@gerrymcgovern @gedeonm This is something to be very...

@gerrymcgovern @gedeonm This is something to be very much aware of. But I’d say there are differences between AI and crypto:

1) AI provides value to the people seeking its responses. Crypto produces nothing of value besides scarcity.
2) there is enormous pressure on AI to make responses consume less energy, and reason to think they can. Bitcoin’s enormous energy consumption is -by design-.

So, something to be concerned about? Yes. But solvable? And are the incentives properly aligned? Also yes

Like 29 March at 16:03 | Wall-to-wall | Open on mastodon.social

6 comments

Gerry McGovern

@Gregmaletic
Good points. Although you could say a core output of AI is malware in content and code, undermining academia, democracy, art, etc. Also, a killer app of AI is advertising. So, because of much greater reach, its total negative impact is likely to be much greater than bitcoin. I'm certainly not in any way defending bitcoin, which I consider a deep, depraved evil.
@gedeonm

29 March at 16:18 | Open on mastodon.green

Greg Maletic

@gerrymcgovern @gedeonm You could be right. No doubt the output of AI will be a mixed bag.

Just a hunch: I suspect the good will outweigh the (notable and significant) bad. For example, in a few years, every major scientific discovery will likely be found by AI. I still believe that AI will be an enormous benefit to the art community, even though they don’t believe it yet. And that AI itself will be able to mitigate some of its bad outputs. The trajectory of this story is unknown

29 March at 16:31 | Open on mastodon.social

Sevoris

@Gregmaletic @gerrymcgovern @gedeonm I *strongly* doubt that significant discoveries will be made by "AI" personally, given the contemporary technology of large language models has notable issues with bias, repetitiveness, and "smoothing out" statistically unlikely expressions of ideas into generica.

Nothing substantial in the contemporary "state of the art text thinker" indicates they're reasoning engines that can be applied to any knowledge base - which is what you would *actually* need.

29 March at 16:45 | Open on mastodon.social

Sevoris

@Gregmaletic @gerrymcgovern @gedeonm second, I would ask: if we propose to be using that much compute for scientific discoveries, with the afformentioned impact consequences: who decides on what is being researched? Who ensures accessability to results and elevation of *human* research? We already have issues with researchers from the global south lacking in plain *presence* and *accessability* in the wider research community, so what epistemological practice issue are you solving with "AI"?

29 March at 16:49 | Open on mastodon.social

Gerry McGovern

@Gregmaletic

I used to be a tech evangelist. But 75% of the damage we've done to our environment happened in the last 50 years. And in the last 50 years, we've had the Digital Revolution. So, either digital did nothing to stop the incredible damage done, or else digital was an accelerant of that damage. Digital is a fire starter.

@gedeonm

29 March at 16:57 | Open on mastodon.green

DELETED

@gerrymcgovern @Gregmaletic @gedeonm I don't have links, but an other degrowth detractor pointed out there is energy based bitcoin, and another kind. Similarly, I imagine there is exploitation based AI, and other kinds. Good luck getting experts to tell the difference though. We need the collective brainpower of the electorate to do that. Simply make the precedent of putting a company that does more harm than good, such as an oil company, out of business. Then voters will figure out which AI companies to discard, and I doubt it will be all of them.

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29 March at 17:21 | Open on climatejustice.social