SORA AI Technology Preview: We are Entering a Golden Age of Chaos

[UngainlyTitan]

Yes. And this will be orders of magnitude worse than that. This will start modern wars with modern technology.

If you hadn’t noticed, most people still have the same relationship with the printed word. Whatever they see in actual print in meat-space or printed on the internet, they assume to be true. And act accordingly.

Which is why text, image, audio, and video created by “AI” will be such a big problem in future.

I really and reverently hope it will not be worse. Warfare on the scale and bitterness of the religious wars could be civilisational ending. The 30 Years War killed (directly and indirectly) about 25% of the population of the Germanies. I have no idea of the scale of the butchers bill for the Dutch revolt (the other major element of those wars) but I suspect it was of a similar scale.
The Tudor and Cromwellian wars in Ireland were pretty awful also. Not as many people killed because there were not as many there in the first place.

 

[overgeeked]

I really and reverently hope it will not be worse. Warfare on the scale and bitterness of the religious wars could be civilisational ending. The 30 Years War killed (directly and indirectly) about 25% of the population of the Germanies. I have no idea of the scale of the butchers bill for the Dutch revolt (the other major element of those wars) but I suspect it was of a similar scale.
The Tudor and Cromwellian wars in Ireland were pretty awful also. Not as many people killed because there were not as many there in the first place.

Well, to be fair, it will be hard to tell why the conflicts will begin because of all the “AI” propaganda. But in the next 50 years, at a guess, we’ll have far worse than all that combined. The real cause will either be “AI” propaganda or climate change. If we survive as a species, we can sort out what to do later.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Well, to be fair, it will be hard to tell why the conflicts will begin because of all the “AI” propaganda. But in the next 50 years, at a guess, we’ll have far worse than all that combined. The real cause will either be “AI” propaganda or climate change. If we survive as a species, we can sort out what to do later.

Again, I fervently hope not. I think the climate crisis will culminate before the AI one. Predictions are hard, especially about the future, to paraphrase Neils Bohr.

 

[dragoner]

Scientists propose AI apocalypse kill switches

To regulate AI, start with hardware, boffins argue

Better visibility and performance caps would be good for regulation too

www.theregister.com

 

[RangerWickett]

Since the first hand axe let one hominid do the work of two cleaning a downed gazelle, technology has been disrupting labor. That is what it is for and it has been an incalculable benefit to humankind. Our society has not just survived but improved through massively disruptive technological advances over and over again.

The only people mad about the adoption of color film were those paid to do it by hand. Well, there were also probably people who thought that color film somehow made film worse, but you can't account for traditionalists. At least capitalists you can understand.

AI, in its various forms including generative AI, is going to have a fundamentally positive net effect, even if some specific industries take a beating. Like with every tech advancement ever.

As with so many things since the Industrial Revolution, the problem of new technology is not that it changes work, but rather that it allows an ever smaller number of people to consolidate the wealth produced by the economy at large, which leaves larger and larger numbers of people at the whims of those with power.

If generative AI (and many other forms of technological automation) had the revenue taxed as if it were wages paid to workers, and if that tax were then distributed among the population at large, then the development of AI would produce more prosperity. Instead what we're seeing is that it's going to be just another way to let a small number of people - often rather sociopathic greedy people - control another large portion of the economy.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I think if your wife leaves you because the waiter made AI porn of you... then you had big trust issues from BEFORE the event.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

As with so many things since the Industrial Revolution, the problem of new technology is not that it changes work, but rather that it allows an ever smaller number of people to consolidate the wealth produced by the economy at large, which leaves larger and larger numbers of people at the whims of those with power.

I do not think that this is true. The actual innovations of the industrial revolution created a lot of wealth and a new wealth class, the industrialist, and the property developer.
What happened was as the innovations, matured the wealthy were able to use their wealth and political clout to consolidate that wealth. Over the nineteenth and early twentieth century there was a consolidation of factory, mine and transport ownership into the hands of larger corporations.
These cartels and monopolies were later (in some places and cases) broken up by political action, a mixture or taxation and regulation.

AI looks like that it is pay to play but I would argue that our economy is suffering from over consolidation of wealth but to discuss this further would be to get into the weeds of politics,

If generative AI (and many other forms of technological automation) had the revenue taxed as if it were wages paid to workers, and if that tax were then distributed among the population at large, then the development of AI would produce more prosperity. Instead what we're seeing is that it's going to be just another way to let a small number of people - often rather sociopathic greedy people - control another large portion of the economy.

No comment.

 

[overgeeked]

As with so many things since the Industrial Revolution, the problem of new technology is not that it changes work, but rather that it allows an ever smaller number of people to consolidate the wealth produced by the economy at large, which leaves larger and larger numbers of people at the whims of those with power.

If generative AI (and many other forms of technological automation) had the revenue taxed as if it were wages paid to workers, and if that tax were then distributed among the population at large, then the development of AI would produce more prosperity. Instead what we're seeing is that it's going to be just another way to let a small number of people - often rather sociopathic greedy people - control another large portion of the economy.

Exactly. Well said.

 

[Reynard]

If generative AI (and many other forms of technological automation) had the revenue taxed as if it were wages paid to workers, and if that tax were then distributed among the population at large, then the development of AI would produce more prosperity. Instead what we're seeing is that it's going to be just another way to let a small number of people - often rather sociopathic greedy people - control another large portion of the economy.

This isn't destiny. We can account for these things and build in guard rails. Many very smart people are working on just that.

But instead of looking forward, we have doomsayers who would have called for the abolition of the printing press had they been around at the time.

 

[RangerWickett]

We can account for these things and build in guard rails. Many very smart people are working on just that.

Forum rules discourage political talk, but I'll briefly say that it seems unlikely the Republican party will allow such guard rails to be built.

I'm not opposed to generative AI. Rather, I see discussions of it as a venue to highlight the root source of most of the problems in society: political corruption preventing the will of the public from being rendered into laws that would create a better future.