The turbulent AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical

9 pointsposted 5 hours ago
by unethical_ban
(gatesnotes.com)

7 Comments

dgellow

4 hours ago

Have we considered NOT taking that risk? Given it is extremely unlikely that we will do the necessary preparation and take precautions. It’s fine to identify issues and benefits, but then you have to ask yourself why accept that gamble in behalf of the whole world

tocs3

4 hours ago

We live in a big modern world there some options that are not really available. As if we are stuck in a really wide raging river. We are not going to be going upstream regardless our desires. Saying stop I want out is not really an option.

throwaway_7274

4 minutes ago

I don’t really understand this. Sometimes I see even stronger versions of this sentiment, that amount to saying, hey, it’s inevitable, so you might as well be e/acc. But you can just not do things. Societies can just not do things. They used to know this. We don’t have to admit the neoliberal Nuremberg defense of “I was just following incentives.”

dgellow

29 minutes ago

Of course it is. We do that for lots of technologies that are considered too risky, including weapons, cryptographic algorithms, substances, and way more

ThrowawayR2

4 hours ago

He missed the most basic risk: unequal access. AI providers have enormous investments to pay off and enormous operating costs and want a ROI so they are going charge all the market will bear. Imagine a nightmare scenario where access to AI is like access to medical insurance coverage in the United States: white collar professionals get access to more tokens on better AI models through their employer and can afford the same for their personal endeavors. Meanwhile the working poor and unemployed are expected to make do with low cost AI models and smaller token allotments that they are grudgingly given by the tech megacorps at the cost of exposure to advertising or some other unwelcome intrusion. One could conceivably see the destitute pawning off possessions to buy enough high end LLM tokens to clean up their resume for an important job interview only to tragically blow them on their AI GF/BF because they needed a moment of reassurance in an uncaring world.

Somebody ring up Cory Doctorow; I'm sure he could wring a cautionary dystopian tale out of the concept.