Artificial Intelligence

[Son of Mathonwy]

AI is a unique technology but is uniquely dangerous - it's the only technology which could realistically cause our extinction in the medium term*. So we ought to work together to control this thing as best we can, to try to build safeguards into it. Naturally the US and the UK choose short-term economic gain over the future of humanity.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... eclaration


* nuclear and biological weapons, pandemic and climate change could all end our civilization but IMO only AI could make us extinct, at the hands (?) of our own creation.

[Puja]

AI is a unique technology but is uniquely dangerous - it's the only technology which could realistically cause our extinction in the medium term*. So we ought to work together to control this thing as best we can, to try to build safeguards into it. Naturally the US and the UK choose short-term economic gain over the future of humanity.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... eclaration


* nuclear and biological weapons, pandemic and climate change could all end our civilization but IMO only AI could make us extinct, at the hands (?) of our own creation.

I will take a moment to note that the thing which has been deemed "Artificial Intelligence" by its creators/publicists is actually nothing of the kind and is a ridiculously long distance from actual AI, if indeed it is a linked technology at all. That's not to say that we shouldn't be cautious about the new technology, which should more properly be called a generative text engine or generative images engine, but that's because of the societal implications of being able to automate and mass-produce the creation of plausible writing/pictures/video, not because there's any danger of it doing any thinking or understanding.

Puja

[Son of Mathonwy]

AI is a unique technology but is uniquely dangerous - it's the only technology which could realistically cause our extinction in the medium term*. So we ought to work together to control this thing as best we can, to try to build safeguards into it. Naturally the US and the UK choose short-term economic gain over the future of humanity.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... eclaration


* nuclear and biological weapons, pandemic and climate change could all end our civilization but IMO only AI could make us extinct, at the hands (?) of our own creation.

I will take a moment to note that the thing which has been deemed "Artificial Intelligence" by its creators/publicists is actually nothing of the kind and is a ridiculously long distance from actual AI, if indeed it is a linked technology at all. That's not to say that we shouldn't be cautious about the new technology, which should more properly be called a generative text engine or generative images engine, but that's because of the societal implications of being able to automate and mass-produce the creation of plausible writing/pictures/video, not because there's any danger of it doing any thinking or understanding.

Puja

I wish I could share your confidence on that.

AI has taken incredible steps in the last few years, consequently sucked in vastly greater amounts of effort and money, consequently will accelerate its progress. The immediate problems are not extinction - there are huge risks which are closer - but if we don't build safeguards into AI now we are much more are risk from a Skynet situation.

[Son of Mathonwy]

Ah, Google. The company whose motto used to be 'don't be evil'. Now ...

the company removed prohibitions against building AI for weapons and surveillance

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... ing-ai-dei

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... ey-the-law

[Sandydragon]

AI is a unique technology but is uniquely dangerous - it's the only technology which could realistically cause our extinction in the medium term*. So we ought to work together to control this thing as best we can, to try to build safeguards into it. Naturally the US and the UK choose short-term economic gain over the future of humanity.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... eclaration


* nuclear and biological weapons, pandemic and climate change could all end our civilization but IMO only AI could make us extinct, at the hands (?) of our own creation.

I will take a moment to note that the thing which has been deemed "Artificial Intelligence" by its creators/publicists is actually nothing of the kind and is a ridiculously long distance from actual AI, if indeed it is a linked technology at all. That's not to say that we shouldn't be cautious about the new technology, which should more properly be called a generative text engine or generative images engine, but that's because of the societal implications of being able to automate and mass-produce the creation of plausible writing/pictures/video, not because there's any danger of it doing any thinking or understanding.

Puja

I wish I could share your confidence on that.

AI has taken incredible steps in the last few years, consequently sucked in vastly greater amounts of effort and money, consequently will accelerate its progress. The immediate problems are not extinction - there are huge risks which are closer - but if we don't build safeguards into AI now we are much more are risk from a Skynet situation.

It’s possible that AGImwill be achieved, but we are t there yet. The skynet scenario is still a way off. But, it is right to consider what safeguards should be in place now to avoid problems later.

[Son of Mathonwy]

Economic disaster (mass unemployment) in the AI pipeline:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... nch-adzuna

[Puja]

AI saves very little time in most jobs and presents very little value

After analyzing data about 25,000 workers across 7,000 workspaces, users of AI only saved on average three percent of time.
...
Earlier this month, an IBM survey found that only a fraction of AI initiatives are delivering a return on investment after surveying 2,000 CEOs.

Companies That Tried to Save Money With AI Are Now Spending a Fortune Hiring People to Fix Its Mistakes

What was supposed to save money had, instead, caused a host of problems.

"It was the kind of copy that you typically see in AI copy – just very basic; it wasn't interesting," says Ms Skidd. "It was supposed to sell and intrigue but instead it was very vanilla."

Ms Skidd spent about 20 hours rewriting the copy, charging $100 (£74) an hour. Rather than making small changes, she "had to redo the whole thing".

...She's hearing of writers whose main role now is to fix copy churned-out by AI. "Someone connected with me and said that was 90% of their work right now. So, it's not only me making money off such missteps, there's other writers out there."

....
Certainly, that's the experience of Sophie Warner, co-owner of Create Designs, a digital marketing agency in Hampshire in the UK.

In the last six to eight months, she seen a surge in requests for help from clients who have turned to AI for a quick fix, but have run into problems. "Before clients would message us if they were having issues with their site or wanted to introduce new functionality," says Ms Warner. "Now they are going to ChatGPT first."

Ms Warner says this has led to clients adding code to their website that has been suggested by ChatGPT. This, she says, has resulted in websites crashing and clients becoming vulnerable to hackers.

She points to one client who, instead of manually updating their event page, which she says would have taken 15 minutes, instead turned to ChatGPT for easier instructions. The error ultimately "cost them about £360 and their business was down for three days."

..."We often have to charge an investigation fee to find out what has gone wrong, as they don't want to admit it, and the process of correcting these mistakes takes much longer than if professionals had been consulted from the beginning."

And finally, from the lighter side of things: Man gives himself psychiatric issue not seen for over 100 years because he followed Chat GPT's health advice and replaced salt with sodium bromide