Aug 1, 2023 11:06 PM
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publicati...-real-deal
EXCERPT: . . . All of this is to say that skepticism about the new AI moment we are in rests on very solid ground. We have seen “this AI moment is real” moments over and over and over going back as far as the 1950s. In spirit, it traces back to the Mechanical Turk, a supposed automaton built in 1770 that played chess at an advanced level, but worked only because hidden away inside it was a human player working its gears, a literal man behind the curtain.
Several aspects of our current AI moment do deserve to remain on that skeptical ground. Some observers see consciousness in ChatGPT or sentience in Midjourney; they are deceived.
The subject of central fixation in the tech world right now is existential risk: AI that takes over the world and destroys the human species. It’s right to worry about this, but as of yet, it is still difficult to imagine a plausible path from the new class of AI to a Skynet scenario. Too much focus on this worry risks downplaying somewhat less apocalyptic but more likely scenarios of social disruption, like dramatic upheavals in jobs.
Finally, hype and alarmism about AI will inevitably be used to advance stupid, self-interested, or beside-the-point pet causes. We are already seeing a push to follow the Tech Backlash playbook and frame AI as a “misinformation problem,” a “disparate impact problem,” a “privacy problem.” All of these are limited frameworks for defining this class of AI, and will need to be resisted as such.
But on the whole, it may be time to abandon deep skepticism and seek higher ground. The titter in the air is back, and a great many people feel it now: Something about this moment really does feel different. For once, they may have good reason to feel this way. Here are a few reasons why... (MORE - details)
COVERED: It’s generalized, not specialized ..... It can understand natural language ..... It understands context ..... It is responsive ..... he way it gains its grasp of the world is flexible, implicit, and general ..... Its errors are not nonsense; they are alien
EXCERPT: . . . All of this is to say that skepticism about the new AI moment we are in rests on very solid ground. We have seen “this AI moment is real” moments over and over and over going back as far as the 1950s. In spirit, it traces back to the Mechanical Turk, a supposed automaton built in 1770 that played chess at an advanced level, but worked only because hidden away inside it was a human player working its gears, a literal man behind the curtain.
Several aspects of our current AI moment do deserve to remain on that skeptical ground. Some observers see consciousness in ChatGPT or sentience in Midjourney; they are deceived.
The subject of central fixation in the tech world right now is existential risk: AI that takes over the world and destroys the human species. It’s right to worry about this, but as of yet, it is still difficult to imagine a plausible path from the new class of AI to a Skynet scenario. Too much focus on this worry risks downplaying somewhat less apocalyptic but more likely scenarios of social disruption, like dramatic upheavals in jobs.
Finally, hype and alarmism about AI will inevitably be used to advance stupid, self-interested, or beside-the-point pet causes. We are already seeing a push to follow the Tech Backlash playbook and frame AI as a “misinformation problem,” a “disparate impact problem,” a “privacy problem.” All of these are limited frameworks for defining this class of AI, and will need to be resisted as such.
But on the whole, it may be time to abandon deep skepticism and seek higher ground. The titter in the air is back, and a great many people feel it now: Something about this moment really does feel different. For once, they may have good reason to feel this way. Here are a few reasons why... (MORE - details)
COVERED: It’s generalized, not specialized ..... It can understand natural language ..... It understands context ..... It is responsive ..... he way it gains its grasp of the world is flexible, implicit, and general ..... Its errors are not nonsense; they are alien