Should We Worry About AI?
[ from the wwwanderers archives ]
If I’m not mistaken, Yuval (we were saying Yugal, hah hah) is one of those who thinks AI is a big threat, like Elon Musk does. Am I right? Again, I’m not a fan of either, not having done the homework of even the lowliest of devotees. Actually, I’ve studied the Musk case a lot more.
I’m a Linus Pauling fan, an Isaac Asimov fan, a Bucky fan… Margaret Fuller (Bucky’s great aunt) has been on my radar a lot lately. She participated in a freedom and independence movement in Rome, the city of my childhood. They were trying to get out from under the fascistic (as it seemed to the rebellious) rule of the Vatican. Fat chance, right? Little known history. Revolutions popped up all over Europe in the wake of the American and French ones.
I didn’t yet see the new Ken Burns documentary on Ben Franklin. Someone (on Facebook?) was saying French nobility got a raw deal, as they helped the Americans revolt against the British, only to inspire the very French revolt that would turn on them, making them the bad guys.
Anyway, I’ve always been a skeptic when it comes to AI and look askance at the celebrity scripts enacted by such as Academy Awards slappy guy (what’s his name again?) and Sophia (the star AI robot). She’s a sham. All pre scripted poppycock and humans self-infantilizing by addressing her as a peer (in some cases for money — to go along with the harmless gag).
https://youtu.be/Ml9v3wHLuWI
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So when people come along preaching the dangers of AI, I’m usually still a skeptic, until I think of Arnold Schwarzenegger and the premise of Terminator: that we’ll do ourselves in because AI tells us to and we obey, because it’ll look profitable on paper (because humans aren’t really worth that much in today’s accounting systems — or we wouldn’t treat them the way we do).
When I think of corporate robots i.e. shareholder limited liability AI operations, programmed since the 1600s, when Elizabethans specialized in raising venture capital, then I realize AI is indeed a threat, as AI inhumans, the corporations, currently sponsor Congress and put on this puppet show we claim (I don’t, but some do) is about the inner workings of some humane democracy. Really? Or is this all soulless machinery?
So if Yuval is saying the main threat to our own survival is our own robotic conditioned reflexing, i.e. we can’t help but think like Malthusians e.g. like Victorian English, then maybe he and I are on the same page.
