everything AI knows it learns from the information it has access too. so if it has access to the stuff we put online...and like every depiction of AI in media is that it becomes "sentient" and evil...maybe it will think it's supposed to be evil. like it's gathering inspo.
Feb 12, 2024
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10 years ago you had to call computational statistics "machine learning" to trick VCs without any technical knowledge to fund you. now you have to call it "AI". both are complete misnomers.
can computational statistics be used for evil? yes (mass surveillance, deep fakes, etc.)
can it be used for good? yes (improved weather forecasting, earlier disease diagnostics, etc.)
on the whole do economic incentives all-but-guarantee it will be used for evil more than good? yes.
does any of this have anything to do with cognition/intelligence/sentience/etc? not even a little
Feb 12, 2024
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Boo I hate the outsourcing of labour! Was reading an essay/talk from Stephen Fry and wanted to share
“We have long been used to thinking of technology as being ethically neutral, lacking moral valency. The same press can print Shakespeare’s sonnets one day and Hitler’s Mein Kampf the next. The devices are not capable of making decisions, either aesthetic, ethical or political. The NRA likes to say the same thing about guns. Ai however is different. Intelligence is all about decision making. That’s what separates it from automated, mechanically determined outcomes. That’s what separates a river from a canal. A canal must go where we tell it. A river is led by nothing but gravity and if that means flooding a town, tough on the town. Ai’s gravity is its goals. Unsupervised machine learning allows for unsupervised machines — and for the independent agents that flow from them.„
Mar 10, 2025
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But really, technology is rarely the issue in and of itself, the issue is the system/motivations/logic/power dynamics it operates within.
So AI won't save us, no more than the steam engine, electricity, computers, etc. saved us. Not because it can't, but because it won't be allowed to. Sure, as whole, we might benefit from these technologies, but ultimately one group of people is gonna benefit the most, while another group is going to become all the more exploited (a dynamic that is ultimately unsustainable).
Any increase in productivity (and therefore value) that technology brings about (especially since the 70s) isn't distributed to labor, but rather used as an excuse to drive down the value of labor and increase the surplus value or profits of capital. Therefore, AI, which could reduce the amount of labor humans have to do (a good thing), is instead (due to the logic of capitalism) used as a way to eliminate jobs, drive down the cost of products, and discipline labor by casting people into precarity (a bad thing).
So I guess AI may destroy us, but it's not AI's fault. Capitalism's inherent logic is to blame. But also, I think the abilities of AI are being blown way out of proportion and simply used as the latest bit of speculative fodder to fuel market growth.
Feb 12, 2024
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Rosalie, I've been waiting all evening
Possibly years I don't know
Counting the passing hours
Everything merges with the night
Feb 12, 2024