To be utterly despondent about AI

[AnotherGreyMorning]

and our future?

Jobs becoming obsolete. People unable to earn a living.

Villains harnessing for their own ends.

It will all move far too fast and at sophisticated levels for even the most dedicated to manage.

Governments will be stunned by it. People will really suffer.

I just feel quiet dread because whilst life will be great for the wealthy and those who are protected, for the vast majority, I think it will be hellish.

Right. But you couldh't have an actual conversation, or something resembling one, with an audio tape. You can with an AI bot, and I know for a fact that lots of students are using this for language practice, and numbers are only going to increase. Tutors in other areas will be replaced by AI too.

The impact on art worries me. I think if all people are offered is AI autotuned music, they will accept it if they don’t know any different (because the technology will be designed to produce something that will be popular and appeal to people’s ears). But I want real music!

As are our perspectives on its disadvantages. And even our perspectives on it's actual capabilities. How long have they been trying to develop a driverless car for instance? Forty years maybe and they still haven't been able to build one that is safe enough for general use even though the technology and programming capabilities have advanced hugely. The first 'learning computers' as they were called at the time, were being developed in the 1980s, AI still doesn't really learn it is just a lot easier for it to find information because of the internet and vastly increased computing power and storage, it still has no or very limited ability to judge anything apart from seeing it came from a 'reputable' (maybe) source. It is a logical progression to use computers more as they get smaller and faster and can be easily incorporated into other technology, practically everything has a computer in it these days and mostly that's useful, but also infuriating when there are problems. AI meaning artificial intelligence is still a misnomer, it isn't intelligent.

Not entirely sure to be honest, but I can see vaguely how things might go:

If we reach the point where there is no or little work, there will be no earned income. Thus the need for UBI.

Further, if everything is done by AI, and possibly a singular AI system at that, that wasn't 'owned' by anyone, would there be anywhere for spent money to 'go' to?

Would the concept of money still be valid? I don't know.

Driverless cars have been a long time coming because our capabilities to build them have been slow to develop, but once AI hits its stride that will change.

Unlike us, AI will have the capability to iteratively improve itself at speed, whether conscious or not. Pace of development could be exponential.

We just don't know.

NRFT but for those asking how the government will protect us… the government is pushing its employees hard to utilise AI. Either because then they can sack the lower portion of the civil service back office workforce who actually do the work, or because they have huge contracts with Microsoft. I haven’t heard the tiniest peep about the catastrophic environmental impact (despite all the lip service paid to “ sustainability” ) it’s being sold as totally “ yay! AI is so useful and can make our jobs more efficient” 🙄
I definitely think that this is the final slide away from democracy and the kind of capitalism we have grown up with and into full on feudalism.

Chances of affording a tutor for most students is pretty unlikely, having an online bot to practise with is great. Obviously better than an audio tape but that's what was affordable and available then. A real tutor would be better yet but only available to the reasonably well off and dependent on where you live.

I don't know whether iteratively improving itself on the roads is going to be a great idea! And literally every corner is a different experience every time you go round it, not the sort of thing that computers are good at. Currently it looks more like it would have to be driving in convoys or on special routes, we will see, but I really expected them to be sorted ten years ago.

I feel like your arguments are based on your understanding of AI as a large language model.

That is not the future of AI and is only one of its more basic forms.

It is not a computer programme. It has the capability to learn for itself and at an exponential rate.

Consciousness and AI's ability to achieve it is a whole other debate but it is undoubtedly intelligent and capable of much more than repetition or basic programming, even in its current simpler forms.

Show me one instance of any AI actually learning anything itself? What any particular AI can do depends entirely on it's programming, ie, chatbots like chatgpt are programmed to trawl the internet for answers to questions and collate the answers, industrial robots are built and programmed to do specific tasks, AI doing routine cancer sample scans, again built and programmed for these tasks. They don't 'know' what they are doing they are following instructions, quite complicated instructions these days. What the future of AIs are mainly depends on what tasks we want AIs to do, there are many areas they could be used in. Maybe one day there will be a super AI that holds all human knowledge, will it ever be able to add anything new to that knowledge? I don't know. There are new types of computers being developed (not yet in use) that use faster logic closer to the way the human brain works, rather than the usual logical step by step way conventional computers work, will they revolutionise computers, maybe.

Don’t you ever wonder how AI manages to do something like that? Who taught AI? And why has not been available before AI?

I meant that the AI helping to design the driverless cars will be improving itself, although I don't see why any AI actually in the car couldn't do the same to become more proficient in its individual environment.

The only thing for certain is that the pace of change will start to accelerate quickly soon.

This is an utterly fascinating area, and absolutely nobody really knows what will happen, including those involved in the field.

It's a computer and someone programmed it. For something like that the way I would have tackled it would be to have hundreds of pictures of normal and abnormal samples stored in the computer memory, the great thing about computers they can do things very quickly so it could compare the new sample with all the reference ones and decide it matches the good ones or it matches one of the abnormal ones (or doesn't match, call for human help) all in seconds. And it could keep doing that without getting tired or bored indefinitely. I'm sure there are other ways as well, not the sort of programming I've ever done but just to give an idea. More and more of these computer applications have been being developed over the years AI is just a name.

Teaching is already being supported by AU, i think it will be replaced fairly easily in the future.

Yes the idea is pretty terrifying. A UBI controlled by an AI that will decide what you get based on 'optimal' outcomes. You've had your three units of alcohol this week, no more credits for that. You've spent too much time reading about that, no credits until you've been bought back into the fold.

But will it control classes?

AI = Actually Idiotic
As with all computer-related software, it is only as good as the humans, who programmed it.
You do realise that there are a lot of AI modules marketed by different companies? All are still in their infancy, most make glaring errors, which need to be spotted by an experienced human.
At a rudimentary level, some things can replace humans, but that level is process automation.

That is not AI. It is self-learning and it will soon out pace most humans in every field. Have you not noticed all the medical breakthoughs happening atm?

Will classes be needed?

What I’m finding a conundrum is the power that AI needs. Many countries are transitioning to more renewable generation, but if spare capacity is immediately mopped up by data centres, how will domestic power needs as households move away from gas, and of other parts of the economy be accommodated?

Yeah because kids need to interact

Some "high performing" academies would appear to disagree, but that's a whole other can of worms, and I don't want to de-rail.

I think there is no doubt that every aspect of life will be impacted by AI, and it will be an insidious, chaotic creep, badly legislated and potentially causing more problems than it solves. Nothing I have seen so far, and I'm keeping close eyes on it, can currently convince me otherwise.

I don’t think humans can imagine the consequences of AI.

Will there be a need to educate the population? Probably not. We will just need crowd control as most will not go on to be productive.

Not being literate doesn’t seem to inhibit a lot of people - eg recent arrivals to the country: if you can stab and scroll on a phone you’re good.

A good point upthread about AI books and music. AI can do both pretty well - if not better in some cases! I don’t think 95% of people would notice or care if their content was computer-generated tailored to their taste.

It’s taken 40 years (?) to go from the first mobile phone to the Iphones in our pocket. How long for this evolution & what will be the tangible changes in 40 or 50 years. Is this the ‘Great Filter’?