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I didn't really make up my mind how far back to turn the clock to, but I like the way you think.
If RETVRNING is not an option, I do have a general principle in mind on how to proceed, but I don't have a name for it. Techno-optimists often point out that this isn't the first time us Luddites have their gripes about machines making us dumb, and takin' ar jerbs, but here we are, and the world doesn't seem so horrible. Aside from the arguments that, in some ways, yes it is, I think technology should be developed in a way that helps us grow as people, rather than makes us succumb to naked consumerism. As you semi-correctly guessed I already have this issue with what IT promised vs what it delivered. Computers and the Internet disrupted how we do a lot of things, but they could have conceivably given us decentralization and climbing rates of technological literacy. We got the opposite on both fronts. The fact that we ended up with even more centralization is not even that surprising when you think about it, as the forces pushing towards it were on open display all this time, but what happened to tech-literacy came as a bit of shock to me. X-ers and Millenials probably all had the childhood experience of their parents buying a new device, and us being able to figure out how it works through mere trial and error, before our parents could find their way through the manual. For years I assumed the same will happen to me, but it just hasn't, and reportedly there are now kids who don't even know what a file is, because the way we design software is hiding the fundamentals of how computers work. On one hand that's a relief - it doesn't look like a young whippersnapper is about to take my jerb anytime soon - but it's also depressing. This, more then anything else, is what worries me the most about the advent of AI, and if anyone has any ideas how to avoid it, I'm all ears.
There was this old TNG episode about kids getting abducted from the Enterprise to live on a planet where all their needs are catered to by a planetary AI, so they can do art and stuff. Well, what I'm saying is: Both the Federation and Aldea has AI technology, but they choose to use it in different ways. Give me the 8 year olds of the Enterprise, who are forced to master basic calculus so they can grow up - and may Allah forgive me for using this phrase - as well rounded citizens, who actually can maintain the technology they depend on, over the children of Aldea, who for that matter don't even master art, they just have their thoughts and emotions translated into it by the AI.
The final thing that is driving me up the wall, is the utter state of the discourse. EAs, for all the talk of "alignment", never mention either of these issues because, as far as I can tell, they don't want the common people to have an understanding of AI, so they can have total control over it for themselves. As for E/Accs the closest thing I ever got to an acknowledgement of the problems with centralization and dumbing down was "Yeah that worries me too, but what can you do? Anyway, look - ChatGPT go brrr!". For that reason I'm inclined to just disconnect from technological society, and join the Amish.
That you don't trust the EA is no reason to disconnect. To beat the EA and not let them have total control you need to support a group that is more aligned to your ideals and try to get your group to have their own influence in the AI game.
It's not just the lack of trust in EAs, E/Accs' approach also seems to lead down a dark path. Basically, I expect the same result as what happened with software, social media, and the Internet generally. At least with software there's the FOSS movement, as helpless as it ultimately turned out to be. Is there a Stallman of AI? Is there even a fraction of energy behind him that there was for FOSS in the 90's and 00's?
Open models, data sets, and training/inference code have become a pretty big thing. In general e/acc is highly favorable toward this.
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I completely agree with you about EA. My point is that you need to play the game with your own side and try to find likeminded people to support. Running away is a losing move.
Of course you personally not wanting to do that is understandable. But when it comes to what is better to do it requires people who try to create alternative platforms and participate in them.
The genie can not be put back in the bottle. Either they monopolize the genies, or others use them too.
Wel, like I said, it's not just the EAs, it's also the E/Accs that I have a problem with.
As for not being able to put the genie back in the bottle, yeah that's one of my fears, but I don't know if this is already decided. By current demographic trends, the Amish are scheduled to inherit America. AI might very well turn out to be a suicidal technology, and Luddites the only survivors.
There will be no survivors. You think not having a cell signal saves you from a Paperclip Maximizer that's demolishing the biosphere for spare parts? Come the fuck on.
I think the Paperclip Maximizer is a boogeyman, and if AI does cause us to go extinct, it will be in a completely different manner than the AI-safety people predict. Like I said above, this is precisely what drives me up the wall in this conversation.
I do not see how there's any remotely plausible world where AI somehow causes us to go extinct while sparing the Amish. Unless the Amish have some really sick data centers hidden under those barns of theirs.
X, no. X is X. You get an AI that wins, the Amish are just more raw material.
The Amish would do better than city-slickers in a lot of GCRs, though, most obviously nuclear war and pandemics. Non-Amish country bumpkins would do fine in a pandemic, but less so in a nuclear war due to the EMP problem. And it's not implausible that a "failed Skynet" could start a nuclear war and/or spread a "normal" GoFed pandemic before getting destroyed.
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The idea that homesteaders/preppers/the Amish might do better in a collapse of the modern world seems reasonable to me. We keep ant farms and shit, maybe the Amish long standing commitments to being low tech make them a safer prospective pet population. I also never understood why turning everything in the light cone into paperclips was so much more plausible than just all the easily available metal or other variations on the, AI with orthogonal values fucks up the world but doesn't actually make it uninhabitable.
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I think it's far less likely that we die at the hands of an unaligned autonomous AI, than we do via standard naked monkey shenanigans, with a non-autonomous AI being a catalyst. Noping out doesn't guarantee survival, but there are plausible scenarios where it results in it.
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Don’t have time for a long reply at the moment, but I like a lot of your take.
Have you read this book by Ivan Illich? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tools_for_Conviviality
I think I only saw references to Illich from other writers, but I never read him directly. The wiki synopsis is very interesting, definitely sounds like a man after my own heart.
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