[dvt]

I think Terry Tao is a great litmus test for AI zealotry (both pro- and anti-). Just in this thread, we have people twisting themselves into knots about how he "sold out" or "not doing math the right way" or whatever. To him, AI is a tool, like any other.

From the interviews I've seen with Tao, he's not some AGI maniac, he says things like here's where we can use this tool, here's where it's less likely to be useful. There's a lot of hallucinations, so we need to double check stuff. Most of the stuff the AI produces is nonsense, but there's occasionally a diamond in the rough.

A very tempered attitude, and likely what most sane people are experiencing when using AI.

[adsf_132]

Well, there is the third type of person who plays the stoic and calls all others irrational or emotional.

There are links posted here with Tao doing OpenAI ads, that is hardly "twisting themselves into knots".

But the deflection of the day is that "AI is just a tool".

[antisthenes]

It's not deflection to take a reasoned stoic sense.

That's just nonsense being pushed by social media to convince you to be upset (or ecstatic) about something.

[dvt]

Calling my position stoic is kind of goofy imo (and fwiw, I personally find AI to be a pretty useful tool), but I'm not going to reply to some drive-by account literally made just to troll me.

[oliculipolicula]

>in the new era of "proof abundance", it is increasingly important that we also debate the "soft" aspects of our field, such as our goals and values.

Trying to upgrade the trolling to rational discourse, TT recently opined

https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/116681024360293007

[keybored]

> I think Terry Tao is a great litmus test for AI zealotry (both pro- and anti-). Just in this thread, we have people twisting themselves into knots about how he "sold out" or "not doing math the right way" or whatever. To him, AI is a tool, like any other.

That’s an Anti example. What’s a Pro example?

[dvt]

We've been flooded with "AGI is 6 months away!" for a few years now, mostly by Anthropic/OAI/XAI, which is clearly nonsensical hype. Also, almost everyone has been walking back their previous claims that "AI will replace ~80% of white-collar jobs."

[jplusequalt]

A smart phone was just a tool at first, but over time society has become overly depedent on them. Most of us are now addicted to our smart phones in one way or another, and that has consequences that play out across society as a whole.

AI not only provides potential to cause society to become overly dependent on it, but it's being developed by/pushed for by the same fucking people who caused our societies smartphone addiction.

Once you recognize what we've lost already, it's hard to turn off your brain and just compartmentalize this away as a "just a tool". Nothing that is adopted so widely is "just a tool," and thinking of it in those terms eliminates the ability to analyze the potential downstream effects it will cause.

[dvt]

> pushed for by the same fucking people who caused our societies smartphone addiction

Not sure where you live, but I would guess the West (where we have the luxury to be worried about "smartphone addiction"). I assure you that the net positive of smartphones, especially cheap Androids, have had a significantly more positive effect on society than negative, particularly in the developing world.

[pera]

As a person from the developing world I feel obligated to say that I find your assurance quite unconvincing: the negative effects of smartphone at this point in time is invariant globally, and whether they are a net positive or negative is at least debatable.

And in relation to your first comment, most sane people would agree that "tools" don't exist in isolation - neither come into existence out of nowhere.

This reductionist position of treating extremely complex machines with deep social interactions as a tool like any other is objectively wrong, and I believe the reasons are highly obvious but I can expand on this if you disagree.

[ForgotIdAgain]

I come from a developping country, and this whole schtick about "being concerned by tech addiction is a western luxury" is tiring.

[jplusequalt]

>But I assure you that the net positive of smartphones, especially cheap Androids, have had a significantly more positive effect on society than negative, particularly in the developing world.

My point is that the tool which was meant to augment one particular aspect of life, has metastasized into being a cancer on many other aspects of our lives, and that has downstream consequences on society as a whole.

Keeping this in mind, being a bullish on AI seems foolish.

edit: Perhaps a better thesis for my reservations with rapid technological progress: smart phones were supposed to help us adjust to society, but society instead adjusted to them. AI is positioned to do the same, and we need to ask ourselves what those changes could look like, and if they're for the better, or for the worse.

>where we have the luxury to be worried about "smartphone addiction"

I reject this, and any similar framing that amounts to "because there are other, greater problems at play, worrying about this relatively lesser problem is worthless."

A problem that impacts people is a problem that deserves attention, especially if an absolute terms the number of people impacted are in the tens/hundreds of millions.

[2snakes]

Social constructivism is tougher and tougher than “just tools.” Could the so-called “addictiveness” consist partly of the many other devices smartphones replaced? Sure, some attention economy but also just turn off the data?

[bit-anarchist]

> My point is that the tool which was meant to augment one particular aspect of life, has metastasized into being a cancer on many other aspects of our lives, and that has downstream consequences on society as a whole.

This is true of all important tools in history. From computers, to electricity, cars, steam, even agriculture. They reshape society and its practices. This has been documented multiple times. One I can remember on top of my head, but is not limited to, is historical materialism.

From an misesian perspective, this seems fairly obvious:

1. smartphones are extremely useful (being miniature computers and all);

2. people tend to optimize their actions with the best tools available (i.e. smartphones in this case);

3. people will see others using smartphone increasing and will try to leverage that for their own goals, thus further adopting smartphones (even if indirectly);

4. the economy is the sum of human action, so this progressive adoption changes the economy and the culture.

> A problem that impacts people is a problem that deserves attention, especially if an absolute terms the number of people impacted are in the tens/hundreds of millions.

The real issue with your post is that you seem to be trying to fix smartphones addiction by getting rid of phones, ignoring the benefits they brought and the previous problems they fixed.

Also, every problem impacts people.

[jplusequalt]

>The real issue with your post is that you seem to be trying to fix smartphones addiction by getting rid of phones, ignoring the benefits they brought and the previous problems they fixed.

No, my post is decidedly not that. I'm saying maybe we should stop and think about the consequences and plan accordingly.

[bit-anarchist]

My bad, then. If I may suggest something, give a small acknowledgement and avoid words such as "cancer", which is pretty loaded.

Still, people (as in most individuals in the economy) can't simply be stopped, even less so to plan, specially in a free system such as enjoyed by most of the west. That requires a high degree of coordination and coersion that I think only Cuba and NK are currently capable of, slightly. Otherwise, people will just do their own thing, leading to a technological revolution again, given the material means.

A more practical approach is to continuously nudge the direction of change towards a better direction, constantly reevaluating approach, but avoiding having to stop everyone else.