AI - A force for Good or Bad?

[Mark J]

38 minutes ago, Steven P said:

"The devil finds work for idle hands"... if we were all sat about doing not a lot with the machines doing it all some of us would find useful things to do (that the machines weren't doing), but there would be a greater portion who would be doing things for their own ends - and some of them will be criminal things. I reckon got to keep the population busy with a purpose to keep society on track, 

I like to think that the inevitable UBI will create a richer society. 
I would still play music and work with trees if I was sorted for cash. 

[Macpherson]

3 hours ago, AHPP said:

I shouted fck off at one

I've been doing that for years😁

[Steven P]

40 minutes ago, Mark J said:

I like to think that the inevitable UBI will create a richer society. 
I would still play music and work with trees if I was sorted for cash. 

 

I know there are benefits - and draw backs - but I think the flip side of it is we still need to be busy, have a purpose in life - which most of us on here have some get up and go... but there are others where the get up and go is suffixed by "to the fridge for another breakfast beer"

[Stubby]

9 hours ago, AHPP said:

 

For anyone who doesn't know, this is the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. There's a bit later on where Arthur discovers the bird-people of Brontitall. By throwing the cup at the machine, he inspired them to fck off the robots altogether and go back to living as birds.

 

https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Brontitall

I urge you to try my liver 🙂

[Welshfred]

I believe ai personal assistants are bad news. To me it vastly accelerates what I tend to call 'internet poisoning'. It's already occurring, people are so influenced by algorithmic content and a shift in communications away from face to face contact that human to human interaction is changing. Ai assistants appear designed to further this change. We will become more individually insular and, frequently, more wrong about things, led by commercial interests.

Using ai to crunch vast datasets has a controllable goal and is already proving very useful.

 

Intelligence can be variously defined, we can naturally only compare anything to human intelligence but there are are other ways. I'm gonna chuck in another author here, Adrian Tchaikovsky, specifically his Children of Time series, which explores communication and intelligence between different species/races in a futuristic post earth intergalactic setting. My point here, apart from recommending some excellent modern sci fi is that if ai ever forms an independent intelligence we won't necessarily recognise it as such until after the fact. 

 

[sime42]

The hardest part of creating conscious AI might be convincing ourselves it’s real

THECONVERSATION.COM

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A philosopher on how and whether we’ll ever decide if AI has sentience.

 

 

 

[sime42]

A big part of the problem with AI seems to be about who owns it. It's currently largely in the hands of rich, powerful individuals or under corporate control. As such it's being used to further commercial interests and personal agendas. With very few benefits to society as a whole, other than the data crunching.

 

Maybe we need more Open Source AI, as opposed to Closed Source. I won't pretend to know much more about how it works, other than what the names would suggest. 

 

 

 

 

[Welshfred]

16 minutes ago, sime42 said:

The hardest part of creating conscious AI might be convincing ourselves it’s real

THECONVERSATION.COM

---

A philosopher on how and whether we’ll ever decide if AI has sentience.

 

 

 

 

Very much in line with my thoughts.

[sime42]

1 hour ago, Welshfred said:

I believe ai personal assistants are bad news. To me it vastly accelerates what I tend to call 'internet poisoning'. It's already occurring, people are so influenced by algorithmic content and a shift in communications away from face to face contact that human to human interaction is changing. Ai assistants appear designed to further this change. We will become more individually insular and, frequently, more wrong about things, led by commercial interests.

Using ai to crunch vast datasets has a controllable goal and is already proving very useful.

 

Intelligence can be variously defined, we can naturally only compare anything to human intelligence but there are are other ways. I'm gonna chuck in another author here, Adrian Tchaikovsky, specifically his Children of Time series, which explores communication and intelligence between different species/races in a futuristic post earth intergalactic setting. My point here, apart from recommending some excellent modern sci fi is that if ai ever forms an independent intelligence we won't necessarily recognise it as such until after the fact. 

 

 

I'm not comfortable with this idea of human to human contact being replaced with human to AI contact. It seems to be increasingly accepted as the new normal.

 

I heard a health program the other day talking about the use of virtual therapists to help people with mental health problems. Presumably there's at least some regulation backing that up if it's some kind of healthcare provider run thing. However, I recoil at the idea of children talking to AI bots about suicide in some dark, dodgy corners of the web.

 

 

[openspaceman]

12 hours ago, sime42 said:

 

But to what end? What are all the ex-staff, and most of the rest of us humans, when extrapolated, going to be doing? After initially telling tech what to do.

 

 

That's what the Luddites and Saboteurs said.

 

Think about all those clerks who sat in rows and columns of desks with mechanical calculators summing up bank accounts, electricity bills etc. All jobs automated by data processing.

 

Look at the service industries that grew with the labour which came available.

 

Loss of jobs was never the issue because the problem comes from the wealth of the  people that own the capital that grew the systems taking humanity on a train to the cliff at ever increasing speed.