[ryandrake]

> It's very similar to the levers they had already

Think about it from the point of view of a hundred-millionaire tech executive. These people's entire interaction with the world outside of themselves/their families is through 1. administrative servants like assistants, personal shoppers, and other hired help, and 2. yes-man sycophants in their direct orbit whose job it is to agree with and enable them. To someone like this, an AI agent is the best combination of all of the above, PLUS it works 24/7 and doesn't have feelings to hurt, an ego to bruise, or internal moral conflict.

Of course, this is a dream product for them. Its mode of operation matches exactly what they expect out of people already doing things for them.

[pepperoni_pizza]

Exactly - that's why all the AI is trained to say "wow what a great idea, let me do it for you" to anything, no matter how stupid or evil thing it is. Because that is the executive experience.

[vkou]

Which is precisely why AI is such a godawful thing for society. It enables powerful idiots with incredible amounts of control over your life to be bigger, dumber powerful idiots.

That's the real AI safety concern, not whether or not chatgpt will tell you to kill yourself.

[MarkusQ]

If that's all there is to it, the problem should be self correcting, with an interval of hilarious "wait, they actually did that?" hijinks (which may have already started) in the interim.

[array_key_first]

You would think, but the world is not generally just. Often evil and even incredibly stupid people do quite well. Companies and stuff can run off of life support or reputation alone for a long time.

And, often, running a company into the ground for a CEO is actually a good thing. Those CEOs are desirable to some because they squeeze money out of their company, even if it's self destructive on a long enough time frame.

[MarkusQ]

I'm not saying anything about justice.

I'm saying supercharging the stupidity of actual idiots (not just people you don't like) tends to result in a pretty quick Darwin Awards. Even something comparatively benign like winning the lottery does a lot of them in.

[vkou]

You'd be surprised by how long a pathologically stupid system can perpetuate itself. Look at any of a million of local shitty maximums our (or any other) society is trapped in. They are all dystopian on one axis or another, and many of them are dystopian in drastically different ways.

Their insanity becomes very obvious once you travel the world a bit.

[MarkusQ]

I never made it to Antarctica (though I've had friends who did), so maybe it's different there. But from what I've seen, I would agree that the range of stupid-human tricks is as impressive as you say, but the judgment of the human condition as "shitty" and "dystopian" or "funny" and "heartwarming" is something have people bring with them. I've met people that were feeling sorry for me at the same time I was feeling sorry for them, and people who were inspired and motivated by me as I was by them.

If everywhere you look you see dystopian shit and never any glorious humanity, you may want to do a little soul searching.