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Neo-Amish

3 pointscornass44 comments

My fear of AGI is rooted in the same annoyance one might feel after getting the day’s Wordle spoiled for them. It seems AGI will be to my career as cheating with Stockfish is to a game of chess. I’ve wondered how individuals might work around this. And I think I have come up with a comforting idea of how I want to live my life upon the emergence of AGI. I will be neo-Amish. Meaning I will abstain from utilizing AGI due to its supposed cheat code level of intellect. This idea does not work without likeminded individuals forming a community with anti-AGI regulations at its core. The only argument I see diffusing this idea is the apparent necessity of a surveillance state.

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I do not see us reach AGI within the next ten years at last, probably in the next 20. Deep Learning and LLMs have taken us down a road that provides many such cheat codes, but is not AGI, and is ultimately is self-limiting in getting to producing an AGI.

I can see more people adopting a neo-amish style approach though as LLMs become more prevalent.

The problem I also see is that as the backlash increases against LLMs in specific, and AI in general, the marketers will mention AI in their product descriptions and web sites less and less. I think it will get to the point where you don't know whether a product uses LLMs or not. Alternatively, it will get to the point where LLMs are ubiquitous, and you can't easily find products that don't use them.

As a result, I think they are a part of life now. We can't ignore them, legislate them away, or decide not to use them without major impact on our lives. Instead, we need to legislate responsible use, legislate attribution and compensation, and learn to recognize the signs of GAN generated content.

The analogy is apt. AI is just a tool to increase your productivity. Amish do not drive cars because they are built with electricity and machines.

You will need to find your digital Pennsylvania, with like minded people and cottage industry customers to make it in the post AI world without taking advantage of the tools.

Except that's not why Amish don't drive cars.

(not that I'm an expert, but I don't believe there'd be anything in Amish theology specifically against AGI —pace current power requirements?— especially if it were intelligent enough to understand Gelassenheit)

one thing that will be true this time will be that there will no anti-Amish people(which we currently are) this time as ASI(Few years after AGI) will end it all.

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