I'm calling it - A.I. will destroy the world as we know it
Let me preface by saying I am normally an optimistic person. I still think there are good things in the world, and that life is worth living. I do not follow the news and am not political. But I have seen the downfall of many in our society, particularly younger people, and their obsession with social media and instant gratification.
In my opinion, these new A.I. technologies that are becoming smarter will be the downfall of our current society. I doubt it will be from some terminator-like machine, but rather it will destroy us amongst ourselves. It will continue to plant divisive thoughts in our youth that turn us against one another.
There algorithms will trigger food shortages, chemical releases, and other life-ending events. We have been warned by a few billionaire tech people who I think genuinely know this is coming, but realize even they are unable to stop society's desire to advance it.
In the end, we will have no one to blame but ourselves. Rather than use common sense and not let A.I. become so powerful, we'll just claim it's good for humanity and makes our lives better. By then, it will be too late. I'll give us 15 years, tops.
which billionaire tech people are warning about this?
Sounds like you just watched that Tucker Carlson and Elon interview
Nope, don't watch the news or watch Tucker. Don't get all the Musk obsessed people either. But I don't need television personalities or billionaires to tell me what I see going on with my own two eyes.
I'm not a luddite or anything, but I genuinely think that this AI bullshit should be put to an end. Maybe free market capitalism shouldn't be so free. Like be for real, what is the point in replacing all jobs with AI? Like everyone is going to be out of work, only very few wealthy people who owns God knows how many assets will see their wealth go up. But what's the point? What are they going to spend anything on? Who wants to live in a world which just completely lacks any humanity at all ? ... It doesn't make sene to me.
Okay, but what would the AI's endgame be? Potentially trigger a nuclear war and completely eliminate its host and itself? Makes no sense. Wouldn't a peaceful and thriving society would be more conducive to building and supporting an AI ecosystem?
I like the fact you're reasonable
How will AI destroy us?
Will it become a conscious tool that tries to kill us? That's ridiculous. AI like GPT searches through all produced human knowledge and organizes it in a way that answers your needs. It's just a search algorithm on steroids. It doesn't have any intrinsic desires or goals. Like Wozniak said, an AI can't wake up one morning and think, "What do I want to do today?"
Will its powers be mobilized by humans to cause harm? Maybe but that logic applies to every human innovation, like nukes or the computer itself.
Like any great change, AI will have a few bad side effects. Our goal is to keep them well-managed to make way for its many benefits.
Like I said, it will pin each of us against each other and cause us to destroy ourselves. There will be no killer robots or the like. It will sophisticated war games that pick us apart as a society.
And the Chat thing is mere child's play compared to the A.I. research going on right now. That's simply a distraction for the masses, but it shows how fast the technology is growing.
But, to what purpose? Like what does the AI get out of this scenario you are outlining?
Pretty sure humans are already going to destroy ourselves perfectly fine with no help needed from AI. I'll bet that happens long before AI ever has time to get sentient enough to end humanity.
I'm no computer scientist, but from my vantage point, my biggest concern with AI is actually that it's output is only as good as it's inputs. One problem with the input is that it's prone to noise and misleading information. These will be problematic in the short-term (i.e. the increased proliferation of fake news and us being unable to distinguish reality from fiction), but I'm relatively optimistic developers will find ways to exclude factually incorrect data or include caveats over time as the products keep rolling out and are tested.
The bigger problem I have, and something that I don't think can be rectified, is the fact that a lot of AI currently to me is just statistics on steroids. The problem with statistics is that it can be storytelling under the guise of mathematics. Depending on what data is included or how the data is cut, you can draw radically different conclusions from the same data set. The reason why I think this is dangerous is because a lot of people tend to trust numbers as "objective" and "reality" when in actuality they can be manipulated to suit someone's agenda. The solution to this would be to replicate virtually every "study" that's thrown out there to vet the veracity of the claims, but I have a feeling that won't be efficient or a reasonable solution.
Therefore, I think the biggest problem with AI is that it'll lead to consolidation of power among a trusted few "experts" (read technocrats prone to bias just as much as we are) and essentially lead to an almost totalitarian type of society where AI is used to justify the whims of the elected elite and essentially control the masses under the guise of objectivity. Without getting too philosophical, I feel AI will almost strip us of our humanity by taking away free will since we'll be so heavily influenced by these algorithms and unable to think objectively.
I'd love to hear why I'm wrong, but I'm much more worried about a scenario like this than some Sci-Fi, Skynet type of situation.
Me taking a shit at 11:17 am vs 10:53 am completely changes the world as we know it. For fucks sake far bigger changes have happened in the past than today. Will AI have a major impact? Yes, but AI =/= complete automation of everything.
Also, what algos are triggering food shortages? Humans who make stupid decisions like invading other countries, cutting off countries from SWIFT, etc. etc. create these outcomes. I am not saying that reactions to other things are not morally correct, but to act like humans don't do this shit is wild.
Last, for those of you who are not aware. I run and build AI based companies. So I have a pretty good understanding of these things.
You said AI does not equal automation of everything. How can you be so sure that this is not where we are headed in the not distant future? I see no evidence that there will be a "slowdown" in the research or technology. We will continue to advance it and push the limit, doing little tweaks here and there, until BOOM.
Simple, full automation would require a significant multi generational improvements in robotics. Will full automation happen? I am not sure, but we will absolutely see massive improvements in the next 20 years. Compute solutions are not the only things that are required.
For every supposed concern about AI, ask yourself "is this already happening or has happened before in human history before the advent of AI? Humans already hold the keys to destroy humanity so personally nothing concerns me about AI.
That may be true, but at the end of the day, mankind is somewhat rational in their decision making. If we weren't, chances are we'd already be nuked by the likes of Putin or Kim Jong Un. Yet we are still here, despite all the wars. This is because people desire power, wealth and recognition. Dictators, like the two I mentioned, need a fearful populace to follow them and make them more powerful and wealthy. Simply put, we don't want to destroy each other (not completely) because there goes all our wants and desires.
A.I., on the other hand, is untested in this regard. They don't have an "end game", nor does it require validation from mankind. In other words, it can cause us to destroy ourselves and I really don't think it would give a sh*t.
AI is definitely going to be the death of us all, especially in the capitalist USA we live in. Not going down the path of AI wanting to kill humans and how it might do so (very real possibility of that occurring) and instead focusing on the type of world we might live in soon this short story does a great job illustrating two possible outcomes:
https://marshallbrain.com/manna
I'm taking the other side of this. I think we will be ok. In fact, I think the OP is an AI looking to psyche us out. Not today my friend. I'll update this post in 15 years.
I don’t think AI will be the end all but I don’t buy that bullshit pipe dream of robots and AI doing all the work while we lounge around jerkin off
I don't know if AI will be the thing that destroys the world. I do think it's a mid to high-level threat for humans, much bigger and more immediate than things like climate change or environmental degradation but not nearly as troublesome as war between nuclear powers, global economic collapse, or continued experimentation with bio weapons via gain of function research. Resources should be focused on the latter group, but we should definitely keep a close eye on organizations like OpenAI because they will no doubt only evolve faster and become more influential as time goes on.
Come back to this post in April 2030. See you then.
I think it will make it difficult to decipher what is real and not very rapidly if we don’t take appropriate measures. If that happens I think there can be some serious ramifications
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