Ah, yes, “when used responsibly.” Like how we use drugs, alcohol, guns, cars, money, power, and everything else responsibly? Humans can’t be trusted with things that do more harm than good when used irresponsibly.
There’s an example used in regulatory circles: electricity would never be permitted in homes under today’s regulatory standards - we only accept it and its hazards because it is so incredibly common and useful in daily life and we’ve been accepting it since before we cared so deeply about safety.
So, have today’s goalposts moved so much that “AI” no longer passes modern society’s definitions of acceptable? I feel like such a technology would have been cheerfully embraced in the 1960s.
AI is the car of modern times. It’s convenient, ruinous for the environment, and a danger to anyone in proximity of one. Hell, we even wasted tons of land on highways kinda like what we’re doing with datacenters. But boy, does it get you from point A to point B quick.
boy, does it get you from point A to point B quick.
Not so long ago, face to face interaction was the only way business was transacted, people were employed and paid.
In today’s world, if we could get past the baseless RTO mandates and let the 60% or whatever it is of modern workers work from home or wherever is convenient for them to work, get the commuters off the roads, restructure the food distribution systems to eliminate that need for cars, we really could make a significant improvement in the environmental impact of cars and trucks.
In the world of AI, I suspect a huge chunk of current AI usage, energy burned in data centers, etc. is “wasteful” - investigational, experimental, learning usage. If we can get past that kind of usage and eventually use it for what it’s good for and leave it alone for counterproductive wastes of time, it should also be a clear net-benefit for “getting stuff done” not only faster, but more correctly and valuably. Which software is more valuable: one coded by humans over the course of a year, with a half dozen undiscovered security vulnerabilities, or one coded by those same humans over the course of a month with those vulnerabilities exposed and fixed?
If you’re concerned about the environment, those humans commuting to work for an extra 11 months add up to far more environmental impact than the AI they used to accelerate their work. Good luck getting their employer to give them 10 months off with pay for delivering the same valuable product faster and better.
I’m sorry, who or what exactly regulates knives? Knife manufacture? Knife ownership? Even knife sales… If you’re referring to ballistic knives or switchblades, sure - those are like guns, but the 99.999% of knives in the world? The ones anybody with a piece of metal can hammer out and sharpen for themselves?
In plenty of countries carrying knives in public is not allowed. You can own one for use in your home or work but don’t brandish it out in the open.
The reason few people know this is because it’s rarely ever needed, and the people violating that law are generally the people you want arrested anyway (e.g. because they’re trying to stab someone).
If the goal was to reduce the amount the average American drank alcohol year over year (and that was the goal) it was an overwhelming success; not only during prohibition but thereafter as well.
Banning stuff and then enforcing the ban works really well and we have tons of evidence of it working; not just in the US but literally world-wide.
This is quite aside from the fact that today we’ve figured out that criminalising drugs and users is the wrong approach and does a lot more harm than good. But we STILL have people like you.
Sorry, I don’t really feel like reading anything from Anthropic atm (I might later, it sounds interesting), but my actual, non-sarcastic position on the matter is fuck LLMs; they should not be doing any sort of policymaking.
Long story short: AI using AI can find ways to run itself on TV set top boxes and similar common IoT devices, as part of a bot-net. It can also find ways to self-propogate such bot-nets across many surprisingly low powered and widely distributed devices in our world.
Ah, yes, “when used responsibly.” Like how we use drugs, alcohol, guns, cars, money, power, and everything else responsibly? Humans can’t be trusted with things that do more harm than good when used irresponsibly.
There’s an example used in regulatory circles: electricity would never be permitted in homes under today’s regulatory standards - we only accept it and its hazards because it is so incredibly common and useful in daily life and we’ve been accepting it since before we cared so deeply about safety.
So, have today’s goalposts moved so much that “AI” no longer passes modern society’s definitions of acceptable? I feel like such a technology would have been cheerfully embraced in the 1960s.
AI is the car of modern times. It’s convenient, ruinous for the environment, and a danger to anyone in proximity of one. Hell, we even wasted tons of land on highways kinda like what we’re doing with datacenters. But boy, does it get you from point A to point B quick.
Not so long ago, face to face interaction was the only way business was transacted, people were employed and paid.
In today’s world, if we could get past the baseless RTO mandates and let the 60% or whatever it is of modern workers work from home or wherever is convenient for them to work, get the commuters off the roads, restructure the food distribution systems to eliminate that need for cars, we really could make a significant improvement in the environmental impact of cars and trucks.
In the world of AI, I suspect a huge chunk of current AI usage, energy burned in data centers, etc. is “wasteful” - investigational, experimental, learning usage. If we can get past that kind of usage and eventually use it for what it’s good for and leave it alone for counterproductive wastes of time, it should also be a clear net-benefit for “getting stuff done” not only faster, but more correctly and valuably. Which software is more valuable: one coded by humans over the course of a year, with a half dozen undiscovered security vulnerabilities, or one coded by those same humans over the course of a month with those vulnerabilities exposed and fixed?
If you’re concerned about the environment, those humans commuting to work for an extra 11 months add up to far more environmental impact than the AI they used to accelerate their work. Good luck getting their employer to give them 10 months off with pay for delivering the same valuable product faster and better.
There is one key difference though, drivers and car manufacturers are sometimes held accountable for their actions
Very weak theater.
“Knives cause lots of stabbings, so let’s ban knives”
All those things, including knives, are heavily regulated, yes.
I’m sorry, who or what exactly regulates knives? Knife manufacture? Knife ownership? Even knife sales… If you’re referring to ballistic knives or switchblades, sure - those are like guns, but the 99.999% of knives in the world? The ones anybody with a piece of metal can hammer out and sharpen for themselves?
In plenty of countries carrying knives in public is not allowed. You can own one for use in your home or work but don’t brandish it out in the open.
The reason few people know this is because it’s rarely ever needed, and the people violating that law are generally the people you want arrested anyway (e.g. because they’re trying to stab someone).
I see nothing special about knives in that respect, though I have no doubt there are laws.
Making credible threats of killing or seriously injuring people, with whatever tools, would seem to be a good basis for arrest.
Nice try to equating a knife to fucking drugs. AI is even worse than drugs, is like the digital version of nuclear weaponry: it shouldn’t even exist.
I swear, some people still think Prohibition was a great idea.
I mean, it is how ice cream became so popular… https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/ice-cream-prohibition-era-craze
However, the end of Prohibition was a much better idea than the start of it.
It was.
If the goal was to reduce the amount the average American drank alcohol year over year (and that was the goal) it was an overwhelming success; not only during prohibition but thereafter as well.
Banning stuff and then enforcing the ban works really well and we have tons of evidence of it working; not just in the US but literally world-wide.
You seem to have missed the 1001 negative side effects of Prohibition, that eclipsed the tiny ideological victory of reducing drinking.
https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/unintended-consequences
Additionally, there is no consensus on whether Prohibition was even successful at that, owing to a lack of hard data.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States
This is quite aside from the fact that today we’ve figured out that criminalising drugs and users is the wrong approach and does a lot more harm than good. But we STILL have people like you.
Then just let AI use AI. I’ll collect my Nobel prize now thx.
You might want to rethink that position: https://www.anthropic.com/research/self-replicating-ai
Sorry, I don’t really feel like reading anything from Anthropic atm (I might later, it sounds interesting), but my actual, non-sarcastic position on the matter is fuck LLMs; they should not be doing any sort of policymaking.
Long story short: AI using AI can find ways to run itself on TV set top boxes and similar common IoT devices, as part of a bot-net. It can also find ways to self-propogate such bot-nets across many surprisingly low powered and widely distributed devices in our world.