pluralistic: the alarmism around AI is just a marketing spin.

Sibbo@sopuli.xyz to Technology@lemmy.world – 142 points –
pluralistic.net

source

The alarmism around AI is just a marketing spin.

As @pluralistic@mamot.fr wrote: that's "mystical nonsense about spontaneous consciousness arising from applied statistics".

Real problems we face with AI are:

Ghost labor, erosion of the rights of artists, costs of automation, the climate impact of data-centers and the human impact of biased, opaque, incompetent and unfit algorithmic systems.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/27/10-types-of-people/

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"This article was sponsored by Roko's Basalisk/The paperclip maximiser"

Capitalism is the paperclip maximizer, don't need AGI for that. AI fears are a tool it uses to achieve maximization.

You clearly don't understand what the paperclip maximiser is. It doesn't just produce a lot of paperclips. It doesn't just kill most people. It's kills everyone and turns the entire planet into paperclips. And if we ignore AI safety by saying 'nOt My JoBs', we're just letting it happen.

Obviously, trivially, blatantly false, because the AI safety people have been at it since long before there was anything to market. Back then, the bullshit criticism was "AI will never be able to understand language or interpret pictures; what harm could it possibly ever do?"

AI still doesn't "understand" language or pictures or anything else. It's little more than statistical analysis based on text and input from humans tagging photos. The fact that we can get some neat output is not indicitive that any understanding is going on behind the scenes.

Even today there are a ton of people who simply seem uncapable of playing out the thought experiment about AGI being more competent than humans at virtually everything. They somehow seem to imagine our current generative AI models somehow being a proof that it can never actually deliver and become what the AI safety people have been worried about for decades.

Yeah and now it's just people fearmongering "AI is the worst thing to happen to artists, musicians, graphic designers - and it steals everyone's work! And and it might become Skynet! And and.." people who don't understand technology always seem to do this. They did it with Crypto, did it with NFTs, and now legitimate technologies have to escape a reputational black hole all because scammers and grifters decided to use it maliciously.

people who don’t understand technology always seem to do this. They did it with Crypto, did it with NFTs

😬

Crypto helped third world countries use a more stable form of currency than their government's. NFTs are no different from the serial codes on dollar bills except virtual. This is why you people are retarded. You know so little and make moronic comments like these.

Yikes.

Your comment is entirely fact-free, it's almost impressive. There's no point refuting anything because it's clear nothing will change your mind, and I don't have to anyway because it's all been dismantled piece by piece already.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=YQ\_xWvX1n9g

https://vivaldi.com/blog/why-vivaldi-will-never-create-thinkcoin

I know it's hard to admit you've gambled big on a losing horse, but the solution is not to gamble bigger, it's to quit gambling.

Edited links for clarity.

"Those morons warned us about these other things (that definitely did have all the problems that they warned about, nothing more annoying than a moron that's repeatedly proven right. What complete idiots.) Anyway they're definitely wrong about this thing."

Do you hear yourself bruv?

I have mixed feelings about "AI" , and you've practically convinced me to be against it. I doubt you could craft a less compelling argument if you tried.

Oh nice another person that knows the buzzwords and generally has opinions but has no deeper knowledge whatsoever. You're the most fun kind of person to argue against.

I'd let you pick which topic you feel the most strongly against but neither you nor I will have the attention span to finish this if we treated it like an actual conversation so I'll just go after AI since you have mixed feelings.

Yes, generative AI probably shouldn't be used on copyrighted works however, AI is a tool no different from photoshop. The only difference between someone cutting up pictures of sunsets and melding them together in photoshop is the ungodly time constraints. Keeping in mind that doing the photoshop method is completely covered under DMCA so it's legally protected, but what about morally? Sure, if you're concerned about using someone's work then you'd need AI that was trained on copyright-free training sets and I'm sure some already exist. Though I personally don't have any objections about copyrighted works being manipulated into something different because that's the definition of transformative. Even if it starts with something someone owns, it just has to be different enough and often times it is.

Can't engage with the actual criticism so you just get all huffy and defensive and try to change the topic.

You gotta get a new script, it's 2024. This shit is boring.

Good retort! I went into deep detail to address your retardation and you just go "nuh uh". At least call me a tech bro or something else to disregard what I actually fucking said.

Cower, Beg, Cry, whatever gets you through the next few years of technology development. It won't stop just because you're outraged and I'm glad it won't.

Do you often just have self-righteous conversations with yourself based on nothing but your own delusions?

Kinda worrying.

Of course he does, he quotes Marcus Aurelius in his profile. May as well just block him and move on.

"AI" has been diluted to mean nothing but marketing wank. 99.999% of "AI" is single variable linear regression estimation. Almost all of the rest is multi variable linear regression.

Computers are a scam too. I found out they're nothing but ones and zeros!