OT: AI, please walk me back from the edge
Going to take a stab given there are probably a good many here who have some background in this field.
With the recent developments in AI over the last 2-3 months (chatgpt, bard, ect), I'm getting more and more concerned about our future as a society and the profound changes afoot. I'm not talking about an imminent skynet scenario with nukes flying all over, but a more subtle and sinister change in society with mass unemployment and social unrest. I see this happening within the next decade if not sooner. And I can easily imagine things would only worsen beyond and generative AI takes shape. If you're not aware, look up the singularity for further clarification on this.
I genuinely fear for my families future and I find this is keeping me up at night. We as a society seem to be walking blindly into this unknown of god-like power, and I can't see it as anything other than a catastrophic end for everyone save the ultra wealthy within the next 2 decades. UBI seems to be some answer, but that would be a paradigm shift in capitalistic mentality that we've had for centuries. Am I being too paranoid? Can someone with better knowledge of this walk me back from the cliff of despair? This seems to be an inevitability at this point, and I don't understand how everyone isn't utterly terrified.
What could possibly go wrong? Computers taking over humanity?
Don't be silly.
Worrying about the future is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life will always be things that never crossed your worried mind.
Baz Luhrmann
In case some people don’t remember where this came from…
This should be required listening for every American - don’t worry, it is from the “before times” when most topics were not politicized.
I've been on the IP side of AI for a couple of decades. If you are not concerned about where AI is going to go and how to protect yourself from its consequences as long as possible from a vocational perspective, you need to do more reading because it is a game changer.
Bill Joy, a distinguished computer scientist and a U of M alum wrote a classic piece that was published in Wired in 2000. Here is a link:
https://www.cc.gatech.edu/computing/nano/documents/Joy%20-%20Why%20the%20Future%20Doesn't%20Need%20Us.pdf
I did not sleep well the evening I read this article. I have reread the piece several times over the two decades since it came out. Other than the timing, I see little to contradict the idea that AI's development will create an existential crisis for our specie and I see little that government can do to put the genie back in the bottle.
Another U of M Engineering alum, Martin Ford, has written extensively about the impact of AI on the future economy in his books Rise of the Robots and Rule of the Robots. Many thoughtful ideas and links can be found at his website
This has been said before many times - I think people were apoplectic about cotton spinners and certainly at the technological progress of the industrial revolution putting people out of work.
There will be disruption and it could even get ugly. But our economy will work its way through the issues and probably even create unforeseen trillions in new wealth.
I am way more worried about the Putin and his commie buddies starting a nuclear war in Ukraine or a Chinese invasion of Taiwan right now than about AI.
That being said, none of it should impact your sleep at night. Nothing you can do about any of this and lack of sleep will definitely kill you.
In the very short term, Putin is concerning; long term, for me it is AI.
We no longer live in a world where tech creates more jobs than it destroys. Inflation adjusted wage growth has been relatively flat for quite some time due, in no small part to increased worker productivity from tech.
Here's another example. We have about 3.5 million professional truck drivers. For obvious financial and safety reasons, autonomous trucks will become part of our future. No wages to pay drivers, no requirements to sleep, etc. The sensors, cameras, LIDAR, what have you, are made using modern manufacturing which is heavy on machines and few humans. Once the coding to run these systems are finished, you won't need many people to modify code (another topic to avoid). What would you do with those truckdrivers who no longer have jobs and all those people who run the truck stops? I would venture a guess that close to 5 million people might be looking for work.
What is the average age of those truck drivers? I bet its at least 50! And when do most truck drivers retire? Let's say at 60 for the sake of easy math.
The turnover of trucks and processes isn't going to happen in one month, one year or probably even 5 years. It is sort of slowly kicking off now and will probably take 15-20 years to complete. During that time, the current crop of truck drivers will largely turn over.
So the question isn't going to be what will happen to the 5 million truck drivers of today. The question is what new jobs will spring up for the next generation of people who would have otherwise become truck drivers. Nobody knows the answer to that but there will be new jobs created - there always are.
I see things very differently and not in a good way in terms of employment nor for the timetables you suggest. A year ago, beyond those of us who work in the field, who would have believed what MSFT's and Google's chatbot capabilities were? What you are hearing in the main stream media is tip of the iceberg. Technological growth is not linear.
Getting back to trucking. if you have an ROI from the capital it takes to convert a truck to driverless that is low, and according to this Wired piece, it is 30K, you would literally do it ASAP as your ROI is a few months. LIDAR, which was once costly has become very affordable.
https://www.wired.com/2016/05/otto-retrofit-autonomous-self-driving-trucks/#:~:text=Otto%20is%20building%20a%20%2430%2C000,the%20ability%20to%20drive%20itself.
While much of the discussion of AI of late centers around software and of course the computing power to run it, robotics haven't been standing still either.
I know of few professions, including professional areas I.e, doctors, lawyers, MBA's etc. that won't take a significant hit over the next decade, give or take.
You are massively underestimating the process of overhauling entire industries. I can guarantee you that will not see fleets of driverless trucks in 2023 and I doubt you will see it in 2025. 2030? Perhaps. There are so many things that need to change before that can happen - least of all street and highway legislation.
You seem pretty determined on being worried and not sleeping - so I guess I can't help you. Only you can help yourself.
I agree as to nothing happening for a few years. AV technology is still in developmental stages and needs to improved. If you read into my post that it is currently ready for prime time and full scale implementation, it most definitely is not. It doesn't have to be perfect, only at least as good as human drivers. I would be very surprised if it weren't ready for full scale implementation within five years.
Once the technology matures a bit more, I believe implementation will happen very quickly - too much money to be made not to go the AV route.
You are correct that the average age is at least 50. I can also tell you that there are many well-paying truck driver jobs that are not being filled due to lack of applicants.
Feudalism came and went, as did a slave based economy, our modern economic order will change as well, likely for the better but with the usual birthing pains.
relying on the economy to somehow ameliorate the negative effects of *anything* is a very silly idea, particularly if the effects will have a disproportionate effect on the least wealthy sector of society.
Again, people have been saying that for 200 years. Look at the changes, which would have been impossible to foresee even 70 years ago, which have happened.
While income inequality is certainly a problem (I have thoughts on that but it is beyond the scope of a football blog on a Wednesday morning) - the U.S. still has the richest and most economically advanced middle and working class ever known to mankind. Even in wealthy European countries like the U.K., France and Italy, purchasing power is 30-40% lower than in the U.S. and that is probably understated.
The assembly line put hundreds of thousands of blacksmiths and other laborers out of work - the labor force adapted and society got ever so much wealthier. Not as wealthy as the Ford family but wealthy nonetheless.
Mechanized farming put literally millions of people out of work and was one of the primary drivers behind the Great Depression. Again, it was hard and long, but we adapted and the upper middle class was born in the 1950s-1960s.
It happens over and over again and every time people "this time is different".
yes, people have been saying it for 200 years. and income inequality in the US is objectively a) higher than anywhere in the world and b) higher than it's ever been. suggesting that "it'll all get solved, like it always has" ignores the more-basic question of whether the current economy, as it has "solved" those past paradigm shifts, is truly healthy at its most-basic level.
note that i'm not saying that the disruption that will inevitably occur with the increase implementation of AI won't eventually be "solved." at the least, some jobs will be created to replace the ones that disappear. what i AM saying is that the economy as a whole, specifically as it affects lower-income people, is for shit. for those people, it's gotten progressively shittier over the last 40 years, and AI is going to make it shittier still.
Americans at the 25%, 50% (median), 75% and 100% levels of income are richer than their counterparts in any other country at anytime in human history (micro-states like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands notwithstanding).
I will say that the U.S. fails in relation to the bottom 5-10% relative other developed countries. This is not a minor issue and creates other societal issues.
Overall assessment - U.S. economy is far from perfect but it works better than any other system in human history.
Have a link for those stats? Not doubting, but I'm wondering if those quartile comparisons are adjusted for things like government provided/subsidized health care, education, etc. I suspect that a person in the 25% range in a Scandinavian country is in a much less precarious position than one in the US.
Also, that bottom 10% is 30 million people.
Wealth is a poor indicator when its distribution is so concentrated.
Quality of life for the middle class in many ways is a legacy of our advantage post WWII as one of the few industrialized economies not flattened by artillery. That ended with the cold war and since the year 2000 GDP per capita has increased by 35% while median income declined. We now live in a econo/political regime where increases in productivity and efficiency have no relationship with quality of life for most of the population (we are 8th in the world by GDP, but only 21st in standard of living).
In other words, don't expect AI to have a net positive impact on your life.
I've probably re-read this one about a dozen times in the past 20 years
https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/classes/188/spring07/mcluhan.pdf
(Yes, I guess I do read Playboy for the articles)
It's from 1969, and obviously less focused on short term job disruption than trying to map the entire trajectory of human consciousness vis-a-vis advances in media technology. Some prescient insights (and intoxicating phrasings, imo) that still cause cognitive dissonance among those with "rearview mirror thinking" (which is pretty much all of us)
Well, you really fucked up my day.
You're right, the folks in Hiroshima and Nagasaki never saw the atomic bomb coming. They should have been worried about far more local issues that were more likely to impact their day to day living.
Reminds me of my favorite arcade game from the 80's, Cyberball.
Hunter? Is that you?
That robot has a quicker release.
It traveled, but given it's uniform colors they never call that on o$u.
Of course he is consistent. He has great mechanics.
That's Keisei Tominaga in costume.
Yeah. But his first step is a bit slow.
Best to worry about things in your control. Obviously, humans will need to merge with AI to survive, at least in a meaningful sense, or, we'll be surpassed and exist to AI like ants exist to us now.
Is that terrible? Maybe? Is that incredible? Maybe? But it will certainly redefine the human condition in a way that is really unimaginable to our current pea-brains.
As for worrying about your family, isn't it a better worry than nuclear war, cancer, or mass shootings?
It's going to be a while yet before they take over soccer.
No kidding
1. They got up WAY too fast after falling down.
2. Neither of them has learned yet to writh about in obvious, near-death pain after falling down. Their programmer will need to make them believe their mother board is being melted or something to elicit the normal soccer player reaction to having a boo-boo.
I would be happy to talk you down from walking off a cliff, but it's not in my DNA.
-- A. Lemming
It almost seems like a rouge AI wrote this.
Edit: I worry about things I control.
I suspect that sooner or later AI will have agency. At that point, will AI’s cooperate? Will they compete? Will they reason together?
Do they have the ability to desire? To intentionally influence future outcomes? Will they be like HAL?
I don't think he's a Commie.
Damn - clearly I am no AI
This proves nothing. It is well documented that today's AI has a difficult time distinguishing French from communism.
I beg our future AI rulers to punish anyone who does the apostrophe-s plural thing.
So this is tonight's "What are you smoking" thread?
Just a cigar, but with Four Roses Bourbon!
Sirius Black. And it's good...
People thought the same thing about electricity. It'll be aight.
Acetylene Torches were going to be the end of society as it was known at the time.
But that really happened!
I thought it was when they flipped the 5G switch.
Thomas Edison promised me a better way to electrocute elephants and let's just say I'm still waiting.
People thought electricity would become superintelligent in a way humans cannot understand and annihilate society for its own betterment? I’m pretty sure that’s not true