posted in Technology

Return_of_Chippy@Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world
edited

AI staff 'genuinely frightened' for humanity's future, ex-Anthropic researcher tells BBC

I’m not an AI techie and I’m not well educated on LLMs/AI in general. The issue I’m having is the dichotomy between how people talk about it. I’ve heard completely opposite ends of the spectrum. From AI is quickly becoming advanced enough to threaten human society, all the way to its a glorified dictionary/search engine that can’t really do much of anything. I know Lemmy has a steep anti-AI slant. But, can someone talk about this in a way I can wrap my head around why the divide seems so big?

www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1kx0gyje9wo
Jacob Coxon, shown on the left, wearing dark frame glasses and a white collored shirt. On the right is BBC's Laura Kuenssberg in a black shirt sitting with her arms on a desk as she looks to the left of frame.www.bbc.comAI staff 'genuinely frightened' for humanity's future, ex-Anthropic researcher tells BBCIt comes as the AI firm's boss has called for the technology's development to be slowed down, citing "serious" risks.
artifex@artifex@piefed.zip

Replying to an earlier post

I’m not pro-AI by any stretch for a huge number of reasons, but in my day job as a technical product manager I have to use a number of AI-powered tools and workflows. Whereas 18 months ago they were a novelty that the bosses were enamored of, today they get real work done and speed up a number of key areas, mainly like fancy automation workflows (which have been around forever). The rate of improvement and capability for certain use cases has been very, very rapid. We do seem to be reaching a plateau though. The tools and models from 6 months ago are just about as good as the ones from today. And China’s models from today are better than the US’s models from 6 months ago, but at a fraction of the cost.

So when I hear people talking about the “end of the world”, I think a realistic case for that is that the AI tools that come out in the next few years will be good enough to do a fair amount of white-collar work, and we won’t have a plan in place to deal with all of the now out-of-work people that leads to. Whole classes of jobs in areas like data entry, telemarketing, and customer support will be almost entirely automated out of existence. New classes of jobs will be created, of course, but it’s hard to imagine them existing in sufficient numbers to make up for the losses. And this is just for LLM-workloads.

In other areas, other types of AI are already enabling robotic automation of factories and in the near-ish future might make self-driving truck fleets practical. This would be devastating because factory workers and truck drivers make up like 30% of the US workforce – and again, there are no signs of new classes of jobs that could absorb the out-of-work workers, and no plans for a social safety net or wealth distribution.

So I’m not worried about a rogue AI unleashing some bioweapon or launching a nuclear attack. I’m worried about a bunch of CEOs deploying barely-acceptable AI to displace millions of workers as soon as it is safe(ish) to do so.

Azazel@Azazel@lemmy.ml

Replying to @⁨artifex@piefed.zip⁩

This is exactly how I feel. I’m not even opposed to automation of these tasks on a fundamental level like some people might be. I just fear the transition won’t be thought out at all and will be devastating for the working class. The last time we had sudden automation of this scale was the Industrial Revolution which completely reshaped western society and was very bad for those who lived through it despite the eventual high modern standard of living it produced. I think this may end up going similarly.

en
MangoCats@MangoCats@feddit.it

Replying to @⁨Azazel@lemmy.ml⁩

the transition won’t be thought out at all and will be devastating for the working class.

The transition is rarely, if ever, thought out. Daring risk-takers go too far too fast and fail. Over-conservatives ignore the new and get left behind. There is a sweet spot in the middle, but exactly where in the middle isn’t planned, can’t really be planned - life and business and politics and the economy and the ecology and unforeseen signifiant contributors to the situation mean that the sweet spot is unpredictable - and as long as we continue living by the golden rule: “He who has the gold, makes the rules” it will continue to be unpredictable, otherwise Wall Street could be rigged and those with the inside information would get all the gains - and then the losers would quit playing, not even by choice, but because they’ve bankrupted and have nothing left to play with.

There are alternative approaches - investing in people instead of greed as the ultimate goal is one great alternative that some countries are pursuing more than others, but it’s hard to compete in a global economy where some players are only playing for maximization of financial returns when you are not.