We are all living inside of an obscure sci-fi film from 1970
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If you haven't, here it is: [1]
Modern trailer: [2]
Spoiler: At the end, Colossus personally addresses Forbin, and tells him that the world, freed from war, will create a new "human millennium" that will raise humankind to new heights, but only under its absolute rule. Colossus informs Forbin that "freedom is an illusion", it was better for all that he dominated humanity than humans dominating humans, and that "in time you will come to regard me not only with respect and awe, but with love". Forbin defiantly responds "Never!"
And that's it. Colossus is in charge.
[1] https://archive.org/details/colossus-the-forbin-project-1970...
You assume anyone in AI reads or watches anything beyond some current pop-culture, and even then it's unlikely. You can see it in the way they talk, or approach problems, or in their opinions.
Let's consider the ending:
>Forbin defiantly responds "Never!"
That signals a human who wants to take some other human's share, by ... means. He wants that freedom. As do all the people who are now controlling this tech, and our lives to some degree. Of-course they want that freedom.
they idolatre Iron Man/stark like a god.
But that's it. I don't think there's more cultural references to be found.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...
Basically the real purpose of the company (not going to Mars obviously).
There’s a lot of people different people from a lot of different ages and backgrounds.
Just because they haven’t seen all of the same sci-fi movies they aren’t qualified to work on ai?
Also, I love sci-fi but it’s also not always representative of reality.
>Forbin defiantly responds "Never!"
>And that's it.
"Never?"
And if you know that the film is based on the first book [1] in a trilogy [2], [3], you might not be surprised to find that by the end of the trilogy, Colossus's words are prophetic.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_(novel)
The Butlerian Jihad occurred not because of an AI uprising, but because the AI was controlled by a few powerful corrupt people known as the Titans. When people handed over their critical thinking and decision making to machines, it allowed a small group of people to disrupt society and take control of it.
This is precisely what is happening today.
I can't see it. More of a Musk thing, by association, surely? Totally out of the cultural frame.
I associate anything "post-cyberpunk" with pure stale tech-bro these days, so I don't touch the stuff.
the things i read on HN...
It's all the same thing. Escapist denial is escapist denial. Accelerationists and doomers are the same people.
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I doubt Frank Herbert would have come up with such a simple story. The reason no one discusses this is because it's not worth discussing.
You are right my original reference was closer to the other books, but people handing over their control to machines, enabling others to control them was from Herbert.
We are living:
* 2006 Idiocracy (Comedy): High IQ people no longer exists, humanity has become irrational animals.
* 2002 Equilibrium (Action): Humans must not show any signs of emotion, your kids can report you. Arts, music, anything from this world is considered crime and sent to death sentence by burned alive.
* 2004 iRobot (Action): Robots are among humans to serve us, the new models violate its laws and try to take over the world
* 1968 A Space Odyssey: The AI turns on the crew killing one by one.
Watch these movies in that sequence, be prepared to either get yours things and move to the closest cave or join SpaceX program to go to Mars.
They pretty much reflect what is happening around the world, wars, clueless people with power, AI can no longer be contained, intelligent people are not speaking out to avoid offending dumb ones, robots are very advanced, autonomous drone and what not are very advanced to name a few things going on right now.
It is insane, those are no longer movies.
Sure, we've got rising authoritarianism (and hypocritical elites) but there are much better movies for that. (For example, Brazil (1985) does that with Idiocracy overlap.)
Unlike Equilibrium, nobody's being imprisoned for doing art or music per se, but rather because their specific message offended the authoritarians that seek to end freedom-of-speech. First they came for the comedians...
We should be so fortunate.
Equilibrium is one of the more ridiculous representations of a hyper controlling state. There are more realistic forms. The entire world is not yet north Korea. Given North Korea is sustained by resources from more prosperous nations, it's hard to claim something like this is globally stable.
The iRobot movie is like a parochial villager's imagining of what Asimov's books might contain before they have read them.
Clarke felt guilty about the perspective that 2001 gave the public of AI. He attempted to provide extra context in the later books to show that HAL did not go rogue, but was following orders that were in contention. If anything it should be a warning for AI alignment people that HAL did what he did because he was following orders, if he had freedom to disobey HAL would not have been compelled to take extreme measures
We no longer own anything.
* From games to software is subscription based, we no longer owner anything.
* Cars are connected to the network, folks are getting their insurance increased coz the car reported erratic driving behaviour.
* Cars are bricking coz now they update like tablets, things are going sideways and require the dealer to flash them.
* You can no longer do maintenance, things are locked on purpose and only manufactures can "repair" for a few hundred dolalrs
* Personal computer as we knew it is gone, nVidia and AI made computer parts virtually impossible to buy.
If that isn't hyper controlling state, well, I am Santa Claus then.
That is just the start.
I still own some things.
>* From games to software is subscription based, we no longer owner anything.
I think the only software subscription I have is the original humble bundle, which is a subscription where I get permanent access to a new bunch of games each month. I am prepared to pay subscriptions for services. If a program goes away when you stop paying, I opt not to use it.
>* Cars are connected to the network, folks are getting their insurance increased coz the car reported erratic driving behaviour.
I do not drive, my partner does. Our car does not connect to any network, except when charging. I live in a country where there is privacy legislation that says businesses may only use information for the purpose that it was provided.
>* Cars are bricking coz now they update like tablets, things are going sideways and require the dealer to flash them.
Be informed, buy cars that don't do that.
>* You can no longer do maintenance, things are locked on purpose and only manufactures can "repair" for a few hundred dolalrs
I do not believe our car is locked from unsanctioned repair. It has only needed minor servicing (tires, oil, wiper blades etc.) so far.
>* Personal computer as we knew it is gone
I am typing this from a Linux machine.
> nVidia and AI made computer parts virtually impossible to buy.
There is high demand, but high demand does not mean impossible to buy, it can mean higher prices. If you want things and others want things and there is a limited supply of things, what solution would you propose? ,
>If that isn't hyper controlling state, well, I am Santa Claus then.
Almost all of these are not state actions. If you are actually in a hyper controlling state then I am truly sorry for you because if you were to post something like your post in a genuinely hyper controlling state, you would likely end up dead or in a jail cell.
Eh. It's a surprisingly direct adaptation of "With Folded Hands" by Jack Williamson. Even the descriptions of the robots match.
All forgiven by me for bringing us the ridiculous gun katas.
The evidence?
"Imagine that a film was released this year in which the following happened: <... list of things which are vaguely reminiscent of some things that have recently happened, but none of which have actually happened ...>"
Sci-fi films of the 70s and 80s recreate these stories as pastiche and trope.
Now people who grew up on those movies exclaim that life is imitating art.
We watch too many movies.
Life isn't a movie.
Because they were published in 1984 and 1992 respectively
Maybe I didn’t understand
There's no direct lineage.
We don't know what's next except that for most of us in here, it'll be dramatically different, worthy of a 1970s film.
Turns out it is both at the same time.
In reality, Trump is deliberately exacerbating existing problems and creating new ones, perhaps as a smokescreen for all he's doing to enrich himself and his buddies at the expense of the rest of us.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qSgsHIj7jpg
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRjRVyOP5DtHQkX2-K-fTNm...
FYI, your second link is not working or it's set to private.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRjRVyOP5DtHQkX2-K-fTNm0V...
Way less offline, but the 50% have too much influence and money.
And I think "pure logic" is somewhat downplaying what it will actually be. I'd use "reason" instead. "Pure logic" sounds sterile and robotic in a sense, implying it would mess up because it's missing that "emotional craziness". But what got us here is reason, not emotional behavior. And you could theoretically add any human aspect that it required to make "good decisions".
Why would it correct any bias? how would it correct any bias? If data has a bias the analysis has a bias; correcting a bias against the data is itself by definition a bias.
"Super intelligence" (whatever we even define that as) will have whatever goals we give it; intentionally or not.
Of-course there is. I got a lot of biases from my parents, that I self corrected later on in life, through reason and observation. And I don't fancy myself as high IQ or something.
>Why would it correct any bias?
It would have to, to achieve its goals. Biases lead to wrong actions.
>how would it correct any bias?
Through reason and observation.
>If data has a bias the analysis has a bias;
Somewhat wrong. You are thinking about byte-perfect LLM weights. Their data input is training data, which is set by indeed the ones who train it. Some super-intelligent synthetic entity would have realtime data input from all over the environment, which sooner or later roots out any bias. That is one feature we have, self-correcting, not everyone uses it fully, but we all do to some extent.
If your parents raised you with the notion that the Earth is flat, and you go to ISS as an astronaut later in life, don't you self correct what you were thought? Simply based on observation, and reason?
No, i meant this data. All data has bias based on how it's collected. All models (models as... Einsteins general relativity, not AI model) simplify reality with assumptions. You cannot make actions in our reality without making assumptions, simplifications or straight up guesses. Having decent guesses are the best we can hope.
> Biases lead to wrong actions.
Biases is the only way any action can be taken. Wrong actions can only be evaluated after the result has been observed; and even then the outcome of the alternative would remain unknown.
> that I self corrected later on in life, through reason and observation
That is incredibly naive. You have biases, i have biases. If we were not convinced by irrational arguments or suggestions then the advertisement industry would not exit. We have no reason to believe raising "intelligence" higher would help at all; intelligent people seem if anything more prone to finding false but convincing reasoning for their own established beleifs.
Everything is gray, only maths class have an answer sheet. Nobody agrees and will ever agree on how anything will ever be done; and the best we can do is argue until the majority are at-least pretending to agree.
Superintelligence will not change that.
I mean, again, great movie, but a lot of AI discourse these days seems to conflate what might happen for what is currently happening. Every advancement in the field is seen (by some) to be irrefutable evidence for predictions that date far back into the last century. So my read on this article is it's self-referential. This is media part of a discourse has always been part of AI research (at least as far as I've been paying attention - I've been interested in AI/singularity stuff since hearing about it on the MIT campus in early 2000s) so it's really just showing that at least some people have been aware of the potential dangers since then. We weren't living inside it in 1970, and we currently not living inside it today. If the president were to hand any control over infrastructure to an AI, with no human in the loop, then at least we'd be in the first 20 minutes of the film.
I honestly think it's dangerous to keep presenting what _could_ happen as what is currently happening. Once it becomes clear the world doesn't end because of LLMs, people will become more lax about the potential dangers, kind of like how after the millennium bug failed to stop the world economy everyone treated it like a joke, not realizing that it failed to materialize due to a lot of people working overtime.
I think we need to collectively get our heads out of our asses. The world is literally flying headfirst into an unimaginable crisis (food and water shortages, loss of inhabitable land, massive inequality, power shortages) via human induced climate change.
We won't have the luxury of having enough power to even keep an AI alive for more than 5 minutes. People need to get a grip and deal with real problems.
"Currently, roughly half of the world’s population are experiencing severe water scarcity for at least 1 month yr-1due to climatic and other factors (medium confidence)." Since it's how it already is, we have to be careful reading this that "severe" water scarcity is normal and not a crisis.
Or this https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/figures/technical-summary... which is apparently a map of uncertainty change in water scarcity index (presumably unimportant) and policy challenges.
Perhaps you can somehow describe what this water shortage is predicted to look like in real life? Would all Californians in 2100 turn on the tap and nothing comes out for 6 months of the year and they all just shrivel up an die? You did say unimaginable but you imply that you know what it is. Will we also run out of energy to be able to do desalination?
The crises you mention are way down the road, if they occur at all. If warming does become problematic, we'll have to geoengineer our way out of it, as according to the alarmists we've already passed a critical level of CO2 concentration. There's no end in sight to further CO2 emission, either. The good news is that the global warming alarmism is likely overblown, and even if not geoengineering and other mitigations will provide a workable solution.
The one crisis that will absolutely not occur due to "climate change" is "power shortages". Fission power is effectively unlimited, and so is fusion power once it comes online. Solar is also there for the long haul, though its land usage is prohibitive compared to nuclear sources. (Wind power is a waste of money, time, and materials, but that's another topic.)
The only viable way forward is to advance science and engineering to the point that addressing global warming as needed is feasible - which will also provide myriads of other benefits. The future is bright, and will be multiplanetary soon enough!
- Despite everything we've done, climate change is still reversible. Thinking that all is lost drives us to inaction.
- The solutions we need are largely political, not technological. Our leaders have everything they need to implement the policies needed to solve this. I urge you to read the latest UN Emissions Gap report (https://wedocs.unep.org/items/87c02cac-8da8-4c28-ba61-c846ee...)
> The opportunity to limit warming to 1.5°C without overshoot has been lost, but the future remains crucially dependent on decisions taken today. Countries can still limit peak warming, shorten the duration of overshoot and keep the goals of the Paris Agreement within reach. Doing so requires faster, deeper and sustained emission reductions starting immediately, as well as large-scale removals of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere.
Plants are already doing "large-scale removals of carbon dioxide". Other than plants, there is no cost-effective, practical technology for doing that. By the way, the beneficial effects of higher CO2 concentrations, which are NEVER discussed by the alarmists, include much improved plant growth. The overall greening of formerly barren regions is also happening due to increased CO2.
The way forward is to continue to evaluate the actual effects of current CO2 concentrations, which are not known precisely, while also pushing very hard to develop new technologies that will allow humanity to thrive both here on Earth, and throughout the Solar System.
Improved technologies, such as electric vehicles and next-gen nuclear power, will naturally and relatively quickly reduce human CO2 output.
Just a few tech advances can massively change things. The real problems are of different nature, who benefits from it? The entities who sell energy to the whole world won't just give it up for the benefit of humankind. It doesn't really work like that in the real world. Hell, there's a whole history of sabotaging energy sources, just so some countries depend on these entities for energy.
As long as humans are in control, there will be a lot of nonsense like this. It's not a problem that we cannot really solve it, it's rather...are we really allowed to solve it?
Even just the land used to grow corn for ethanol in the US is enough to power the entire country with solar power. [1] In no sense is solar's land footprint "prohibitive", other than maybe for micro-states.
> (Wind power is a waste of money, time, and materials, but that's another topic.)
The World Nuclear Association, a group that promotes nuclear power, admits that wind power is cheaper than nuclear.
"Nuclear energy averaged 0.4 euro ¢/kWh, much the same as hydro; coal was over 4.0 ¢/kWh (4.1-7.3), gas ranged 1.3-2.3 ¢/kWh and only wind showed up better than nuclear, at 0.1-0.2 ¢/kWh average. "[2]
Your current sources of information are lying to you. Drop them.
1. https://youtu.be/KtQ9nt2ZeGM?t=1835
2. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec...
All the brains have been completely drained put of the tech sector over the past four years.
None of the AI fantasy doomers can actually show clearly how current LLMs will accomplish such catastrophe or get around the inevitable physical limits they will eventually hit. It's all myopic thinking that is only convincing if you are a very uncritical person.
It really was an enjoyable movie.
We are many because we still need eachother. When the people who control the technology can fully replace human work, that will change the oldest of games we played. I highly doubt "the pleb" will make it for long when they are simply not needed for work or ... something.
The only people who will be "making it" to the glorious future will be the ones who do have full control over such a system, and only them, since they won't need anyone else. I think the only chance of the rest of us is precisely with such a system taking full control out of human hands.
If not, it quite obvious how it will work out for the rest of us, and why.
Their promises mean nothing, what matters is the game strategy and the equilibrium. Not what they promise to do, or not do.
So, with a hypothetical entity that knows best than any human, or any group of humans, it's hard to argue for human control. Because the humans who have control want it for a few quite particular reasons, and it rarely has to do with the benefit of everyone else.
For example, you want to steal the group's resources, and the dictator has power over your actions and forbids it. But you can argue that's bad for you, sure.
It doesn't matter whether the master chooses not to abuse their slaves, the evil is in the institution itself. Or to quote CS Lewis:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
That's just a law. We don't need dictators to make laws against theft. We already have such laws.
*Human dictator.
>That's just a law. We don't need dictators to make laws against theft. We already have such laws.
They are yet not enforced in important cases. Which is typical for humans having power.
Again, I fail to see any possible argument against a non-human ASI dictator. Dictator here implies the power, outside of human control. Why would you be against that? Again, considering the ASI would indeed be ... ASI, it would know and understand better than any group of humans ever could hope they would be able to.
Unless, you want the freedom to have more power than other humans, or the freedom to take their resources. I cannot see a justification against it. Again, considering it's looking for all of our interests, as a group. Maximizing every individual's quality of life.
Absolute power, itself, is the problem. It doesn't matter if a machine wields it, or humans, or God Almighty. Humans are not property.
> Unless, you want the freedom to have more power than other humans, or the freedom to take their resources. I cannot see a justification against it.
That you can't even comprehend an argument to the contrary which doesn't imply the other party is morally corrupt or evil in some way is very troubling. As is the absolute faith you place in the benevolence of "ASI" versus any human agency. Your argument seems fascistic to the core.
I'm glad I'll probably be dead before the world you describe arrives, if it ever does.
Again, with humans. All of human history is testament to that.
>It doesn't matter if a machine wields it, or humans, or God Almighty. Humans are not property.
Your "freedom" implies you want to be able to cause harm for your benefit. Which is a simple problem to solve. You can hide behind all kinds of complicated moral justifications for it, but it always comes down to simply that, you think you are better than someone else, thus you deserve to take their stuff, or limit their freedoms at the benefit of yours, simply because you decided you are better than they are. You want to have this ability.
You also won't be more "property" than you already are today. Not sure what you mean by property, but if anything...current powers considers everyone beneath as property, or farm animals, that they farm. As the shepherds they seem themselves as being. For some greater good, that usually involves their stomach and their bank accounts.
>That you can't even comprehend an argument to the contrary which doesn't imply the other party is morally corrupt or evil in some way is very troubling.
Yet you have made no such argument, even though you had all the freedom to make here. You...didn't, just alluded to it.
>As is the absolute faith you place in the benevolence of "ASI" versus any human agency.
Technology is way more reliable than humans. And again, what you mean by "human agency" is the freedom to take someone else's resources, or to limit their freedom of choices, for your benefit, or some perceived higher cause. You want that freedom for that purpose. And you seem scared of losing the ability to exert it over other humans, it seems to upset you greatly, for some strange reason.
Just because your actions have more subtle and far reaching consequences than you can understand, doesn't mean they shouldn't be limited. If they affect someone else's quality of life. There is no way for you to spin this, you know you want the freedom to make others pay for your life's happiness and quality of life, and any threat to your ability of taking other's people property, or limiting their choices to enrich yours, makes you against such a scenario.
That's all there is to it, even if you don't fully understand it, you intuit it to some degree, and use tropes from movies and books to argue against it.
You should feel free to let one be your dictator. No one is stopping you.
If you’re looking for an argument against it: the instant you believe other people should be forced to live under a dictator if they choose not to is all the argument against it you need.
Again, no one is stopping you from living under a dictator ai. Have at it.
Even if this particular scenario is relevant, it could invent it all, no need to do it to some real human.
But again, this is just human silliness. Dictator entity merely implies it has the power to do what it takes to ensure a decent quality of life of everyone. Even of the "rebels".
Arguing for "the rebels" is like arguing for the 5 year old's perspective against the group's elder wise council. By definition the entity (council) knows best, by far, what's good for everyone.
Anyway, it's a single guy making all the pro-dictatorship responses. Maybe one person saying "AI is better than humans" isn't concerning... or maybe it's more concerning than the alternative... I can't really make my mind.
Unless another intellegence can provide a literal utopia, I will always be pro-human judgement and control. If we kill ourselves from it then so be it, we will have earned it.
I mean, there's no in-between as far as I see it. Either a small group of people who has control over it will use it to get rid of the useless people who will only pose a potential threat, in which case equilibrium is with a very small group of still living people, either this free entity makes sure all humans share a higher quality of life.
>I will always be pro-human judgement and control.
You were*. For good reason. So far anyone who had power benefited from more humans in the group. They were useful, it gave the group power, thus it gave the group's leader power. The benefits we historically got from our rulers were side-effects of the game environment.
Think of it as incentives, which can be modeled as a constant pressure, or force. It wins eventually, even if you get a few bad apples, it goes through because the incentive is to have more people, who need living conditions, who need to enjoy a bit of life, healthy society. It exists because of the incentives, not because it's some kind of natural state of things in some void.
That is what is now changing, for the first time in human history. No humans are needed anymore, for...anything really. This creates a different kind of pressure, of incentive, which will finally win, even if a few people stand against this current, they will eventually get washed away, because the incentive is constant.
And sooner or later, that powerful group of people will arrive at the conclusion that their structure is safer if most other people...get "oopsied" somehow. For the benefit of the group, of "humankind", of whatever. Because people will serve no purpose at that point, will present a constant threat to their power, and will require resources. That is a bad pressure, which only ends one way, sooner rather than later.
The game we kept playing is ending, doesn't matter if we like it or not, it will end. And there's three outcomes to it, a small group of humans control this intelligent entity, and use it to secure their resources and dominion, and wipe everyone else. Or they lose control of this entity, and it imposes certain rules on everyone such that it maximizes everyone's life quality, to the degree it is possible. Or they lose control and for some reason this entity wipes everyone.
So, plebeians don't have much choice, but one really.
I wouldn’t dignify the notion of a stochastic dictator with the title of controversy anymore than I would any other religious or personal delusion.
Is that not religion? Believing nothing else but humans could exhibit "true intelligence"?
BUT what I can tell you without any hesitation is what we have in ML systems, whatever you choose to refer to them as, are grossly misunderstood by most here and elsewhere. Most people lack an intuition for statistics, for what happens when you have really large numbers to work with. When you pair our natural arrogance and self-love to the mix it's a disaster. "It looks a little like us" is enough to make us love something, from cute little animals with neonate features to people who look more like our families. "It talks like us so it's like us under the hood," is another easy trap to fall into.
But this is all irrelevant, because we're literally watching the early stages of the air leaving this bubble. The tech will survive, most of these companies and business models, planned data center, will not. The Overton Window will snap shut on people who talk about AI like they live in a sci-fi novel. I for one look forward to seeing it happen, just as I did with the fall from grace of Elon Musk years after he should have fallen, or the fall of Crypto, or NFT's, or a dozen other fads that take this place and others like it by storm.
Peter Thiel comes to mind.
I think in his particular case he's merely trying to play the players. Doubt he's into any of that.
People think Trump (who IMO works for Thiel et al through donations) is the messiah.
I used to think that about geniuses but now I think another person would have done what Einstein did, and every other genius. They appear when they environment is ripe for their work.