I don’t think that’s what he meant. They both are surveillance tools. He’s just upset only one of those is making people advertise their leave in protest.
Correct, but advertising was a better disguise for surveillance. AI goes well beyond surveillance and many evil use cases are now obvious to more people.
Advertising has the appearance of representing an on-going revenue source for an increasing number of devices used in our daily lives by way of surveillance and creation of a picture of an individuals habits and psychology in order to manipulate said psychology to induce the individual to spend more money on literally worthless shit.
That is a threat to the fundamental stability of society.
I think it's worse than that. Or at least, the products that have been built because of advertising are worse than that. Instagram/TikTok/Facebook are all ultimately just surfaces to serve ads, but they've wormed their way into their users' consciousness in fairly insidious ways
Advertising turned brains of entire generation (or maybe a few) into mush.
All intellectual, psych and social scores are in free fall since introduction of ad-supported attention grabbing internet.
AI is theorethical threat. Advertising is a constant detriment to our brains, societies and culture.
If AI can mitigate a fraction of the damage that ads do it will have massive positive impact.
We live in times where everyone can pick their own flavor of apocalypse to be scared of. Ads are leading us into Idiocracy since ~2004 and made huge progress towards it.
Google and Meta's wealth came at the cost of civilization getting sucked dry of its attention and mental capacity.
It’s funny how the [very real] thing that normalizes the exploitation of user data, enables “reel casinos,” suffocates creators and replaces them with “influencers,” etc. is compared with the [still very abstract] danger of AI.
Even before big money was on the table, people didn’t blink an eye at starting to work for Google/Facebook, “solving fun tasks.”
(OP here)
FWIW I despise the addictiveness, er engagement optimization that Google and others do. I have said so inside and outside the company many, many times. I would never have agreed to work on that stuff myself. One of the hobby projects I would like to work on is exploring how to use personal AI to beat those algorithms.
I respect the argument for not working for a company that does addictiveness work anywhere, even if you don't work on it yourself. But that's not where I drew the line.
Also FWIW I disagree the danger of AI is abstract. A lot is happening right now, in education for example.
So it is ok to believe (even despise) it is bad but as long as I don't work directly on it but my super big paycheck gets funded by it, all good! Cheers!!
I actually work in education and can share the following first-hand: the things we now build, the ways we now educate, and all the opportunities for reaching out to students are beautiful. I foresee that _many_ people will cut corners now, but I believe that, in the end, we will get a new generation of education that is personal and humane.
I don't mean this as preaching some shiny future that I hope will magically arrive. I already see these things happening. And I also see all the ways people misuse the tools or take shortcuts.
Educators with good intentions, skills, and powerful tools will always beat ignorance and laziness relying on those same tools.
To a guy who knows nothing about nuclear physics, an atomic bomb is very abstract until it blows up and becomes very concrete. Should we wait until it explodes to consider the risk?
Comparison between LLMs and atomic weapons just mystifies the issue.
I wrote about this here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49685036">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49685036
Is there anything specific you, as an LLM equivalent of a nuclear physicist (if that’s a fair comparison), can highlight in terms of these imminent dangers?
There's no "imminent" danger, but right now we are on a course where ASI will be developed. There are many reasons to believe that ASI will be dangerous. There are some books you could read...
AI is a threat if you're a messy codebase, an unsolved math problem, or cancer. Otherwise you only have an improved quality of living to look forward to IMO.
BLKNSLVR · · focus · HN ↗
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King-Aaron · · focus · HN ↗
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BLKNSLVR · · focus · HN ↗
That is a threat to the fundamental stability of society.
swiftcoder · · focus · HN ↗
I think it's worse than that. Or at least, the products that have been built because of advertising are worse than that. Instagram/TikTok/Facebook are all ultimately just surfaces to serve ads, but they've wormed their way into their users' consciousness in fairly insidious ways
scotty79 · · focus · HN ↗
All intellectual, psych and social scores are in free fall since introduction of ad-supported attention grabbing internet.
AI is theorethical threat. Advertising is a constant detriment to our brains, societies and culture.
If AI can mitigate a fraction of the damage that ads do it will have massive positive impact.
We live in times where everyone can pick their own flavor of apocalypse to be scared of. Ads are leading us into Idiocracy since ~2004 and made huge progress towards it.
Google and Meta's wealth came at the cost of civilization getting sucked dry of its attention and mental capacity.
smugglerFlynn · · focus · HN ↗
Even before big money was on the table, people didn’t blink an eye at starting to work for Google/Facebook, “solving fun tasks.”
roca · · focus · HN ↗
I respect the argument for not working for a company that does addictiveness work anywhere, even if you don't work on it yourself. But that's not where I drew the line.
Also FWIW I disagree the danger of AI is abstract. A lot is happening right now, in education for example.
BLKNSLVR · · focus · HN ↗
+1000
CrimsonRain · · focus · HN ↗
roca · · focus · HN ↗
smugglerFlynn · · focus · HN ↗
I actually work in education and can share the following first-hand: the things we now build, the ways we now educate, and all the opportunities for reaching out to students are beautiful. I foresee that _many_ people will cut corners now, but I believe that, in the end, we will get a new generation of education that is personal and humane.
I don't mean this as preaching some shiny future that I hope will magically arrive. I already see these things happening. And I also see all the ways people misuse the tools or take shortcuts.
Educators with good intentions, skills, and powerful tools will always beat ignorance and laziness relying on those same tools.
killerstorm · · focus · HN ↗
smugglerFlynn · · focus · HN ↗
I wrote about this here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49685036">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49685036
Is there anything specific you, as an LLM equivalent of a nuclear physicist (if that’s a fair comparison), can highlight in terms of these imminent dangers?
killerstorm · · focus · HN ↗
hypfer · · focus · HN ↗
AI is concerning in some aspects, yes, but the loss of a shared reality has nothing to do with that, and is even more scary.
jimmaswell · · focus · HN ↗
etdznots · · focus · HN ↗