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I really can’t handle all the doom and gloom we have to face on a daily basis. The sky is falling media headlines, the election, protests, our country’s border disintegrating (USA), people being hateful and violent in general, the comment sections online, knowing about every injustice that ever happens, every tragedy, every disaster…
Where is the internet kill switch.
You forgot about the fascism. They are rebooting fascism. Add that to your list.
 
I was thinking about this when I saw a headline how AI could replace CEOs. And my question was if the CEO is responding to real life shareholders, or responding to the workers

So long that AI is designed to the specifications of executives and the board room, then yeah AI will be horrible. If AI is designed to the specifications of the working class, then there could be some utility in it.

I don't think there will be the catastrophic disaster that sci-fi plays out with AI. I think it will be absurd, stupid, and largely out of the general public's consciousness
 
so instead of heeding a potential warning we scoff and move on? Which is the more rational and logical path to take when it’s the insiders telling us to watch out… your perspective isn’t that farfetched, but which side is to “be believed”. Imagine a “doomsday” comes and they say we tried warning you. Hard for the common person to know what to do. Do we escalate this and push for oversight or do we ignore it and hope they’re liars?
Instead of worrying about AI taking over, we need to focus on building and innovating. The doomsday narratives are designed to make us give up, with messages like “don’t build that app; AI will take over” or “don’t bother to learn; AI will take that job.” This is absurd. AI can’t even solve simple issues like getting rid of bots on X for Elon Musk.

The real danger of FUD is fear itself. I don't expect to completely change your mind, given that the best and brightest are tirelessly trying to scare you every day. But maybe, some will start to notice this and hesitate just enough on the AI scare tactics to not give up on their own projects and futures.
 
Instead of worrying about AI taking over, we need to focus on building and innovating. The doomsday narratives are designed to make us give up, with messages like “don’t build that app; AI will take over” or “don’t bother to learn; AI will take that job.” This is absurd. AI can’t even solve simple issues like getting rid of bots on X for Elon Musk.

The real danger of FUD is fear itself. I don't expect to completely change your mind, given that the best and brightest are tirelessly trying to scare you every day. But maybe, some will start to notice this and hesitate just enough on the AI scare tactics to not give up on their own projects and futures.
But how do you know it’s only a narrative and not a threat with some level of probability. That’s the whole reason to be anxious about it. We are being advised of a potential EXISTENTIAL threat. Are you saying you are certain the chance of this is 0%? Because even 10% is concerning. We aren’t* talking about a rocket going to space and killing a small group of people if it doesn’t work out.
 
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so instead of heeding a potential warning we scoff and move on? Which is the more rational and logical path to take when it’s the insiders telling us to watch out… your perspective isn’t that farfetched, but which side is to “be believed”. Imagine a “doomsday” comes and they say we tried warning you. Hard for the common person to know what to do. Do we escalate this and push for oversight or do we ignore it and hope they’re liars?

It actually doesn't matter. Today, when profit clashes with "what's actually best for the world" only one of those wins. The game seems to have become let the future bring whatever problems it brings and we'll try to borrow our way to address it then. Kick the many cans down the road to make an extra buck today.

A.I. is just another variant of the same. Quite a while ago, we had what was an astronomical front row seat to seeing a comet collision with Jupiter. The devastation for Jupiter was dramatic and it would be been a potential extinction event if it had hit Earth instead.


Hang in there for less than the 2-minute mark to hear the quantity of atom bombs equivalency and then think about how many Hiroshimas are on planet Earth today. There was enormous talk about planetary defense and putting things into space to shift the paths of NEOs to try to shield against a collision... until attention was lost to the next thing.

A.I. could certainly kill its creator. Covid (or similar) could still mutate into something that kills 95% of the population instead of only up to about 5%. Recent solar activity that brought the auroras as far south as Florida could deliver an extinction blow. Yosemite caldera could unleash a Super Volcano eruption to likely destroy towards ALL of the U.S. and put much of the world in an Ice Age again. Gamma Ray Burst. Nuclear War. Rogue Black Hole. Rouge Planet throwing earth out of orbit. Invasion of a superior species. Food chain collapse. Chain reaction global warming. Etc. There's LOTS of them... without even sliding into the pure conspiracy ones.

Some of those can actually be addressed if we can find the will and then keep it focused on fixing the problem. But there's the real problem: focus & persistence to deal with "it." Is there a reason for anyone to be homeless in a world that can mass produce anything for relatively cheap? Is there a reason for anyone to be hungry in a world where we can produce far more food than what can be consumed? Do people have to die of diseases that existing medicines can cure just because they don't have the money to pay for the medicine? Etc.

The most pressing need of humanity's long-term survival is to get viable colonies off of the SINGLE planet on which ALL of us live. Even a viable colony on one other world/station would significantly increase the chance that none of the many extinction catalysts could take all of humanity out. What's holding that up? We don't want to allocate the money to it. Instead, we'd rather fight wars, put our head in the sand about big problems, even deny events unfolding right before our eyes, etc.

Does that read futility? It probably does. But pick a cause, any cause. If the cause clashes with profiteering, it's probably not going to go anywhere. The actual remedies will need things to be so dire that the money-making side of it makes little-to-no-sense. Think of the scene in Titanic where rich-guy Cal is expecting wealth to save himself "we had a deal" met with "your money can't save you anymore" (only about 15 seconds into this)...


There's where remedies have their best chance... probably too late and beyond any money solution offering some advantage... the point where something other than money gains higher priority. You might recall that Cal still makes it off and survives but how: he appealed to the humanity of the situation by pretending to be the crying child's only parent. In some extinction events we face, neither money nor an appeal of humanity will make any difference. Most of the scenarios need a unified & global effort to have any real chance of being addressed. Yet most of us can't even get along with our immediate neighbors in our own neighborhoods... squabbling over political nonsense, religion, geography, philosophy, misconceptions, prejudices, etc.

Make much of the population care about something more than profit and that will probably be something that gets addressed... or it will be too late and the ship will sink (with probably no lifeboats or Carpathia at all). The usual reaction: we gloss over, perhaps run to denial (often fueled by watching too much of 1+ propaganda network messaging) even if it conflicts with basic common sense, hope "it" won't be catastrophic and go chase our own next buck or three.
 
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The real danger of FUD is fear itself. I don't expect to completely change your mind, given that the best and brightest are tirelessly trying to scare you every day. But maybe, some will start to notice this and hesitate just enough on the AI scare tactics to not give up on their own projects and futures.

Bold made me think of Dune, which made me think of the Butlerian Jihad.
 
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What a hassle. Just let it happen.

boom-tony-stark-explosion-37smtvye2u2d8uf9.gif
 
My opinion is this "AI Revolution" will fall drastically short of promises or speculation. That does not mean this new tech related speculative bubble won't be a disaster. The information revolution of the internet has broadly failed at fully replacing the role of the newspaper or magazine but it completely eviscerated that industry in the process and in the void absolute crap information has filled it's place.

I imagine that whatever zenith is achieved with large language models/generative AI will fall well short of what investors hope: the deskilling of white collar labor, so they can charge less for human resources. It will destroy some industries in the process though.
 
Basically what Elon Musk has been saying all along.
I don't trust companies like MS (OpenAI) or Google to be "responsible" with it.
I know people don’t like him, but I do not feel with any fiber of my being that he has ill intent or bad motives regarding the “greater good.” He’s not perfect, nobody is. You sure wouldn’t want my dumb ass in a position of money and power. But I’m a good person. And I think he is too.
 
But how do you know it’s only a narrative and not a threat with some level of probability. That’s the whole reason to be anxious about it. We are being advised of a potential EXISTENTIAL threat. Are you saying you are certain the chance of this is 0%? Because even 10% is concerning. We are talking about a rocket going to space and killing a small group of people if it doesn’t work out.

Buddy, look at what we are doing about the decades of climate research ... Techno drones fantasizing about P(apocalypse) are useful idiots with saviour complexes, if you remouve the Existensial*TM dog whistle you can start having productive discourse.

But real AI safety is alot more boring and less adept at capturing the general public's imagination than anthropomorphic intelligence run amok.
 
AI in the form of LLMs is set to ruin the internet beyond the SEO slop that’s been eating away at it for over a decade. The race to eliminate the pesky price of human labor should be focused on undesirable tasks, but is instead now aiming at artistry. The push for profit at the expense of human dignity is a toxic mold on civilization.
 
I know people don’t like him, but I do not feel with any fiber of my being that he has ill intent or bad motives regarding the “greater good.” He’s not perfect, nobody is. You sure wouldn’t want my dumb ass in a position of money and power. But I’m a good person. And I think he is too.

I agree that no one is flawless, nor is the theme of the thread an analysis of character of this individual. But his sheer ability to depict himself as an "expert" in the eye of the layman on such a diversity of subjects when the actual grasp is quite often slim is problematic in itself.

And following a "greater good" or any other absolutes blindly has been the underlying excuse behind a great deal of despair throughout history. However right the proponents of their given definition thought they were.
 
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But how do you know it’s only a narrative and not a threat with some level of probability. That’s the whole reason to be anxious about it. We are being advised of a potential EXISTENTIAL threat. Are you saying you are certain the chance of this is 0%? Because even 10% is concerning. We aren’t* talking about a rocket going to space and killing a small group of people if it doesn’t work out.
Of course, it's very difficult to predict the future, but the likelihood of AI becoming an all-encompassing threat is very low. Studies on zero-shot learning show that AI requires exponentially more data to make significant advancements, and we simply don't have the capacity to provide that level of data.

AI models aren't showing the kind of dramatic improvements that suggest we're on the brink of an AI revolution. In a sense, we’ve already had the revolution, and now AI capabilities are likely to flatten out. Think of CGI in movies: it looked like CGI 30 years ago and still does today. AI will improve somewhat and do interesting, fun things, but it's not going to live up to the doomsday hype.

If you spend all your time worrying about AI, you might be suited for a job in alignment or help drum up investment in more AI (since AI is much more interesting to investors if it seems dangerous), but you're not going to stop all countries and companies from developing AI into some all-powerful being. Luckily, it's not going to get there anyway, even if you just focus on your own life.

Again, predicting the future is difficult, but it seems AI is likely to end up being one of the biggest disappointments in investment history for everyone but companies like Nvidia. Remember, in a gold rush, the real money is made by those who sell the shovels and run the saloons.
 
Right, I guess I’m saying if the threat is actually real enough, then I expect (hope?) that someone will be willing to lose their job to save all of humanity.

True, one would expect that ... But again, this is superimposing that apocalyptic narrative ... Most likely, the things needing to be exposed are anti-competitive/consumer behaviour. And for that you need the incentive that civil society will take care of you.
 
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I really can’t handle all the doom and gloom we have to face on a daily basis. The sky is falling media headlines, the election, protests, our country’s border disintegrating (USA), people being hateful and violent in general, the comment sections online, knowing about every injustice that ever happens, every tragedy, every disaster…
Where is the internet kill switch.

Using the Internet less and being connected less often can help

I've become so much happier this year with way way way less device and internet usage overall

Things are wonderful when one gets outside .. in the sun .. getting exercise, eating well, being happy and healthy.

My switch back to my iPod Shuffle for all my walks & exercise I think has helped too.

Instead of Podcasts pummeling me with "stuff I need to know" and "serious issues" .. I'm out enjoying great music and don't even have a phone on me at all! Totally peaceful and focused.
 
I was thinking about this when I saw a headline how AI could replace CEOs. And my question was if the CEO is responding to real life shareholders, or responding to the workers

So long that AI is designed to the specifications of executives and the board room, then yeah AI will be horrible. If AI is designed to the specifications of the working class, then there could be some utility in it.

I don't think there will be the catastrophic disaster that sci-fi plays out with AI. I think it will be absurd, stupid, and largely out of the general public's consciousness
If I can write your job down on a piece of paper then it can be automated.

Navigating a board, shareholders, company culture, etc not sure how much of this can completely be automated. but you may be right, for a generic company it might be enough.

But no doubt, in the future there will be those that can afford AI and those that can’t. The advantage will sit with those that can afford it.
 
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Using the Internet less and being connected less often can help

I've become so much happier this year with way way way less device and internet usage overall

Things are wonderful when one gets outside .. in the sun .. getting exercise, eating well, being happy and healthy.

My switch back to my iPod Shuffle for all my walks & exercise I think has helped too.

Instead of Podcasts pummeling me with "stuff I need to know" and "serious issues" .. I'm out enjoying great music and don't even have a phone on me at all! Totally peaceful and focused.

Good for you legend.
 
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