| > Actually I don't think that's true, consider manufacturing robots. We're long way from making fully AI-driven robots. But much closer to other uses. Our current world is very data-centric: companies have been collecting, selling, sharing and stashing metadata with websites, social media and smartphones for the last decade. Now, language models will help them process it.
I have one question: for what cause? Surely, for the good of humanity. That's what the companies exist for, right? It's not like we need laws to force companies to not screw us over, or in America they need lobbyists to force politicians to force companies to not screw them over. Currently, AI is absolutely unregulated wild lawless west, and it's frightening. And not because of bad actors, but because of the 'pretending to be good' ones. > Wasn't it always true? Trivially all people advocate their beliefs.. You would be surprised, but people need constant reminders of that. Or they will start treating mega-corporations as privacy-respecting, consumer-oriented, eco-friendly or any other bullshit their PR-team trying to push today or will try tomorrow. |
Someone else asked that question in this same thread [0].
It's a good question.
The purposelessness of much technology is a problem Neil Postman addressed very robustly in "Technopoly" [1]. To date I have not heard any sane responses to his "Six Questions Regarding Technology" [2].
> not because of bad actors, but because of the 'pretending to be good' ones.
When you don't have any reason at all for doing something, and you're challenged, one tends to use imagination to dream up a plausible "good" reason.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37656891
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopoly
[2] https://cyber.harvard.edu/node/95930