Abstraction is the opposite of specialization, not precision. Multiplication, for example, is an abstraction that can be defined in terms of repeated addition of the same term, which is less general, and so more special, than addition of two arbitrary terms, but it not less precise.
Eventually we will pull the black ball out of the urn. It is the responsibility of those currently alive to assess the possible harm their creations might cause.
This cynical invincibility complex is becoming a tacit allowance of extreme danger. It's not some annoyance for people to act responsible, and not all technological achievements are the same as ones previously produced.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, gentlemen's clubs would vote whether to accept a new member. Each man would secretly place a ball in an urn, either black or white.
If your urn contained even one black ball, your membership was vetoed and your chances - ruined.
John C Lilly had a concept called the "bad program" that was like an internal, natural, subconscious antithetical force that lives in us all. It seduces or lures the individual into harming themselves one way or another - in his case it "tricked" him into taking a vitamin injection improperly, leading to a stroke, even though he knew how to administer the shot expertly.
At some level, there's a disaster-seeking function inside us all acting as an evolutionary propellant.
You might make an argument that "AI" is an evolutionary embodiment of our conscious minds that's designed to escape these more subconscious trappings.
> And there is no reason to think that AGI would have desire.
The entire point of utilizing this tool is to feed it a desire and have it produce an appropriate output based upon that desire. Not only that, it's entire training corpus is filled with examples of our human desires. So either humans give it desire or it trains itself to function based on the inertia of "goal-seeking" which are effectively the same thing.
The problem with your analogy is that these babies are HUMANS and not some distinctly different cyber-species. The basis of "human alignment" is that we all require basically the same conditions and environment in order to live, we all feel pain and pleasure, we all need food - that's what produces any amount of human cooperation. What's being feverishly developed is the seed of a different species that doesn't share those restrictions.
We've already found ourselves on a trajectory where un-employing millions or billions of people without any system to protect them afterwards is just accepted, and that's simply the first step of many in the destruction-of-empathy path that creating AI/AGI brings people down.
It's time to put an end to this fashionable and literal anti-human attitude. There's no comparative advantage to AI replacing humans en-masse because of how "stupid" we are. This POV is advocating for incalculable suffering and death. You personally will not be in a better or more rational position after this transition, you'll simply be dead.
I don't see where you go from some over-hyped generative text bot outputting reams of semi-gibberish to.... AI will kill us all horribly. There's more than a few intractable technical limitations between ChatGPT and the T-1000.
Yeah I was going to say the III one is surprisingly good. I used to know the director and he was super cool. Also produced re-animator. He also did a weird low budget movie called "society" which is interesting.
There are a few horror and sci fi movies with similar themes to Society that all came out around the same time. Society is probably the wildest. Worth a watch.
In 2010 Reddit was center-left, with a high degree of variance between subreddits.
Today it is a far-left echo chamber in most large subreddits.
The process of change was gradual. Like all echo chambers it is a result of distillation, with marginal moderate users progressively leaving in response to seeing the shrinking frontier of acceptable discourse.
Early Reddit had a philosophically libertarian majority (or at least, a significant percentage) and a demographic of mostly STEM-oriented, bookish, nerdy dudes from 18-40. Ron Paul was a popular political candidate. "Socially liberal, fiscally conservative" was a common refrain, although in 2008 that usually meant supporting gay marriage and wanting legal marijuana. People were skeptical of big corporations and big government alike, but had genuine belief that technology was changing the status quo in positive ways (remember when Google was a startup and "Don't be evil" felt earnest). The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were unpopular, but a big chunk of the criticism focused on ways the PATRIOT act invaded individual privacy and the wastefulness of DHS spending. Open source software and filesharing were discussed as philosophical stances and acts of resistance against entrenched powers. Race and gender were rarely discussed as being particularly important.
Writing this made me realize not just how different Reddit was, but also the issues of the time and the ways they were thought of and talked about. It's almost hard to map onto contemporary parties, policies or issues.
These 5 people are our employees. We pay them with our tax dollars to assist in delivering services to ourselves and our fellow citizens. Unless secrecy is a distinct function of the service they deliver, I expect their names to be public. Transparency and accountability is owed to the taxpayer, if that's not acceptable to people then they are free to lend their talents to the private sector instead.
Part of the problem is we're not sure who is paying them and who ultimately they report to. Are they doing what's best for Musk and his business interests or what's best for the US? Even Altman has called out Musk in a similar fashion.
What's happening now is the exact opposite of transparency and accountability.
The comment you replied to referenced "multiple teenagers" - the very people that liquor stores cannot sell alcohol to since they're not recognized as mature enough to be freely allowed to drink.
SR allowed children to buy addictive poison without any regulation whatsoever, and Ross profited off of those transactions.
You're right. Ross should have been granted a drug selling license, analogous to a liquor license, and it should have been revoked if he failed to check ID before allowing people to make purchases on his marketplace.
Doing business in, or running, a marketplace without established legal regulations opens you up to undefined consequences. Without laws to bind you, there are no laws to protect you.
