willington

joined 2 years ago
[–] willington 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The owners of the AI are centering their personal interests first.

Who here thinks businesses and CEOs exist to serve the public interests? I have a bridge to sell you.

If we want businesses and CEOs to serve the public inerests ahead of their personal interests we have to FORCE them to.

This problem is so bad it even has a name as a "principle agent problem". The CEOs and other execs routinely steal from even their "own" publicly traded companies, but it is hardly ever litigated as it is hard to prove without violating the privacy of the CEOs. The most obvious method is via kickbacks. They get under the table payments from the contractor companies when deciding which contractor should get the contract.

The business world is rife with scum and villainy. If we ever want some guardrails around business practices we must grab the CEOs by their genitals. Because taking their word for anything is worth the sound that the word makes.

CEOs need to see jail time, and capital punishment in states that allow it.

Instead we lionize these psychopaths and call them "business leaders". We brought all this on ourselves by uncritically believing the businesses' own way of describing themselves.

[–] willington 1 points 2 weeks ago

"We will build one concentration camp less than the Republicans!"

Signed, Democrats.

[–] willington 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Elon turned Grok into Mecha-Hitler.

Trump is telling the Smithsonian museum to ignore slavery, or to cover slavery as a positive.

The domestic appetite for propaganda is huge. Prager U is American.

Let's not center foreign countries when we have so much work to do at home.

[–] willington 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I have seen some people talk like that, and it strikes me as a religion. There's euphoria, zeal, hope. To them AGI is coming to usher in heaven on earth. Singularity is like rupture.

Sam Altman is one of the preachers of this religion.

[–] willington 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

How indeed. It's probably a multi-factor phenomenon which requires an anthropological study for a serious answer. (Good luck trying to get the necessary access to study them.) My guess for one factor in this, is that they have more money than they know what to do with.

[–] willington 5 points 3 weeks ago

As an assist to an actual oncologist, only.

I can see AI as a tool in some contexts, doing some specific tasks better than an unassisted person.

But as a replacement for people, AI is a dud. I would rather be alone than have a gf AI. And yes I am taking trauma and personal+cultural baggage into account. LLM is also a product of our culture for the most part, so will have our baggage anyway. But at least in principle it could be trained to not have certain kinds of baggage, and still, I would rather deal with a person save for the simplest and lowest stake interactions.

If we want better people, we need to enfranchise them and remove most paywalls from the world. Right now the world instead of being inviting is bristling with physical, cultural, and virtual fences, saying to us, "you don't belong and aren't welcome in 99.99% of the space, and the other 0.01% will cost you." Housing for now is only a privelege. In a world like that it's a miracle the people are as decent as they are. If we want better people we have to delibarately, on purpose, choose broadbased human flourishing as a policy objective, and be ruthless to any enemies of said objective. No amnesty for the billionaires and wannabe billionaires. Instead they are trying to shove down our throats AI/LLMs and virtual worlds as replacements for an actually decent and inviting world.

[–] willington 17 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

A narrow purpose AI trained to recognize tumor growths early is the kind of AI that makes sense to me.

[–] willington 17 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Don't believe for a second that this is about children.

Imagine the policies of someone who actually cared about children's wellbeing? Those policies would not look like bans or restrictions for the children.

[–] willington 27 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

The "owners" of our world want us to be passengers, not drivers. They own the carusel, and we rent our rides.

They say we have no skin in the game. Truth is, SKIN is ALL we have in this game. We must have assets in the game as a birthright to make it worth playing in good faith. If most are landless and assetless, sorry, the game sucks. That means untill we get the rules that protect all of our interests, as opposed to protecting massive wealth accumulations at everyone's expense, we will ignore the rules, the norms, decorum, civility, etc.

If the hoarders break the social contract repeatedly, like they have since 2008, it takes people some time to internalize and digest the fact of what it means for none of us to be bound by a social contract. Once people catch on, there will be hell to pay.

[–] willington 7 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Of course the power dynamics cannot ever be eliminated (either by breeding or enculturation) from the interpersonal relationships.

Instead, power can be regulated and managed, to maximize distributed decisionmaking, and to protect those decisionmakers who could not or would not protect themselves.

In a free for all, feudalism will always result. The strong and the willing will rule over the weak and the unwilling.

There have to be limits to the power dynamics. Those limits will have to be enforced to protect the vulnerable, the gullible, and the unwilling (those who have the capability to exercise power, but refuse by choice), etc. This requires advanced democratic governance with a very strong government.

Doing away with the government is just a speedrun toward technofeudalism.

Working to create a protected space that selects for distributed decisionmaking is the actual project. That's an actually sane, worthwhile and achievable goal.

[–] willington 10 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (4 children)

When democratic governance withers what fills the power vacuum is feudalism.

Technofeudalism is feudalism with computers.

Ironically, to create a space that selects for and protects distributed decisionmaking (the desire of most sane anarchists), you need a strong government!

[–] willington 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

My use case for AI is to get it to tell me water to cereal ratios, like for rice, oatmal, corn meal. If there is a mistake, I can easily control for it, and it's a decent enough starting point.

That said, I am just being lazy by avoiding taking my own notes. I can easily make my own list of water to cereal ratios to hang on the fridge.

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