AI - A force for Good or Bad?

[sime42]

2 hours ago, Mark J said:

The AI Machine Men Snatching Our Souls

WWW.DONOTPANIC.NEWS

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(**************** AI Part II)

 

 

FFS. 

 

 

[Mesterh]

52 minutes ago, Squaredy said:

it all started going wrong for humanity is when we learnt agriculture ten thousand years ago:  life expectancy plummeted, we became stunted due to lack of variety in diet

I was under the impression of the exact opposite. 

[sime42]

1 hour ago, Squaredy said:

Good grief, the writer of that article has some serious hang ups!  I guess he walks everywhere and uses a typewriter to send letters to his friends!  Which to be fair there is nothing wrong with. And also to be fair he does make some valid points.  But he lost me when he said AI is racist.  And the example he gave was pathetic.

 

I think we can all agree that AI has its risks, just the same as probably every technological advancement from planting seeds to grow your crops to machines replacing skilled workers also has risks and downsides.  In fact you could reasonably argue that where it all started going wrong for humanity is when we learnt agriculture ten thousand years ago:  life expectancy plummeted, we became stunted due to lack of variety in diet and almost every major catastrophe that has happened since would have been impossible before large scale farming.

 

But put your hand up if you want to go back to a hand to mouth existence where you hope you can feed your family and keep them alive for one more day.

 

Surely we need to learn to harness AI and use it for our ends.  After all it can’t be uninvented!

 

 

You present us with a false dichotomy.

 

Minimising the impact of AI doesn't mean we have to go back to a hand to mouth existence. I put my hand up; I want to go back 20 years. We had most of the gains to be derived from technology, without many of the risks. 

 

Equating AI with other technological advancements in history just doesn't work I'm afraid. It's on a completely different scale in terms of speed and magnitude of change to society and the world around us. I mean, what was the worst that could have happened from planting seeds, instead of foraging?

 

It can't be uninvented, true. But it could be limited, curtailed, controlled or at the very least regulated to some extent. Non of that seems to be happening at present. It's just being foisted on us by a handful of mega rich twts seeking to make even more money from it. At the expense of us and the planet. 

 

BTW - I've yet to see anyone on here extolling any of the virtues of AI. How exactly is it beneficial to me? Or anyone else? Why do we need it? I'm quite capable of looking information up on a search engine, writing a job application or speaking to a friend on the phone if I need a chat. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited yesterday at 23:19 by sime42
Typo

[Squaredy]

8 hours ago, Mesterh said:

I was under the impression of the exact opposite. 

Agriculture gave us leisure time.  But also huge famines, huge wars, slavery, obesity, genocide etc.  I am not sure many people would want to return to hunting and gathering however!

[Squaredy]

8 hours ago, sime42 said:

But it could be limited, curtailed, controlled or at the very least regulated to some extent.

Agreed.  It seems the educational establishment have no idea how to tell how much work is down to a student and how much is AI.  Perhaps a solution to this might be for universities to actually return to exam based assessments!

[Welshfred]

9 hours ago, sime42 said:

I put my hand up; I want to go back 20 years. We had most of the gains to be derived from technology, without many of the risks

 

+1 I do feel there was a technology sweet spot around 2005. A lot of "advances" since have been purely for commercial gain rather then customer need or desire. 

[Squaredy]

1 hour ago, Welshfred said:

 

+1 I do feel there was a technology sweet spot around 2005. A lot of "advances" since have been purely for commercial gain rather then customer need or desire. 

So about the time that suddenly everyone had a computer in their pocket, rather than a communication device. 

 

I tend to agree, but you could say that IT was elite until the smartphone became afordable.  Ie only those who could afford a PC or laptop and broadband at home were IT enabled.  But of course the upside of this was that things were still available the old fashioned way.  Banks were still a thing; the high street had a huge variety of shops, and you could phone ahead to see if they had what you need.

 

Nowadays some things are just so easy to find - a quick google search, press a few buttons and within a day or two it arrives.  On the other hand how frustrating is it when we are forced to do things via an app that doesn't work properly?  And how sad that so much of life is just now about staring at a screen - social media is a whole rabbit hole of good and bad that we haven't even mentioned.  

[sime42]

12 hours ago, Squaredy said:

So about the time that suddenly everyone had a computer in their pocket, rather than a communication device. 

 

I tend to agree, but you could say that IT was elite until the smartphone became afordable.  Ie only those who could afford a PC or laptop and broadband at home were IT enabled.  But of course the upside of this was that things were still available the old fashioned way.  Banks were still a thing; the high street had a huge variety of shops, and you could phone ahead to see if they had what you need.

 

Nowadays some things are just so easy to find - a quick google search, press a few buttons and within a day or two it arrives.  On the other hand how frustrating is it when we are forced to do things via an app that doesn't work properly?  And how sad that so much of life is just now about staring at a screen - social media is a whole rabbit hole of good and bad that we haven't even mentioned.  

 

 

It's pretty clear to me, social media is bad on balance. The world would be a better place without it. It drives social division and isolation, extremism, mis/dis-information, conspiracy theories; a whole host of negatives. AI could well be akin to SM on speed.

Where do stand on children having smart phones? 

 

 

 

[Squaredy]

29 minutes ago, sime42 said:

Where do stand on children having smart phones? 

I am not sure I have the answer here.  I think school life was better before smartphones. It is so sad seeing so many people walking around staring at their screens all the time, no doubt much of the time on social media.  
 

But where do you draw the line?  It is not always bad.  Having said that I think schools should take a strong line and this would make it easier for parents.  But I fear the teachers love technology as it can do much of their work for them.  My boys school uses an awful system called Sparx Maths which does all the lesson planning, sets all the homework, marks all the homework, shows pupils help videos for any work they are stuck on.  The teacher barely needs to turn up.  The kids hate it and in many cases it makes them hate maths.  But it looks like it is the future.

 

If I had my way all homework would be paper based.  In fact pretty much all schoolwork would be paper based.  Generally kids work out really fast how to use technology.  It is the traditional skills they need help with.

[AHPP]

Seeing as I probably haven't yet left education, my perspective:

 

I was at school 1992-2006. Just missed needing to do stuff on computers. In hindsight, thank christ.

 

Did my law degree 2013-2016. Not that long before AI. I'd have ignored it anyway. You can still do it the (relatively) old fashioned way, thank christ.

 

I had a place on the bar course for 2017 but told them to stick it when I saw the intake was full of scammy Indians who'd blatantly bought fake passes of the mandatory English language tests. The training provider knew and didn't care because they were getting paid. I cared deeply because I didn't want to do a year of career-defining work shackled to people (joint work) who couldn't speak the course language and had cheated to be there. I also wasn't going to be lectured on ethics by the people taking their dirty money.

 

Now the legal industry is fully gay for AI. I know lawyers who use it for real stuff and I know it's as crap as any of the other AI. They bang it in anyway. The thought of entering the profession full of that mess makes my blood run cold. And the thought of going crawling back to the same bar course provider with the same illiterates ruining it with AI too now, makes me sick.

Edited 24 minutes ago by AHPP