This is what bugs me about the whole AI fanaticism thing coming from the top down, because what evidence is there that the AI labs aren’t going to try and eat everyone’s lunch after they’ve done whatever they need to developing the actual AI. We’ve already seen this with Gemini and OpenAI trying to eat video production and making workflows explicitly for that purpose, what makes people think that Claude isn’t going to do the same exact thing once they get bored of making models? It’ll all be under the guise of “making [lucrative niche] accessible to anyone” meanwhile they just disappeared your moat that you willingly handed them
We've also seen ample evidence that AI labs are not overly concerned with the legality of how they obtain training data. Its not a stretch to say maybe they look at some other stuff they shouldn't too.
Yeah, I really don't know what people are thinking. We specifically didn't use any LLMs in the development on the project specifically to not leak anything (though admittedly also because we just didn't think they were particularly useful at the time, even for smaller things). The same CEO is also deathly afraid of people reverse-engineering the application so I have no idea how he reconciles these two things. I would've thought it's either fine to blast the codebase out there to essentially unknown parties and also fine to deliver a binary without shitting your pants, or it's not fine to do either.
It all makes sense when you realize QAnon basically runs the white house now. There’s a very insulated type of American who lives in their own world, that unfortunately lots of voters are apparently sympathetic to. It’s probably seen as a victory against the climate change hoax or something along those lines.
I have seen some chatter where 2nd-term Trumpism has been (very imperfectly) compared to Mao's Cultural Revolution.
Obviously there are many differences, no question. But it's actions like this where a bit of the comparison seems apt -- fervent, nonsensical anti-intellectualism / anti-science actions done purely in the name of ideology.
Why else would one actually go out of the way to dismantle a working ocean observation system, which provides a rich amount of data for multiple purposes?
The only action that seems to make sense is that:
A) Some of that data can be used to observe climate change issues.
B) In Trumpism, it is not enough anymore to propagandize that climate change is not happening. One must also actively suppress anything that could suggest climate change is happening, no matter how much the cost, no matter how much it hurts other non-related things.
It’s seen in Crusader terms. A bunch of things which are not Christian, for example controlling social order at all costs, are adornments on nationalism. The apocalyptic parts of QAnon slot into their belief system. So many other religious movements rely on salvation. Another commenter mentioned ancient China. Big political upheavals swept ancient China based on very slight new ideas about salvation.
It’s a band aid solution because the model can get stuck in a refutation loop, where it argues a point by pulling up a contradicting source ad infinitum. The holy grail, which has not been yet reached, is figuring out how to dynamically align the model to be consistent with all the sources in the first place (and this is a problem of provenance rather than model design)
All of these advanced death machines need equally advanced supply lines and staging grounds, both of which would run through civilian populations. Look at Afghanistan as an example: with all the might of its war machine the US couldn’t kick the Taliban out, who we love to tout as fighting with sticks and stones.
In fact the only issue stopping a worker’s revolution in the US is the lack of organization. The technology factor is really small in comparison to the inherent asymmetry of the situation.
The attitudes aren’t 1-1 comparable. China is on a winning streak in terms of socioeconomic development, and AI is likely seen as merely a new technology in the context of the social contract. The US is going the opposite way, and people here view AI through the lens of oligarchy more often than not. I wouldn’t say that a lot of people feel as optimistic, even if they are actually more economically secure.
Do you have direct experience with this? From what I understand China has huge youth employment issues right now, and the 35 and out (at even non tech companies) meme has some basis in reality.
China historically has had a poor social safety net, but made up for it with a more dynamic labor market (well, we could say the same about the USA vs Europe).
China is still riding the high of its economic miracle, that lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, which is why the population is so complacent toward their authoritarian government. For now, at least.
That's a pretty generic answer that would have been correct 10 or 20 years ago as well. But where are the recent trends in youth employment? Is automation reducing the need for workers going to cause (or is causing) social instability?
I saw a tiktok a few days ago about the proliferation of autonomous food delivery taking away jobs from delivery bike riders (the ones pretty ubiquitous in China today), and this kind of job was sort of considered a safety net if you lost your normal job (in that you can can always deliver food). It was Chinese authored and I doubt anyone who has never been to China would have understood it anyways.
The idea of the social contract impacting perceptions of AI is interesting to me. I hate to use the words “permanent underclass”, but perhaps the main difference is a fear of that permanent underclass actually materializing. In the US, it seems that that would be the logical endpoint of the capitalist system and many people predict AI simply replacing them permanently. Of course, China is not completely communist, but since their social contract is much less individualistic and more collectivist, maybe that makes people see AI as much more likely to uplift society as a whole or at least “trickle down”.
I think this might be a bigger reason as China’s economy for the youth isn’t looking the brightest right now.
The false equivalence of emotional maturity with being able to chase production is really telling.
When people think of autonomous driving as a solved problem it evokes something very specific. It means vehicles can drive on their own, without guidance. Until you solve AVs you don’t have a claim to present whatever you actually have as such. There’s no “good enough” for AVs, you’ve either solved them or you haven’t.
I doubt we’d build anything IRL without understanding how it works first. And we’re pretty good at putting 2+2 together once we have the pieces, for a lot of these things we don’t even have those. After all AI can just explain it to us atp
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