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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35570 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023

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I don't know. I don't believe the AI doomerism, but neither do I believe the AI pollyannas about how Fairy Godmother AI will solve all the world problems and we'll all be rich and living high on the hog.

And while I try to be sympathetic to Aaronson because I do think he is severely neurotic and troubled, lines like this have me facepalming:

It was also defined by my struggle against the bullies—i.e., the kids who the blankfaced administrators sheltered and protected, and who actually did to me all the things that the blankfaces probably wanted to do but couldn’t.

Dude, mate, pal: I've worked in a school and related areas. The "blankfaces" don't want to stick your head down the toilet, they don't think of you as anything other than "okay, another problem to be solved", especially if your parents were on the phone every five minutes about how unfair it was that little Scott wasn't allowed to jump ahead three grades in maths.

This is someone smart, who works in academia, is married with kids - and is still going through the world as the scared and resentful 12 year old who was bullied at school. If he thinks AI is going to recognise him as a kindred 'high intellect' and be on his side, he needs to wake up fast. AI won't recognise or think of anybody as anything, it'll be a tool in the hands of whoever brings their product to market first.

If the doomerists are anyway right, he'll be just another one of the fleshbags. For someone who seems to live in a constant state of "I'm Jewish, so everyone wants to Holocaust me", I can see why he'd pin his hopes on machine intelligence being the boss of the world. But he's wrong - sure, the machine won't care that he's Jewish, but it also won't care that he's smart for a fleshbag. He's just more paperclip material.

But he's wrong - sure, the machine won't care that he's Jewish

He is in a position to make it care about his Jewish identity and protect it.

Does this mean I can now blame him for the annoying email from Microsoft egging me on to sign in and chat with Bing?

Because OpenAI sure seems to have dumped a lot of principles for the opportunity to "get there first and rake in the dough":

How is Microsoft approaching responsible AI for the new Bing?

At Microsoft, we take our commitment to responsible AI seriously. Bing is being developed in accordance with our AI principles. We are working with our partner, OpenAI, to deliver an experience that encourages responsible use. For example, we have and will continue to partner with OpenAI on foundational model work, we have designed the Bing user experience to keep humans at the centre, and we have developed a safety system that is designed to mitigate failures and avoid misuse with things such as content filtering, operational monitoring and abuse detection, and other safeguards. The waiting list process is also a part of our approach to responsible AI. We’ll be taking user feedback from those with early access to Bing to improve the tool before making it broadly available.

Responsible AI is a journey, and we'll continually improve our systems along the way. We're committed to making our AI more reliable and trustworthy, and your feedback will help us do so. To learn more about how to use Bing responsibly, please see our Terms of Use and Code of Conduct.

To learn more about how to use Bing responsibly, please see our Terms of Use and Code of Conduct.

However AI eventually develops, right now as in this instance, I think it's being used as a tool to use our data and sell us crap:

How do I best use the new Bing?

Ask questions as if you were talking to a person. This means including details, asking for clarification or more information and telling Bing how it can be more helpful to you. Here’s an example: “I’m planning a trip with my friends in September. What beaches are within a 3-hour flight from London Heathrow?” Then follow up with something such as “What should we do when we get there?”.

And of course completely coincidentally all the answers will be "from our sponsors" - what airline, what hotel, what fun pubs and clubs and tours and restaurants, etc. to use and visit. Now we've told it that we have a bunch of people all wanting to visit someplace at a particular date. It can now suggest items for groups, plus collate that with our contacts lists and sell the same advertising to the 'friends'. Expect a deluge of "Hey Guy, you asked about ski trips? There's a great bargain on skiing gear to be found at this site!", maybe less blatant than Google's sponsored and paid-for search rankings, but just as devoted to parting us from our money.

If this is the smart shiny high-IQ future for humanity, Mr. Aaronson, it sure looks a lot like the existing old grubby commercial present.

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