Hmmh. I sometimes struggle to emphasize. I don’t live in the US. Culture and politics are a bit different here. We certainly have those dynamics as well. But I don’t think we’re (yet) at a majority of the population living in constant fear. We Germans tend to be less open towards new technology, though. For other reasons. We always sell our souls to American big tech eventually. But it’s always met with some initial reluctance/backlash.
I’m not sure about your point about fascism. I mean there’s some inflation with how people use the word… But proper fascism is really, really bad. All my grandparents had to suffer through it. Somehow they survived. But it cost like 70 million lives. And most cities here were turned into burning piles of trash. You kinda want to avoid it. Even at a substantial cost. And my place isn’t the only example. We have plenty wars and fascists on earth. Constantly. Fear isn’t the right tool to avoid it, though. Being clever and education are good strategies.
Ultimately it’s certainly hard to judge some hypothetical future. I still don’t see any reason to completely sell out to some specific big companies. I mean they sometimes do come up with good products. Sometimes their path to profit is scattered with dead bodies. Could be anything unless there’s accountability and regulation. And it’s not either/or… We could as well have some less nasty company do the research. Or do it a bit more slowly… Maybe that’ll take 10 years longer but we get less people killed and less permanent harm done to the environment. There’s not just one path forwards.
I fully agree on the atmosphere and sentiment,. It’s really hard to talk about AI. Especially online. Everyone is yelling and doing identity politics. Most people don’t have a clue how it works. And/or they believe in some falsehoods. I think the best way is to just tell it how it is. Quite a lot of people won’t listen. But they’re not listening anyways.
Be a bit careful with the evil companies, though. I don’t think Meta, Anthropic, OpenAI, Elon Musk or the Chinese government act in your, or my best interest. I’d advise not to be naïve about that. They always tell nice stories. Promise all kinds of stuff. Politicians do the same thing. It’s their job. It doesn’t have to come true, though, by any means. In fact the more they promise, the more likely it is they’re trying to manipulate you.
This isn’t really connected to the technology and science though. Whether AI is going to succeed and improve from a scientific perspective is yet another can of worms. I still strongly doubt LLMs are going to be the direct predecessor to strong AI or something properly “clever”, but we’ll see about that.
To be clear, I’m saying the opposite. Fear is the necessary ingredient that causes fascism. Everyone is seeing wealth inequality, and jobs going away, and cost of living rising, and (depending on the country) healthcare costs rising and quality getting worse. There is a lot of fear going around all over the world, and that’s the classic environment for a demagogue to step in, point at a scapegoat, and stoke populism. As we’ve learned in the US in the last decade, it’s a short jump from there to fascism, and Germany and Italy weren’t the only countries to learn the same lesson back during the great depression. Canada was about to elect their own version of Trump, but instead elected Carney in direct response to Trump’s aggression. So I’m confident if it wasn’t Germany back in the 30s, it would have been someone else, possibly even the US. We did our own internment camp stuff towards the japanese, and there was famously a pro-nazi rally that was held at Madison Square Garden in NYC in 1939. The fear was everywhere, it just came to a head with Germany first.
You kinda want to avoid it.
Hah, understatement. And yet democracies still reliably fall for it. And the reason is they have fears that make them prone to exploitation.
I still don’t see any reason to completely sell out to some specific big companies…they’re trying to manipulate you.
Absolutely not what I’m suggesting. The opposite. As I mentioned before, I tend to believe that any models trained on stolen public data should be made public domain, and to whatever extent possible, the companies using them should need to license the resulting models from us.
Edit: but I’m specifically against any govts taking a stake in these companies, because that’s effectively a bailout for them. They would love to unload their risk on the people.
Hmmh. I sometimes struggle to emphasize. I don’t live in the US. Culture and politics are a bit different here. We certainly have those dynamics as well. But I don’t think we’re (yet) at a majority of the population living in constant fear. We Germans tend to be less open towards new technology, though. For other reasons. We always sell our souls to American big tech eventually. But it’s always met with some initial reluctance/backlash.
I’m not sure about your point about fascism. I mean there’s some inflation with how people use the word… But proper fascism is really, really bad. All my grandparents had to suffer through it. Somehow they survived. But it cost like 70 million lives. And most cities here were turned into burning piles of trash. You kinda want to avoid it. Even at a substantial cost. And my place isn’t the only example. We have plenty wars and fascists on earth. Constantly. Fear isn’t the right tool to avoid it, though. Being clever and education are good strategies.
Ultimately it’s certainly hard to judge some hypothetical future. I still don’t see any reason to completely sell out to some specific big companies. I mean they sometimes do come up with good products. Sometimes their path to profit is scattered with dead bodies. Could be anything unless there’s accountability and regulation. And it’s not either/or… We could as well have some less nasty company do the research. Or do it a bit more slowly… Maybe that’ll take 10 years longer but we get less people killed and less permanent harm done to the environment. There’s not just one path forwards.
I fully agree on the atmosphere and sentiment,. It’s really hard to talk about AI. Especially online. Everyone is yelling and doing identity politics. Most people don’t have a clue how it works. And/or they believe in some falsehoods. I think the best way is to just tell it how it is. Quite a lot of people won’t listen. But they’re not listening anyways.
Be a bit careful with the evil companies, though. I don’t think Meta, Anthropic, OpenAI, Elon Musk or the Chinese government act in your, or my best interest. I’d advise not to be naïve about that. They always tell nice stories. Promise all kinds of stuff. Politicians do the same thing. It’s their job. It doesn’t have to come true, though, by any means. In fact the more they promise, the more likely it is they’re trying to manipulate you.
This isn’t really connected to the technology and science though. Whether AI is going to succeed and improve from a scientific perspective is yet another can of worms. I still strongly doubt LLMs are going to be the direct predecessor to strong AI or something properly “clever”, but we’ll see about that.
To be clear, I’m saying the opposite. Fear is the necessary ingredient that causes fascism. Everyone is seeing wealth inequality, and jobs going away, and cost of living rising, and (depending on the country) healthcare costs rising and quality getting worse. There is a lot of fear going around all over the world, and that’s the classic environment for a demagogue to step in, point at a scapegoat, and stoke populism. As we’ve learned in the US in the last decade, it’s a short jump from there to fascism, and Germany and Italy weren’t the only countries to learn the same lesson back during the great depression. Canada was about to elect their own version of Trump, but instead elected Carney in direct response to Trump’s aggression. So I’m confident if it wasn’t Germany back in the 30s, it would have been someone else, possibly even the US. We did our own internment camp stuff towards the japanese, and there was famously a pro-nazi rally that was held at Madison Square Garden in NYC in 1939. The fear was everywhere, it just came to a head with Germany first.
Hah, understatement. And yet democracies still reliably fall for it. And the reason is they have fears that make them prone to exploitation.
Absolutely not what I’m suggesting. The opposite. As I mentioned before, I tend to believe that any models trained on stolen public data should be made public domain, and to whatever extent possible, the companies using them should need to license the resulting models from us.
Edit: but I’m specifically against any govts taking a stake in these companies, because that’s effectively a bailout for them. They would love to unload their risk on the people.