I get the common cynical response to new tech, and the reasons for it.

We wish we lived in a world where change was reliably positive for our lives. Often changes are sold that way, but they rarely are.

But when new things introduce dramatic capabilities that former things couldn't match (every chatbot before LLMs), it is as clear of an objective technological advance as has ever happened.

--

Not every technical advance reliably or immediately makes society better.

But whether or when technology improves the human condition is far more likely to be a function of human choices than the bare technology. Outcomes are strongly dependent on the trajectories of who has a technology, when they do, and how they use it. And what would be the realistic (not wished for) outcome of not having or using it.

For instance, even something as corrosive as social media, as it is today, could have existed in strongly constructive forms instead. If society viewed private surveillance, unpermissioned collation across third parties, and weaponizing of dossiers via personalized manipulation of media, increased ad impact and addictive-type responses, as ALL being violations of human rights to privacy and freedom from coercion or manipulation. And worth legally banning.

Ergo, if we want tech to more reliably improve lives, we need to ban obviously perverse human/corporate behaviors and conflicts of interest.

(Not just shade tech. Which despite being a pervasive response, doesn't seem to improve anything.)

At the risk of stepping on a well-known land mine around here, how'd you do on the IMO problem set this year?

I didn't participate. I probably wouldn't have done well. I disagree with your framing.

Well, wait, if somebody writes a computer program that answers 5 of 6 IMO questions/proofs correctly, and you don't consider it an "advance," what would qualify?

Either both AI teams cheated, in which case there's nothing to worry about, or they didn't, in which case you've set a pretty high bar. Where is that bar, exactly? What exactly does it take to justify blowing off copyright law in the larger interest of progress? (I have my own answers to that question, including equitable access to the resulting models regardless of how impressive their performance might be, but am curious to hear yours.)

The technology is capable in a way that never existed before. We haven't yet begun to see the impacts of that. I don't think it will be a good for humanity.

Social networks as they exist today represent technology that didn't exist decades ago. I wouldn't call it an "advancement" though. I think social media is terrible for humans in aggregate.

I notice you've motte-and-baileyed from "revolutionize both the practice and philosophy of computing and advance mankind to the next stage of its own intellectual evolution" to simply "is considered an 'advance'".

You may have meant to reply to someone else. recursive is the one who questioned whether an advance had really been made, and I just asked for clarification (which they provided).

I'm pretty bullish on ML progress in general, but I'm finding it harder every day to disagree with recursive's take on social media.