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Is there anyone prominent in the tech world who is pessimistic? I am tired of this relentless optimism regarding new technologies.
by lappet 3y ago
Is there anyone prominent in the tech world who is pessimistic? I am tired of this relentless optimism regarding new technologies.
- bamfly 3y agoWhen's the last time you saw a pessimistic car salesman? Same thing. Now, a mechanic....
- esafak 3y agoMusk is pessimist about AI.
- Footkerchief 3y agoTwo of the three so-called "Godfathers of AI," Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton, as well as Sam Altman and Bill Gates, have signed the Statement on AI Risk. https://www.safe.ai/statement-on-ai-risk#open-letter https://www.safe.ai/statement-on-ai-risk#open-letter
- cubefox 3y agoBoth Altman (OpenAI) and Hassabis (DeepMind) have said existential risk from AI is real.
- JohnFen 3y agoBut their actions say that they don't really believe it. Or that they're sociopathic. Pick your poison.
- kristiandupont 3y agoI don't think they do. You might disagree but I think Altman's stance is that this will happen no matter what, so it's better for "good guys" (for some definition of that word) to take the lead to minimize the threat.
- JohnFen 3y agoYes, I understand his stance. I think that stance is, at best, misguided. But given how the worldcoin thing shook out, it seems to me that he doesn't have a great deal of concern over how his actions impact others, and I question his ability to judge who are the "good guys" and "bad guys". I am trying to view him in the most positive possible light here.
- dragonwriter 3y agoA lot of the worst x-risk AI doomers are... selling AI (Altman at OpenAI being the most visible). X-risk, of course, is leveraged as a powerful argument for regulation which narrows the field to a small number of favored firms which have privileged mutual relations with government, with a difficult on-ramp for anyone else, and minimum public transparency.