[13years]

All roads of AI advancement seem to be converging on dystopian outcomes.

It is not just elections, but the complete end of privacy which also means the end of free societies which I wrote about as well here.

https://www.mindprison.cc/p/ai-end-of-privacy-end-of-sanity

I still haven't seen any proposals that have any high confidence for counter balance.

If AI solves all disease, is it still worth it if we are living in nice gilded cages?

[TaylorAlexander]

You’re telling me you got a nice gilded cage?

[13years]

lol, not so much right now.

But everyone who is worried about AI existential risk wiping out humanity, I'm not sure they have considered that an all powerful AI could easily create a mind virus to control everyone. Why not, billions of resources at your disposal until not needed. You would be perfectly happy doing the AI's bidding as it rewires your brain to get a dopamine boost for your obedience.

[TaylorAlexander]

This is a genuine possibility but before that will happen, the humans that have always been trying to control us will have ever more powerful tools, and generally I think that concern should be front of mind over self aware AGI taking over. The Murdochs and Zucks and Musks of the world control huge platforms which can easily tip sentiment. Better AI tools to track opinions and guide their viewers wherever the platform owners want is a more immediate concern, and hand-wringing over all-powerful AI which is a long ways away is a great way to avoid addressing these more human and more immediate issues.

We do not actually know if an all powerful AI would try to manipulate humanity (it absolutely might, but we do not know), but we know for a fact there are a lot of people right now already trying to do that, and AI tools will make it easier for them to do so.

[13years]

Yes, I agree. The real concerns are already here. Long term risk is impossible to evaluate.

I'm more concerned about the societal implications for AI used as "intended".

Such as I've elaborated on FYI

https://www.mindprison.cc/p/ai-and-the-end-to-all-things

[jjoonathan]

You're telling me you got a cage? What's the monthly payment?

[nonrandomstring]

There's been a very recent step change in "AI"

We would do to remember thw world before. The abuse of digital technology for surveillance, fraud, impersonation, spamming, hacking, tracking, behavioural prediction and influence..... an entire world of shit, was already doing just great.

It would be a shame to fixate on "AI" as a Hollywood villain, which would be to miss the real problem. For the past 40 years digital technology has been on a trajectory to dehumanise and dominate. Let's think about why, and who is doing the deeds.

   "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves"

[ekanes]

Your kind of arguing against yourself. You start with "Human nature is to use technology to dominate others" (agreed) but then conclude "don't worry about this massive step up in ability to surveil and control populations, rather let's focus on the elites being nicer"

[harabat]

The paragraph starting with "it would be a shame..." has their entire point laid out in simple, unambiguous terms. There's no mention of human nature or calls to not worry.

[13years]

But that is the point. It only emphasizes the concern. It is where I draw upon the insight to foresee where this technology will lead us.

AI is simply a power upgrade for all the institutions who wish to control thought and social engineer society to their liking.

[sterlind]

which is why open-source AI, and affordable access to hardware, is so important. groups with access to powerful AI systems will crush those without. if competing institutions can build out equally powerful, competing AIs, it prevents any single actor from gaining too much advantage.

I remember hearing a lot about "democratizing" AI a few years ago, but now I just hear about "alignment," which is sort of the opposite. competing institutions, by definition, aren't aligned in their goals, so how could their AIs be?

[13years]

I agree it is important, but open source has not sufficiently challenged the institutions in the area of information dissemination and social connection so far.

In other words, google, still owns search, instead of like presearch, and rest of big tech own social media. The alts represent still an insignificant portion of users.

I hope open source AI can have greater success, but the users are motivated by convenience and not freedom or privacy.

Yes, alignment has so many obvious problems that are simply hand waved away currently. One of the best simple quotes on the subject "Demonstrably unfriendly natural intelligence seeks to create provably friendly artificial intelligence."

[sterlind]

> I hope open source AI can have greater success, but the users are motivated by convenience and not freedom or privacy.

Agreed, but that's actually helped open-source AI too! Stable Diffusion beat DALL-E 2 because you could actually run it, you didn't have to be a vetted influencer or whatever OpenAI required at the time. And it's hung on because you can fine-tune it to make porn, or celebrities, or even just anime. The least convenient model is the one you don't have access to (or that can't/won't do what you're asking of it.)

That's a great quote on alignment.

[AussieWog93]

>It is not just elections, but the complete end of privacy which also means the end of free societies which I wrote about as well here.

This is only true if you accept that most discussions are had via online forums and social media.

I wouldn't be surprised if we all just simply moved away from online communication rather than letting society collapse.

[Jeff_Brown]

But how many times, in how many countries, will voters be fooled into electing disasters before they stop falling for deepfakes?

[shrimp_emoji]

Have you considered that privacy is doomed to end, eventually? If we can eventually ask an AI to produce a perfect extinction-tier virus genome, open source that, and someone can upload it to a nucleotide synthesizer in their garage, it seems like we either eliminate privacy or die.

It's a far-off (?) and abstract, "in the limit" question, and I'm probably as horrified as you are, but our ancestors would probably be horrified by how their sacred cows are eviscerated on a daily basis by modern societies. :p (Death is a neat "mental refresh" of the human mind in the abstract when viewed that way, allowing it to adapt to new realities.)

[13years]

> Have you considered that privacy is doomed to end, eventually?

Yes. All matters of a free society seemingly will be lost. It is not directly AI. I've seen this coming long before as the progression of technological power simply points to that outcome. I don't see a way out of the dystopian trap. AI is just an accelerator that arrived a bit sooner than expected.

[CatWChainsaw]

>All roads of AI advancement seem to be converging on dystopian outcomes.

All the people who thought this was mind-numbingly obvious got shouted down by people who "know better". Yet here we are.