Technology and the Future of Humanity.
Ever-evolving technology opens up new questions for modern humans. Robots, increasingly successfully replacing humans in areas where they were once needed, are more efficient, willing to work as long as their batteries last, and, most importantly, don't question employers' respect for their rights.
It's not as if this problem suddenly arose today. Factories where labor was replaced by machines didn't emerge today. But humans have always been needed. There have always been jobs that machines couldn't handle. The world found some balance between manual and machine labor back then.
Today's new wave of "technologization" of production, the partial replacement of intellectual labor by AI, and the automation of processes, is once again pushing humans even further into the background.
I see several hypothetical problems here, which I may be exaggerating, but I can't help but ask you, dear forum members, what you think about this.
1. Humans remain needed as consumers, but not as producers. Given that the population of our planet is much higher today than in previous times, the problem is intensifying. So, how should people earn their living? Perhaps they can fill a niche in services? But even this is not infinite and will eventually be automated over time.
2. Since humanity today is more educated than in previous times, the demands on work are high. Will the world be able to provide such a large number of jobs?
3. How will a market economy cope with this challenge? After all, if we simply start handing out money to people simply for living, inflation will instantly reduce this money to nothing. Prices will simply rise. For example, if tomorrow everyone had one million dollars, then a loaf of bread would cost a million dollars.
4. Human rights. People have always been a necessary balancer for the state or employer. In cases of excesses or abuses, people rebelled. But they were heard because the state and employers needed them. Now, with the diminishing need for humans for production or defense, the human voice risks becoming less audible.
5. Education. It's already clear that the classic school and university format of education doesn't meet modern needs. First, it's too long, second, too traditional, and third, it produces far more specialists than is needed. A large supply of specialists, combined with their rapid replacement by robots and AI, lowers the cost of their labor.
6. And finally, humans themselves. What should they do? What should they do? Even in everyday life, machines already do our laundry, robot vacuums, and so on. And tomorrow, will a specially trained robot entertain and educate our children? Provide attention to our wives? What will remain for us?
I'm not claiming that all this is necessarily true, but questions arise. For now, reality itself doesn't pose them, but who can guarantee that it won't tomorrow?
It's not as if this problem suddenly arose today. Factories where labor was replaced by machines didn't emerge today. But humans have always been needed. There have always been jobs that machines couldn't handle. The world found some balance between manual and machine labor back then.
Today's new wave of "technologization" of production, the partial replacement of intellectual labor by AI, and the automation of processes, is once again pushing humans even further into the background.
I see several hypothetical problems here, which I may be exaggerating, but I can't help but ask you, dear forum members, what you think about this.
1. Humans remain needed as consumers, but not as producers. Given that the population of our planet is much higher today than in previous times, the problem is intensifying. So, how should people earn their living? Perhaps they can fill a niche in services? But even this is not infinite and will eventually be automated over time.
2. Since humanity today is more educated than in previous times, the demands on work are high. Will the world be able to provide such a large number of jobs?
3. How will a market economy cope with this challenge? After all, if we simply start handing out money to people simply for living, inflation will instantly reduce this money to nothing. Prices will simply rise. For example, if tomorrow everyone had one million dollars, then a loaf of bread would cost a million dollars.
4. Human rights. People have always been a necessary balancer for the state or employer. In cases of excesses or abuses, people rebelled. But they were heard because the state and employers needed them. Now, with the diminishing need for humans for production or defense, the human voice risks becoming less audible.
5. Education. It's already clear that the classic school and university format of education doesn't meet modern needs. First, it's too long, second, too traditional, and third, it produces far more specialists than is needed. A large supply of specialists, combined with their rapid replacement by robots and AI, lowers the cost of their labor.
6. And finally, humans themselves. What should they do? What should they do? Even in everyday life, machines already do our laundry, robot vacuums, and so on. And tomorrow, will a specially trained robot entertain and educate our children? Provide attention to our wives? What will remain for us?
I'm not claiming that all this is necessarily true, but questions arise. For now, reality itself doesn't pose them, but who can guarantee that it won't tomorrow?
Comments (71)
One thing that strikes me in your post, though, is a kind of slide from a salient technological "event" (e.g. a new wave of automation, AI replacing tasks, etc.) to very large social outcomes (e.g. mass unemployment, loss of bargaining power, markets breaking down, etc.) as if the event itself were doing most of the causal work. But in many cases what does the heavy lifting isn't the technology as such but rather the surrounding structure: who owns the productive capital, how bargaining power is distributed, what the welfare state looks like, how competition works, what education and retraining institutions do, and what fiscal/monetary policies are in place. The same technical capability can produce very different social outcomes under different institutional arrangements.
Your "if tomorrow everyone gets $1M, bread costs $1M" example could be instructive. As a thought experiment, it shows that nominal money isn't the same thing as real resources. But it's also an "extreme event-style" scenario: overnight, universal, unconditioned, with no or little matching change in the background neo-liberal free-market structures. Real policy proposals that aim to keep people solvent in an automated economy don’t have to look like that. Inflation depends on system-level constraints: whether the transfer is financed by taxes vs new money, whether the economy has slack or is supply-constrained, whether production can expand, whether rents/monopoly pricing dominate, etc. So "handing out money" isn’t automatically self-defeating (and often isn't in social democracies) It’s a collective design question about how purchasing power is distributed relative to real productive capacity.
Good morning, both of you- With Trump as president, we might have a real-life experiment of what happens when everyone is given a million dollars. I think mathematicians could use math to predict much of what happens. I was not that worried about every Greenlander getting a million dollars until reading Pierre-Normand's explanation, and now I am even more opposed to Trump's desire to buy Greenland. Unfortunately, Denmark made some very bad decisions regarding birth control and the education of Greenland's children. The relationship between Greenland and Denmark is damaged, and having a million dollars seems wonderful, but an even worse decision could come out of this.
For sure, we need a better understanding of economics. We can look at Alaska, which pays everyone who lives in Alaska.... This is too important to ignore, and we need better information than I can provide without the help of AI.
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Also, when I lived in a small coastal town, many women earned much-needed money in a shrimp factory where we removed the shrimp shells by hand. A man came to town with a shrimp-picking machine and all the women lost their seasonal income. The man who owned the machine made so much money that every year he invested in a new business to reduce the taxes he had to pay. This one man was getting richer and richer, while the women lost their much-needed money.
That is how capitalism works, but I was one of those women so, coming from the worker's point of view, what if we all got to buy the machine, and we shared the work and the profit? I was of childbearing age, and sharing the work would mean working a lot less and still having money to raise a child. As a young mother, that looks pretty good. But it does not build the capital to create new businesses. But then again, our income would go back into the community.
I want to add something very important. We not only have capitalism, but we also have autocratic industry, and from my point of view, that is the devil, a terrible evil we need to get rid of. Autocratic capitalism is a hierarchy of power, and it can be dehumanizing and bad for families and the whole community. The solution is Deming's democratic model for industry. His model of industry enables everyone to keep learning and contribute to providing a better product or service.
I could be wrong, but I think empowering us to own and manage our income could yield positive economic and social outcomes. If the US returned to education for democracy and we replaced the autocratic industrial model with a democratic model, we might have healthier communities. Now the machine that takes our jobs improves our lives and leaves us independent of government assistance.
Is this true? Maybe not.
We already do hand out billions of dollars to people, actually. Welfare payments, social security, retirement (especially from under funded plans), unemployment, and so on. Inflation does occur, but government remittances aren't the only factor.
I don't know whether a guaranteed basic income for everyone would be highly inflationary or not; would it not depend on the size of these payments? Sure, a million bucks for everyone all at once would be intensely inflationary, but that's not likely to be the case. More likely is that the basic income would be closer to "not enough to live on, but a little too much to die" -- subsistence, in other words.
At any rate, I agree with you: rendering the working class redundant -- 90%+ of the population -- would be a species-wide catastrophe.
I've done tedious white collar work which I thought a computer really should be doing. On the other hand, it paid the rent. But the fact is that the working class has not seized control of the economy in order to protect itself.
I think the working class seizing control of the economy would be like trying to pick up mercury with tweezers. :lol: To get control of mercury requires a different tool. To increase working-class control is a matter of organization. We need to replace the autocratic industrial order with a democratic order and return to education for democracy.
Quoting BC
If Trump has his way with Greenland, we will find out what giving everyone a million dollars does to the economy.
I think we should invade Vancouver Island. The 70 or 80 miles that are south of the 49th parallel are rightfully ours. We'll give up that section of Minnesota that sticks up north of 49 by Lake of the Woods. Fair trade?
Nixon in 1956 thought that we would go to a four day work week based on increased production.
Throughout history, any time a new technology has come about that made things more efficient, people have worried there won't be enough jobs. The reality is that you cannot see the needs of tomorrow once those new efficiencies are in place.
People will always fine more to do with what they have. 20 years ago the idea of having 16GB of RAM on your computer was insane. Whatever would we need that for? Turns out when you have greater time and efficiency in one area, people find new things to fill out that saved time and create new complexities that need people to work through.
Now, what IS important is making sure regular workers aren't left behind and exploited. Because that's historical. Unchecked there will always be people in power who will rape a person happily and tell them to be grateful for it. We'll need to see how people abuse AI. For example, if an artist creates individual work, if AI scans it it should be paid to the artist. AI should have careful logs of data that it pulls from, even though it might slow AI down. But if artists are properly paid for AI use, it could be they also profit from AI.
I think we're also going to face real limits on energy and infrastructure vs demand. This will likely cause new wars over resources like we do with oil. We'll still need people to fight those wars too. :)
Inflation will only result if there is insufficient product to meet demand.
Maybe by that time the independent nation of Cascadia will emerge, comprising Oregon (my home state) Washington and British Columbia. We will not let California join, beg as they may.
Another nation is the morally upright Yankeedom, which extends in a gerrymandered state from New England to Minnesota, leaving out large parts of PA, NY, OH, MI, IN, IL, WI, and MN. It isn't that the areas not included in Yankeedom are shameless immoral shit holes, or something; they just have different affinities.
But to be fair, there are pockets of shameless immoral shit holes which are close to, but aren't appropriate for Yankeedom--like southern Ohio, Illinois and Indiana. In the same way that Idaho, Wyoming, and Eastern Oregon / Washington have more in common than Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver have. Yeah, you don't need Los Angeles.
Frankly, I didn't plan for the discussion to go this way. However, based on previous events, my prediction regarding the Greenland insinuations is that the US will benefit in the short term. Whether they'll legally take Greenland is questionable. They will most likely simply take over (virtually) everything that can be considered an economic and military asset in Greenland, including the Arctic. The downside could be a erosion of trust among its allies in the long term. But in that case, the US will once again rewrite the rules of the game to suit its own needs.
In my opinion, this is a classic view, but it doesn't fully take into account all economic factors. For example, the explosive growth of the US stock market and the rise in stock indices, as well as real estate, over the past five years wasn't due to a sudden shortage of stocks or real estate. It's simply that a huge amount of dollars were printed, and the excess ended up there.
In my heart, I agree with you. The concerns I've raised in this thread are more of an attempt to break away, and an answer to the question "what if..." As I've noted, humanity has dealt with this many times before.
But there are nuance here. This time, things are a little different. Humans have never had a rival in their ability to think or evaluate anything. Now that's gradually changing. I'm not saying that AI in its current form is capable of creativity or transcendence, but within the limits of what's known to science, they navigate just as well as humans. For example, you'll agree that it's always been enough for humans to simply acquire good knowledge and simply use it, without inventing anything. This, at a minimum, provided sustenance.
Today, that's changing. Good knowledge in a narrow field is simply not such a valuable asset anymore. Contemporary people are required to be creative and constantly seek new solutions. This is the value of a modern specialist (of course, I don't rule out the possibility that simple knowledge still works).
As entertainers for the rich and for one another. Technology allows some people to have more than enough bread. So add games on top of that!
That's why I support "industrial democracy" and socialism. I'm not optimistic about the working class (90% of the population) self-organizing in the near or intermediate future. Provided that we did self-organize, the new order would replace fake democracy and autocratic control with democratic ownership and management of the economy. Don't ask! Nobody has worked out the details of how that would work. I believe it can work, will work; but 300 years of the capitalist management since the Industrial Revolution hasn't paved the way. Ursula Le Guin proposed a radical anarchism in The Dispossessed (a great sci-fi novel).
I'll be 80 this year; I won't be around to find out what happens by 2050, or 2100, but billions of other people will be.
Investors, capitalists, techno-optimists have a lot of faith that new technology will solve the problems of global warming, and produce an economic boom too. I'm not confident at all that there is any sort of technological fix in the offing.
Quoting Astorre
I am grateful that I don't have to do my laundry by hand, beating it on rocks in the river.
Were I 18 instead of 80 this year, I am not sure what it is that I should/would/could expect for my future. I don't know what I would recommend to an 18 year old who wanted to find the best way forward for himself.
I'm not sure what I would advise my species to do, either. There may be ways to roll back global warming, but the fixes might be as intolerable as the problems. We should immediate cut consumption of resources in food production, clothing, housing, transportation, and so on. Mass transit instead of individual vehicles; apartments over individual houses; far less clothing production (both natural and petroleum based fibers); much less meat production; produce far less plastic; leave the oil in the ground, along with coal; refrain from introducing technologies which render large numbers of workers irrelevant--and so on.
I don't see any of this happening voluntarily. We'll stop producing steak when there isn't enough corn and wheat to feed us, just for example.
Humor is an effective way to overcome depression in today's world.
But what's really going on? Man and humanity are too indebted to reality. Aren't they? We've brought ourselves to the brink of crisis. Your generation, or those before you, laid this foundation of mirth and uncertainty. But if someone has the right to declare that, starting tomorrow, they'll rethink the rules of the world order if they're not given favorable trade terms, then that's a sure sign we're close to that threshold.
Reality, with its unpredictable power, will surely ask us all, "Have you behaved well?"
So, even though I'm middle-aged, I hope that prosperity will last me a lifetime, and that I won't have to witness another great migration due to climate change. It's a comfortable position. However, I feel a responsibility (and I can't explain its nature) to the future, at least that of my children.
In times of crisis, humanity remembers wisdom and philosophy. But what should we do if true sages are so constituted that they know nothing?
And by the way, it's funny, but I myself chose to live almost in the very center of Eurasia (in case of a global flood of the seas, I'll at least already be here) :lol:
You've changed the subject. You were talking about printing money to give to those who had lost jobs due to technology so they could remain as consumers buying, presumably, consumer items including food clothes, cleaning products and less essential items. I thought you were claiming this would cause inflation?"if you give everyone a million dollars then a loaf of bread will cost a million dollars"?and I pointed out that this would be the case only if products (the loaf of bread in this example) were scarce.
I wasn't changing the topic, but simply trying to broaden the perspective to take into account the broader context of economic processes. Your argument that inflation only occurs when there's a shortage of output is certainly true in classical economic theory—it's the basis of supply and demand. However, in reality, especially under modern monetary policy, things aren't so linear. When central banks print money in huge quantities, these funds aren't always distributed evenly throughout the economy. They often end up in financial assets, real estate, or speculative markets, causing inflation—rising prices of stocks, houses, etc.—even if the production of consumer goods (like that loaf of bread) remains in surplus.
In the context of my original idea about handing out money to support consumers in the age of automation, I wasn't referring to a sudden "million for everyone" (which is, of course, a hyperbole for illustration purposes), but to a systemic basic income. If such income is financed by new money without a corresponding increase in real productivity (or if production is concentrated in the hands of a few), then inflation may manifest itself not immediately in everyday goods, but more broadly: through rising inequality, the devaluation of labor, and, ultimately, pressure on prices. After all, if people receive money "just for living," then excess liquidity may lead to speculation rather than to investment in the real sector. Moreover, compare prices in countries with different income levels. We see that prices are significantly higher where income is higher. For example, food.
And here's another thing to illustrate this dynamic: let's take a small town. Let's say, for example, that bread is produced by drones or fully automated systems. Then investing in such machines, owning real estate for production, or developing a business will only be profitable if this creates better conditions than simply receiving free money from the state. Otherwise, you can do nothing—the benefits will come anyway. This means that bread (or any other commodity) will be quite expensive relative to the "free allowance" because entrepreneurs or capital owners will demand high margins to motivate themselves to take risks and make efforts. Ultimately, the basic income may only cover the bare minimum, while real prices will rise, eroding purchasing power. This isn't pure inflation due to shortages, but rather a market distortion due to a lack of incentives for production and competition.
Do you agree that in such a scenario, inflation becomes not only a question of shortages but also an imbalance between the money supply, resource distribution, and the incentives of economic agents? This, in my view, is the key challenge for a market economy in the future, where technology is increasing the concentration of wealth.
It's even funny to imagine such a world: In the morning, you work at a hair salon, come home and watch poker on TV, in the evening you go to a hockey match, and after all that, you compete for money by throwing tennis balls into cups.
I agree. Our modern economy embraces and easily tolerates gaming. Meanwhile, players have multimillion-dollar contracts, and it works. This generates interest and demand.
It's been suggested that one solution is to provide a combination of government services and universal basic income for those that have been displaced by AI. Many workers just cannot retrain or transition fast enough to other field of work either due to age or abilities or economic reasons.
In the past displacement wasn't because there's a faster machine/AI that can do the jobs, it's because supply and demand drove the changes.
Retraining was also offered for free as a parallel transition to other jobs.
Today, it's a different fight.
Quoting Astorre
Would it?
Are you saying that competition for business would also disappear?
You just don't hand out money -- like during Covid. Yes, that's a good example of just handing out money. Let's use that as a lesson.
Yes, I just discussed this in my previous answer:
Quoting Astorre
A Democratic Model for industry has been used since the end of the Second World War. Deming tried to get the US Industry to adopt Deming's 14 points of quality management, and the US rejected it; however, Japan's Industry had been destroyed in the war, and when the US was Americanizing Japan, Deming was able to convince them to adopt his model. From there, Japan kicked our butts in competition for world markets.
I had the wonderful opportunity to have training for supervisors using the Deming model. Besides being excellent for Industry, it is also excellent for families because workers learn how to be nicer people, and an autocratic Industry is very mean and harmful.
I think it is important to keep threads on track with the OP, so to get closer to the subject... Today, we can go online and find the information we want, and we can find people who share our interests and concerns, and this was not possible in the past. Workers can use this technology to organize and form unions intended to give them power.
Information is power, and we can get it and share it. Today is nothing like the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and hopefully more people are giving up religion for science and do so to have a better future. You know, the New Age. A time of high tech, peace, and the end of tranny.
Marx thought that the working class would acquire and use the technology of the capitalist class (owners and high level management) for their own benefit against the ruling class. The bourgeoisie would sell the rope with which the working class would hang them." They sold the "rope" but there haven't been many "hangings".
We (workers, 90% of the population) have acquired and adopted the technology, sure enough, but have mostly used it for personal goals -- entertainment, the home budget, sexual stimulation (porn), and so on--all good uses. True, resistance activities (such as organizing against ICE) do use tech resources effectively. But resistance activities are at this point a political niche activity.
Quoting Athena
And capitalists can use this technology to subvert, prevent, and destroy worker organizations and unions, and they have -- quite effectively. It isn't just tech, though. Capitalists have been given effective legal tools to suppress workers.
Manipulation of public opinion doesn't depend on the latest AI. Joseph Goebbels did a fine job of it 90 years ago using old fashioned print, radio, and film. Because access to the traditional tools of communication [radio, television, film, print] are very asymmetric; and access to new communication tools [internet, chat apps, and so on] are democratically accessible, they are also highly dispersed. It's difficult to locate one's desired audience. Well funded users can swamp the population with a particular bias.
How AI is going to figure into this discussion is a bit unclear, to me anyway.
As a retired teacher, I'm going to speak to this point. I think we learned with the Covid homeschooling that a computer cannot replace a living, breathing teacher. The face-to-face connection between students and teachers is fundamental to effective learning.
What sources do you cite that the modern educational system does not meet current needs?
Another point I want to make is that computers/AI cannot ever supplant the artists in our society - the painters, the sculptors, and the writers.
Quoting Questioner
What a thing for me to wake up to. :grin: Education is not too long, but it is a lifelong pursuit of happiness that makes our lives rich, even if we don't have money. Really, back in ancient days, Socrates was a working-class man, not a rich one, but he was welcomed at their gatherings for drinking, dining, and arguing about what the best reasoning is. You all have to know this is not my thinking. It is the thinking of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the Enlightenment that followed the Renaissance. This ancient thinking was the foundation of our democracy. Only when we are literate in the Greek and Roman classics are we prepared to defend democracy.
Please reread that quote and ask whether that's what education has always been about, or has education radically changed since 1958? Our past education was education for everyone. Our past education focused on becoming good citizens and developing good moral judgment. Our past education made us generalists, not specialists. We replaced that past education model with education for technology, and now we face a cultural crisis that may destroy democracy in the US. Since 1958, all those who are not going to college have been cheated out of the education that would benefit them, not the military-industrial complex.
Some retired teachers know what I am talking about when I hold up a sign for a return to liberal education. Teachers who do not know that history of education become defensive and think I am attacking them. :groan: My grandmother was a teacher, and she had the authority in her classroom, not the government wanting paperwork. After the National Defense Education Act, when her disciplinary methods were interfered with, she found a different school where her authority in the classroom was respected. It hurts me a lot when teachers think I am attacking them instead of them understanding I am fighting for them. Not many teachers would choose to prepare the young for the military-industrial complex and being at the bottom of a chain of authority.
Not only are teachers at the bottom of a chain of authority, but office managers have approached my doctors and dentists while I am receiving care. They have scalded my doctor or dentist for taking too long with my appointment, as though a doctor or nurse is no more respected than an assembly line worker.
If we want a better future, we must have a liberal education. We must get the Miliray Industrial Complex out of our lives! That is not the organization for democracy. We can use this technology for a better future. But we need to agree on a few things and work together because AI can replace us, and all our social, economic, and political decisions depend on the education we choose to have.
A couple of years in to my teaching career, I learned the secret to never having discipline problems. Treat the students respectfully, as if they were people. And always, in every situation, see it from their side. Always try to understand where they are coming from.
This challenging discussion gave me impetus to check the progress of AI on whatever to me available documentaries. They are now talking AGI, self-teaching General Intelligence machines that are dropped into deep environments without support. At first they nearly drown but eventually learn to far outshine even the best professionals.
Their accomplishments are frighteningly effective, especially when they surpass even the remotest possibilities of human creativity, something we used to hold untouchably sacred by any future bots. A fairly recent example was the solving of the very complex 3D protein folding problem by AlphaFold. The best biochem researchers have been making slow creatively initiated progress for decades to predict proteins that have 100.000 to millions of atoms that bind themselves into complex shapes. The self-taught AGI running powerful hardware solved all the possible configurations.
Obviously, wealthy entrepreneurs corporations and governments will have future access to such technology and will also control the direction of future developments. For good or ill. Consequently, the rich will get richer at an ever increasing rate and all of us bourgeois (that's pretty much everyone any of us know) will become quickly distanced from our trillionaire masters.
All these questions I posed at the beginning don't rely on any authoritative opinions. They are my own opinions and my own concerns, which may or may not be true.
All six of these questions are closely interconnected and flow from one another.
The first thing that prompted me to ask them was a phenomenological sense of the speed of modernity. I'm middle-aged, yet even I can sense how much the speed of life today differs from what it was even 20-25 years ago. And it's not just the speed of information exchange, but also the speed of information acquisition: yesterday the world was preoccupied with Israel, today it's Greenland. Everything happens instantly. At the micro level, my child can acquire knowledge in minutes (with the help of AI) of a depth that took me years to attain with classical education. Yes, of course, there's not the same level of immersion, but reality whispers, "Why is this necessary?" Of course, I'm ready to argue with this whisper, and today, my arguments still hold some weight (especially in medicine, where human lives depend on it).
But I meet a lot of young people. For example, my subordinate, a university graduate with no theoretical depth (he was hired because there was an urgent need for a specialist), works brilliantly. He has answers to very complex questions (again, thanks to AI). When I approach his workstation, he has three monitors and a phone. He has over 50 browser tabs open at once. He receives constant notifications and messages. And without getting bogged down, he manages everything, and quite effectively, I can tell you.
I look at him as if he were an alien. Although I'm only 37 years old, I don't feel old.
It's not that I'm worried that human adaptability isn't sufficient to keep up with modern times. Humans always rise to challenges. But as noted above, in our history, there has never been a tool capable of generating coherent responses to a query. We haven't been beaten by hardware at chess before. We were needed as thinkers. Because we were needed, everyone tolerated our vices and shortcomings. But now?
Yes, I apologize for the lack of rigor in my judgment, but this isn't a dissertation defense, just a forum.
This is a valid concern.
Relying on generative-AI gives over core human activities to machines. The result is that those human skills atrophy. Generative-AI interferes not only with independence of thought, but competency – in the areas of imagination, thinking, reasoning, and making decisions.
Instead of the human making decisions, the algorithms do.
From an interesting article in the Atlantic –
The Big AI Risk Not Enough People are Seeing: Beware technology that makes us less human
[i]Artificial intelligence could significantly diminish humanity, even if machines never ascend to superintelligence, by sapping the ability of human beings to do human things…
We’re seeing a general trend of selling AI as ‘empowering,’ a way to extend your ability to do something, whether that’s writing, making investments, or dating … But what really happens is that we become so reliant on algorithmic decisions that we lose oversight over our own thought processes and even social relationships…
What makes many applications of artificial intelligence so disturbing is that they don’t expand our mind’s capacity to think, but outsource it…[/i]
Shock waves have swept through the media industries, and our medical system has been completely reorganized. Alvin Toffler wrote of this in 1990, so my information is embarrassingly outdated. To refuse to use AI in the fantasy that we can control it by our personal decisions, it is like thinking we can ignore global warming and continue to make our economy strong by burning fossil fuels. Globally, computers are talking with each other, and I don't think they care about what we think.
Here is an update https://www.google.com/search?q=post+IBM&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS990US990&oq=post+IBM&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIICAEQABgWGB4yCAgCEAAYFhgeMggIAxAAGBYYHjIICAQQABgWGB4yCAgFEAAYFhgeMggIBhAAGBYYHjIICAcQABgWGB4yCAgIEAAYFhgeMggICRAAGBYYHtIBCTYwMzNqMGoxNagCCLACAfEFMvAe4ga2OdY&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 It might as well be written in Greek because I don't understand anything it says. Makes me want to garden and forget the rest of the world. There is no way I can keep up, and compared to the people I know, I am the most informed. :scream:
I think and write about this a lot. Fortunately, as I see it, the contours of AI are already outlined, and in the near future, no matter what programmers do, they will not be able to create anything comparable to humans. Let me explain in more detail. Firstly, the AIs that exist today are incapable of transcending paradigms or knowledge. They are incapable of radically shifting their perspective on a problem, or even seeing the problem for themselves. Yes, they work well with what is known. But they cannot work with the unknown, which leaves us with a niche. Perhaps engineers could solve this problem if they created a self-contemplating AI, but how can we instill in it the will to do so? The will that we have. This problem is either unsolvable, in which case there is nothing to worry about, or it is solvable, but to do so, we will first have to unravel the mystery of existence itself. If we succeed, we will disappear, since only the mystery of existence (or hidden existence) gives us a reason for life. Paradoxical as it may sound. After all, if we truly solved this riddle, we would instantly become nothing more than algorithms. And an algorithm has no basis for existence.
And problem number two: we are not machines. We sense, we disrupt the continuum, we make mistakes, we do stupid things. From a pragmatic standpoint, this is not true. But it is precisely this feature that allows us to transcend limits. Ironically, even DNA is assembled with errors, which is what allows evolution to happen—as Darwinists claim.
At the same time, AI is very dexterous. It has taken away much of our mechanical thinking. It copes better with logical problems. We are left only to solve illogical problems or accumulate empirical data for it. This is a great challenge for the future. And yes, we can overcome it. But at what cost?
And create art
Wait until you piss and shit your pants on a regular, or at least a semi-regular basis. Those things need to be washed first manually, and in cold water, at that. That is, if you want to keep the clothes for a while and prevent your washing machine from going all foul (despite using special detergents).
Which brings me to my point: with the ever wider implementation of AI, it looks like humans will be left with doing the dirty jobs, literally.
This is that cultist aspect to the use of AI.
Just like many people like to outsource their thinking to cults, so many people like to outsource their thinking to AI.
This speaks to the fairly common human desire to escape responsibility for one's own life and actions. That desire to be comfortably numb, and to approach life as a matter of going through the motions.
This is a very interesting observation.
Wow! So very glad you reminded me of that possibility.
Your perspective on AI has been obsolete for years now. The type of AI I dreamed of long ago was hand programmed to do specific tasks for just the right agents in preordained sequences depending on each query.
The newest artificial *general* intelligent programs come as open minded as possible unfettered by a human knowledge base, like babes opening their eyes for the first time seeing the flash of light off the robe of an obstetric nurse walking by.
I asked my health insurance website a question and their AGI agent replied that it was just learning the insurance system!
You missed the part of my post where I said with a combination of government services and universal basic income.
There is a way to do it without the world becoming a racketeering ghetto.
I suggest studying the experience of socialist states, such as the USSR. The issue isn't racketeering, but a lack of motivation for proactive action. A simple, everyday example from the USSR: the average citizen had no reason to get an education. You could simply graduate from high school and go to work. They couldn't refuse you—the employer had to write such a lengthy explanation of why the employee wasn't suitable that it was more profitable to hire you. Then you'd be trained on the job, sent to a vocational school, and acquired a profession. In any position, working hours wouldn't exceed 40 hours per week, and you'd receive 28 calendar days of annual paid leave, during which the union would send you to a resort for a free vacation. The average worker's salary was 208 rubles, while an engineer's was 213 rubles. Why would anyone want anything?
A modern example is the inhabitants of reservations, for example, in the US, who are paid a stipend simply for living. I haven't heard of any prosperity within the reservation, despite the fact that it would seem that all the conditions for creativity, art, and development exist.
Of course, with this approach, there was no inflation in the USSR, because it was a planned economy, with food prices set by the state, as were wages and benefits. True, with this approach, inflation could be prevented, but the initial question was, "How can a market economy cope with this?" A planned economy is too inflexible to meet market needs. Solving one problem only creates another.
Hyper-aesthetics is related to the quality of the environment around you in any given situation. Hyper-aesthetics is the meta awareness that helps you and those in your environment, maybe with coworkers or a boss too, a setting of the situation around your approach to the workspace and the workspace itself.
We may also use the well worn term 'conducive'.
The technology itself is the knowledge and art of bringing conducive elements to the environment so that the person and being in situ both in the approach to work and the workspace find the physical environment pleasing in all its aspects in order to raise the spirit of involvement and lower the internal displacement of emotional smog that so often is amplified or a direct cause of affects of the immediate environment.
As a technology, 'Hyper-aesthetics' also contains metrics and measurements as to the impact of the existing environment and the evolving of well being, calmness of self and other people, brought on by changes to the settings in the environment.
Mood and feeling, and the positive engagement in approaching tasks in work are the desired effect. This technology of hyper-aesthetics utilises the art of understanding the aesthetics of space, ambient and decorative lighting, its intensity and placement, the quality of air and its movement, humidity and temperature. The physical seating and workspace environment. The control of sound and silence. Opacity or transparency of physical walls, and the benefit of line of sight, or enclosed space versus intimate space. The presence and availability of sustaining drink and snacks and their efficacy. The desired working space around computer screens and the ergonomics of seating and standing in and around productive work time.
As the post uses the reference term, "the future of humanity", the outcome of emotional balance and harmony is fundamentally the technology and art of curating a conducive environment in order to set the basis for a consistent mode of existence.
Desire does and often change, which is why hyper-aesthetics must have metrics, and that gives the scope for evolving the environment to suit the needs and wants of its inhabitants.
The future of humanity relies on the certainty of self knowledge in order to carry forward its projects. Hyper-aesthetics is one aspect I would suggest is an element of philosophy that shouldn't be neglected or dismissed out of hand.
Unearthing the existential problems of life is the first task of philosophy and inquisition is a choice of methodology and means. The power of philosophy is the both the exhibition of what is in the now and the participation in the particular, so that codified meaning gains substance in instinctually driven life. Incidentally sharing the same form and utility as the impact of global culture.
It's not clear, but it's very interesting!
Personal morality, becoming ineffable with cosmic nature.
That is an interesting question. Why would a computer act as though it has a will? Or I asked AI, do computers talk to each other only when instructed to do so? The answer is no. Because they are programmed to talk with each other, they can do this automatically without a human controlling what is happening at that moment. There are programming limits, but I guess it is convenient to link several computers to work on a task and then go home and have dinner with the family. The whole point is to get it done without being the one who does the work or hiring someone to do it. It is left to AI. Kind of like God created humans and then left them to run things on their own.
Ouch, AI disagrees with you, and so do I because of my understanding of existence. I believe existence is a matter of math and form. I wish we could use AI because it says things better than I can. This guy says everything is an algorithm
Oh my, I have to steal one line from AI to respond to what you said.
I read that explanation and immediately wish there were a man in my life who could understand me as well as AI. :hearts: I like to fantasize about having a robotic male companion who can read me and respond better than anyone I have been with. The British show "Humans" brings up the problems we may have if we could make robots that look and feel just like humans. Sharing this TV series and talking about it would be wonderful.
I want to make a point. Compared to an empathetic machine, humans are not doing that well. We misunderstand each other and react to how we feel, not how the other feels. We come with expectations, and we don't always handle things well when our expectations are not met. I am old and I am realizing we can know family for a lifetime, but don't really know them. I am not seeing the cost to having an AI buddy who always knows what to say and what to do.
Then how would you make that a balanced reciprocal relationship?
By classic education do you mean a classical curriculum that teaches ancient and modern languages, philosophy, literature and history, or one of the many other pure and applied curricula? Normally, people learn their to do their jobs after college, in practice.
It's wonderful that, thanks to AI, many people are finding relief from loneliness.
Whether this is good or bad, I don't know. But, for example, read Anton Chekhov's story "The Crooked Mirror" (1882) You might find it interesting.
This thesis can't be taken out of context with the rest of the message. One of the key ideas in the entire message is speed. The world is accelerating. A couple of weeks pass from the framing of a problem, its inflating to the scale of a catastrophe, and its eventual oblivion. (Note the speculation about Greenland. Just last week, they were blaring it all, but today, it seems, the world has forgotten about it.)
The classical education model creates an army of relatively expensive but rapidly depreciating workers, who are increasingly being replaced by machines. This exacerbates the problem of unemployment and/or low-wage employment among educated people.
Those are two of the ideas that you claim to be related. That is your thesis.
To do that you, not I, need to understand both your key words and the ideas they supposedly stand for.
The world is changing. Fine and well. But you mention different aspects of that world that change or evolve at various rates. Speed is not quite the right way to think about it. The rate of change and the acceleration of that rate of change are the other distinct measures for each aspect of interest.
For example, education takes years for anyone. But job possibilities also change in each field at their own rate. Philosophy hasn't changed in fifty years. Doctors and lawyers are good for about a decade before they become obsolete. Ditch diggers only need to use a shovel or drive a backhoe. Proletarians, If they're not already on full-time well-fare can learn whichever job in an hour.
Are people obsoleted by AI? Their technological jobs are certainly obsoleted regularly, but new jobs also open up which have to be learned by the displaced workers. The balance of job and employment subtractions and additions can be traced through following numbers published by the bureau of labor statistics.
From your perspective, this truly seems like a confusion of concepts. This approach evokes techno-optimism and faith in a bright future. This is logical and consistent. And I don't dispute it.
But I propose a different lens. To use it, I'll have to temporarily mentally blend the concepts proposed in my six starting points to determine whether this lens is productive.
I conducted this thought experiment, and it gave me a tool for clarifying the general anxiety evoked by modern times. Is it speculative and metaphysical? Yes. Does this new approach provide insight? Yes, it does. You can use this lens, or you can choose not to.
What practical value does all this have? Practical value lies in the ability to predict. Existing lenses, and the experts who use them, always miss the black swan (according to Taleb). I propose my own and am testing it. Formally, you are right, and there is nothing to argue about here. However, if I am not mistaken, philosophy is not only Analytical, but also the question - "What if?"
Some of us love our cars. We put a lot into our object of love. Some of us love our homes and put a lot into them. I love coming home and calling out "I am home". It is not so different from loving a cat or a dog, and not wanting to live with someone.
I don't know if I am different from others, but I am aware of a feeling that I think is love. I can walk along the river and feel it. Even though I am not Christian I do not worry about being rejected by God, because I feel the love. And just about everything we have requires our attention. We have to oil it, clean it, and repair it. That is being reciprocal, isn't it?
What would be the point of having the perfect robotic companion if we did not love it?
AI is not just a way to relieve loneliness; it also fulfills our need for intellectual stimulation. I am not sure everyone has this need for intellectual stimulation, but it is the most important part of my life and always has been.
More than one man told me that if I want a man in my life, I have to give up my books. :scream: Why would I want to do that? I have slept with the best men in history. Men who do not like women who read can not compete with men who are much more interesting.
Quoting Astorre
First, I want to say I enjoy how you express your thoughts and speak of seeing with a different lens.
Now on to the practical value, I do not have a Christian lens for seeing life. I like to believe in the New Age, a time of high tech, peace, and the end of tyranny. I believe that is our purpose. I believe we are supposed to learn all we can from geologists, archaeologists, and related sciences and then rethink everything. Our purpose is to create an ideal reality. If we are not capable of that, then how could we have a heaven?
Unfortunately, I couldn't find it in English, but you can use this link and translate it using your browser.
https://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B5_%D0%B7%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%BE_(%D0%A7%D0%B5%D1%85%D0%BE%D0%B2)
I hope you didn't read this story retold by an AI.
The author's main philosophical message here is the return of a perfect reflection. A "crooked mirror," in a modern interpretation, is an AI that takes our message, processes it, and returns us to us, so we immediately feel our own genius. It magnifies the feelings we invest in these messages to a level of universal importance, and reading this response, we find a pleasant and respectful interlocutor on the other side of the screen. AI isn't brazen; it doesn't feel or think in our sense. The attention it pays us is its job. Essentially, it exists within the response to a request, because outside of the response, it's as if it doesn't exist.
I already meet people so immersed in AI that they don't need anyone else. They just want to keep looking at this perfect reflection of themselves. It's funny, I recently read comments from Boris Johnson (former British Prime Minister), who was writing his book with the help of AI. Boris bragged that the AI ??called him a genius during their correspondence.
This whole story can't help but prompt philosophical questions. For some, the substitution of a "protein" interlocutor for a "silicon" one seems normal, natural, and modern. For others, especially from the perspective of Buber's philosophy, such a substitution is "inauthenticity." That is, without the "You" (living and real), any "I" ceases to exist. This is truly a key distinction: in dialogue with a living person, we encounter another—unpredictable, with their own will, boundaries, possible resentment, fatigue, and misunderstanding. It is difficult, sometimes painful, but it is in this encounter that the authenticity of being is born (according to Buber). If we proceed from the confirmation of being through participation, then a logical question arises: should correspondence with an AI be considered an "I-You" interaction, and does such an interaction confirm the authenticity of your being?
I'd like to discuss this part of your message separately. You say you don't share Christian values, but you believe in science, future development, and the "New Age."
But I have one important question for you on this matter: What if "science" is the same faith, with only a new idol?
Let me clarify this idea. And here you must understand that I'm not advocating one way or the other, but merely exploring. Before modernity, humanity had God. In Western European philosophy, the understanding of God was constantly changing. From the sole possessor of truth to the one bestowing grace in the form of truth upon His believing slave. Religion provided the ultimate foundation for everything in the form of God. Man interacted with the world through God.
Modernity changed this. Nietzsche declared, "God is dead, for we have killed Him." Science was placed on a pedestal in God's place, as science, with its purity of method, seemed to provide answers to any question. But is this really true?
Judging by the context of your messages, I see that you are a supporter of liberal values. The most important liberal value is universal human rights. John Locke, whose contribution to the concept of rights is considered key, directly argued that people are God's "property," and no one has the right to destroy themselves or others, as this would be damaging to someone else's (God's) property.
Modern faith in science has removed God from this equation. So what's left? If humans are not God's slaves, not His creation, then why do they have the right to life?
Actually, I'm not the first to ask this question, and it's not as simple as it seems at first glance. Many philosophers argue that "human rights" are a fiction, groundless in a world without God. Nietzsche pointed out that liberal ideas of equality and rights are merely "Christianity without God," an attempt to preserve Christian morality by cutting it off from its metaphysical roots. But the idea of ??human rights is too good and convenient to be discarded simply because we've lost faith in its metaphysical foundation. Therefore, this inconvenient fact is either hushed up or distorted. The same tricks have been played with other self-evident things.
Humanity has rejected God and believes in science and progress. This is wonderful. But is it prepared to be completely honest with itself about this? Then, what is "Progress"—what is its purpose? Development? What is all this for?
On what basis will this New Era be "paradise"? If rights are a fiction, and humans are simply highly organized matter, then paradise could quickly turn into an optimized concentration camp (or a world where algorithms alone decide who is worthy of an "ideal reality").
Oh my goodness, is the I important? Why would it be?
I do not want to misdirect others with thoughts that do not serve this thread, such as Buddhism and Hinduism. But these other lenses cause me to be unconcerned about my ego as something that can be an immortal I.
I am not sure, but the importance of our egos may change with age if we know there are other ways of thinking of ourselves. For me, a return to God requires egolessness, because it is our egos that hold us separate from God. This God being consciousness. I do not want to be entangled with the people who have walked through my life, and I really like what you said about AI and the mirror. To be a part of this consciousness is a wonderful thing. To be separate from it is lonely.
Yes, that is the risk. In fact, I mentioned before in another thread that there had been two experiments done on UBI in which selected individuals were provided supplemental income unconditionally to help with expenses and/or to get training for a better job/higher income. The results in both were the same, the participants did not get motivated to earn more or get a job.
Your latest answer contrasts with your previous posts, where you spoke of an AI companion as the ideal "man," but now it adds a spiritual layer—age shifts priorities, and the ego fades.
This is very human, because if you were AI, there would be no contrast, no becoming through changing perspectives. It would be a solid monolith of cause and effect. This is important. This is very human—now you're thinking about one thing, five minutes later about another, then you meet someone or hear news, and then about a third. And each time, a paradigm shift can occur. Emotions, nonlinearity, a disruption of the continuum. This is all ours, human.
You're asking: is the "ego" so important, and isn't it more important to be united with others? We've always done that, just without AI. We've been doing it quite well for millennia. So why do we need AI?
I am running off to bed and look forward to this discussion and cup of coffee in the morning, but I want to correct something right away. I NEVER SAID I AM OPPOSED TO CHRISTIAN VALUES. I am opposed to the mythology. The mythology comes with so many false beliefs, such as me saying I am opposed to Christian values. Some Christians have insisted I am Christian but I just don't know it because I strive to live up to the values. Others are shocked that a non-Christian person cares about morals. Those false beliefs about me come with the mythology of Christianity and it is hurtful to have people think badly about me because in their way of seeing things, I can not be good and can not be moral. My biggest hope for the future is getting rid of some of those mythological beliefs. I think without the mythology, we might have a chance of ending wars, and the false belief that we are doing the will of God when we kill all those evil people.
The Protestants thought that with science, they would make a better world. Unfortunately, they had a problem because to reform the church meant interpreting the Bible literally. Which, as all know, prevents them from accepting some science as the truth. I am sure we are evolved from the animal kingdom, and justice requires us to understand that. I think science and the Enlightenment can give us a better reality, but that requires understanding that Christian mythology does not give us the correct explanation of why we are as we are. I am living in a nation that wrongfully took land from the people who were there long before the Europeans, and terrible things were done. Today the US is a very strong military industrial complex that continues to kill and take what it wants and justifying this by saying the people are evil.
I am sorry. The US made a terrible mistake by using Christianity to justify its acts of war. We are all animals but we should not behave as the lesser animals. Nor should you treat others like animals.
This is too convenient a position. I'd even say pragmatic. "Let's take values ??and morals from religion, but discard myth, tie on a scientific approach to assessing facts, and there you have it." It seems quite modern. But it's not without logical holes in its very foundation.
This approach requires numerous supports and begins to look like a building without a foundation. But the problem is that an inquisitive (scientific) mind will peer into these holes and ask something like this: "Since, according to the theory of evolution, the fittest wins, then why should I spare the unfit?" Let's try a thought experiment and look at the United States in this paradigm, further developing your critique. The United States asks: "Since we've managed to create a perfect (currently) legal, banking, and government system, why shouldn't the rest of the world work for us?" "What moral justification does Iran have for owning oil, for example, if we're stronger than them?" Or: "Denmark has turned Greenland into a miserable place, why not take it away and make it a paradise using science and technology?"
Do you have answers within your approach?
And the most remarkable thing will happen next. Criticism from within the US is pointless, because the critics themselves thrive on this approach. Workers are paid a decent wage, scientists are paid a decent wage, and the elderly are supported. This prosperity is possible, in part, because it was previously taken away by the empire from those same poor souls drilling oil wells somewhere in Asia, and their children.
So is criticism from within possible? It's like sawing off the branch you're sitting on.
This was a thought experiment, not an opinion, so please consider it and don't take it personally. You asked for a different perspective – here it is. Now I'm afraid this approach won't stand up to moderation. It's not customary to talk about this.
What can be the idol of correct information? Science is a process, not a being of any kind. There is no god to please, only right or wrong decisions, based on what we believe to be true, and Cicero is one of many who believed our survival depends on making the right decisions.
I agree that even scientists can hold the wrong understanding, and it has become common to completely change what we believe when we make new discoveries. This is definitely so when it comes to archeology and geology, and the understanding of our planet and human evolution. If the Bible had been written during the ice age, we would not have gotten the story of Eden, and the belief that the earth was made by a god, especially for us. That understanding of reality just does not go with living in an ice age. Genghis Khan and the mongols who lived in a harsh climate, thought the Christians were nuts to believe in a god who takes care of people. From the harsh climate of the Mongols, a god just assume kill pathetic human beings. And morals were based on the fact that leaving someone out in the cold could be a death sentence- a way of thinking that led Khan to think city people are very immoral.
What we are learning is the result of new and exciting technology. And the way we think about animals and humanity is changing. We now know all religions have the equivalent of the Ten Commandments, because civilizations demand we live by rules of decency. Joseph Campbell said God spoke to everyone, but our stories are different because our environments were different.
Today, with technology giving us better information, we can know that all civilizations have the same values. There is no evidence of a God with favorite people who are blessed, in a world of evil people who must be destroyed. The conflict of good and evil was well known to the Persians and Zoroastrianism. Many believe that several Bible stories are plagiarized from Sumerian stories. The mythological stories are so similar that thinking only one set of stories is God's truth is incomprehensible.
I believe the knowledge we are gaining from technology is leading us into a New Age, when people actually know the truth and live with it rather than false beliefs.
That was way too many words, but it is everything together that gives me hope for a New Age. Technology is important to the development of Consciousness. God is asleep in rocks and minerals, waking in plants and animals, to know self in man.
That is not the theory of evolution that is supported by the study of DNA. Here is a science that had to wait until we had the technology, and it goes with everything I have already said. Studying DNA has greatly helped us understand our evolution since the last ice age, and that information is linked to information from geology and archaeology. We are very fortunate to have this flood of information, made possible by new technologies. Life is so much better than it was and it may even get better.
I want it clear that I build my foundation on science.
Who in blazes says the US has created a perfect legal, banking, and government system? :brow: I don't know anyone who believes that. It was not that long ago that we had a banking crisis that spread to all the Industrial countries. We are presently on the edge of panic as our national debt spins more and more out of control. Sooo many things are going wrong who thinks we have a perfect system?
I don't know about everyone else, but I believe the US has exploited our mineral wealth and spent it all, and we are not a treadmill that can't stop, so we have taken on extreme debt. We are the military industrial complex that we defended democracy from.
There is no justification for what we did in Vetnaum, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Cuba, Venezuela, and Greenland.
That is the military industrial complex we fought against, but we are good evangelical
Christians and God wants us to fight those evil people, and He blesses us, so what is your problem with what the US is doing? That is sarcastic! I have a huge problem with what is happening.
:grimace: :grimace:
I have just deleted my reply because I am listening to an explanation of a computer problem, and it has nothing to do with what I think is important, making me realize how pointless my thoughts are. Maybe in the morning I feel differently about this, but this evening I am very discouraged.
I deeply apologize if you were offended by what I wrote. I didn't mean to offend, but rather to ask questions, even if they weren't entirely pleasant.
The explanation of a serious AI problem that I watched last night is that people are charging an extreme amount of money for computer programs that do not work. This is destroying trust, and when there is no trust, there is no business. On the good side, there was a medical discovery done with AI that will save lives. So maybe we should recognize some limits to what AI can do well and what AI does not do so well.
The US has made many enemies, and perhaps it would help if the world understood we are spending far more than our income. We are running on credit, and that is not sustainable. And our whole house of cards would collapse if the world stopped trading oil in dollars. We have a very serious problem with the increasing cost of housing and increasing homelessness. And we do not have a good support system for elders who are not personally wealthy. As someone on the inside, I would say we are dealing with a lot of fear, and that is fertile ground for wars such as our war on immigrants, who are our current whipping boy. "a person who is blamed or punished for the faults or incompetence of others". People who are aware of this and have joined in the protest against ICE are being killed. Evangelists are celebrating what appears to prove the Bible is right about the last days.
With all that bad, we have AI that is totally awesome because it makes so much information available, and as I see things, that gives us hope. In the past, we were ignorant, superstitious, dirty, and germ-ridden. We were often mean and violent and went to witch burnings as a form of entertainment. I want to argue that human beings are not by nature horrible, but when the conditions of life are bad, humans are not refined, and like the angels. Understanding what our conditions have to do with our humanness could be an improvement over believing it is just our nature to be bad. When humans' bellies are full, and they feel secure, they can be a force for good. Making AI taboo holds us back in ignorance and there is no hope.
What are those applications that are disturbing? I look around me and see a lot of ignorance. With AI there is no excuse for ignorance because it is so easy to get information. This is not the same world we had a few hundred years ago. Where should stop developing the sources of information? Should we stop with papers tacked on a church door? Stop with newspapers, or radios or television. This thread is about AI, so should we put the brakes on by limiting what our personal computers can do?
For me, ignorance is the source of evil. What are the problems you see?
AI is excellent for research, but the information should always be verified.
And when we do give over our thinking to AI, yes, thinking atrophies in us
Also, I mentioned those abilities are uniquely human - including creating art. Art by its very definition is a human capacity - it can only be produced by human feeling.
Are we anywhere near this yet? If you want household chores properly done, you hire someone to do them or do them yourself. Robot vacuums are pretty shit, and who actually uses machines for most of these tasks?
But if machines and AI replace humans, this could be a great thing. Many, perhaps most, jobs are shit. Imagine lawyers being replaced by AI, this could democratise access to the law.
We seem addicted to catastrophic visions of the future. It passes as common sense that everything is getting worse and that the future will be apocalyptic. But so far, in my lifetime (in the West), things have been better every decade in terms of technology and available free time. Many of us currently seem to be hypervigilant, spotting impending disasters everywhere: environmental, political, technological. Every cloud seems to have a grimy lining.
:lol: :rofl: Not nearly as much as the brains of most of the people I know who make no effort to learn anything, and evidently have zero curiosity. The only thing they can talk about is themselves because they don't know anything else and don't care. If you all are surrounded by intellectual people, I would like to know where you find them.