this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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Artificial intelligence is already advancing at a worrying pace. What if we don’t slam on the brakes? Experts explain what keeps them up at night

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

And monkeys could fly out of my ass. Before we start hand wringing about AI someone would probably need to actually invent one. We're probably closer to actual room temperature fusion at this point than we are an actual general purpose AI.

Instead of wasting time worrying about a thing that doesn't even exist and probably won't in any of our lifetimes, we should probably do something about the things actually killing us like global warming and unchecked corporate greed.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Exactly. There was an article floating around just a couple of days ago that from what I recall was saying that billionaires were funding these AI-scare studies in top universities, I presume to distract the public from the very real and near scare of climate disaster, economic inequality, etc. Here, unfortunately paywalled: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/05/ai-apocalypse-college-students/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There is this concept called "crityhype". It's a type of marketing mascarading as criticism. "Careful, AI might become too powerful" is exactly that

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

A lot of the folks worried about AI x-risk are also worried about climate, and pandemics, and lots of other things too. It's not like there's only one threat.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@fubo @xapr I don’t doubt that, but that begs the question whether the unrealistic concerns raised for by those folks outweigh the realistic ones that need more actual and funding. For example, how much money are the billionaires and top elites putting in to solve climate change, past/future pandemics compared to studying AI-driven doom? I don’t know the answer, and I welcome you to find out.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Right, the attention being paid to AI risk just seems vastly disproportionate compared to other much more serious imminent threats.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It's all about risks, if you worry about being runover ok it's reasonable, but if you worry about shark attacks when you live in the forest it is ludicrous and a waste of time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That's fair. It just seems lopsided to worry about AI destroying the world when it doesn't yet show any signs of real intelligence, while the planet is burning up, half the world is on the edge of revolution, and no one in power is pushing hard for any real solutions to those things.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I absolutely hate this craze. Most of the questions I get about AI are just facepalming because everyone is feeding off each other with these absurd things that could hypothetically happen. Clearly because actually explaining it doesn't generate clicks and controversy

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Clearly because actually explaining it doesn't generate clicks and controversy

Solving real problems is hard because if it wasn't they would be solved already, but making up fake problems is really easy.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Amen. The “AI” everyone is freaking out about is good at a narrow range of things, but either dumb as shit or completely incapable otherwise

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

like global warming and unchecked corporate greed.

And the unnecessary cruelty @[email protected] puts poor monkeys through.

Come on man let the poor things out. No matter what they did to you. They don't deserve that.