Yes, or start raising the potential problems much sooner.

To any anti AI millennials I try to point out that there’s a direct line from google search (which millennials were crazy about in the day) to AI.

I mean generally, how much computational power is lying around in discarded smart phones?

How much I reached potential is there in some sort of clustering solution to distribute the load such that 2-6 smartphones can get some real work done?

The jokes about starting some random religion aside, it really isn’t that far fetched that being steadfastly anti AI includes enough values and beliefs about the world to form some sort of religion. Maybe weak on metaphysical beliefs, but again, leaning a bit more in that direction from an anti AI position seems pretty natural.

Humanism, naturalism and whatever you want to call it, if averting from the tech industry’s latest “progress” is non-secular, then let that be a religion.

Well I think some loud voices point out the “factions” more than matter.

lol.

Curiously, I’m an ml user from before the “migration”. Back then there weren’t nearly as many options.

Is this about the capitalisation?

If so yes. Evolution of language is a thing. Older people just have to accept it at some point. But this just seems like a needle regression for the sake of doing something different. Does it come from some smart phone behaviour or something?

Can’t help but think it’s worse.

Factor in the world wars and colonialism and other conflicts and just how wealthy Europe has been and for how long … It’s just like can you guys sort your shit out already.

I love this so fucking much!

Long live NetBSD then!

Yea, that list is painting a fairly bleak picture.

Linux kernel and all BSD are basically “lost”, which means FOSS OSs are basically lost. Arch, gentoo and Elementary (and Asahi, interestingly) seem like notable exceptions against the grain, but they are just distros.

Not sure where anti-computing is supposed to be from here?

Honestly, organising around a hard fork of a kernel and committing as a collective seems the only viable way … but we sure as hell know that’s not going to happen.

Not any other of the BSDs?

Sad indictment of American tech culture to be honest.

I feel like you only need first principles and solve precautionary logic to care about AI safety. Not some pseudo-intellectual circle-jerk-first.

Something I find interesting is the ambiguity in this question.

I think you can be pro-AI and also prefer to go back to before AI in a “we should make the best of the opportunities we have now” kind of mindset. A mindset that is also disinclined from opposing the mainstream and scared of being left behind etc.

In other words, the question’s premise is an unrealistic magical solution and doesn’t directly concern practical reality.

Which might be a neat way of cutting through the noise people’s rebellious or conformist or opportunistic mindsets which can cloud the essential question of whether this all feels good or bad to people.

“Meaningless” is a strong term.

How biased is the user who posted the poll, and their audience?

All good!

In the end, I think we’re more or less in the same page. If you picked up on a tone policing vibe, I think I can see that, but that totally wasn’t where I was coming from. EG, going after all CEOs for being brain washed psychopaths who naturally use AI because they’re psychopathic would have been in line with what I was saying, at least to me.

But no need to drag this out. Appreciate your comments!

Thanks!

Thanks for those links.

I get what you’re saying. But that’s your thoughts not those presented in the Twitter excerpt, and I’m talking about that excerpt.

Slightly more broadly, yes one can make the point that you are, and it may have been a more interesting exchange on Twitter if it were made from the top.

More broadly, I still have concerns about the nature of “the discourse”, because I just don’t think you’re going to win many hearts and minds with this line of thinking without some change in the framing, by, eg, focusing on the harms and “evils” of AI (with the disqualification of those indifferent to such issues being a natural corollary).

But even then, I fear still that that conversation is being lost, and these sort of ad hominem attacks as we see in the excerpt and even your summary just above of disqualified people are symptom of anti-AI not knowing what to say anymore. I see your point about shaming and all, but I look around the world and honestly think it’s a pipe dream. I hope it works for you, genuinely.

Sure. Either way, that’s not the argument that was made in the tweet. It was much more specific and easily countered, which is my broader point.

I feel like we’re more or less saying the same thing here. I think the initial argument was a fairly logical and dry one about what skills CEOs do and don’t have, not, as I think we both claim is more important, that they work for companies in capitalism, with all that that entails, such that the marketable qualities of the CEO as a person are a distraction.

I’m totally with you. But I think that’s where we are. As I see it at the moment the big points are

• “safety”, which is a lot like climate change (yay),
• power and wealth concentration, which I’m surprised I don’t hear more about
• enslavement of potentially conscious creatures (again more of a future problem thing but a serious one)
• a human and even spiritual urge to not reduce ourselves to mere operators of machines, which is a pretty basic matter of taste but which gets Amish pretty quickly.

These are all big “what is life about” issues that are just hard to get penetration on. Only the second is material right now. Maybe it’s an issue with today’s society that we’ve forgotten how to talk about these sorts of things. But maybe we’re just wired to jump off of these sorts of cliffs. I don’t know.

I honestly don’t thing this will be the end of humanity. It could be, but I’d bet on some weird future first. Could it be better. Yea. But again, we’re a funny bunch.