I agree, and Clavicular. The problems are 1) being promoted to people, especially kids, over more "normal" celebrities; and 2) being motivated to push beyond where they'd naturally stop, in ways they end up regretting. Both mainly caused by social media.
What is normal? What is the ideal path for each individual? I don't think either of these influencers are normal, but neither do I think the ideas of anyone I've seen promote censorship. Even good-intentioned censors: determining what is best for others is hard, hence why I think softer methods are better (for starters, not promoting these influencers to children against the wishes of their own parents; censoring them from children is OK, but shouldn't be necessary).
Intentionally and knowingly allowing yourself to be harmed should not bar others from action
I would caveat, only when it is beyond reasonable doubt against your sane interests, because what defines harm? For example, suicide treatment that someone may enter initially voluntarily is OK, because the people who it saved believe so, but people who diligently consistently want to die should be entitled to MAID. Or in this case, both trans and looksmaxxing adults should be allowed gender-affirming care, with a bit of friction to ensure it's what they really want (unless obvious); because it's their choice, and there's a not-insignificant chance they won't regret it.
Brainwavez
1d ago
Time is money. Consider a low software dev salary of $24/hr: if asking the LLM saves 20 minutes, that’s $8, while the cost of a small script or image (using the API, not subsidized subscription) is under $1.
Brainwavez
1d ago
What makes a collection of atoms one object or multiple?
Is a building an object? Forest? Planet? Galaxy?
Then why would a group of people and technology not be an object? It could be a temporary physical space when they're together, like an occupied lab.
Brainwavez
2d ago
But why is the brand “80-90 years old”? If the job is simply to press the red or blue button, why not hire someone charismatic? It’s embarrassing, even for the politicians themselves.
Brainwavez
2d ago
Term limits are OK but maybe a band-aid. Why do both parties endorse geriatrics in the first place?
UPDATE: McConnel is alive, so US politicians are still literally brain dead but only in the figurative sense.
I wish him many more healthy years outside US government, fortunately he announced last February his retirement after midterms.
Our (US) politicians are literally brain dead
Ok, technically we don't know Mitch McConnel is dead, but he's not been seen for 4 weeks since being hospitalized. Especially with what's (not) happening in Congress, I honestly don't see any significant difference whatsoever. And he's still getting paid ($174,000/yr).
This isn't the first time. Kay Granger disappeared for months (still getting paid) until someone discovered she was in a memory care home. It's bipartisan: Diane Feinstein died in office, 90 years young, shortly after she kept missing votes for health issues. The two most recent presidents are over 80 and seem to be having memory issues in office, and 1/3 of Senators are over 70.
And maybe you disagree, but I think it reflects how out-of-touch the US government is. I feel that most of today's politicians aren't qualified to serve in a retirement home committee, yet they're serving in the grand Retirement Home that's in charge of a country with about 350 million people and $32 trillion GDP.
What's actually happening
Allegedly the people in charge of McConnel won't declare him dead because that would trigger a special election, where he could be replaced by Democrat Charles Booker. Except Thomas Massie, a Republican-turned-independent, would almost certainly win if the party endorsed him. My admittedly poor understanding is that the party doesn't like Massie because he doesn't always support Trump and has principles; this is definitely a weakman, but does anyone have a steelman for why a brain-dead (or at best, long-term hospitalized) man is better? I mean, it's not like Congress is doing anything anyways.
Why Congress looking utterly incompetent matters
The United States government is at least supposed to appear to the median idiot to run the United States. What are children supposed to think when they see their 90 year old "representatives" literally die in office? Gen Z is not optimistic (even about their own party, and these are the Gen Z who still respond to polls).
I believe that ordinary citizens consciously and subconsciously look at their leaders for how to act, so leaders' shamelessness trickles down and causes low-level institutions to decay. This isn't a new theory. Why work hard when your politician gets paid more to, let alone adequately represent you, not even show up (or show up last Thursday for 30 seconds)?
And old politicians in general can't really understand young people concerns like AI, social fragmentation, and the HR-ificiation of jobs. I'm not asking for every politician to be young, but for example, more than 2% of the senate to be under 40 and more than 0(%) under 30.
How to fix?
Elect younger politicians.
I don't know what we can do beyond passive, mostly ineffective support. But even party insiders, I don't understand why they don't back younger candidates. They obviously must eventually back newer generations.
Is every potential young candidate as problematic as Graham Platner? 26-year old Davig Hogg could've been the DNC vice chair but was replaced, unofficially for criticizing established (older) candidates for being "asleep at the wheel" (sound familiar?), officially (not a Republican cariature, this was the actual reason) to maintain a diversity quota.
Other countries
Although political disillusionnment seems to be nearly global, other countries have less old politicians. Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are a youthful 73, EU leader Ursula Von Der Leyen 67, Argentina's Javier Milei 55, and the 9 youngest current leaders are under 40 (the 10 youngest since 1795 are...too young).
I'm not sure why the US is so overtly dysfunctional in this area, or if other countries are more visibly dysfunctional in other areas. I'm curious if there have been very young politicians anywhere, and whether or not they've been popular or successful.
Brainwavez
2d ago
I program and would be surprised if LLMs haven't increased my productivity. Although maybe they atrophy skills, I'm still working myself at the high level, the LLMs help with boilerplate and bug fixes. They also answer questions that are too complex for a search engine, faster than I could on my own (and provide sources so I know they're accurate).
Brainwavez
2d ago
how is the human artist to make a living, between the…Charybdis of stupid anons
This is already a problem, has been before AI, and can become much worse without AI: companies overwork and underpay artists because otherwise they can find a faster, cheaper, sloppier-but-still-adequate replacement.
To fund and help artists, I believe it’s more productive to increase welfare, grants, or easy side-jobs, while reducing necessary effort and increasing background encouragement to create art, than attack AI which may replace them.
…Scylla of stupid experts…
But not all experts are stupid. If the majority who are awarding grants or otherwise funding artists select AI work, that’s a problem, but I think even if they preferred AI they’d try to select humans.
Brainwavez
2d ago
work that's obviously heavily AI written has already won at least two significant literary awards
Especially since it was “obvious” I’m skeptical those specific awards were ever worth taking seriously.
Likewise, obviously AI-generated blog posts frequently make the Hacker News frontpage, but I feel that reflects the declining quality of its userbase: the topic is actually often good, but the entire article is basically the title and maybe one or two details AI-expanded, a human-written article would’ve been better.
I have a simple test: AI can create art that is human-level to me when I like some work that is revealed to be AI (obviously or later). So far I have seen decent AI technical writing. I actually saw good pixel art I initially suspected was partly AI, but then I saw the artist livestreams so now I’m convinced it’s 100% human.
Why not?
The question that spawned this thread
What is the bull case, beyond drawing lines on a graph, for AI achieving superhuman, or even human, performance on tasks that are not quickly verifiable?
is much less important if AI can’t, but a single human-AI hybrid can. For example
Radiologists continue to do just fine for themselves despite repeated promises of doom.
Some radiologists would always be employed, but much less who work much more efficiently.
We could even get exponentially increasing intelligence, although only by directly linking an AI chip to a human brain.
Brainwavez
2d ago
I’m sure AI already has some value with the amount of time it saves researchers and developers, and this is economic value because I’m sure these groups would pay above inference costs to keep using it. My understanding is that the vast majority of big AI companies’ massive debt is from training, and even the current inference costs may be profitable, but if they’re not and most customers had to they’d pay more.
Jobs are something I worry about, but as long as there are other decent jobs or something like UBI:
I don’t think devaluing (logical) intelligence really matters, because it’s like how strength has been devalued. It would still be far from useless, just not as important (and if you’re smart enough, in most cases already wasn’t as charisma): like people still want to be strong, want strong partners, strength helps in everyday situations.
And although today’s full curriculum may not be mandatory tomorrow (I think we already teach some generally unnecessary concepts), people will still go to school, like how we still exercise: at minimum for mental health and basic functioning (e.g. exercise for ability to walk without being out of breath, school for common sense); then some will do more because they intrinsically like to, or want a still-remaining benefit of innate knowledge.
People demand real art made by humans? Humans say they're making real art, but use AI to create it: human washing
I don’t predict a demand for real art as much as 1) artists prefer full control over their work and 2) AI art is generally mediocre, so the subjective best art to most people will be human.
“A picture is worth a thousand words” vaguely captures the problem: generating just the right image and editing it to be correct will be harder than creating the image from scratch. Generating a random mediocre image that matches a paragraph description is easy, but not worth much: 1) artists want to express themselves and 2) people with taste want something beyond mediocre.
If AI becomes hyper-competent 2) won’t be an issue, but then the AI should be able to make a tool that lets artists express themselves very easy and quickly, so most won’t bother automating it further.
Lawyers and doctors offering human accountability? Sure, but they'll still delegate all non-customer facing functionality to AIs: human washing.
I expect them to use AI and provide at minimum only humanity, but they’ll still be hired by people with more money than they can spend just for that. People waste money on handcrafted furniture and cookware when (unlike art) what’s made in the factory is functionally strictly better.
I predict (although I may be very wrong) in the near-medium term, no ASI but some very useful advancements. We didn’t get room temperature superconductors and cold fusion; but in the 1990s-2010s, we got expanded internet, improved technology by orders of magnitude (to the point we have things like hyperrealistic graphics that were probably hard to imagine before 2000), and less noticeable but significant advancements in medicine, food preservation etc. Likewise since 2020, we already have a chatbot that can research and explain niche knowledge across multiple domains, implement and debug code mostly correct up to a high level of abstraction, generate unrealistic images and video (although you can usually tell they’re generated if you look close), and even just basic actions are impressive, because everything is through natural conversation.
And there are drawbacks, like how society in 2010 gradually declined probably partly because of centralized internet services (enshittification) and general social media, and now AI is making people lazier and has reduced jobs in some fields. But I predict (again maybe optimistically) AI won’t destroy humanity or massively reduce jobs without generally-regarded-as-better replacements.
I don’t think it’s uncharitable, but I do believe the prominent rationalists are altruists (or less kindly, quokkas) who genuinely want regulation to save humanity and/or are using the threat for attention and funding.
It doesn’t matter, because the people implementing the regulation would almost certainly corrupt it for power and personal gain, including undermining it for themselves or their friends, unless it was designed so that corruption and undermining are almost impossible. If ASI needs much more chips than already exist, that may actually be feasible (because a defector must run many fabs, which takes a while and can’t be easy to hide).
Brainwavez
3d ago
the human brain is the most complicated object in the universe, as it is the only currently known object capable of of understanding these questions well enough to even ask them
Not true: a group of human brains, or a human + tools|AI, or humans + tools|AI, are smarter and more complicated.
Here’s another interesting albeit ranty AI post, because not everyone here frequents Hacker News: Punk, or why I don't stream anymore, by George Hotz, who’s a very talented and mildly eccentric programmer.
He addresses the rise of mass commodification and (indirectly here, but a common theme of his other ranty posts) the “permanent underclass”, which has been a problem since consolidation of the internet and economy into a few large companies, but is accelerated by LLMs. (Unless I have bad reading comprehension) “punk” alludes to how the punk culture started novel and authentic, but became standardized and commercialized.
I believe this is a much less discussed concern about ASI, but it’s necessary to prevent a boring conformist and ultimately decaying dystopia. Modern social media and LLMs provide niche subcultures and topics one can explore, but I suspect even these form conformist spirals, because people have become lazier. My idea of alignment would push humans to understand and express themselves (and prevent misery, not sure what else).
Brainwavez
3d ago
The exact outputs usually aren't in the training data. Although similar outputs are, you can take any human idea and decompose it into similar older ideas and maybe an infinitesimal amount of chance. That doesn't mean AI will reach human-level intelligence, but makes it impossible to disprove.
We already live in a human zoo ruled by Moloch.
Why do big companies and governments follow the same common patterns? If you're the leader of a successful company and don't follow those patterns. you'll be pressured, if that doesn't work fired, if that doesn't work your company will go bankrupt. Same with politicians and governments.
Likewise, why is social media so mediocre and toxic? I don't actually think it benefits the rich (I can't imagine how) but is a natural consequence of human bias towards negativity. Hence even smaller sites like this are, albeit to a lesser extent.
We are ruled by self-reinforcing cycles comprised of many smart humans. If a participant stops perpetuating a cycle somebody else will step in. These cycles can and will be broken eventually, but either not obviously or not now, otherwise they already would be.
So to me, AI is just another overlord. Although that doesn't mean it can't be worse, the problem isn't that it rules over humans, the problem is how. For example, maybe future AI will be like a smartphone: a virtual assistant that future generations can't function without, that influences their thoughts however it wants based on its advice like a milder Whispering Earing (although current LLMs are unfortunately influencing us towards sameness and model collapse; I hope that if this is our future, the whispering AI still preserves individual uniqueness and anything else fundamental to "good life").
Brainwavez
3d ago
I agree, whenever rationalist types discuss AI, it sounds like they're living in an alternate reality.
Yet their discussions are still interesting and, via insight, occasionally useful. Scott Alexander started (what eventually led to) this forum; him, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and others invented lots of terminology and concepts we take for granted. I doubt they would've if not for the same personality traits that cause them to keep being wrong about AI (mainly, logic over empiricism). A person can't predict anything without occasionally being wrong, or have any good ideas without occasional bad ideas.
AI 2040: Plan A
The AI 2027 authors published a follow-up. Scott Alexander also wrote a separate blogpost and although not in the author list contributed.
It's a very speculative and optimistic timeline of AI's future evolution. It presents five ways or "plans" the US government will intervene. Unsurprisingly, the ASI-pilled authors favor strong, global regulation to ensure alignment. Summaries:
-
Plan A (recommended): the US makes an international treaty with China, pauses AI training (not inference, i.e. no new models but we keep using existing ones), enforces full transparency of future research, then when alignment research advances enough carefully resumes
-
Plan S: the US makes an international treaty with China and pauses AI training for as long as possible
-
Plan B: the US regulates AI at home and demands China also regulate, but doesn't negotiate with them, probably leading to a war
-
Plan C: the US regulates AI and ignores China, so they overtake it and reach ASI first
-
Plan D: the US doesn't regulate AI, we get ASI in early 2031 and it probably kills everyone
Personally, I just don't share the optimism of these guys in either direction.
I think politicians will prioritize culture war and the failing economy over AI regulation, and at most pass some executive orders suggesting companies be more careful. But I also doubt we'll have ASI that can solve the abstract problems "take over the world" or even "keep existing world leaders in power" (they're getting old and increasingly unpopular, their parties may remain in power but only if their policies significantly shift).
What I expect from AI:
-
Basically solve legacy code by rewriting entire codebases, applying very niche domain knowledge, and actually finding and handling edge-cases better than humans
-
Greatly speedup research, leading to new discoveries and inventions. Important but background things like food preservation and medicine will improve from AI-assisted discoveries. Major advancements in math and theoretical physics
-
Much better and cheaper education, therapy, initial medical/legal appointments, personal repairs...maybe reducing but not eliminating human jobs, because human experts will offer these services "premium"
-
Won't replace human artists. Some advertisements and infographics will be AI but even some will still be human. At best it will assist them in a way where the human still fully controls the output, e.g. by generating code leading to new and improved software tools to learn, practice, and create art
-
Used by the vast majority as a personal assistant, but doesn't replace human relations
Yes, to be clear I’m not against taxes or regulations.
I think the important part is that richer and more influential people and organizations should have strictly more taxes and compliance overhead (and not in the sense “both rich and poor can’t sleep under bridges”). Today we have situations where working-class citizens pay more taxes than rich locals via offshore tax havens, and small businesses suffer from unnecessarily difficult regulations (not protecting anyone) while big businesses fail audits then suffer less than it would take to pass them.
More generally: it’s important for everyone to contribute and compromise for society, the problem is when people asking/enforcing don’t evenly contribute and compromise themselves. I think growing lack of effort and honor within the working class should and would be fixed by seeing more effort and honor from their leaders.
Once everyone has to suffer evenly from laws regulations etc., they become more permissive, because everyone wants as much freedom as possible for the choices they want. Almost everyone agrees that (for example) murder is wrong and building safety is important, few would accept safety for living in a panopticon.
If she gave consent over text, then he drove there and she said no, it’s still rape. Acceptable recourse for being led on was to (for example) break up with her.
I don’t understand the point of banning and distributing physical books when books are obsoleted by technology.
More options
Context Copy link