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sheeshkebab | on: Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs
What’s with fascination with agi/superintelligence? It seems people working on it never had kids and just want to compensate for that. It’s a really horrible thing to try to “solve”.
mdp2021 | parent | next
> What’s with fascination with agi/superintelligence

We had relative strength, we needed more strength, we built cranes;

there was something like intelligence, we needed more intelligence, we sought to fill the need;

we were rightly fascinated with intelligence, we studied intelligence itself, we wanted to build it...

And then somebody built things that looked like intelligence, and very rightly some said "Oh, now we have to get to the Real Thing with urgency".

solenoid0937 | parent | next
I think death, and most extreme pain/suffering should be optional. Superintelligence, if done safely, lets us solve most of our problems.
sumeno | root | parent | next
The vast majority of pain and suffering in the world is already entirely optional, but as people we allow it to exist. How is another computer going to fix that?

It is far more likely that whoever controls a super intelligence uses it to gain more power and inflict far more suffering

refesgesg | root | parent
what an asinine opinion. who allows death?
a2ff6eeb0 | root | parent | next
I agree, we're doing a wonderful job of safely letting the leaders of various countries and companies, at their option, cause death, extreme pain, and suffering. Look at the innovation of AI companies in the police and military sectors.

I'm extremely bullish on our future ability to make autonomous death an option for anyone.

ethbr1 | root | parent | next
If humans could politically-economically deploy superintelligence safely, then we'd already have less extreme pain/suffering.

Unless there are countervailing forces, it will be deployed, capital will hoard the benefits, and everyone else will be told to fuck off.

I don't have faith in any of the AI labs to make hard financial decisions to deploy hypothetical future AGI in a way that's good for humanity as a whole.

There are too many incentives against, including extreme personal financial incentives for key AI lab stakeholders against.

And if we should take anything from tech history, it's that an exceedingly small number of people look fuck-you money in the face and say "Naw, I'd rather do what I believe in."

solenoid0937 | root | parent
Capital hoards benefits because resource scarcity and cost of production are a thing

Post scarcity societies would likely have entirely different dynamics

ethbr1 | root | parent | next
Transitioning to a post scarcity society requires broad, accessible dissemination of post scarcity production methods.

What was the first thing we did when we digitized media and therefore made it copyable at negligible per unit cost?

Spent a huge amount of time and money to artificially reimplement scarcity via DRM.

Scarcity-based capital interests (read: most) are not going to willingly give up their profit engines.

a2ff6eeb0 | root | parent
We're already physically running out of materials to cheaply build infrastructure. I'm not sure how solving the economy needing humans translates to humans having more things -- short of "turning off" the consumers to conserve resources, and taking the things that they may have otherwise consumed.
tomashubelbauer | root | parent | next
What is your position on middle of the road pain and suffering?
Rapzid | root | parent
There's an app for that.
sheeshkebab | root | parent | next
What? psychologists are for that (or drugs and alcohol).
solenoid0937 | root | parent
Neat. I didn't know psychologists could cure terminal cancer!
sheeshkebab | root | parent
The idea that agi would help us cure all the human deceases, esp house built into our generics or developed over millions of years gotta be the top indicator of our own stupidity.
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vasco | parent
I for one think that's it's been too long that human suffering is alone. Since the machines will take our jobs, they might as well suffer while they do it.

It's like the old adage: "If you make AGI you just want to watch computers cry"