Asimovian AI is the ideal AI that should have emerged in an ideal universe — the AI intended to replace the grueling pains and labors of the masses, not the one striving to become a businessman’s utopia of intellectual worker replacement. Intention is the most important aspect of any implementation, and we are seeing the results of current AI implementation right in front of us: workers getting sacked with each passing day, humanity competing with itself day in and day out over who impresses their superiors more on these token metrics, emerging glorious narratives of how AI will be ‘The Future’, the recurring advice of ‘Use AI or perish in the tech market’. Now who really gains from these events and who loses? I wonder if anyone ever gives serious thought to this broader question or just keeps being a cog in the corporate wheel like everyone else.
It’s high time we pushed the “Pause AI” button right now and take a breather and reflect a bit on what exactly is going on here. And no, no big catastrophe is going to happen if we do that. China isn’t going to get ahead in the race - and even if it did, how does that justify everything else that’s happening here?
I really hope there is someone out there with enough clout and influence who can push this pause button - or at least persuade others to do so. That would be the best thing to happen to humanity at this point. By doing so, we might prevent a massive societal collapse and there is really no downside to this.
The AI alignment problem is much easier than the cooperation alignment problem.
What you want is not a “pause AI” button, it is a “pause capitalism” button. You’ll need the second one to have the first one and you actually will never have either.
No one has the influence to do that. Not the POTUS, not the Chinese Premier, not the CEOs of the five biggest companies.
I wonder if anyone ever gives serious thought to this broader question or just keeps being a cog in the corporate wheel like everyone else.
I have since the 90s and I kept being told that what’s happening right now was impossible and that I was delusional.
Intention is the most important aspect of any implementation
Indeed, and I don’t see anyone, especially in the left wing, who tries to embrace this technology to try to build the post-labor society that we are all waiting for, all calling for, and that has been an utopia promised since the 19th century. Now that it is within our reach, there’s no one trying to give it a shape.
Now that it is within our reach, there’s no one trying to give it a shape.
Agree. It’s a problem that most ‘social rebels’ can’t see AI as a tool to be used to overturn the system, organize alternative social structures - or at least to protect them selves from the consequences of late stage Capitalism, Fascism…
The problem, to a degree, is that AI promises to be a decisive tool in industry and hence militarily. No government dares ban it or restrict it — at least from itself — for fear the race to the end will be lost. AI companies dare not pull back without legislation that will never come, for fear that someone else will make the decisive breakthrough that leaves everyone else in ruin.
The problem is, I don’t see that breakthrough coming. Ever. At least not down the path of LLMs. Now, LLMs help me accomplish far more in a day than I’d be able to alone. but even the best ones keep making the same sorts of mistakes. One of the big problems with agentic AI is that AI output becomes AI input — so what happens when the AI output is confidently wrong? It goes down a massive rabbit hole and if you’re lucky 5 minutes later it will second guess the base inaccuracy that led it there. But often it concludes there is something wrong with your network configuration and possibly hardware, when really you just forgot to connect to the VPN.
I digress. My point is that this road is a dead end. It might do some neat tricks, but this is NOT the path to global supremacy or freedom from labor. But just in case I’m wrong. Just in case it is. No one can afford to risk letting someone else beat them to it. I’m not endorsing that point of view, just acknowledging it.
Sadly, there is no “Pause” button in reality. And we can’t load the last checkpoint save either 😅 That’s just computer games.
You might find this an interesting read: https://leidendeclaration.ai/
It’s a declaration able the use of AI in mathematics. White it doesn’t completely block AI out, it aims to limit and structure its use in academic research.
I’m sure there are similar stands being Yasmeen in other contexts too, but I just walked to point towards a clear example of people wanting to slow down and think about the repercussions of AI - its training, implementation and usage.