The original comment was justifying unregulated and unmitigated research into AI on the premise that it's so dangerous that we can't allow adversaries to have the tech unless we have it too.
My claim is AI is not so existentially risky that holding back its development in our part of the world will somehow put us at risk if an adversarial nation charges ahead.
So no, it's not harmless, but it's also not "shit this is basically like nukes" harmful either. It's just the usual, shitty SV kind of harmful: it will eliminate jobs, increase wealth inequality, destroy the livelihoods of artists, and make the internet a generally worse place to be. And it's more important for us to mitigate those harms, now, than to worry about some future nation state threat that I don't believe actually exists.
(It'll also have lots of positive impact as well, but that's not what we're talking about here)
Training new models is already the domain of large actors only, simply due to the GPU requirements, which serve as a massive moat. That ship has sailed. There isn't a single open source model, today, that wasn't trained by a corporate entity first, and then only fined tuned by the community later.
You don't need AI for any of that. Determined state actors have been fabricating information and propagandizing the public, mechanical Turk style, for a long long time now. When you can recruit thousands of people as cheap labour to make shit up online, you don't need an LLM.
So no, I don't believe AI represents a new or unique risk at the hands of state actors, and therefore no, I'm not so worried about these technologies landing in the hands of adversaries that I think we should abandon our values or beliefs Just In Case. We've had enough of that already, thank you very much.
And that's ignoring the fact that an adversarial state actor having access to advanced LLMs isn't somehow negated or offset by us having them, too. There's no MAD for generative AI.
Really? I'm supposed to believe AI is somehow more existentially risky than, say, chemical or biological weapons, or human cloning and genetic engineering (all of which are banned or heavily regulated in developed nations)? Please.
I understand the AI hype artists have done a masterful job convincing everyone that their tech is so insanely powerful (and thus incredibly valuable to prospective investors) that it'll wipe out humanity, but let's try to be realistic.
But you know, let's take your premise as a given. Even despite that risk, I refuse to let an unknowable hypothetical be used to hold our better natures hostage. The examples are countless of governments and corporations using vague threats as a way to get us to accept bad deals at the barrel of a virtual gun. Sorry, I will not play along.
"The bad guys will do it anyway so we need to do it, too" is the worst kind of fatalism. That kind of logic can be used to justify any number of heinous acts, and I refuse to live in a world where the worst of us are allowed to drag down the rest of us.
For the record, I deleted the comment you replied to because I realized I was wrong in that both Tesla and the quoted manual, above, urge the removal of tree sap and so forth immediately, something I hadn't caught in my first reading.
Having recognized that I realized I hadn't considered the more fundamental point that I called out in my other comment (that the fact that the Cybertruck finish requires the same treatment as a regular car is in fact an indictment of the quality of the Cybertruck's exterior, not a justification for it), hence the new reply.
Yes, but you see the difference is my car is expected to rust because it's not made of supposedly stainless steel.
So I fully expect to have to protect my car's finish. That's why it's painted. The Cybertruck doesn't even have a clear coat. One would naturally thus expect that, unlike my regular non-stainless steel car, the Cybertruck wouldn't in fact rust.
Please try to keep your criticisms of Musk fair and unbiased. Otherwise, you risk weakening your point.
Thank you for your unsolicited advice. I'm sure next time I'll keep it in mind while having meaningless arguments with anonymous internet strangers.
The damn maintenance manual tells owners to carefully remove anything remotely corrosive (including, among other things, tree sap). Given Tesla knows the material is subject to rust, I think it's a bit more than just some confused owners.
Not just more stiff, the sharp angles on the body are also much more likely to cause serious injury to pedestrians and cyclists (there's a reason modern vehicles have rounded edges). Unfortunately the lack of regulations in North America on safety features vis a vis anyone but the vehicle occupants means these death machines remain street legal.
Less waffling and more shitty comms, which unfortunately has been a consistent problem with this government for years, particularly for files where Guilbeault is minister. That guy shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a microphone...
I'd buy that argument if the house Republicans could actually come together and do, you know, anything with their (thin) majority. But they can't because they're now simply the party of "no".
And the root causes are obvious: the house GOP is the least experienced caucus in history with more freshman than ever. Those folks were voted in on a platform of obstruction and reactionary objection, not constructive policy positions.
And so now, with their hands on the tiller, they have no coherent platform or strategy.
You can see this in the recent border debacle where it was more important to deny Biden even the hint of a win than to pass any kind of legislation, even when it's policies they ostensibly support. That's the politics of obstruction at work.
Back when the Tea Party was the minority voice, that was fine. They could throw bombs from the back row and things would still get done.
Now that those folks are in charge, they're directionless.
zaphod @ zaphod @lemmy.ca Posts 0Comments 288Joined 2 yr. ago
Amazing how Google and Apple differ on so much, but in this respect they are in total agreement...