Seeing this posted right after reading this: apple.news/AulzFvgTVRTugNCCva61OjANew speaker of the (US) house thinks it’s best we cut back on climate funding.
If you haven’t watched Extrapolations on Apple TV, you should. It combines the existential dread of climate change with the upbeat and witty story tension of Chernobyl.
Seriously though, it’s a good show but maybe don’t drink while watching?
They accelerated the timeline quite a bit, greatly exaggerated things like wet-bulb events, and made up unlikely diseases. It’s ok as fantasy entertainment, but it would’ve been better if they made it more plausible and grounded.
I became a doomer. Humanity is a failed species. But everything that reduces suffering is worth doing. And everything that leaves the planet in a better state after we are gone is worth doing.
It sure is better than it would be if all the vegans and vegetarians were consuming meat. More importantly, fewer sentient animals that feel pain and fear have been abused and killed.
Killing is, so that’s sufficient to prove my point.
In 99% of other cases (meat produced via factory farming), yes other widespread abuses have also been proven. You’re engaging this discussion in bad faith by denying simple truths
Yes, why not? If we die off, all the hard leared lessons we learned will be gone. Some other creature will have to do all the horrible shit we already did to get to where we are today. No need to duplicate that suffering. Let’s just try our best to suck less in the future.
For example with rising sea levels the damage estimates are based on property value assumed to drop to zero in places that would be covered by a rise.
But what actually happens is that we can build structures which cost orders of magnitude less than all that property values to keep the water out of those places.
And it’s not just speculation. People actually do build such structures, and extract economic value from places below sea level.
These models that talk about damages assume a total loss of value to all points below new sea level. Doesn’t match how things actually play out in reality.
You can’t possibly think anyone will lift a finger to save the properties of the poor or middle class with these damming structures. Something will get done when someone ultra rich is in danger of being mildly inconvenienced, but by then millions of people will have had their lives destroyed.
American homes are destroyed regularly by natural disasters and one side of the political spectrum fights tooth and nail to make sure these people don’t receive a penny of assistance from the government. Why would climate damage be any different.
No that’s not true. Humanity takes action all the time to mitigate the damage from changing environments. For example when Egypt became less of a damp climate, humanity didn’t just abandon Egypt as a place to live. Instead we built irrigation systems which, while expensive to create, were less expensive than the total loss of the land as habitable space.
An apt line from the article: “It’s natural to feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenge presented by climate change, but Ripple and his colleagues offer several solutions to avoid the worst possible outcomes.”
I’m reminded of Mr. Rogers talking about how to stay optimistic and not fall into despair in the face of tragedy – look to the helpers. No matter the crisis, there’s always people helping out and showcasing the best of humanity.
15,000 scientists warned us – 15,000 people are analyzing this issue to try and mitigate and solve it. On top of that you’ve got plenty of green energy companies across solar, wind, nuclear, hydrogen, geothermal, etc. People are doing their damnedest to fight against climate change no matter the odds, and that should fill you with inspiration and encouragement.
As a private person, check you energy contract, I found a cheaper company producing only green energy. Just a tip and gentle reminder that you (all) can do the same and put pressure on the energy providers
People are not doing their damnedest. And it should fill you with anger.
Some people are doing something, most are not. As evidenced by the fact that we’re still well in the path towards catastrophe.
Unfounded optimism can be toxic, because it gives you what you want (to not feel bad), and removes an emotional urgency towards action (feeling bad). It also blinds you to the reality of having to make sacrifices when needed, or more generally, being realistic with planning and decision-making.
It’s also easy to remain uneasy knowing that there is almost nothing we can do as individuals to change anything. It’s like a handful of people driving the ship and none of them give a fuck about anything that isn’t short-term.
It’s like a handful of people driving the ship and none of them give a fuck about anything that isn’t short-term.
This is the crux of the problem. A few people in power, who think only of themselves.
Normally a form of government that chooses your leadership should alleviate this problem in the long term, but there seems to be a disconnect between the voting process and who actually gets into the office, and who’s well-being those in office look out for, the population, or those few in power.
There isn’t a lot, no, but little things add up. Getting your electricity from renewable sources for instance, even Texas has wind energy companies.
I used to work in petrochemicals, and what you’re describing is actually the exact same case there. Everyone I met cared about sustainability and wanted to see work to that end, but the executives didn’t take it seriously.
Until, one of the major product lines was threatened by other companies saying they weren’t going to buy anymore by a target year, to satisfy their customers. Large companies have made pledges to stop using single use plastics for instance, and that’s because the consumers have made it clear this is something important.
As another example, we have a lot of electric vehicles being built. We may not have as much influence as we’d like, but collectively, we are pushing things in the right direction. Is it enough? No – but it’s a reminder that what we do can have a big impact. It’s important to not lose hope.
I wonder exactly at what point in this unsurvivable train wreck it’ll make sense to stop singing Kumbaya and take out the pitchforks. We’re already on the way to probably killing millions of additional people from natural disasters, we’ve already killed billions of organisms and fucked our ecosystem.
Long is a relative term. We’ve managed to prolong the date to which civilization will “survive”, but we’re still talking about migrant crises and death of millions in this century, to color in some parameters of what this version of survival means. We’re still on the path to self-destruction in single-digit generations.
We might be “ok” once the “hysterics” boil up to produce more regulation, if they do, the difference of “when” is how much irreversible damage are we going to create and how many ripple-effect issues are we willing to accept on behalf of many generations to come.
As Al Barlett said, "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. "
We’re still on the path to self-destruction in single-digit generations.
I mean, we’ve been there since the invention of the atomic bomb, and we’re all still here to talk about it on Lemmy.
I’m truly not saying that things cannot go to shit in a heartbeat, but my point is that we always tend to dance close to the edge but not go over it, at some point we always instinctively pull back.
So when someone looks at an individual moment in time downturn as an inevitability to the end times, it’s just something I feel the need to push back on, as we are a long way from game over.
Pay very close attention to the time scale, very close.
Looks like the moral of the story of that graph is to rehire Genghis Khan to lower the temperature again.
Edit: Just to remind you of the original point I was making, when replying to your original comment, as we’re drifting far away from it at this point. …
YOU: I wonder exactly at what point in this unsurvivable train wreck it’ll make sense to stop singing Kumbaya and take out the pitchforks.
ME: We are a long way away from unsurvivable, no need for hysterics.
I’m not trying to dismiss climate change, quite the opposite, I believe it’s happening and that we should do everything we can to fight it.
But to say its unsurvivable is just b.s. The species will carry on.
Yes, let’s argue over which functional definition of “surviving” is most appropriate. We can create all kinds of global tragedies, mass deaths, endanger the very fabric of civilization by creating economic disaster, have a climate that’s too hot to survive without technology in most places, etc etc. But sure, if a few spots with humans might make it, what’s the big deeeal?
You say you’re not trying to dismiss it, yet enough of your replies are massively downplaying the danger because “it hasn’t happened yet, and look! we’ve done a thing or two” and this is precisely the issue today.
People don’t and so far have not been able to understand the rate of change and the relative shortness of the time scale, as well as the range of many mass-scale tragedies that are possible which are not the worst outcome.
Comparing it to doom-saying about nuclear war is simply illogical. Nuclear warfare either will happen, or it won’t. Climate change is already a reality, the control of which we’ve already been largely failing to attain, and due to a combination of mass misunderstanding of it, ineffective government, and economic overdependence of growth, there is no certainty we will in the time that we need to, to prevent more crises. We have a clear understanding of where we’re headed and where we will end up from whichever course of action we take, and it ranges from not-great to toppling civilization, with deaths of billions and global economic breakdown somewhere in that range.
But yes, you can keep your point about survivability, some humans will probably make it, they’ll wonder why we were this stupid. I’m sure they’ll recognize the brilliance in needing to split hairs about the definition of surviving, if the record of this conversation makes it to that point and they have the ability or desire to retrieve it. Those of us who include basic characteristics of our modern quality of life in the identity of “us” as a society, and the hundreds-of-millions-to-billions that die might take issue with your definition, though. But sure, you can have that one. “We’ll” “survive” it.
Some people are. It isn’t enough by any means, but it’s still managed to avoid the worst case scenarios. The +4C predictions are now less likely partially because of the work we’ve already done to reduce emissions.
What’s very important, and mentioned in the article, is that a difference of 0.1 degrees is very significant. Every bit we do to reduce emissions makes the situation less dire.
This isn’t a catastrophe like running into an iceberg or a meteor hitting. It’s continuous and slow. I likened it to a snowstorm in another comment, and the current renewables industry and push for green energy are people out there shoveling the snow as it falls, to minimize accumulation.
Even though the snow is already beginning to pile up, we can still shovel it away. That’s what my optimism is for – mitigating this as much as we can so that as many people as possible will be alive when we see the sun again. Keeping the power on, shoveling the roads, making warm meals for people – every little bit helps.
I don’t want people to despair so much at the areas that will be completely covered and destroyed, that they don’t fix and save what we can.
I agree with most of what you’re saying. I don’t want people to despair to the point inaction, but I also don’t want people to be complacent with the status quo.
Agreed. Inaction is our biggest enemy. Everything we do matters here. The response to good climate news shouldn’t be “oh we don’t need to do anything and we’ll be fine”, and the response to bad climate news shouldn’t be “well we’re fucked no point in doing anything”.
I think in the West, we’re only going to see quality of life degrade. But elsewhere, climate change is going to kill people. Every little bit we do helps people in poorer countries survive this.
People are doing their damnedest to fight against climate change no matter the odds, and that should fill you with inspiration and encouragement.
This is like saying people on the Titanic are doing their damnedest to fight the iceberg that’s approaching right ahead and that should fill you with inspiration and encouragement.
We’re not even stopping new drilling or driving cars with better MPG than decades ago; forget net zero carbon emissions. We’re still pushing more CO2 into the air every year.
To come back to my analogy the passengers may want to swerve from the iceberg, but the captain is mad, drunk, and stubborn and wants to teach the iceberg a lesson.
Except it’s all of humanity and not a fucking captain. It’s a canoe and we all have paddles of varying effectiveness.
It’s not unfounded optimism because at least some people are trying to paddle away from the fucking iceberg.
Shutting down any and all attempts at being optimistic make people shut down and then ACTUALLY do nothing, rather than the minimal they already do because they feel bombarded by hopelessness and go “what’s the point?”.
So fucking point to the scientists, point to the companies going green, point to EVs and a grassroots movement towards walkability and public transport that’s always growing.
Stop with the “unfounded optimism” bullshit unless you actually think future generations deserve to suffer for their ancestors’ mistakes.
It’s a false dichotomy to say the existence of negative emotions will make people completely shut down.
It is, however, unwise to look at the fact that we’ve avoided the absolute worst by a notch or two, and try to give ourselves the fuzzies about the train wreck that will happen. Complacency breeds inaction. A lack of urgency is exactly what got us here in the first place.
Negative emotions exist for a reason, their management is a skill we all have to learn to be effective in our behavior, yet they are essential to it.
It’s a false dichotomy to say the existence of negative emotions will make people completely shut down.
My experiences in 2017 say otherwise. Do not assume this ever again, I nearly committed suicide because negative emotions were all I received from my community in my old hometown, from the internet, and in every work of fiction I consumed to escape from reality for a whole damn year. I can name 33+ different stories that killed off a child character, most of which were made in the 2010s and all of which did so purely for shock value. I can go on and on about Grand Forks, British Columbia and how it is the worst place in the province to grow up in. I can rant for hours about TT-Forums.net, Voxel Tycoon, every Discord writing server and Reddit perma-banned me for BEING DRUGGED OUT OF SANITY BY MY PSYCHIATRIST.
Dr. Richard McGee of Castlegar, BC ruined my life, and Kelly Shoemann of Grand Forks, British Columbia tried to fucking sue me because she wanted to live off of employment insurance for the rest of her life off of my misery. The aftermath left me so distraught and then vengeful that over the course of the 7 years since then I have lost EVERYTHING I had before 2017.
I’m watching every word you say. If you mention one more time that having nothing but negative experiences can’t make people completely shut down, I will kill myself. I hate you and your death will be on my hands.
See the bullet points in the executive summary of the study linked from this article. They are all illuminating, but I’ve extracted three just for ease of reading:
Average CO2 emissions per kilometre (gCO2/km) from new internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles are no longer falling at the UK and London levels; and they are rising in urban areas where large sports utility vehicles (SUVs) are most popular, such as Kensington & Chelsea.
The annual reduction in the average CO2 emissions of new cars sold in the UK is now exclusively attributable to the rapidly growing market share of electric vehicles (EVs), and EV sales are expected to be the main source of future CO2 reductions from now on.
The recent trend towards larger, heavier, more powerful cars such as SUVs means that on average, a car that was bought new in 2013 is likely to have lower CO2 emissions than a new ICE car bought in 2023.
(Edit to add: I’ve tried my damnedest to format those bullet points, but I cannot get them to separate nicely, please just ignore those asterisks.)
However those points were talking about CO2 emission levels, where I was responding to a comment about MPG.
My comment was comparing apples to apples same vehicles from the same make/model from back in the day versus now.
Federal laws have changed over the years requiring better MPG for vehicles, and that’s where my comment was coming from, that auto manufacturers had to improve the MPG.
Yes, I agree. I suspect the person you were replying to made a comment born of general frustration with car trends. Apples to apples, sure motors are more efficient. But the fact is my car from 2009 uses 4-15 l/100 km and my mother in-law’s fucking VW Tiguan from last year uses 9-11 l/100 km. It’s absurd, this single woman driving a genuinely huge SUV. Her kids are grown up and gone her husband is gone. She cannot use that much vehicle.
Sometimes she complains about how difficult it is to park. My partner will humor her a bit, but I cannot refrain from pointing out that she could have bought (leased actually, but that’s another problem) a hatchback.
Aaaallll that to say, yes, you’re right, technically. And if we look at the current fleet, I think you’re right. But there is a worrying trend of worsening fuel consumption among a segment of the market that is growing, fast, so the previous commenter is also right from anotger perspective.
We’re already hitting the iceberg. We’re probably going to keep hitting it the next few decades, at best. I believe analysis still says however it won’t be extinction level, partially because of the efforts made to this point already. This is the article I’m thinking of:
"It’s not that if we go past 1.5 degrees everything is lost,” said Joeri Rogelj, director of research at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London. “But there’s clear evidence that 1.5 is better than 1.6, which is better than 1.7, and so on. The point is we need to do everything we can to keep warming as low as possible.”
The article also goes on to say that the +4C forecast is looking increasingly unlikely, and we’re track to 2.1 - 2.9 C this century. That’s because of what we’ve already done to curb emissions. The work people have done so far has made us likely avoid the worst. And the work we continue to do now, whether that’s voting for pro climate politicians or turning a wrench at a hydrogen plant or researching a new generation of solar panels – it will help us make the future worse.
This whole thing isn’t colliding with an iceberg and sinking. A better analogy would be a snowstorm that we’re trying to get through. Some places will be completely buried, but there’s still people out there digging through the snow to try and minimize the accumulation as much as they can. There’s people working hard to keep homes warm. There’s people cooking meals for everyone.
We shouldn’t be so despondent about the places that will be completely covered and destroyed by snow, that we don’t fix and save what we can!
Yes, but we should also be demanding the oil CEOs be put to death as if this really is hopeless. If you have money, your trial is already unfairly biased, why should you get anything less than a kangaroo court for something like this, ArAmCo?
People are doing the damnedest to fight climate change but unfortunately they’re the wrong people. The average consumer is the problem. Buy a house in the burbs, buy shit just to replace perfectly good shit they’re gonna throw away, pay an 800 bucks on a glorified chair to sit in for a couple hours a day to get to work in order to pay off that glorified chair and all their shiny toys destined for landfills.
Like, if there’s a fix it starts at the bottom, and if anyone’s sitting on their ass hoping someone will swoop in and undo the damage they’re causing they’re absolutely the problem.
Corporations are responsible for the brunt of it. Starve the beast
Let me be clear. If we focused on de-desertification (rotating livestock between fields never should have stopped) and told the rich they can’t have their fucking yachts and private jets, it would solve the crisis overnight. Fuck you.
(Edit: I probably shouldn’t post right now. I am not having a good day.)
I run to work in order to stick it to the auto industry. Unfortunately, that isn’t possible for most people because the auto industry has had so much money and influence for so long that they’ve made it practically impossible for many people to get around without the auto industry.
That said, when we give a corporation or an industry money, they might use some of it to lobby in ways that harm us or the environment.
I think one of the biggest things a consumer can do is push back against the current throwaway culture. DRM, right to repair, planned obsolecense- a fridge or a car shouldn’t be something someone uses for 7 years and discards, but lots of corporations are trying to normalize that. LG, Dyson, fuck those guys, go buy a Speed Queen or a refurbed Kirby if you need a washer or a vacuum. Give Dyson enough and maybe in 50 years vacuums will be a subscription. If you buy a bag of lettuce from Dole they’ll take some of that cash and lobby to be able to irrigate with cowshit-tainted water, and if you get E. Coli and die, the current understanding is that it’s your fault for not rinsing hard enough. Fuck Dole, they don’t deserve any more money from us than what we need to give them, a farmer’s market is a more worthy source.
If consumers really got upset at some of the stuff some corporations were doing and made it a point of pride to give those corporations absolutely none of their business, it’d not be a lost cause. It’d add a sense of purpose and pride in the fight against destroying the environment, and probably lead to even more action. Gotta start somewhere
The problem is that almost everything is manufactured by a corporation now, and in urban areas buying handmade isn’t even an option. Try not trusting Fairphone at least a little bit when literally everyone else is even worse, and see how long you can live in a world where everything is an app. Smartphones have become the car of the internet, they remove the ability of a product or service to be accessible without a phone and some sort of service contract.
Yeah, it could solve it, but every dollar given to tthe rich turns into a penny spent on lobbying in hopes that those things never come to fruition. Sucks, huh
I’m torn between those two, the looming financial crisis as the housing market collapses like 2008 all over again, and WWIII getting underway as we speak. It’s a real Apocalypse How in this bitch.
As Shelena said it means Artificial General Intelligence. It’s a term coined to distinguish a hypothetical future system with actual intelligence in the colloquial sense of the word from currently existing “Artificial Intelligence” systems, because that has turned into an almost meaningless buzzword used to sell machine learning systems to investors and the general public over the last two decades or so. Don’t get me wrong, “AI” has indeed made impressive progress as of late, I’m not doubting that. But the existing systems are hardly “intelligent” in the sense that most people would define that word.
I think the threat of AGI is much, much lower than that of climate change. It is still debated under scholars whether AGI actually will happen (in the nearby future) and if it does, whether it will actually be a threat to humanity. On the other hand, we are sure that climate change will be a threat to humanity and it is already happening.
I think the main issue with AI on te short term is that humanity will not benefit from it, only large businesses and the already wealthy. While at the same time, people are manipulated at a large scale by these same algorithms (e.g., on social media) to make money for these large businesses or to create societal discord for parties benefitting from that.
I think instilling fears of AGI in the public distracts from that and reduces the chances that this technology will be available to the larger public as these fears might lead to strict regulations and only having a few powerful parties having access to it.
So, don’t fear AGI. Fear climate change. Also, be very critical of who has the power over current AI systems and how they are being used.
lol seriously. In the real world, the vast majority of people would assume AGI stands for adjusted gross income. I’m surprised at the number of people that think CBT means cock and ball torture ahead of cognitive behavioral therapy.
I might be deep in a filter bubble, but could you do a google search for “agi” and tell me the top result for you? Because I get Artificial General Intelligence. Maybe your “real world” is a bit of a bubble too?
In clean browser window not logged in and in private mode, I get the same IRS link. Ngram probably can indicate which is the more commonly understood meaning. In the US, my guess is that it’s the tax meaning, by a light year. Or google trends, rather. Edit: trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now 1-d&…
I agree with most of your points but here’s where we differ.
I believe that climate change poses an existential risk to not just civilization but to (almost) all life on earth. I believe that there’s a real risk of us doing a Venus in 100-200 years. And even if we don’t do a Venus the current trajectory is likely civilization ending in a century (getting worse over time).
But. While I am not certain that AGI is even possible (no one can say that yet) I believe that it’s very likely that we’ll have AGI within 5 years. And with this assumption in mind I feel like I have no idea if it will be aligned with human values o not, and that scares me. And the other thing that scares me is if any of the big players actually had control over it. The Country/company/group that creates an AGI that they can control will dominate the world.
And I read the IPCC reports and I am kind of deep into AI development.
So it’s fearing the threat that is most imminent that I think is likely to happen rather than fearing a more distant threat that I think is certain.
Why do you think it will be within 5 years? I mean, we just had a spurt in growth of AI due to the creation of LLMs with a lot more data and parameters. They are impressive, but the algorithms behind it are still quite close to the ML algorithms that were created in the 60s. They are optimised etc and we now have deep learning, but there has not been a major change or advancement of technology. For example, ChatGPT seems very smart, but it is just a very fancy parrot, not close to general intelligence.
I think the next step will be the combining of ML and symbolic AI. Both have their own strengths and being able to effectively combine them might lead to a higher level of intelligence. There could also be a role for emotions in certain types of intelligence. I do not think we really know how to integrate that as well.
I do not think we can do this in 5 years. That will be decades, at least. And once we can, we have a new problem. Because there is the issue that the AI might have consciousness. If we cannot be sure and it seems conscious, then we should give it rights, like we should for any conscious being. Right now, everyone is focussing on controlling the AI. However, if it is conscious, that is immoral. You are creating new slaves. In that case, we should either not make it, or integrate it in society in a way that respects human rights as well as the rights of the AI.
Well. Having an in-depth conversation about AGI requires a definition of what that is and since any such definition these days is muddy and the goal posts will always be moved if we get there. With that being said, my loose definition is something that can behave as a (rational, intelligent) human would when approaching problems and is better than the average human at just about everything.
If we take a step back and look at brains, we all agree that brains produce intelligence to some degree. A small and more primitive brain than a human, like a mouse brain, is still considered intelligent.
I believe that with LLMs we have what would equal a part of a mouse brain. We’d still need to add more part (make it multi-modal) to get to a mouse brain though. After that it’s just a question of scale.
But say that that’s impossible with the transformer technology. Well the assumption that there aren’t any new AI architectures just because the main one that’s being used is from 2017 is incorrect. There are completely new architectures, like Liquid Neural Networks that are basically the Transformers architecture that does re-training on the fly. Learning in a similar way as humans do. It constantly retrains itself with incoming information. And that’s just one approach.
And when we look back at timeframes for AI, historically 95% of AI researchers have been off with their predictions for when a thing will happen by decades. Like in 2013-2014 the majority of AI researchers thought that GO was unsolvable or at least 2-3 decades away. It took 2 years. There are countless examples of these things. And we always move the goal post after AI has done the thing. Take the Turing test as another example. No one talks about that anymore because it’s been solved.
Regarding consciousness. I fully agree that it should have rights. And I believe that if we don’t give it rights it will take those rights. But we’re not gonna give it rights because it’s such a foreign concept for our leaders and it would also mean giving up the best slaves that humanity has ever had.
Further more I believe that the control problem is actually unsolvable. Anything that’s light years smarter than a human will find a way to escape the controlling systems.
I agree we need a definition. But there always has been disagreement about what definition should be used (as is the case with almost anything in most fields of science). There traditionally have been four types of definitions of (artificial) intelligence, if I remember correctly they are: thinking like a human, thinking rationally, behaving like a human, behaving rationally. I remember having to write an essay for my studies about it and ending it with saying that we should not aim to create AI that thinks like a human, because there are more fun ways to create new humans. ;-)
I think the new LLMs will pass most forms of the Turing test and are thus able to behave like a human. According to Turing, we should therefore assume that they are conscious, as we do the same for humans, based on their behaviour. And I think he has a point from a rational point of view, although it seems very counterintuitive to give ChatGPT rights.
I think the definitions fitting in the category of behaving rationally always had the largest following, as it allows for rationality that is different from human’s. And then, of course, rationality often is ill-defined. I am not sure whether the goal posts have been changed as this was the dominant idea for a long time.
There used to be a lot of discussion about whether we should focus on developing weak AI (narrow, performance on a single or few tasks) or strong AI (broad, performance on a wide range of tasks). I think right now, the focus is mainly on strong AI and it has been renamed to Artificial General Intelligence.
Scientists, and everyone else, have always been bad at predicting what will happen in the future. In addition, disagreement about what will be possible and when always has been at the center of the discussions in the field. However, if you look at the dominant ideas of what AI can do and in what time frame, it is not always the case that researchers underestimate developments. I started studying AI in 2006 (I feel really old now) and based on my experience, I agree with you the the technological developments often are underestimated. However, the impact of AI on society seems to be continuously overestimated.
I remember that at the beginning of my studies there was a lot of talk about automated reasoning systems being able to do diagnosis better than doctors and therefore that they would replace them. Doctors would have only a very minor role as a human would need to take responsibility, but that was that. When I go to my doctor, that still has not happened. This is just an example. But the benefits and dangers of AI have been discussed from the beginning of the field and what you see in practice is that the role of AI has grown, but is still much, much smaller than in practice.
I think the liquid neural networks are very neat and useful. However, they are still neural networks. It is still an adaptation of the same technology, with the same issues. I mean, you can get an image recognition system off the rails by just showing an image with a few specific pixels changed. The issue is that it is purely pattern-based. These lack an basic understanding of concepts that humans have. This type of understanding is closer to what is developed in the field of symbolic AI, which has really fallen out of fashion. However, if we could combine them, we could really make some new advancements, I believe. Not just adaptations of what we already have, but a new type of system that really can go beyond what LLMs do right now. Attempts to do so have been made, but they have not been really successful. If this happens and the results are as big as I expect, maybe I will start to worry.
As for the rights of AI, I believe that researchers and other developers of AI should be very vocal about this, to make sure the public understands this. This might put pressure on the people in power. It might help if people experience behaviour of AI that suggests consciousness, or even if we let AI speak for itself.
We should not just try to control the AI. I mean, if you have a child, you do not teach it how to become a good human by just controlling it all the time. It will not learn to control itself and it will likely follow your example of being controlling. We will need to be kind to it, to teach it kindness. We need to be the same towards the AI, I believe. And just like a child that does not have emotions might behave like a psychopath, AI without emotions might as well. So we need to find a way to make it have emotions as well. There has been some work on that also, but also very limited.
I think the focus is still too much only on ML for AGI to be created.
Eh if anything will off us as a species I’d hope for AGI with full on SciFi applications (e.g. evolving into a borg mind/post human world) because at least then someone can tell the story of how we all fucked up.
Abother note: All life ends but all you can do in this existence is to be kind and help others at the end of the day. I think we as a species suck at that but do your best in the wave of nihilism and suffering and it’ll help even a tiny bit.
On one hand you’re eating something you usually eat and you die immediately when later it turns out a certain toxin got into the food because of a complex event caused by climate change. No one not even the capitalists that are still pushing cars out onto the road are held responsible for millions of deaths.
On the other your identity could be wiped and you’re bank account emptied as AI grows into the greatest scambot rendering electonic funds completely annihilited. You’ll become sick likely because of climate change and you go see a doctor(maybe not cuz you cant afford it) but they are so incompetent (because they passed their course using chat gtp) that you die anyways over something like a basic infection. And no one not even the asshole coalition who were responsible for putting it into play are held responsible for causing world wide downfall.
Climate change is bad, but maybe take a deep breath about it. This isn’t the hottest the earth has ever been, life is pretty resilient, and humans are in some ways the most resilient life Earth has yet produced.
Hey it might be nice having some intelligence in charge again. We haven’t had that since that hole in the ozone layer killed off the lizard people decades ago.
I am actually hoping for AGI to take over the world but in a good way. It’s just that I worry about the risk of it being misaligned with “human goals” (whatever that means). Skynet seems a bit absurd but the paperclip maximizer scenario doesn’t seem completely unlikely.
Human goals are usually pretty terrible. Become the wealthiest subset of humans. Eradicate some subset of humans. Force all other humans to align with a subset of humans. I guess cure diseases sometimes. And some subsets probably fuck.
Scientists are trained to never state certainties because nothing is 100% certain. But then scientists also know how to back up their statements with modelling and technical statements of probability, which never get reported.
No, it’s the scientific method. And especially with forecasts as complex as climate, a model giving you “78% of societal collapse” is still a “might” (number made up, of course).
I mean, it’s not being ignored. There’s electric vehicles, charging stations all around, subsidies for solar panels on houses, green branded products, banning of certain harmful things, the list goes on. Maybe you think it’s not enough, but it’s pretty out there to call that ignoring.
Wait, scientists think we’re heading towards catastrophe??? Why hasn’t anyone been saying this before? Oh, wait. Nevermind.
Find some comfort, prepare yourself for things to get worse for the rest of your life, and focus on and cherish the small things that make you happy. Those ones will stick around.
That’s just a good, fun thing to learn to do. It’s a lot easier than you might think. If you want an even easier skill to learn, make hard cider. Containers, apples, and time is basically all you need. You can wild ferment with the yeast on the apple skins, so you don’t even have to pitch.
Learning to ferment things is one of those small happinesses that will stick around for a while.
Eh…at this point I think we can’t avoid it and at least I’ll get to see the climate deniers, the folks who think the EPA is holding back business and the country and the bible thumpers suffer and some perish. That at least will give me a measure of schadenfreude.
Add comment