> The classic picture of AIs doing things in the world is robots, but I think a more realistic picture of the near future is computers telling people what to do.
As a purely qualitative description, this does not strike me as anything particularly new. Machines had been doing something like this long before the computer age. For example, as early as the late Middle Ages, mechanical wheel-driven clocks with striking mechanisms were used to call people to prayer.
Any process in which a person reacts to a machine can be characterised in this way. Every till that calculates how much one has to pay, every traffic light, every other machine-generated signal. When a warning light comes on in the car, we are prompted to do something: release the handbrake properly, fasten our seatbelt, visit a garage, ...
We are already so deeply embedded in such cycles that AI seems to be merely a new variation on them than a fundamental change.
The deep sense of unease regarding AI does not stem from a machine telling us what to do, but from the risk of losing control over the situation as a whole.
Archelaos · · focus · HN ↗
As a purely qualitative description, this does not strike me as anything particularly new. Machines had been doing something like this long before the computer age. For example, as early as the late Middle Ages, mechanical wheel-driven clocks with striking mechanisms were used to call people to prayer.
Any process in which a person reacts to a machine can be characterised in this way. Every till that calculates how much one has to pay, every traffic light, every other machine-generated signal. When a warning light comes on in the car, we are prompted to do something: release the handbrake properly, fasten our seatbelt, visit a garage, ...
We are already so deeply embedded in such cycles that AI seems to be merely a new variation on them than a fundamental change.
The deep sense of unease regarding AI does not stem from a machine telling us what to do, but from the risk of losing control over the situation as a whole.