Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ben_w 504 days ago
Most people have a hard time unplugging from social media, despite widespread distrust of big tech.

Can't unplug from banking, even when literally communists (literally literally, I've met some proud of being communists, they still got a mortgage).

Coal and petroleum-based fuels are slowly getting unplugged, but the issues were known over a century ago, and the transition only became relevant scale when the alternative was already much cheaper — and it's not yet clear how much damage has been done in the intervening years.

--

Any AI worth using is so because it's at least one of [cheaper, better] than a human on the same task: any AI which is both more expensive and worse just doesn't have any reason to be used in the first place.

This means that "unplugging" an AI comes with a cost of losing every advantage that made you start using it in the first place.
1 comments
nickburns 503 days ago
The context of simply unplugging it, would be if "AI" or "AGI" (as we currently understand the concept) were to turn on humanity.
link
ben_w 497 days ago
And? Look to fossil fuels and the greenhouse effect — even with ample evidence of both a causal mechanism and the results, we've still got people who want to drill and burn more oil; and also, there's also plenty of people who want to switch oil off despite all the positive things that oil brings.

An AI which is "only" as misaligned as one of the major industrial sectors of the world, that is made out of humans who are necessarily able to care about human interests, and which drove a huge amount of economic improvement and brought with it derivatives such as basically all polymers, is still capable of great harm. And because of those benefits, society as a whole still has not unplugged the oil drills.

The more power there is in a system, the harder it is to keep it aligned with our best interests, even when there are humans not just at the wheel but occupying every step.

And the more aligned it is, the harder it is to "just unplug it" when things — as is inevitable because nothing is perfect — do go wrong.

link