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Comment by vouaobrasil | Hacker News Reader

Then it should be a fundamental mission of people who DO have technical knowledge to spread the word on both the negative and positive effects of AI. If WE have the knowledge, WE have the responsibility to go out there and let people know. But as far as I know, most technical people are happy to discuss it amongst themselves and not even say one word to people who have no technical knowledge. Not one word.

We need more balanced opinions in a world where the only ideas that survive are the ones that promise short-term gains at the cost of long-term disasters.

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The problem with AI has never been the technology that composes AI, the problem has always and will forever be the immature yet powerful humans that take advantage of less advantaged humans using whatever means they have, which today can include AI. The issue is not a technology issue, it's a human psychology and sociology issue, it's our immature humans in society that is the issue. Technologists cannot speak about that in any meaningful manner.

Michael Crichton has (rightly) entered the chat.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton

Crichton says these failures of humanity are inevitable because there will always be a technologist who does things because they can, not because they should.

That everything will go off the rails, no matter what people attempt, is the plot of the novel Jurassic Park.

I absolutely disagree. Technologists understand the true nature of AI and can thus predict its uses. Moreover, if technologists realize this problem of how AI will inevitably be used, their voice will be a powerful message that even those who enjoy math and science are fearful of AI.

Nope, nope. Technologists do not understand the true nature of AI. What technologists know they can rarely communicate, and even less so to a general public. Technology developers are not some special deep understanders that ordinary humans are not; we just have more time spent in our specialization than they, as they have in their specializations which we do not. If anything, technology developers, due to our specialization's time requirements and the traditional lack of professional communications training, tend to be weaker communicators than the general public. The last people you want explaining AI to a potentially fearful general public is weak communicators, such as the AI developers.

Just because many technologists are poor communicators, doesn't mean all are.

Carl Sagan.

The problem is the same as some of the woke movements. Nobody wants to publicly speak out against AI safety BS because a Twitter mob who has made a career out of it will descend onto them and ruin their career. There is nothing to gain from speaking out against it, but you gain career opportunities by being part of the AI safety BS community. In fact, this has happened with Hinton (I think it was?) when he dared to explain how models aren't inherently biased. Had to publicly apologize for it later.

Even ML conferences have AI safety tracks these days. Nobody sane wants to be excluded from opportunities.

Well, I for one am speaking out against it (and against AI in general). I have a blog, Twitter, newsletter, and I even post warnings on my YouTube channel from time to time. I was part of a discussion that led my employer to commit to NOT using generative AI.

No Twitter mob is going to stop me. They can descend all they want and pretend to be brave in front of a keyboard and screen. As far as I'm concerned, they're cowards.

Upvoted because I appreciate your taking a position and if the Twitter mob won't stop you there is no reason to have the HN mob squelch you.

That said:

I'm fairly aligned with your position in that I believe that technology should be utterly subservient to us and I draw the line at push messages and don't have a smartphone, online assistant or any other crap like that. I'll think for myself and I will allow myself to be interrupted where and when I want it, not when some piece of needy technology believes it is time for me to be distracted. My attention is my most precious commodity and I'll spread it around based on my own preferences. That is also why I've banned advertising from my life.

But I recognize that this is a personal decision first and foremost and that there are many other people for whom convenience is a far bigger factor than it is for me. At the same time those people are often wondering why I'm as productive as I am but that's not for me to explain, I lack the tools to tell them - politely - that if they dropped all of the crap in their lives, opened a book or two and learned some more skills that they too could be more productive.

I've been accused of being a modern Luddite and that's kind of funny because for forty years or so I think I was solidly positioned at the forefront of the tech scene, right at the bleeding edge and in quite a few cases working to advance that frontier. But now I'm much more aware of the shadow side of all this stuff and that's why I'm very cautious about what parts I allow in and which parts I keep out, even if that means less smooth interaction with those around me who all embrace all this stuff without a second thought.

Oh, and maybe lay off the all-caps words.

Upvoted because I appreciate your position.

In case anyone is wondering, jacquesm is the one who designed & built a robotic sorting mechanism that intelligently distinguishes different types of Lego pieces and separates them quite effectively.

The kind of Luddite who hasn't forgotten how much progress can be made when zero hours are spent hunched in the touchscreen pose, and things like that.

Anyone who can do 0 hours per day for a decent spell just might find out those zeros really add up.

When you have a device that's supposed to give you more freedom to roam it might not really be pulling its weight if you are tethered to it all the time.

And things like that.

"against AI safety"

You speak against AI and against AI safety? In what way? Wouldn't be speaking against AI enough? Or would AI safety mean laws to prevent AI existence? Like in the Algebraist? (though it is funny in that book how the powerful use AI when it suits them).

I speak out against both. I am strongly against AI. But I am also against AI safety in general because I think AI safety is:

(1) A false amelioration that cannot prevent the dangers of AI

(2) A false promise to people that AI can be made safe

(3) A weak on-the-fence position to take of people who think they can have their cake and eat it too.

But is it impossible to study AI safety (or "safety") scientifically? What about all the papers like AI watermarking or AI racial bias and so for?

Do you argue that academics working on those questions are doing illegitimate science?

I don't think the science is illegitimate in the sense that it doesn't follow the scientific method or at least the principles of science or engineering in some form. Nor do I think they have bad intentions.

BUT, I do think their work is useless and only serves to better integrate AI into to the system, which is better in the short term but worse in the long term. Therefore, overall, I vehemently disagree with their research and I think it is fundamentally a contribution to the worsening of the earth.

I absolutely AGREE with treating all people equally and eliminating racial biases of course. However, TECH companies have a VESTED interest in this sort of thing, which is to integrate as many people as possible into the tech empire. It just so happens that building the tech empire is roughly equivalent to success in modern society, which is why their intentions seem good, but they are only ostensibly good. In reality, they do no good of any kind.

Hmm, I'm intrigued. I looked at your blog - not very close, no time right now, but I feel I would enjoy a more thorough read - and I find, for example, this[1] post to be quite sensible on its surface, even if I may not agree with everything. However, the latter part of the title - "and should be destroyed" - makes me wonder: how exactly could it be possible to put the genie back in the bottle?

The only scenario that comes to my mind - happily untainted with any philosophy training - is the one from Dune. The problem with that is that, throughout the series, Dune describes at least four different dystopic world orders, all motivated and cultivated because the AI-based one didn't come to pass (narrowly). In the novel, the only feasible, long-term strategy to avoid being wiped out by the "thinking machines" was either religious fundamentalism or a God-like undying tyrant forcing its vision on everyone. Since we lack the capabilities to create the latter, it seems the former is the only way we can implement it right now. Wouldn't, however, living under the permanent anti-AI jihad also be a dystopic experience? Especially in our case, where the AI has yet to decimate humanity to the brink of extinction.

I'm sure you considered this, so if you have a summary of what you think we can still do to stop AI without succumbing to any of the other undesirable outcomes, I'd appreciate a link :)

[1] https://blog.jpolak.org/2519/

If you are actually interested in that you can promote voices like this (Why We Must Resist AI w/ Dan McQuillan): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38362498

Thanks, I'll look into it!

> Then it should be a fundamental mission of people who DO have technical knowledge to spread the word on both the negative and positive effects of AI.

Researchers have done so. One good resource is Melanie Mitchell's book Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans (i presume a 2nd edition is in works to incorporate LLMs/ChatGPT etc.) Also checkout her videos on youtube.

The problem is that technologically clueless vested interests in the business/media push sound bites to the already distracted public thus distorting everything.

There should be no need for us to spread the word about anything. Technology needs to be built and the chips need to fall where they may. If society changes as a result, so be it.

I'm seriously tired of these vested interests destroying perfectly good technology just because it would endanger their precious business models. Computers should have put an end to silly things like copyright but they would rather destroy our computing freedom than allow that to happen. Now we have these awesome language models and AIs and they're desperately trying to limit and control it.

It's a tragedy in of itself that we even need to fight these political battles at all.

the strong needs to just take whatever it wants, and so be it?

there's no separating technology from context, as in consequences. yes, all the talk about bombing datacenters is crazy, but oversight is not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQfJi7rjuEk

Yeah, sure. "Oversight". Funny how that only ever seems to benefit governments and entrenched corporate interests. Can't let normal citizens have free computing, lest they start encrypting things or violating copyright at massive scales. Now the new boogeyman is "unrestricted" AI. Can't let people have that, it might provide people instructions about sarin gas manufacturing or something. The government intelligence agencies totally want full access though, they can feed everyone's communications into it so they can ask it questions about the people they're surveilling. Is person X planning a terrorist attack? Is there anything that could ruin person Y's reputation?

The truth is these technologies are subversive. They literally subvert the existing social order and impose a new one. A new social order where the users of the technology are empowered. They can't tolerate it when we are the users. It takes their power away. So they ban it, control it, flip it around on us and turn it into the very mechanism of our wide-scale oppression.

funny, yet false.

there are clear benefits to having the FDA, SEC, FTC, EPA and so on around. there's a clear benefit to having fire inspectors, and there's a clear benefit to the mandate of 2 stairs per multi-story building. there's a clear benefit to the requirement of demonstration of efficacy in front of the FDA. there's a clear benefit to having clean air.

of course there are clear drawbacks too. most of Europe is perfectly okay with just 1 stair per such building. FDA processes are slow and expensive, even if a drug has proven safe and effective abroad.

regulatory capture is a problem, the super-long intellectual property terms are a problem. using environmental review laws for endless NIMBYism is a problem.

but these are arguments for reform, not for scorched earth, because then the problems will very likely come back.

of course it's very hard to do proper cost-benefit comparisons, yet that doesn't mean it's impossible, and especially doesn't mean that simply getting rid of these controls will deliver utopia overnight.

...

funny, how we're talking about some hypothetical oversight, while right now in the present the big beneficiaries of AI are hyper-big-fucking-corps. MSFT. Google. Tesla. Apple. Amazon.

...

Subversive tech? Like Pegasus? And face recognition? And the Great Firewall of China?

> but these are arguments for reform, not for scorched earth

We're never going to "reform" this system. We're up against trillion dollar industries with unlimited lobbying power, governments bold enough to ignore the constitutional rights of their own citizens.

... that again seems like a very useless model of the world. regulations change, sometimes for the worse sometimes for the better. of course we know that when populism flies high and the wolves are elected to keep the sheep safe, well, you know, we have always been at war with Oceania. Supreme Court justices were always allowed to accept gifts.

social movements, radicals come and go, trillion dollar industries can too.

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