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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31249 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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So, this feels up the motte's alley- https://www.romecall.org/the-call/

I apologize for the Vatican's web design. TLDR important figures from the major Abrahamaic religions have signed a call for AI ethics which has also been signed onto by representatives from, among others, IBM, Microsoft, and the Italian government.

It's not 100% clear to me what any of this means, per se-

Now more than ever, we must guarantee an outlook in which AI is developed with a focus not on technology, but rather for the good of humanity and of the environment, of our common and shared home and of its human inhabitants, who are inextricably connected. In other words, a vision in which human beings and nature are at the heart of how digital innovation is developed, supported rather than gradually replaced by technologies that behave like rational actors but are in no way human. It is time to begin preparing for more technological future in which machines will have a more important role in the lives of human beings, but also a future in which it is clear that technological progress affirms the brilliance of the human race and remains dependent on its ethical integrity

and

in this context and at a national and international level, to promote “algor-ethics”, namely the ethical use of AI as defined by the following principles:

• Transparency: in principle, AI systems must be explainable;

• Inclusion: the needs of all human beings must be taken into consideration so that everyone can benefit and all individuals can be offered the best possible conditions to express themselves and develop;

• Responsibility: those who design and deploy the use of AI must proceed with responsibility and transparency;

• Impartiality: do not create or act according to bias, thus safeguarding fairness and human dignity;

• Reliability: AI systems must be able to work reliably;

• Security and privacy: AI systems must work securely and respect the privacy of users.

Are more like typical Francis-era Vatican boilerplate than anything concrete. But as a milestone it's probably the first time anyone even attempted to define AI ethics, isn't it? Anyways, I'd be interested in hearing from Motteizans who know a lot more about AI than I do(which, to be clear, is that it's hilarious to feed ChatbotGPT black nationalist conspiracy theories) about what this probably means.

Found this part the most interesting and Luddite:

“AND THAT DOES NOT HAVE AS ITS SOLE GOAL GREATER PROFIT OR THE GRADUAL REPLACEMENT OF PEOPLE IN THE WORKPLACE.”

I thought the entire goal of AI was to remove humans from the workplace. Keynes grand idea of the zero hour work week with all prices going to marginal costs. Granted a lot of humans lose purpose without some manual labor. Maybe we learn to cook and hobby work.

But the grand idea of AI is the elimination of work, marginal costs and prices going to zero. Poverty eliminated. Though a world without poor is a difficult world for religion.

Keynes grand idea of the zero hour work week with all prices going to marginal costs.

Which, back in the 1970s, the kind of futurist forecasting envisaged would be in place by 2000 since with increasing automation and productivity, we would all have so much leisure time due to a four hour work day/three day work week, we wouldn't know how to use it all.

Remind me how that turned out, again? "AI will replace workers but that won't matter since something something post-scarcity something something we'll all have UBI and can work as we want, not as we are driven to". Does anybody really expect for-profit businesses to throw money at workers for not working, or rather that they will put the profits into retained earnings?

Does anybody really expect for-profit businesses to throw money at workers for not working, or rather that they will put the profits into retained earnings?

While I don't agree with them wholeheartedly, isn't this the premise of the "bullshit jobs" folks say is already happening? Given the relative simplicity of it's product, does Facebook really need tens of thousands of software engineers? I guess Elon is willing to take that bet with Twitter.

I think long term we might see changes to improve efficiency, but it's not as if there aren't forces the opposite direction: managers that see status scaling with direct reports, not all technology is implemented immediately, and sometimes bureaucracy stands in the way. Sometimes unions drive this: NYC subways are still driven by hand despite computer controlled systems elsewhere.

Given the relative simplicity of it's product, does Facebook really need tens of thousands of software engineers?

Facebook isn't simple, and if you get caught in one of its circular bugs, there is no human support person who can help you out. I've had three clients in the past year get locked out of some Facebook for Business service or seemingly simple feature due to miscommunication between complex related services or a seemingly easily solvable security issue -- if there were any human beings capable of looking into them. There aren't. It's all completely impersonal and complicated and extremely frustrating when you're the one trying to get some kind of relief.

This is an interesting topic because, broadly, most people sympathize with workers fired from jobs because they’ve been made redundant, but also that automating the blue collar tasks which need to be done is not going so fast, so there’s jobs for these people to go into.

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