It's real hard for me to conjure up "good" uses for, say, mustard gas or bioweapons or nuclear warheads.
"Technology is neutral" is a cop-out and should be seen as such. People should, at the very least, try to ask how people / society will make use of a technology and ask whether it should be developed/promoted.
We are all-too-often over-optimistic about how things will be used or position them being used in the best possible light rather than being realistic in how things will be used.
In a perfect world, people might only use AI responsibly and in ways that largely benefit mankind. We don't live in that perfect world, and it is/was predictable that AI would be used in the worst ways more than it's used in beneficial ones.
Why? Soviets tried to re-route rivers with nuclear blasts in their infinite scientifically-based wisdom and godlike hubris. How much illness their radioactive sandbox would cause among people was clearly too minuscle a problem for them to reflect on.
But not in equal quantity. Technology does not exist in a contextless void. Approaching technology with this sort of moral solipsism is horrifying, in my opinion.
I strongly disagree. Many technologies aren't neutral, with their virtue dependent on the use given them. Some technologies are close to neutral, but there are many that are either 1) designed for evil or 2) very vulnerable to misuse. For some of the latter, it'd be best if they'd never even been invented. An example of each kind of technology:
1) Rolling coal. It's hard for me to envision a publicly-available form of this technology that is virtuous. It sounds like it's mostly used to harass people and exert unmerited, abusive power over others. Hardly a morally-neutral technology.
2) Fentanyl. It surely has helpful uses, but maybe its misuse is so problematic that humanity might be significantly better off without the existence of this drug.
Right. But a machine that helps plant seeds at scale could be used for bad by running someone over, but it's core purpose it to do something helpful. AI's core purpose isn't to do anything good right now. It's about how many jobs it can take, how many artists can it steal from and put out of work, and so on and so on. How many people die from computer mice each year? How many from guns? They're both technology and can be used for good or bad. To hand wave the difference away is dangerous and naive.
It only "take jobs" because it's useful. It's useful for making transcription at scale, text revision, marketing material, VFX, all those things. It also does other things that don't "take jobs", like computer voice control. It's just a tool, useful for everyone, and not harmful at all at its purpose. Comparing it to guns is just ridiculous.
But... the machine that plants seeds also takes away the livelihood to a bunch of folks. I mean, in my country, we were an agrarian society 100 years ago. I don't have the actual stats but it was close to 90% agrarian. Now, it's at about 5%. Sure, people found other jobs and that will likely be the case here. I will do the dishes while the AI will program.
I understand the industrial revolution happened. To say this revolution is the same and will produce the same benefits is already factually wrong. One revolution created a net positive of jobs. One has only taken jobs.
I would say we don't know that yet. Comparing the current state of LLMs to what they can lead to or what they might enable later on is like comparing early machine prototypes to what we have today.
I can also 100% tell you that the farming folk of 100 years ago also felt like the farming machines took away their jobs. They saw 0 positives. The ones that could (were young) went into industry, the others... well, at the same time we instituted pensions, which were of course paid for by the active population, so it kind of turned out ok in the end.
I do wonder, what will be the repercussions of this technology. It might turn into a dud or it might truly turn into a revolution.
this is always the answer that the hopeful give: "previous revolutions of this kind, i.e., the Industrial Revolution, created a host of new professions we didn't even know existed, so this one will as well." Except that it was obvious quite early on what the professions created by those revolutions were. Factories were springing up immediately and employing those who had been working in the fields. The pace of change was much slower too; it took about 150 years in the US for the transformation from an agrarian society to an industrial one to happen. That provides time for society to adjust.
I have yet to see anyone demonstrate even an idea of new professions -- that may employ millions of people -- that are likely to emerge. So far, the "hope" is a pipe dream.
However, aren't there now a lot of job openings out there for LLM-whisperers and other kinds of AI domain experts? Surely these didn't exist in the same quantity 10 years ago.
(I'm just picking nits. I do agree that this "revolution" is not the same and will not necessarily produce the same benefits as the industrial revolution.)
