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https://www.techdirt.com/2023/04/11/its-good-that-ai-tech-bros-are-thinking-about-what-could-go-wrong-in-the-distant-future-but-why-dont-they-talk-about-whats-already-gone-wrong-today/>
"Just recently we had Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders on the Techdirt
podcast to discuss their very own podcast mini-series “Silicon Valley v.
Science Fiction.” Some of that discussion was about this spreading view in
Silicon Valley, often oddly coming from AI’s biggest boosters, that AI is an
existential threat to the world, and we need to stop it.
Charlie Jane and Annalee make some really great points about why this view
should be taken with a grain of salt, suggesting the “out of control AI that
destroys the world” scenario seems about as likely as other science fiction
tropes around monsters coming down from the sky to destroy civilization.
The timing of that conversation was somewhat prophetic, I guess, as over the
following couple of weeks there was an explosion of public pronouncements by
the AI doom and gloom set, and suddenly it became a front page story, just days
after we were talking about the same ideas percolating around Silicon Valley on
the podcast.
In our discussion, I pointed out that I
did think it was worth noting that
the AI doom and gloomers are at least a change from the past, where we famously
lived in the “move fast and break things” world, where the idea of thinking
through the consequences of new technologies was considered quaint at best, and
actively harmful at worst.
But, as the podcast guests noted, the whole discussion seems like a
distraction. First, there are actual real world problems
today with black box
algorithms doing things like enhancing criminal sentences based on unknown
inputs. Or, determining whether or not you’ve got a good social credit score in
some countries.
Like there are tremendous legitimate issues that can be looked at
today about
blackbox algorithms, but none of the doom and gloomers seem all that interested
in solving any of those.
Second, the doom and gloom scenarios all seem… static? I mean, sure, they all
say that no one knows exactly
how things will go wrong, and that’s part of
the reason they’re urging caution. But, they also all seem to go back to the
Nick Bostrom’s paperclip thought experiment, as if that story has any relevance
at all to the real world.
Third, many people are now noticing and calling out that much of the doom and
gloom seems to be the same sort of “be scared… but we’re selling the solution”
kind of ghost stories we’ve seen in other industries.
So, it’s also good to see serious pushback on the narrative as well."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
