Why I Do Not Fear AI...

[tater]

5 hours ago, KSK said:

I've read bad fanfic but it was a rare displeasure to find one so thoroughly saturated with the author's smug sense of superiority.

Yeah, I'd never heard of that before—I'll admit I bailed after a few chapters last night, was too annoying.

Him actually speaking in interviews, podcasts, etc, is pretty funny. Every N^th word out of his mouth is "like." A bad look for someone posing as a public intellectual.

[kerbiloid]

Quote

Why I Do Not Fear AI...

Idk, cuz they promise it's okay.

Spoiler

 

Btw, if AI can emulate human personalities, running them as applications, digital compression methods would be very effective, as 95% of humans are interchangeable.

[kerbiloid]

Btw, a virus, a trojan, or a cryptominer can also call the AI API.

[farmerben]

Youtube now has a realistic imitation of Christopher Hitchens reading audiobooks he never actually recorded.  Blocked.  At the very least they notified us it was fake.  This is borderline abuse of technology.  I don't want to waste time on audio fakes

[kerbiloid]

HR vs AI interview.

Which evil wins?

[tater]

1 hour ago, farmerben said:

Youtube now has a realistic imitation of Christopher Hitchens reading audiobooks he never actually recorded.  Blocked.  At the very least they notified us it was fake.  This is borderline abuse of technology.  I don't want to waste time on audio fakes

Why would this be a problem?

If I was to read something Hitch wrote narrated by some rando, vs hearing it in a convincing Hitchens, I'd much prefer the latter I think—assuming using his voice was acceptable to the family. I could imagine it being trained on recordings of people long dead, and them reading a book might be pretty cool.

[farmerben]

Customizing it to your individual taste is one thing.  I am sort of upset that somebody found a way to spam the YouTube algorithm.

[kerbiloid]

(Can't remember if it already was quoted here).

"I don't fear of AI, who has passed the Turing test.
I'm afraid of AI, who intentionally has failed it."
(c) idk

[tater]

At the moment this is slightly tangential to AI—unless being embodied matters

[TheSaint]

5 hours ago, tater said:

At the moment this is slightly tangential to AI—unless being embodied matters

It's all tangential. Until it's not.

Agility Robotics is building its first bipedal robot factory in Oregon

"While customers can expect robot orders to begin fulfillment in 2024, by 2025, the factory will be producing 10,000 humanoid robots per year."

[DDE]

11 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

It's all tangential. Until it's not.

Agility Robotics is building its first bipedal robot factory in Oregon

"While customers can expect robot orders to begin fulfillment in 2024, by 2025, the factory will be producing 10,000 humanoid robots per year."

Salem, huh? (not that one, though)

And they do look mostly plastic...

[tater]

1 hour ago, TheSaint said:

"While customers can expect robot orders to begin fulfillment in 2024, by 2025, the factory will be producing 10,000 humanoid robots per year."

I wonder how autonomous and easily directable these are?

A humanoid robot needs to be programmed by saying, "Watch me load the dishwasher." Then 3 hours later, "Watch me put the dishes away." Then tomorrow: "Load the dishwasher, and when it's done, put them away."

[KSK]

Well at least the loveer is honest.

Agility Robotics’ co-founder and CEO says that the ultimate goal of creating Digits is to “Solve difficult problems in today’s workforce like injuries, burnout, high turnover and unfillable labor gaps.”

So, in other words, replacing today's workforce because heaven forbid  that we try other solutions like treating them fairly, providing a safer working environment and paying them more than a pittance. Line must go up, after all.

Screw this company. When the revolution comes, I hope their Board and executives are the first against the wall. Bonus points if their half-buried company slogan translates to 'Go stick your head in a pig.'

 

Edit.  If I'm going to be filtered by this stupid forum software for minor cussing, I may as well get filtered for proper cussing.

Edited September 25, 2023 by KSK

[kerbiloid]

12 hours ago, TheSaint said:

Agility Robotics is building its first bipedal robot factory in Oregon

"While customers can expect robot orders to begin fulfillment in 2024, by 2025, the factory will be producing 10,000 humanoid robots per year."

They could do that in the famous Kensington Ave, Philadelphia.

According to the numerous videos, it's enough just to update BIOS.

11 hours ago, tater said:

A humanoid robot needs to be programmed by saying, "Watch me load the dishwasher." Then 3 hours later, "Watch me put the dishes away." Then tomorrow: "Load the dishwasher, and when it's done, put them away."

"Hey! The cops!"

("Атас, менты!" in localization.)

[SunlitZelkova]

15 hours ago, DDE said:

Salem, huh? (not that one, though)

And they do look mostly plastic...

Just a hour and half from where I live. So when the AI activate the nuclear weapons, I should be shielded from the bombs, because Oregon will become the base of the AI army.

I, for one, look forward to serving as the human advisor to the new apex predator of Earth.

4 hours ago, KSK said:

Screw this company. When the revolution comes, I hope their Board and executives are the first against the wall. Bonus points if their half-buried company slogan translates to 'Go stick your head in a pig.'

Long live the People’s Republic of Cascadia!

[darthgently]

On 5/27/2023 at 11:21 AM, kerbiloid said:

New Egyptian pyramids are waiting for their hardworking heroes.

Stargate-1 team activated

[tater]

7 hours ago, KSK said:

So, in other words, replacing today's workforce because heaven forbid  that we try other solutions like treating them fairly, providing a safer working environment and paying them more than a pittance. Line must go up, after all.

Automation has already removed many jobs, and not just recently, but for over 100 years. Someone isn't pushing a cart of parts, it comes on a conveyor? Send the engineers responsible to the wall! Fire! A great great uncle of mine had a business in Minneapolis that Detroit put out business. He was a drover. People had to maintain the wagons, feed and care for the horses, etc. They eventuality were all out of jobs. Dang automation.

All those laundry workers put out of business by washing machines! Would it have been somehow worse if the machine was a humanoid robot that used a 100+ year old washboard and bucket of water to wash, vs our front loader?

Generalized robotics will be capable of many human tasks, it's just when. This was never not true... only the when part was/is uncertain.

Is the reaction the same to people like patent lawyers or screenwriters maybe being put out of business by AI the same—or is it more concerning that the AI might also come for some physical work, not just cognitive work?

How far does the Butlerian Jihad go? Do we line up the washing machine manufacturers? The dishwasher owners set upon by the Red Guard? Or only tech invented after 2010 is verboten?

I think the implications of the coming technology are certainly worth examining, but they are coming, one way or another. If the manufacturers think people are going to come for them the factories will get security:

 

Edited September 25, 2023 by tater

[KSK]

Yeah, the old buggy-whip argument, aka 'you can't stop progress'.

Well, I for one, am fed up with it. Because that line of thinking leads to automated everything - manual labour, skilled labour, creative works, the lot. So what the hell happens then?  Apart from ever-increasing amounts of money (and therefore political power and influence) being concentrated in the hands of the AI and robot company executives. Who don't give (and are legally obliged not to give) a rolling love at a donut about anything other than their bottom line.

Maybe it's about damn time we did give some thought to this, rather than trotting out the same old bullcrap strawmen and  (as per that charming CEO), treating people as an inconvenient liability on the balance sheet.

But to answer your counterfactual.

Washing machines require people to build them, enable other business models, and remove some level of domestic drudgery, theoretically freeing up time to spend on better things. We'll ignore the fact that those better things tend to be 'going out and getting another job'. With robots, its gonna be robots all the way down: robots building the washing machines, robots running the laundromats and whatever other businesses use those washing machines, and eventually robots building the robots that build the washing machines. No room for people anywhere, and all the money flowing upwards to the robot building company owners.

There's no automobile makers to replace the buggy whip makers here.

And on a marginally less ranty note; even if you don't care about any of the above, you really should care about concentrating economic power in the hands of a few increasingly large companies, whilst removing people's ability to make a living and pay for all the shiny dreck made by those companies. Because, at that point, your economic system goes belly up anyway.

 

Edited September 25, 2023 by KSK

[tater]

30 minutes ago, KSK said:

Yeah, the old buggy-whip argument, aka 'you can't stop progress'.

Well, I for one, am fed up with it. Because that line of thinking leads to automated everything - manual labour, skilled labour, creative works, the lot. So what the hell happens then?  Apart from ever-increasing amounts of money (and therefore political power and influence) being concentrated in the hands of the AI and robot company executives. Who don't give (and are legally obliged not to give) a rolling love at a donut about anything other than their bottom line.

What people think one way or another doesn't matter, though. It's going to happen. It was always going to happen.

WRT AI doomers (the AI kills all humans folks), any limits they suggest definitionally will only apply to people who elect to accept the limits, and who are also not lying about limiting themselves. Ie: impossible task. The first world can have 100% compliance, and someone else will simply do it—and become 1st world as a result (that's their motivation, anyway).

So the best solution, IMO, is to figure out how to live with it.

34 minutes ago, KSK said:

Washing machines require people to build them, enable other business models, and remove some level of domestic drudgery, theoretically freeing up time to spend on better things. We'll ignore the fact that those better things tend to be 'going out and getting another job'. With robots, its gonna be robots all the way down: robots building the washing machines, robots running the laundromats and whatever other businesses use those washing machines, and eventually robots building the robots that build the washing machines. No room for people anywhere, and all the money flowing upwards to the robot building company owners.

It's not a matter of what anyone wants or doesn't want. My Dune reference was serious. Short of something akin to a Butlerian Jihad, what's the option?

We save the jobs by not using robots, great. Some other country builds the robots... how do we have jobs when the other stuff is cheaper? Go isolationist, and stop global trade? We better have onshored, well, everything.

As for the economics, there's only money to send uphill to the robot magnates if there are people making money. If they all lose their jobs, the money dries up for the robot magnates anyway. Need a job to afford a robot.

This has been the discussion for years WRT AI, what happens? Do we all become artisanal cheese makers—until the robots have taste sensors and can do it better?

39 minutes ago, KSK said:

And on a marginally less ranty note; even if you don't care about any of the above, you really should care about concentrating economic power in the hands of a few increasingly large companies, whilst removing people's ability to make a living and pay for all the shiny dreck made by those companies. Because, at that point, your economic system goes belly up anyway.

Yeah, agreed on economic endpoint (as I just said—was quoting point by point and missed that I came to the same conclusion).

If robots are that effective, then we go "post-scarcity?"

As for concentrating economic power, when has that NOT been true? By all measures the general trends of human wellbeing has been going the right direction, and before the Enlightenment, and subsequent Industrial Revolution, it was very flat. There was little to distinguish Europe at the start of the Age of Sail and the Roman Empire (or before) for the bulk of people. Hard agricultural work, and occasionally guys with spears/swords come and take your stuff—or conscript you to join them. Power was very concentrated then—arguably more concentrated.

Not saying it's preferable, I just don't see any plausible solution (and I discount all totalitarian solutions out of hand).

[kerbiloid]

I'm afraid, when almost 1/3 of the vertebrate biomass is humans, almost 2/3 of total vertebrate biomass is human cattle, ~6% are deer, ~4% are rodents, ~3% are all predators, and ~1% is random junk, and the human median age in Africa, SE Asia, and South America is 15..20 years (so the human biomass will grow twice till 2050, while the cattle biomass will proportionally decrease, making the human a mono species containing more than half of the vertebrate biomass, fastly eating every other vertebrate around), it's somewhat too late to seek for solutions. 

AI will obviously occupy the human jobs, at least because, regardless of political deeds, the situation in many countries, essential for the global production, will be getting unstable, causing the main manufacturing countries turn from the economics of comfort to the economics of survival, cancelling the artificially supported counter-unemployment urban jobs of the servicing sphere.

At the same time, this will mean electional procedures fictional, like the Roman bread and coliseum tickets distribution with further voting, totally depending on the welfare.
Probably, low-life jobs and AI assistance (for some IT), and the military/paramilitary service will stay due to the p.1.

In one form, or another, the Earth population will probably significantly decrease before 2050, and since then human personalities s will be more standard, symbiotic with AI and global network.
These people will return to the Moon, go to Mars, and form the crews of the generation ships.
But you wouldn't find their life romantic, and their personalities bright and individual. You would find myriads of perfect AI clones.

On the other hand, you would find a bright personality of the overmind. Heil Borg!

Edited September 25, 2023 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

55 minutes ago, tater said:

What people think one way or another doesn't matter, though. It's going to happen. It was always going to happen.

WRT AI doomers (the AI kills all humans folks), any limits they suggest definitionally will only apply to people who elect to accept the limits, and who are also not lying about limiting themselves. Ie: impossible task. The first world can have 100% compliance, and someone else will simply do it—and become 1st world as a result (that's their motivation, anyway).

So the best solution, IMO, is to figure out how to live with it.

It's not a matter of what anyone wants or doesn't want. My Dune reference was serious. Short of something akin to a Butlerian Jihad, what's the option?

We save the jobs by not using robots, great. Some other country builds the robots... how do we have jobs when the other stuff is cheaper? Go isolationist, and stop global trade? We better have onshored, well, everything.

As for the economics, there's only money to send uphill to the robot magnates if there are people making money. If they all lose their jobs, the money dries up for the robot magnates anyway. Need a job to afford a robot.

This has been the discussion for years WRT AI, what happens? Do we all become artisanal cheese makers—until the robots have taste sensors and can do it better?

Yeah, agreed on economic endpoint (as I just said—was quoting point by point and missed that I came to the same conclusion).

If robots are that effective, then we go "post-scarcity?"

As for concentrating economic power, when has that NOT been true? By all measures the general trends of human wellbeing has been going the right direction, and before the Enlightenment, and subsequent Industrial Revolution, it was very flat. There was little to distinguish Europe at the start of the Age of Sail and the Roman Empire (or before) for the bulk of people. Hard agricultural work, and occasionally guys with spears/swords come and take your stuff—or conscript you to join them. Power was very concentrated then—arguably more concentrated.

Not saying it's preferable, I just don't see any plausible solution (and I discount all totalitarian solutions out of hand).

Yes consecrating of wealth has always been an issue. Now  I see this is more of an issue in software as its an trend toward monopoly, Microsoft, Apple and Google simply because its not an marked for that many operation systems or social media. 
On the other hand, they tend to not stay in power for long times, Facebook has issues. IBM was one of the big 5 but not any longer. 

Global trade has had this issue for half an century but then mostly production done in low cost countries. AI is more of an issue than robots who we already have. More advanced robots will be more expensive to buy and maintain. 

[tater]

2 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Yes consecrating of wealth has always been an issue. Now  I see this is more of an issue in software as its an trend toward monopoly, Microsoft, Apple and Google simply because its not an marked for that many operation systems or social media. 
On the other hand, they tend to not stay in power for long times, Facebook has issues. IBM was one of the big 5 but not any longer. 

Global trade has had this issue for half an century but then mostly production done in low cost countries. AI is more of an issue than robots who we already have. More advanced robots will be more expensive to buy and maintain. 

I honestly don't know when the excrement hits the HVAC, but I have to think we eventually hit a point where we have machines capable of doing most human labor. At first the cost barrier will be high, but in the right regime of paid labor, might well be cheaper than human labor. Clearly extant robotics already are—in assembly lines globally already. If car assemblers are getting paid $100/hr, what's the max cost a robot to replace one could be and still have that be a cost-effective solution? Say the robot costs $160k (a year of 32 hr weeks with 2 weeks vacation), and is only half as productive as a human... the trick is it will not have to work 32 hours, it can maybe work 112 hours a week (the rest recharging). It's still doing 1.75X the labor of the human it replaced, and after 1 year, it's paid for, and the cost is just electricity. There's not no world I can envision where this does not happen over time.

Say all of us here agreed that we think wages are too low in the tech sector that makes our phones. So instead of paying $800 for a new phone made paying people $3/hr, the phones are made here, or the workers are paid the same wherever they are made, and they are paid $30/hr, instead (~$60k/yr)? Is that enough? How about $45/hr? Everyone here all in for $8000 phones? $12k?

At the rate offshore ($3/hr is a number I have seen), robots might take a long, long time to be cost effective vs humans. At $30/hr? Not so sure.

So a few robot managers get some good jobs, then loads of robots.

[KSK]

@tater

To be honest, I don't think there is an answer, short of rewiring human psychology which will likely require those totalitarian measures.

We're going to hit that endpoint, the system is going to catastrophically fail - and then, assuming that there's enough left to rebuild something , there's still going to be an entrepreneurial class wilfully ignoring the recent lessons of history and  promising that this time the line really can keep going up.  At  which point there will inevitably be another class of  fools rushing in with their money for fear of missing out.

Humanity's epitaph:    We were so afraid of The Others doing stupid things that we felt obliged to beat them to it. But we created a lot of shareholder value in the process.

Edited September 25, 2023 by KSK

[tater]

7 minutes ago, KSK said:

@tater

To be honest, I don't think there is an answer, short of rewiring human psychology which will likely require those totalitarian measures.

We're going to hit that endpoint, the system is going to catastrophically fail - and then, assuming that there's enough left to rebuild something , there's still going to be an entrepreneurial class wilfully ignoring the recent lessons of history and  promising that this time the line really can keep going up.  At  which point there will inevitably be another class of  fools rushing in with their money for fear of missing out.

Humanity's epitaph:    We were so afraid of The Others doing stupid things that we felt obliged to beat them to it. But we created a lot of shareholder value in the process.

A plausible trajectory.

Note that this stuff is the risk I am most concerned about, vs theoretical "X-risk." The societal risk of AI/robotics/whatever disrupting the current global economy is just "when," vs the "if" of x-risk (which I grok over long timescales, but don't think is concerning in the near future).

Course there are voices that do treat this like other disruptive changes, and the productivity per human goes way up—because humans can have robotic assistants—and humans just start making more/new/different stuff. <shrug>

Take Hollywood writers. Right now they are part of this bajillion dollar industry where they get some pittance, and the guys running Amazon/Disney/Netflix/et al get rich—along with some small fraction of the actors (the rest get by as maybe middle class). What if these people with ideas leverage their storytelling ability, and understanding of the sorts of stories people want to see, and can simply lead an AI system to make the story into a show? They skip the huge players, write something—with their AI assistant—then task the prompt to video to make it. Then have it available in a way they can directly profit? I suppose the downside is that maybe the AI can eventually write it by itself, or the individual viewer can prompt the creation of what they want to see and jump right over them. Dunno.

I can think of many pros to robotic labor, but also many cons as people are displaced.

Send the robots to Mars to build a city, then send people?

[KSK]

Because I’m feeling pessimistic today (in related news, bears defecate in woods), I’m going to say that whoever owns the AI software pulls a Unity and screws everyone over.

Edit. I’m right with you on societal risk vs theoretical X risk. As far as I can tell, the X-riskers are mostly Singularity whackjobs who should go back to doing something useful like arguing about how many basilisks can dance on the head of a pin.

Edited September 25, 2023 by KSK