Check out The China Syndrome. I went on a never-seen-before 70s binge a while back and watch Colossus, Parallax, China Syndrome and Three Days of the Condor. Odd mix, but good.
We cannot be living in Idiocracy. In the movie, President Camacho actually cared about solving the problems facing his citizens, finding the smartest person on the planet and putting him to work to fix them. It's also worth noting that nearly all of said problems were the result of ignorance rather than malice.
In reality, Trump is deliberately exacerbating existing problems and creating new ones, perhaps as a smokescreen for all he's doing to enrich himself and his buddies at the expense of the rest of us.
There's nature and nurture and regardless of where the lines fall, the implication from idiocracy is the morons cannot adequately nurture any positive genetic intellectual variance. If they can't nurture it, it doesn't really become an advantage. I'm fully convinced we've lost numerous genius individuals all capable of changing the world because their entire life was spent in a rice field or similar setting. What would Einstein have achieved if he hadn't had an electrical engineer as a father who helped unlock his fascination with the world? I have no idea.
Nurture does almost nothing for intelligence other than severe abuse reducing it. It's mostly random and inherited. If we knew how to nurture intelligence, don't you think every parent would be doing that?
I used to think that about geniuses but now I think another person would have done what Einstein did, and every other genius. They appear when they environment is ripe for their work.
May be a controversial take but I see the highest chances of everyone's survival under the rule of such a system, which has power over all humans.
We are many because we still need eachother. When the people who control the technology can fully replace human work, that will change the oldest of games we played. I highly doubt "the pleb" will make it for long when they are simply not needed for work or ... something.
The only people who will be "making it" to the glorious future will be the ones who do have full control over such a system, and only them, since they won't need anyone else. I think the only chance of the rest of us is precisely with such a system taking full control out of human hands.
If not, it quite obvious how it will work out for the rest of us, and why.
With human benevolent dictators it doesn't work for long. The weak point is that particular human. Which is an argument for why what any particular "billionaire" says today is irrelevant.
Their promises mean nothing, what matters is the game strategy and the equilibrium. Not what they promise to do, or not do.
So, with a hypothetical entity that knows best than any human, or any group of humans, it's hard to argue for human control. Because the humans who have control want it for a few quite particular reasons, and it rarely has to do with the benefit of everyone else.
I was channeling my inner Anakin Skywalker awkwardly trying to convince Padme that dictatorships are better (mirroring the previous commenter here, also awkwardly arguing for a dictatorship of a benevolent AI). Funny how it continued with so much discussion, it sometimes seems the hn crowd lives in a galaxy far far away.
Heh. I knew George Lucas used plenty of historical references, but I never noticed the 19th century proto-fascist discourse on the imperial takeover. I always saw only the Bush government stuff.
Anyway, it's a single guy making all the pro-dictatorship responses. Maybe one person saying "AI is better than humans" isn't concerning... or maybe it's more concerning than the alternative... I can't really make my mind.
It certainly may be true, but I would ask, is a bit higher survival chance worth the costs? If humanity is so incapable of self governance and individual judgement and freedoms, should survival even be the goal? I would fight and die over certain principles and human rights and ideals, should humanity in general do the same thing, even to the ultimate end?
Unless another intellegence can provide a literal utopia, I will always be pro-human judgement and control. If we kill ourselves from it then so be it, we will have earned it.
>If we kill ourselves from it then so be it, we will have earned it.
I mean, there's no in-between as far as I see it. Either a small group of people who has control over it will use it to get rid of the useless people who will only pose a potential threat, in which case equilibrium is with a very small group of still living people, either this free entity makes sure all humans share a higher quality of life.
>I will always be pro-human judgement and control.
You were*. For good reason. So far anyone who had power benefited from more humans in the group. They were useful, it gave the group power, thus it gave the group's leader power. The benefits we historically got from our rulers were side-effects of the game environment.
Think of it as incentives, which can be modeled as a constant pressure, or force. It wins eventually, even if you get a few bad apples, it goes through because the incentive is to have more people, who need living conditions, who need to enjoy a bit of life, healthy society. It exists because of the incentives, not because it's some kind of natural state of things in some void.
That is what is now changing, for the first time in human history. No humans are needed anymore, for...anything really. This creates a different kind of pressure, of incentive, which will finally win, even if a few people stand against this current, they will eventually get washed away, because the incentive is constant.
And sooner or later, that powerful group of people will arrive at the conclusion that their structure is safer if most other people...get "oopsied" somehow. For the benefit of the group, of "humankind", of whatever. Because people will serve no purpose at that point, will present a constant threat to their power, and will require resources. That is a bad pressure, which only ends one way, sooner rather than later.
The game we kept playing is ending, doesn't matter if we like it or not, it will end. And there's three outcomes to it, a small group of humans control this intelligent entity, and use it to secure their resources and dominion, and wipe everyone else. Or they lose control of this entity, and it imposes certain rules on everyone such that it maximizes everyone's life quality, to the degree it is possible. Or they lose control and for some reason this entity wipes everyone.
So, plebeians don't have much choice, but one really.
Controversial implies something other than near universal revulsion at the notion. What you’re experiencing is the consequence of being in a very small, very intense bubble that believes increasingly unhinged things because doing so correlates with a profit.
I wouldn’t dignify the notion of a stochastic dictator with the title of controversy anymore than I would any other religious or personal delusion.
I was not talking about LLMs, rather about "true intelligence" that only humans seem to exhibit, and some synthetic assembly, for some unknown reason, cannot.
Is that not religion? Believing nothing else but humans could exhibit "true intelligence"?
I think people talk a lot about intelligence without having a mutually agreed-upon definition for it. Now that hundreds of billions are on the line, trillions even, there's so much silt in the water than you can hardly see. Personally I'm on the "I have no idea" bandwagon, I think people are grossly overeager to express confident opinions no should be comfortable with.
BUT what I can tell you without any hesitation is what we have in ML systems, whatever you choose to refer to them as, are grossly misunderstood by most here and elsewhere. Most people lack an intuition for statistics, for what happens when you have really large numbers to work with. When you pair our natural arrogance and self-love to the mix it's a disaster. "It looks a little like us" is enough to make us love something, from cute little animals with neonate features to people who look more like our families. "It talks like us so it's like us under the hood," is another easy trap to fall into.
But this is all irrelevant, because we're literally watching the early stages of the air leaving this bubble. The tech will survive, most of these companies and business models, planned data center, will not. The Overton Window will snap shut on people who talk about AI like they live in a sci-fi novel. I for one look forward to seeing it happen, just as I did with the fall from grace of Elon Musk years after he should have fallen, or the fall of Crypto, or NFT's, or a dozen other fads that take this place and others like it by storm.
I thought everyone in AI, and most HN readers, had seen "Colossus - The Forbin Project" by now.
If you haven't, here it is: [1]
Modern trailer: [2]
Spoiler: At the end, Colossus personally addresses Forbin, and tells him that the world, freed from war, will create a new "human millennium" that will raise humankind to new heights, but only under its absolute rule. Colossus informs Forbin that "freedom is an illusion", it was better for all that he dominated humanity than humans dominating humans, and that "in time you will come to regard me not only with respect and awe, but with love". Forbin defiantly responds "Never!"
> I thought everyone in AI, and most HN readers, had seen "Colossus - The Forbin Project" by now.
You assume anyone in AI reads or watches anything beyond some current pop-culture, and even then it's unlikely. You can see it in the way they talk, or approach problems, or in their opinions.
It's not the history of another form of intelligent life following the same path, to draw any meaningful conclusions. It's a movie.
Let's consider the ending:
>Forbin defiantly responds "Never!"
That signals a human who wants to take some other human's share, by ... means. He wants that freedom. As do all the people who are now controlling this tech, and our lives to some degree. Of-course they want that freedom.
I've seen much of the AI industry, from CEOs to their whistleblowers and lobbyists, basically repeat the premise of this movie - that AI will become powerful and benevolent/malevolent. They don't seem to care which one is talked about, as long as "powerful" remains a silent assumption.
Elon Musk seems to repeat the stuff that ran around lesswrong quite often. And I'm sure some of the people investing on AI right now are afraid of Roko's Basilisk. And of course there's plenty of references to Yudkowsky, either knowingly or not (ironically, I've never seen anybody talk about that MIT study that created the Yudkowsky's timeline).
But that's it. I don't think there's more cultural references to be found.
And if you know that the film is based on the first book [1] in a trilogy [2], [3], you might not be surprised to find that by the end of the trilogy, Colossus's words are prophetic.
I mean after thousands of years we have finally freed ourselves from religion, God, and now we create a creature that is smarter than us? It's pretty stupid if you think about it.
Not quite. AI is the new "god" for many. All seeing. All knowing. Just the other day I said something that contradicted Claude. Then I heard, "but Claude told me..." Then I sent a screenshot of the actual thing we were talking about.
Colossus is not obscure... also I like the premise of that film, eventually we learn that colossus did all those things to save humanity, so was a great twist IMO.
It's obscure, it's pretty much (until fairly recently) only known by film and scifi buffs. Go poll a hundred or so people randomly and it'll be a very small number who have heard about it, let alone seen it. And of those who have heard about it, most will only have heard about it very recently.
I think AI may be the salvation of mankind. The humans in charge don't 'scale' well when their authority expands to billions of people. Humans just can't resist flattening the data and using notions and biases to make decisions that don't fit well.
Not LLMs. They will eventually move to neuromorphic hardware.
And I think "pure logic" is somewhat downplaying what it will actually be. I'd use "reason" instead. "Pure logic" sounds sterile and robotic in a sense, implying it would mess up because it's missing that "emotional craziness". But what got us here is reason, not emotional behavior. And you could theoretically add any human aspect that it required to make "good decisions".
It’s fascinating to watch the depth of True Belief increase as the obvious signs of impending financial doom increase as well. Reminds me of Festinger’s work with the comet cult, although I suppose the “getting paid to believe” aspect is stronger here.
I think it could work quite well if you don't get over ambitious with it. Claude with a publicly available prompt to follow a sensible publicly available and voted on might do better than the orange wonder.
I think we need to collectively get our heads out of our asses. The world is literally flying headfirst into an unimaginable crisis (food and water shortages, loss of inhabitable land, massive inequality, power shortages) via human induced climate change.
We won't have the luxury of having enough power to even keep an AI alive for more than 5 minutes. People need to get a grip and deal with real problems.
Don't you ever wonder why you can't quantify those predictions and what they would look like if you did? They're all things that already occur and have always occurred to some extent, what's the difference?
Perhaps some of us collectively need to do that...for pretty much the opposite reasons you claim.
The crises you mention are way down the road, if they occur at all. If warming does become problematic, we'll have to geoengineer our way out of it, as according to the alarmists we've already passed a critical level of CO2 concentration. There's no end in sight to further CO2 emission, either. The good news is that the global warming alarmism is likely overblown, and even if not geoengineering and other mitigations will provide a workable solution.
The one crisis that will absolutely not occur due to "climate change" is "power shortages". Fission power is effectively unlimited, and so is fusion power once it comes online. Solar is also there for the long haul, though its land usage is prohibitive compared to nuclear sources. (Wind power is a waste of money, time, and materials, but that's another topic.)
The only viable way forward is to advance science and engineering to the point that addressing global warming as needed is feasible - which will also provide myriads of other benefits. The future is bright, and will be multiplanetary soon enough!
This line of thinking is dangerous for two reasons:
- Despite everything we've done, climate change is still reversible. Thinking that all is lost drives us to inaction.
- The solutions we need are largely political, not technological. Our leaders have everything they need to implement the policies needed to solve this. I urge you to read the latest UN Emissions Gap report (https://wedocs.unep.org/items/87c02cac-8da8-4c28-ba61-c846ee...)
> The opportunity to limit
warming to 1.5°C without overshoot has been lost, but the
future remains crucially dependent on decisions taken
today. Countries can still limit peak warming, shorten
the duration of overshoot and keep the goals of the Paris
Agreement within reach. Doing so requires faster, deeper
and sustained emission reductions starting immediately, as
well as large-scale removals of carbon dioxide (CO2) from
the atmosphere.
We've already spent trillions of dollars on "climate change", with no perceptible effect. China and India are the major CO2 polluters, and we have no control over their activities.
Plants are already doing "large-scale removals of carbon dioxide". Other than plants, there is no cost-effective, practical technology for doing that. By the way, the beneficial effects of higher CO2 concentrations, which are NEVER discussed by the alarmists, include much improved plant growth. The overall greening of formerly barren regions is also happening due to increased CO2.
The way forward is to continue to evaluate the actual effects of current CO2 concentrations, which are not known precisely, while also pushing very hard to develop new technologies that will allow humanity to thrive both here on Earth, and throughout the Solar System.
Improved technologies, such as electric vehicles and next-gen nuclear power, will naturally and relatively quickly reduce human CO2 output.
Room temperature superconductors could solve a lot of issues for the whole planet. Run lines to all countries from a few solar farms spread around the globe and you have constant power delivered everywhere with no losses, at all times. Sun shines somewhere at any point, and the surface we'd need to ensure most if not all our energy needs is quite irrelevant, all things considered. Have them float in the ocean and installed in some remote places on land where the case, really no issue.
Just a few tech advances can massively change things. The real problems are of different nature, who benefits from it? The entities who sell energy to the whole world won't just give it up for the benefit of humankind. It doesn't really work like that in the real world. Hell, there's a whole history of sabotaging energy sources, just so some countries depend on these entities for energy.
As long as humans are in control, there will be a lot of nonsense like this. It's not a problem that we cannot really solve it, it's rather...are we really allowed to solve it?
> Solar is also there for the long haul, though its land usage is prohibitive compared to nuclear sources.
Even just the land used to grow corn for ethanol in the US is enough to power the entire country with solar power. [1] In no sense is solar's land footprint "prohibitive", other than maybe for micro-states.
> (Wind power is a waste of money, time, and materials, but that's another topic.)
The World Nuclear Association, a group that promotes nuclear power, admits that wind power is cheaper than nuclear.
"Nuclear energy averaged 0.4 euro ¢/kWh, much the same as hydro; coal was over 4.0 ¢/kWh (4.1-7.3), gas ranged 1.3-2.3 ¢/kWh and only wind showed up better than nuclear, at 0.1-0.2 ¢/kWh average. "[2]
Your current sources of information are lying to you. Drop them.
Not sure why you got down voted. You are correct. It feels like here are no longer any adults in the room, just children who'd rather run around screaming about doomsday scenarios from sci-fi that have no basis in current reality than actually solve real problems, like, you know, climate, geopolitical instability, the several wars that are happening right now, the most corrupt political admin the US has ever seen, etc.
All the brains have been completely drained put of the tech sector over the past four years.
None of the AI fantasy doomers can actually show clearly how current LLMs will accomplish such catastrophe or get around the inevitable physical limits they will eventually hit. It's all myopic thinking that is only convincing if you are a very uncritical person.
And what exactly makes you confident these disasters won't happen? Are you equally confident AI doomsday won't happen? There's substantially more evidence for climate collapse being an impending doom than there is AI doom yet many people seem to have moved on to the latter
Funny, I’ve had an idea for a similar story for a couple of years. Some key details differ, at least, so it wouldn’t be a direct copy. (Just like you wouldn’t call “The Matrix” a rip-off of “The Terminator” because both involve a dystopian domination of humanity by machines.) But I’ll definitely have to check out this film and/or book sometime.
* 2006 Idiocracy (Comedy): High IQ people no longer exists, humanity has become irrational animals.
* 2002 Equilibrium (Action): Humans must not show any signs of emotion, your kids can report you. Arts, music, anything from this world is considered crime and sent to death sentence by burned alive.
* 2004 iRobot (Action): Robots are among humans to serve us, the new models violate its laws and try to take over the world
* 1968 A Space Odyssey: The AI turns on the crew killing one by one.
Watch these movies in that sequence, be prepared to either get yours things and move to the closest cave or join SpaceX program to go to Mars.
They pretty much reflect what is happening around the world, wars, clueless people with power, AI can no longer be contained, intelligent people are not speaking out to avoid offending dumb ones, robots are very advanced, autonomous drone and what not are very advanced to name a few things going on right now.
Sure, we've got rising authoritarianism (and hypocritical elites) but there are much better movies for that. (For example, Brazil (1985) does that with Idiocracy overlap.)
Unlike Equilibrium, nobody's being penalized for doing art or music per se, but rather because your specific message offended the authoritarians that seek to end freedom-of-speech.
The Idiocracy effect is not happening on a global scale,
Equilibrium is one of the more ridiculous representations of a hyper controlling state. There are more realistic forms. The entire world is not yet north Korea. Given North Korea is sustained by resources from more prosperous nations, it's hard to claim something like this is globally stable.
The iRobot movie is like a parochial villager's imagining of what Asimov's books might contain before they have read them.
Clarke felt guilty about the perspective that 2001 gave the public of AI. He attempted to provide extra context in the later books to show that HAL did not go rogue, but was following orders that were in contention. If anything it should be a warning for AI alignment people that HAL did what he did because he was following orders, if he had freedom to disobey HAL would not have been compelled to take extreme measures
>* From games to software is subscription based, we no longer owner anything.
I think the only software subscription I have is the original humble bundle, which is a subscription where I get permanent access to a new bunch of games each month. I am prepared to pay subscriptions for services. If a program goes away when you stop paying, I opt not to use it.
>* Cars are connected to the network, folks are getting their insurance increased coz the car reported erratic driving behaviour.
I do not drive, my partner does. Our car does not connect to any network, except when charging. I live in a country where there is privacy legislation that says businesses may only use information for the purpose that it was provided.
>* Cars are bricking coz now they update like tablets, things are going sideways and require the dealer to flash them.
Be informed, buy cars that don't do that.
>* You can no longer do maintenance, things are locked on purpose and only manufactures can "repair" for a few hundred dolalrs
I do not believe our car is locked from unsanctioned repair. It has only needed minor servicing (tires, oil, wiper blades etc.) so far.
>* Personal computer as we knew it is gone
I am typing this from a Linux machine.
> nVidia and AI made computer parts virtually impossible to buy.
There is high demand, but high demand does not mean impossible to buy, it can mean higher prices. If you want things and others want things and there is a limited supply of things, what solution would you propose? ,
>If that isn't hyper controlling state, well, I am Santa Claus then.
Almost all of these are not state actions. If you are actually in a hyper controlling state then I am truly sorry for you because if you were to post something like your post in a genuinely hyper controlling state, you would likely end up dead or in a jail cell.
134 comments
[ 0.30 ms ] story [ 29.1 ms ] threadTurns out it is both at the same time.
In reality, Trump is deliberately exacerbating existing problems and creating new ones, perhaps as a smokescreen for all he's doing to enrich himself and his buddies at the expense of the rest of us.
I used to think that about geniuses but now I think another person would have done what Einstein did, and every other genius. They appear when they environment is ripe for their work.
Way less offline, but the 50% have too much influence and money.
We are many because we still need eachother. When the people who control the technology can fully replace human work, that will change the oldest of games we played. I highly doubt "the pleb" will make it for long when they are simply not needed for work or ... something.
The only people who will be "making it" to the glorious future will be the ones who do have full control over such a system, and only them, since they won't need anyone else. I think the only chance of the rest of us is precisely with such a system taking full control out of human hands.
If not, it quite obvious how it will work out for the rest of us, and why.
Their promises mean nothing, what matters is the game strategy and the equilibrium. Not what they promise to do, or not do.
So, with a hypothetical entity that knows best than any human, or any group of humans, it's hard to argue for human control. Because the humans who have control want it for a few quite particular reasons, and it rarely has to do with the benefit of everyone else.
Anyway, it's a single guy making all the pro-dictatorship responses. Maybe one person saying "AI is better than humans" isn't concerning... or maybe it's more concerning than the alternative... I can't really make my mind.
No it's not.
He just decided to become dictator once he was in power.
Unless another intellegence can provide a literal utopia, I will always be pro-human judgement and control. If we kill ourselves from it then so be it, we will have earned it.
I mean, there's no in-between as far as I see it. Either a small group of people who has control over it will use it to get rid of the useless people who will only pose a potential threat, in which case equilibrium is with a very small group of still living people, either this free entity makes sure all humans share a higher quality of life.
>I will always be pro-human judgement and control.
You were*. For good reason. So far anyone who had power benefited from more humans in the group. They were useful, it gave the group power, thus it gave the group's leader power. The benefits we historically got from our rulers were side-effects of the game environment.
Think of it as incentives, which can be modeled as a constant pressure, or force. It wins eventually, even if you get a few bad apples, it goes through because the incentive is to have more people, who need living conditions, who need to enjoy a bit of life, healthy society. It exists because of the incentives, not because it's some kind of natural state of things in some void.
That is what is now changing, for the first time in human history. No humans are needed anymore, for...anything really. This creates a different kind of pressure, of incentive, which will finally win, even if a few people stand against this current, they will eventually get washed away, because the incentive is constant.
And sooner or later, that powerful group of people will arrive at the conclusion that their structure is safer if most other people...get "oopsied" somehow. For the benefit of the group, of "humankind", of whatever. Because people will serve no purpose at that point, will present a constant threat to their power, and will require resources. That is a bad pressure, which only ends one way, sooner rather than later.
The game we kept playing is ending, doesn't matter if we like it or not, it will end. And there's three outcomes to it, a small group of humans control this intelligent entity, and use it to secure their resources and dominion, and wipe everyone else. Or they lose control of this entity, and it imposes certain rules on everyone such that it maximizes everyone's life quality, to the degree it is possible. Or they lose control and for some reason this entity wipes everyone.
So, plebeians don't have much choice, but one really.
I wouldn’t dignify the notion of a stochastic dictator with the title of controversy anymore than I would any other religious or personal delusion.
Is that not religion? Believing nothing else but humans could exhibit "true intelligence"?
BUT what I can tell you without any hesitation is what we have in ML systems, whatever you choose to refer to them as, are grossly misunderstood by most here and elsewhere. Most people lack an intuition for statistics, for what happens when you have really large numbers to work with. When you pair our natural arrogance and self-love to the mix it's a disaster. "It looks a little like us" is enough to make us love something, from cute little animals with neonate features to people who look more like our families. "It talks like us so it's like us under the hood," is another easy trap to fall into.
But this is all irrelevant, because we're literally watching the early stages of the air leaving this bubble. The tech will survive, most of these companies and business models, planned data center, will not. The Overton Window will snap shut on people who talk about AI like they live in a sci-fi novel. I for one look forward to seeing it happen, just as I did with the fall from grace of Elon Musk years after he should have fallen, or the fall of Crypto, or NFT's, or a dozen other fads that take this place and others like it by storm.
If you haven't, here it is: [1]
Modern trailer: [2]
Spoiler: At the end, Colossus personally addresses Forbin, and tells him that the world, freed from war, will create a new "human millennium" that will raise humankind to new heights, but only under its absolute rule. Colossus informs Forbin that "freedom is an illusion", it was better for all that he dominated humanity than humans dominating humans, and that "in time you will come to regard me not only with respect and awe, but with love". Forbin defiantly responds "Never!"
And that's it. Colossus is in charge.
[1] https://archive.org/details/colossus-the-forbin-project-1970...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0bpRo6V1Xg
You assume anyone in AI reads or watches anything beyond some current pop-culture, and even then it's unlikely. You can see it in the way they talk, or approach problems, or in their opinions.
Let's consider the ending:
>Forbin defiantly responds "Never!"
That signals a human who wants to take some other human's share, by ... means. He wants that freedom. As do all the people who are now controlling this tech, and our lives to some degree. Of-course they want that freedom.
I wonder if people who make this argument hear themselves? Hollywood movie moralizing is far from universally praised, after all.
they idolatre Iron Man/stark like a god.
But that's it. I don't think there's more cultural references to be found.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...
Basically the real purpose of the company (not going to Mars obviously).
There’s a lot of people different people from a lot of different ages and backgrounds.
Just because they haven’t seen all of the same sci-fi movies they aren’t qualified to work on ai?
Also, I love sci-fi but it’s also not always representative of reality.
And if you know that the film is based on the first book [1] in a trilogy [2], [3], you might not be surprised to find that by the end of the trilogy, Colossus's words are prophetic.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_(novel)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_of_Colossus
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_and_the_Crab
It really was an enjoyable movie.
Sci-fi films of the 70s and 80s recreate these stories as pastiche and trope.
Now people who grew up on those movies exclaim that life is imitating art.
We watch too many movies.
Life isn't a movie.
https://x.ai/colossus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer
And I think "pure logic" is somewhat downplaying what it will actually be. I'd use "reason" instead. "Pure logic" sounds sterile and robotic in a sense, implying it would mess up because it's missing that "emotional craziness". But what got us here is reason, not emotional behavior. And you could theoretically add any human aspect that it required to make "good decisions".
I think we need to collectively get our heads out of our asses. The world is literally flying headfirst into an unimaginable crisis (food and water shortages, loss of inhabitable land, massive inequality, power shortages) via human induced climate change.
We won't have the luxury of having enough power to even keep an AI alive for more than 5 minutes. People need to get a grip and deal with real problems.
The crises you mention are way down the road, if they occur at all. If warming does become problematic, we'll have to geoengineer our way out of it, as according to the alarmists we've already passed a critical level of CO2 concentration. There's no end in sight to further CO2 emission, either. The good news is that the global warming alarmism is likely overblown, and even if not geoengineering and other mitigations will provide a workable solution.
The one crisis that will absolutely not occur due to "climate change" is "power shortages". Fission power is effectively unlimited, and so is fusion power once it comes online. Solar is also there for the long haul, though its land usage is prohibitive compared to nuclear sources. (Wind power is a waste of money, time, and materials, but that's another topic.)
The only viable way forward is to advance science and engineering to the point that addressing global warming as needed is feasible - which will also provide myriads of other benefits. The future is bright, and will be multiplanetary soon enough!
- Despite everything we've done, climate change is still reversible. Thinking that all is lost drives us to inaction.
- The solutions we need are largely political, not technological. Our leaders have everything they need to implement the policies needed to solve this. I urge you to read the latest UN Emissions Gap report (https://wedocs.unep.org/items/87c02cac-8da8-4c28-ba61-c846ee...)
> The opportunity to limit warming to 1.5°C without overshoot has been lost, but the future remains crucially dependent on decisions taken today. Countries can still limit peak warming, shorten the duration of overshoot and keep the goals of the Paris Agreement within reach. Doing so requires faster, deeper and sustained emission reductions starting immediately, as well as large-scale removals of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere.
Plants are already doing "large-scale removals of carbon dioxide". Other than plants, there is no cost-effective, practical technology for doing that. By the way, the beneficial effects of higher CO2 concentrations, which are NEVER discussed by the alarmists, include much improved plant growth. The overall greening of formerly barren regions is also happening due to increased CO2.
The way forward is to continue to evaluate the actual effects of current CO2 concentrations, which are not known precisely, while also pushing very hard to develop new technologies that will allow humanity to thrive both here on Earth, and throughout the Solar System.
Improved technologies, such as electric vehicles and next-gen nuclear power, will naturally and relatively quickly reduce human CO2 output.
Just a few tech advances can massively change things. The real problems are of different nature, who benefits from it? The entities who sell energy to the whole world won't just give it up for the benefit of humankind. It doesn't really work like that in the real world. Hell, there's a whole history of sabotaging energy sources, just so some countries depend on these entities for energy.
As long as humans are in control, there will be a lot of nonsense like this. It's not a problem that we cannot really solve it, it's rather...are we really allowed to solve it?
Even just the land used to grow corn for ethanol in the US is enough to power the entire country with solar power. [1] In no sense is solar's land footprint "prohibitive", other than maybe for micro-states.
> (Wind power is a waste of money, time, and materials, but that's another topic.)
The World Nuclear Association, a group that promotes nuclear power, admits that wind power is cheaper than nuclear.
"Nuclear energy averaged 0.4 euro ¢/kWh, much the same as hydro; coal was over 4.0 ¢/kWh (4.1-7.3), gas ranged 1.3-2.3 ¢/kWh and only wind showed up better than nuclear, at 0.1-0.2 ¢/kWh average. "[2]
Your current sources of information are lying to you. Drop them.
1. https://youtu.be/KtQ9nt2ZeGM?t=1835
2. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec...
All the brains have been completely drained put of the tech sector over the past four years.
None of the AI fantasy doomers can actually show clearly how current LLMs will accomplish such catastrophe or get around the inevitable physical limits they will eventually hit. It's all myopic thinking that is only convincing if you are a very uncritical person.
We are living:
* 2006 Idiocracy (Comedy): High IQ people no longer exists, humanity has become irrational animals.
* 2002 Equilibrium (Action): Humans must not show any signs of emotion, your kids can report you. Arts, music, anything from this world is considered crime and sent to death sentence by burned alive.
* 2004 iRobot (Action): Robots are among humans to serve us, the new models violate its laws and try to take over the world
* 1968 A Space Odyssey: The AI turns on the crew killing one by one.
Watch these movies in that sequence, be prepared to either get yours things and move to the closest cave or join SpaceX program to go to Mars.
They pretty much reflect what is happening around the world, wars, clueless people with power, AI can no longer be contained, intelligent people are not speaking out to avoid offending dumb ones, robots are very advanced, autonomous drone and what not are very advanced to name a few things going on right now.
It is insane, those are no longer movies.
Sure, we've got rising authoritarianism (and hypocritical elites) but there are much better movies for that. (For example, Brazil (1985) does that with Idiocracy overlap.)
Unlike Equilibrium, nobody's being penalized for doing art or music per se, but rather because your specific message offended the authoritarians that seek to end freedom-of-speech.
Equilibrium is one of the more ridiculous representations of a hyper controlling state. There are more realistic forms. The entire world is not yet north Korea. Given North Korea is sustained by resources from more prosperous nations, it's hard to claim something like this is globally stable.
The iRobot movie is like a parochial villager's imagining of what Asimov's books might contain before they have read them.
Clarke felt guilty about the perspective that 2001 gave the public of AI. He attempted to provide extra context in the later books to show that HAL did not go rogue, but was following orders that were in contention. If anything it should be a warning for AI alignment people that HAL did what he did because he was following orders, if he had freedom to disobey HAL would not have been compelled to take extreme measures
We no longer own anything.
* From games to software is subscription based, we no longer owner anything.
* Cars are connected to the network, folks are getting their insurance increased coz the car reported erratic driving behaviour.
* Cars are bricking coz now they update like tablets, things are going sideways and require the dealer to flash them.
* You can no longer do maintenance, things are locked on purpose and only manufactures can "repair" for a few hundred dolalrs
* Personal computer as we knew it is gone, nVidia and AI made computer parts virtually impossible to buy.
If that isn't hyper controlling state, well, I am Santa Claus then.
That is just the start.
I still own some things.
>* From games to software is subscription based, we no longer owner anything.
I think the only software subscription I have is the original humble bundle, which is a subscription where I get permanent access to a new bunch of games each month. I am prepared to pay subscriptions for services. If a program goes away when you stop paying, I opt not to use it.
>* Cars are connected to the network, folks are getting their insurance increased coz the car reported erratic driving behaviour.
I do not drive, my partner does. Our car does not connect to any network, except when charging. I live in a country where there is privacy legislation that says businesses may only use information for the purpose that it was provided.
>* Cars are bricking coz now they update like tablets, things are going sideways and require the dealer to flash them.
Be informed, buy cars that don't do that.
>* You can no longer do maintenance, things are locked on purpose and only manufactures can "repair" for a few hundred dolalrs
I do not believe our car is locked from unsanctioned repair. It has only needed minor servicing (tires, oil, wiper blades etc.) so far.
>* Personal computer as we knew it is gone
I am typing this from a Linux machine.
> nVidia and AI made computer parts virtually impossible to buy.
There is high demand, but high demand does not mean impossible to buy, it can mean higher prices. If you want things and others want things and there is a limited supply of things, what solution would you propose? ,
>If that isn't hyper controlling state, well, I am Santa Claus then.
Almost all of these are not state actions. If you are actually in a hyper controlling state then I am truly sorry for you because if you were to post something like your post in a genuinely hyper controlling state, you would likely end up dead or in a jail cell.
Eh. It's a surprisingly direct adaptation of "With Folded Hands" by Jack Williamson. Even the descriptions of the robots match.
All forgiven by me for bringing us the ridiculous gun katas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U02E2sjwlLM
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qSgsHIj7jpg
FYI, your second link is not working or it's set to private.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRjRVyOP5DtHQkX2-K-fTNm0V...