The politics of 'end times' and the approaching AI-driven 'apocalypse' often seems to be driving a fatalism that there is nothing we can do. However, as Nicholas Guilhot suggests, nothing is written in stone & such doom laden predictions should encourage us to search for alternatives rather than accept the present-focussed enrichment regime of our political class. Some have already see this need, but the shape of any new social settlement is still unclear, as is the route there. #politics
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The danger from #AI and #ML does not come from the #technology, but its owners and controllers. The Luddites didn't smash the looms because they were anti-tech (contrary to modern representations[1]), but because they were forced out of income[2]. That the #tech #oligarchs can't be trusted is on display time again, currently with the #mathematics community[3]. #society #history #politics #economics #epsteinclass [1]economicshelp.org/blog/6717/ec… [2]bloodinthemachine.com/p/unders… [3]wired.com/story/openai-is-piss…
I took a recent exchange on a matrix channel as reason to summarise some thoughts. Posting a version here to make it easy to recollect. --- AI is the brainchild of the mathematician. Just like computers are. We thought them up and made them, almost exactly to do what they have done so far. The computer is an instructive example: it wasn't thought up out of fancy; it was thought up as a soln at a time of crisis. Applied Mathematics and CS teach ways of looking at and responding to the world. So feeling distraught may be normal. But responding to it with applied-maths thinking has a better chance of success than other ways of thinking about the problem.
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Some questions facing us that might benefit from such a way of thinking: 1. How should AI be used - good/bad habits? How does one define these notions usefully? 2. How should AI be integrated into society? Based on habits, norms and culture or tech like neuralink that puts a layer of AI over human intelligence, cyborging us? 3. How should one reconsider financial value (and money in general) when anything a human can do reliably is available for far cheaper from a machine? What is a good toy model of an economy in such a world? If we summon up enough optimism and have the drive to answer such questions at least for ourselves, we make it a little more likely that others like us will also do the same. And perhaps this momentum is all it takes to solve a problem well as a society. If not, we die having been optimistic and driven, instead of victimised and helpless. Seems an obvious choice. #aboutAI
