This is incredibly bleak. It absolutely will require some difficult conversations about the reasons for, and meaning behind, things like higher education and work in general. I suppose one of the benefits of the Trump/Musk midair disassembly of government and civil society is that when it comes time to rebuild we will have a broader scope of possibilities when discussing a transformative restructuring of society in the future. That might just be my bad habit of optimism talking, though.
I just read an article in Wired (April 26, 2035): “Code of Misconduct: AI Models Can Learn to Conceal Information From Their Users.” If you can read it and still trust AI, the you are either in denial or stupid. There is no other way to look at it.
After watching that posthumous AI statement, I had to drop my phone to say WHAT. THE. FUCK. The video itself was creepy as hell. But not 10% as creepy as a judge - a judge!!! - knowingly changing a sentence because of it. Dear Lord.
Covered a lot of ground, and very well. Why must AI push into every aspect of our lives? Is it just greed or some techno dream that is really techno-feudalism? The bubble will break, none of this is sustainable, but the level of destruction is vast. It is the story of Midas - insatiable and unchecked greed.
This trend promises to go full circle in a matter of decades: people will be by then so uneducated (thanks to AI) that they will not be able to sustain the very systems that create AI (computers, servers, programs...). It will first degenerate until it is unusable, then it will die. All (natural) systems go in cycles. This artificial one makes the impression to have a really short one.
The Eloi in the movie "The Time Machine" (I've seen just the one from the 60ies) are beings that are very peaceful but also indifferent, very young, beautiful - and also in reality held like cattle by the Morlocks, who harvest them periodically (by having them conditioned to react in a certain way at hearing the sound of emergency sirens). So, yes, I agree, the comparison doesn't quite fit. The upper and middle class are the ones in control (so they can't be the Eloi). The only parallel being maybe, that they live completely unbothered and unaware by the true reality of things - the right wing turning slowly into Morlocks and eating them alive.
The comment by the university professor concerning illiterate graduates presages the future that was created by C. M. Kornbluth in "The Little Black Bag" (1950). It seems like a dystopia to us, embedded in the culture of the 20th century and early 21st century, but is it? Classic scholars bemoaned that students no longer memorized epic poetry. We use sophisticated machines with algorithms that we cannot recreate from scratch. Can we repair contemporary consumer goods, or fix bugs in software? Yet we can do extraordinary tasks with spreadsheets as well a host of specialty software packages that extend our capabilities.
The late Allan Bloom decried the state of US education in his book "The Closing of the American Mind" (1987). Did US education decline, or was it simply that what universities taught changed with the times?
Other than that, the 3 other AI dystopias seem genuinely worrying.
I hope AI puts everyone out of work. Then perhaps we'll question our current socioeconomic model.
Nah, who am I kidding. Free markets and capitalism are wonderful/horrible. The 1950s were wonderful/horrible. The future will be wonderful/horrible.
Futurists, dystopians, apologists, romantics - I could put you in a room filled with mirrors and not one of you would realize the root of our predicament.
Everything is as it should be. Kick and scream all you want, the human experiment on this planet will attain its wonderful/horrible outcome.
Yes it is bleak. Bleak and true. But there is hope. I am a Business School professor and director of Master programmes. We are these weeks running courses on AI, GenAI and "vibe coding". Ethically, I am against this. Practically, I have to prepare my graduates for the real world.
Note of hope: many of my students raise questions about the consequences that you signal here. Others specifically request information on the potential impacts on climate, social structures etc.
With respect, critical thinking, debate...we stay on the barricades and some will join us.
A good beginning on the Human part of the AI equation. Seriously, I did not expect the ‘correct’ personalized vision of AI entwined with flawed HUMANITY. As most powerful Science fiction, seems to be the “unintended consequences” of emotional impact on and through inanimate tools or extensions. Noting that the JUDGEMENT of Human “moral” applies to what we DO with our tools AND TO WHOM affects. (Contemporary discussion of guns in our culture, always begs the intervention of a human -guns don’t kill people!) same old, same old problem: HUMAN nature.
This is incredibly bleak. It absolutely will require some difficult conversations about the reasons for, and meaning behind, things like higher education and work in general. I suppose one of the benefits of the Trump/Musk midair disassembly of government and civil society is that when it comes time to rebuild we will have a broader scope of possibilities when discussing a transformative restructuring of society in the future. That might just be my bad habit of optimism talking, though.
I just read an article in Wired (April 26, 2035): “Code of Misconduct: AI Models Can Learn to Conceal Information From Their Users.” If you can read it and still trust AI, the you are either in denial or stupid. There is no other way to look at it.
About time Wired wrote more than just headlines from the future. We need full articles. 😅
After watching that posthumous AI statement, I had to drop my phone to say WHAT. THE. FUCK. The video itself was creepy as hell. But not 10% as creepy as a judge - a judge!!! - knowingly changing a sentence because of it. Dear Lord.
Covered a lot of ground, and very well. Why must AI push into every aspect of our lives? Is it just greed or some techno dream that is really techno-feudalism? The bubble will break, none of this is sustainable, but the level of destruction is vast. It is the story of Midas - insatiable and unchecked greed.
I feel like we need to have a family meeting, but for all of civilization, over that college cheating piece. Here is the NYMag article, unpaywalled https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/everyone-is-cheating-their-way-through-college/ar-AA1EjCRk .
LLMs are 3 things; theft, rape, and murder. Stealing IP, Raping innocence, and Killing jobs.
This trend promises to go full circle in a matter of decades: people will be by then so uneducated (thanks to AI) that they will not be able to sustain the very systems that create AI (computers, servers, programs...). It will first degenerate until it is unusable, then it will die. All (natural) systems go in cycles. This artificial one makes the impression to have a really short one.
“Those among the upper middle class that can still afford to go to college takes one step closer to becoming the Eloi. “
Leaving the rest of us to be Morlocks. Hmmm … didn’t the Morlocks kill and eat the Eloi? “Eat the rich” is an older idea than I thought.
The Eloi in the movie "The Time Machine" (I've seen just the one from the 60ies) are beings that are very peaceful but also indifferent, very young, beautiful - and also in reality held like cattle by the Morlocks, who harvest them periodically (by having them conditioned to react in a certain way at hearing the sound of emergency sirens). So, yes, I agree, the comparison doesn't quite fit. The upper and middle class are the ones in control (so they can't be the Eloi). The only parallel being maybe, that they live completely unbothered and unaware by the true reality of things - the right wing turning slowly into Morlocks and eating them alive.
The comment by the university professor concerning illiterate graduates presages the future that was created by C. M. Kornbluth in "The Little Black Bag" (1950). It seems like a dystopia to us, embedded in the culture of the 20th century and early 21st century, but is it? Classic scholars bemoaned that students no longer memorized epic poetry. We use sophisticated machines with algorithms that we cannot recreate from scratch. Can we repair contemporary consumer goods, or fix bugs in software? Yet we can do extraordinary tasks with spreadsheets as well a host of specialty software packages that extend our capabilities.
The late Allan Bloom decried the state of US education in his book "The Closing of the American Mind" (1987). Did US education decline, or was it simply that what universities taught changed with the times?
Other than that, the 3 other AI dystopias seem genuinely worrying.
I hope AI puts everyone out of work. Then perhaps we'll question our current socioeconomic model.
Nah, who am I kidding. Free markets and capitalism are wonderful/horrible. The 1950s were wonderful/horrible. The future will be wonderful/horrible.
Futurists, dystopians, apologists, romantics - I could put you in a room filled with mirrors and not one of you would realize the root of our predicament.
Everything is as it should be. Kick and scream all you want, the human experiment on this planet will attain its wonderful/horrible outcome.
Yes it is bleak. Bleak and true. But there is hope. I am a Business School professor and director of Master programmes. We are these weeks running courses on AI, GenAI and "vibe coding". Ethically, I am against this. Practically, I have to prepare my graduates for the real world.
Note of hope: many of my students raise questions about the consequences that you signal here. Others specifically request information on the potential impacts on climate, social structures etc.
With respect, critical thinking, debate...we stay on the barricades and some will join us.
A good beginning on the Human part of the AI equation. Seriously, I did not expect the ‘correct’ personalized vision of AI entwined with flawed HUMANITY. As most powerful Science fiction, seems to be the “unintended consequences” of emotional impact on and through inanimate tools or extensions. Noting that the JUDGEMENT of Human “moral” applies to what we DO with our tools AND TO WHOM affects. (Contemporary discussion of guns in our culture, always begs the intervention of a human -guns don’t kill people!) same old, same old problem: HUMAN nature.
LLMs can be great learning tools. Companies have been replacing humans with technology since technology was ever conceived.
Using LLMs to put words to the likeness of the deceased is indeed creepy.
Blanket rejection of anything is simply robbing one’s self of an opportunity to explore alternative arguments.