If you agree that rational agency isn’t evenly distributed. That not everyone is equally able to make choices that serve themselves wisely. If you agree foolishness exists.
If you agree that some people can use foolishness in others to manipulate them to believe and act in ways that benefit the manipulator at the cost of the manipulated. That it’s possible to exploit foolishness.
Then logically the market and democracy both simply hand power to manipulators because whatever power is given to the foolish will be taken from them.
Thus we’re gonna get a ruling council either way, might as well make it public policy and declare who or what they are and try to structure it ethically and honestly.
Imagine a yard with 10 people in it. 1 is a vicious bully, and 1 is a genius charismatic conman. You know who will have more money/power at the end of the day if you gave everyone 10 dollars and 1 vote.
But I’ve almost always been pronuclear and progun because science nerd and the facts and logic respectively are quite clear.
Then 2016 happened and suddenly I’m branded a sexist racist Russian spy because I understand the coming jobpocalypse thanks to robots and the myth of trickle down and “job creators.” And because I know who Seth Rich really is. (DNC leaker.)
Especially since I know Russia Russia Russia is DNC smoke for the contents of the Podesta emails having legitimately creepy human trafficking implications.
Add that to being painfully aware of how hated I am simply for being white and male, and I find myself sitting in the new right of the overton window.
Robert, now I know your entire worldview is distorted. (Anthropocentric.) Only a tiny percentage of the earth’s surface has been modified by us willfully at all and much of that tiny surface was purpose hardened to accept stomping of some kind. The vast majority of the world is absolutely neutral. Even an open lava flow is more psychopath than sadist. Lethality in nature is parsed as incidental usually, unless you actively hate water in response to drownings being a thing? Are polar bears serial killers? (I actually think so essentially, but I know you don’t.) I think your philosophy is inconsistent.
The world doesn’t care about us and it’s not afraid of us. We’re just another animal to it, and animals are just more bits of matter. Your human mind injects meaning everywhere as a byproduct of cognition. But if you’re going to claim the majority of hypothetical AI is bad, imo you’re cherry picking or being pedantic. How are you even going to make an objective claim dependent on subjective terms? (You can’t except as an exercise in rhetoric.) Your entire argument is emotional and I don’t think you see it, that’s why this is a video and not a published paper. You’re speaking to the mob because the mob a whole accepts the kind of argument you badly want to make. Pinker did the same thing just from the other side.
But as far as the random stomping analogy, roads and sidewalks spring to mind and roofs for example that typically need to be strong enough to withstand weather. The majority of stomping surface is water for starters, or wilderness, or sand, or ice. If you’re gonna define stomping on a roadway or patch of sand as “bad” as opposed to neutral, you’re being inconsistently strict, technically it might be a waste of time and electricity but usually it’s going to be meaningless. I could easily balance out all your hypothetical breakage bads with humor/amusement goods. Watching a robot slip around on ice could be hilarious. Boston dynamics videos of robot testing have brought small amounts of joy to millions. Sure some of the stomps (and falls) may be materially costly but how many of them are going to be hilarious or fascinating or instructive? YouTube is full of people destroying things for amusement. Is YouTube an evil AI? Also slapstick is a thing, we like watching stuff stumble around. Arguably it’s a big part of the appeal of children and puppies heh. You’re arbitrarily ignoring entire classes valuation to prop up your argument.
The stuff we’ve made (technology) isn’t much different than the stuff that was already here (nature). And very little that we’ve made would persist very long without our active maintenance. Arguably that’s why technology is possible at all in the first place, because of how close things are to useful by default, because after all we evolved to suit the default world. You’re altering how you define bad and ignoring all kinds of good to fit your claims about the hypothetical ratio of possible bad AIs. Claims which now earn you cash.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ~Upton Sinclair
While Pinker’s article may be unfairly written in a strictly logical sense, you need to keep in mind that by speaking to lay people at all in non technical terms you are doing the same thing regardless of whether or not you disclaim and admit it before hand. I think his core point is correct and you are an example. I also feel you’re being irresponsible (with this channel) because a simple look at history knows how people respond to fear. We already have a thousand movies and books screaming about how lethal AI will be. All you’re doing is giving the next ted kaczynski fodder for his manifesto. By definition unless your concerns are worthy of publishing and go on to alter consensus, they are insufficiently robust to be taken seriously. Unless you’re arguing the entire consensus building process is corrupt? The fact that you wouldn’t hold yourself responsible for something like a “crazy” using your words is what I mean by irresponsible.
You’re talking to the easily panicked mob for cash and attention when presumably you should be talking to your fellow rational researchers only. Considering the disruptive good AGI could do and imo likely will do, what you are doing no matter how factually accurate boils down to scaremongering for profit. :/
AI is poised to liberate humanity from slavery for the first time in history. How many lives have we already lost from not pursuing that goal as a species?
Even if my argument is weak that’s only expected since you’re being paid for yours but none of your opposition here is. You chose this venue because of that as well. You knew the majority of replies would be random YouTube idiots either making easily dismissed counter arguments, or universally acceptable praise, which has no intelligence threshold for value. I can praise you with a single word and it will be accepted. But naturally you’ll reject objection until it rises to some level of complexity, which you define. Like I could say “cool” and you’d accept that, but if I said “fool” you’d reject it until I defended myself. (Like the biased baked into YouTube not showing down thumbs on comments.)
You speaking on YouTube is inherently defensive. We can only ever really reply from within enemy territory. It’s like the admonition, don’t argue with someone who buys ink by the barrel. You have a platform. You’re being paid to speak and you have tons of supportive listeners already. All you have to do to convince them I don’t have a point is make a video responding to it. History will count it as a win for you. It’s inherently unfair. Again, that’s why so many people feel safe making videos here. It’s not a wilderness, it’s a padded room. That’s why I moved my reply out to my blog. I know I’ll be fair. I publish tons of unflattering responses here. Never once have I censored a comment because it was defeating me, and I never will. Now, you can choose not to believe that, and that’s fine, but I know the truth and really so would anyone that objectively examined what few comments I have published here. While this may be my personal wordpress, the structure of wordpress itself isn’t like YouTube. We can both speak freely here. Or you can just ignore me or make another video. That’s cool too.
