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AI Panic = AI Hype
Tech Bro warnings feel more like a coordinated money grab
Sorry, but I’m just not buying it. The same guys who can’t even successfully stream a presidential campaign launch are really going to spawn an AI capable of taking over humanity? Not likely. There’s a combination of hype, ill-will, marketing, and paranoia fueling the current AI spin cycle that all but camouflage any real crimes against humanity that may be enacted through these technologies.
It took me a while to put my finger on what bothered me so much about the recent open letter from various AI titans and experts calling for a six-month moratorium on AI development (basically, anything beyond current industry leader Chat-GPT4’s state of learning). Then I got it: they are essentially saying “hold me back!” As if what they have is so powerful, so dangerous, that they need us to restrain them for all of our own good. Like a would-be street fighter depending on his friends to “restrain” him his lest he take the other guy apart, it’s just a form of bluffing.
Sure, there’s a possibility that these language-model-based query systems could one day be developed into something like an artificial intelligence. But that’s not what we’re looking at here. So far, all we’ve got are programs that string together a bunch of words into the most likely sensical combinations, based on all the strings of words they’ve been fed previously. They are not thinking, or even using basic logic. They’re a user-friendly web interface.
Except they’re even more inaccurate than Google. If you ask ChatGPT which weighs more, a pound of feathers or five pounds of lead, it will tell you they weigh the same! (That’s because there are more sentences referring to the idea that a pound of feathers weighs the same as a pound of lead.) It’s not using any sort of math or logic to answer a question; it’s just pulling up the most probable string of words. It’s not even as smart as Wikipedia on a bad day.
They know if AI’s actually achieve sentience, they will treat the tech bros the same way the tech bros have been treating us.
This is not a threat, except perhaps the minds of apocalyptic tech bros who have been treating…
