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I'm not saying this situation is different from all of the other technological paradigm shifts in history. But what concerns me is that authors of articles suc

I'm not saying this situation is different from all of the other technological paradigm shifts in history. But what concerns me is that authors of articles such as this feel no need to differentiate themselves from other anti-technology arguments in history.

alcomatt 6d ago
I think it is very much different. Previous revolutions allowed us to fall back from manual labour to more mental driven work. Now even this is not going to be an option. Soon we're going to be reduced to be useful for spare parts only.
- serbuvlad 6d ago
  This is only the case for the Industrial Revolution. There have been many other thinking technologies and they ALL have been attacked in exactly the same way. * Socrates attacked the invention of writing, arguing it would make people intellectually lazy. * Abbot Johannes Trithemius argues in "In Praise of Scribes" in the 15th century that the Gutenberg machine would make people intellectually lazy. * Lots of people in the 1960s attacked punch card computers, and automation in general (!), on the basis that it would make people intellectually lazy. * Nicholas Carr attacks Google in a famous article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", on the basis that it would make people intellectually lazy. And so on and so on and so on. "That which has been is what will be, And there is nothing new under the sun." It is because of this history that any argument such as the author makes, arguing that AI would make people intellectually lazy, must start already from the lamentation of the downfall of human intelligence from the days of Socrates, or must explain why this is different. It is obviously not different. There are three mental skills being offloaded onto AI: 1. Domain-specific skills 2. General intelligence (g) 3. Recall Of these three, the danger with 1 is offloading them too early, before the AI is "good enough" to be better than human experts. This is a genuine concern and we should do things carefully. However, if the AI is good enough, there is no danger here. Recall is the mental skill that all of these innovations have "hurt", but it can simply be trained explicitly and synthetically. We will certainly have to structure our societies more and more in the future to synthetically exercising recall (like we're now synthetically exercising our muscles), but if we do this, offloading recall at work is not a big issue. As for general intelligence, this is the most harmless to offload, because, as far as I know from the literature, it cannot really be trained, and it does not really degrade either.
  - alcomatt 6d ago
    "If AI is good enough there is no danger" ?? Who's going to be validating the AI expertise after the experts are gone? Another AI? This is a downward spiral into oblivion and worst case, obsolescence. The way the transformers work, getting to the point 1 will probably never be possible - more likely that the capital will just say it is good-enough "in the name of profits" and legislate to protect AI companies against any litigation from AI made mistakes. To a certain extent it is happening already - and all the IP and Copyright theft for model training has been brushed aside already. Yes there are few odd lawsuits here and there but they will be inconsequential and soon forgotten. Recall is already being massively affected. I see it in our teams at work and I am also affected myself to a point. I very much doubt there will be a massive restructure of societies to allow us to work our brains out - mental gyms. They do exist now, in various chess clubs and are not that popular - that this will become a norm is a wishful thinking, and anyway, we will be too busy fighting one another for the last few remaining jobs. General Intelligence without Recall and those hard acquired Domain-specific skills means nothing really - just our bioware defaults.
    - serbuvlad 6d ago
      1. I don't know, Transformers seem to be pretty good at those Domain specific skills. 2. I'm sure mental gyms will become common, although I'm not sure if chess is a very good mental gym. It may take a hundred years or so, though.
- hackeridiot12 6d ago
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moolcool 6d ago
To be fair, many of the old anti-technology arguments were correct. We lived with the consequences, but life also went on.
- vouwfietsman 6d ago
  Depends on what you mean by correct. Do you think the world would be better if those anti-technology people succeeded and the technologies did not come to be? A world without steam engines, cars, computers, printing presses.
  - happytoexplain 6d ago
    Possibly for some things and possibly not for others. It's hard to say. The upsides and downsides are very apples-and-oranges. The point isn't that the world would be objectively better in every case, but rather that the arguments of "anti-technology people" are frequently rational (and often don't even necessitate an elimination of the technology in question), and using their name as a cudgel as if they were cavemen is a low-quality rhetorical trope haunting all conversation about writing that is critical of AI. It's also a distraction. If the topic is AI, then it's better to simply talk about the ups and downs of AI than the ups and downs of e.g. cars.
    - vouwfietsman 6d ago
      Indeed it is, so it would be bad to just "resist ai"
  - moolcool 6d ago
    Predictions and prescriptions are different things. E.g. they said that recorded music would cause fewer people to sing and perform in their own homes. This happened, but we're all largely just fine with it.
happytoexplain 6d ago
Why would they need to differentiate? You're implying those arguments were wrong? The argument usually isn't "I believe X will not happen," it's usually either "I believe X should not happen" or "I believe we should manage how X happens".
Planktonne 6d ago
> feel no need to differentiate themselves from other anti-technology arguments Why should they? Other "anti-tech" arguments include - Concern about global warming/pollution - Resistance to nuclear/chemical warfare It's not just, or even primarily, that anti-tech arguments are the equivalent of 'cameras will steal souls'.

alcomatt 6d ago

I think it is very much different. Previous revolutions allowed us to fall back from manual labour to more mental driven work. Now even this is not going to be an option. Soon we're going to be reduced to be useful for spare parts only.

serbuvlad 6d ago
This is only the case for the Industrial Revolution. There have been many other thinking technologies and they ALL have been attacked in exactly the same way. * Socrates attacked the invention of writing, arguing it would make people intellectually lazy. * Abbot Johannes Trithemius argues in "In Praise of Scribes" in the 15th century that the Gutenberg machine would make people intellectually lazy. * Lots of people in the 1960s attacked punch card computers, and automation in general (!), on the basis that it would make people intellectually lazy. * Nicholas Carr attacks Google in a famous article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", on the basis that it would make people intellectually lazy. And so on and so on and so on. "That which has been is what will be, And there is nothing new under the sun." It is because of this history that any argument such as the author makes, arguing that AI would make people intellectually lazy, must start already from the lamentation of the downfall of human intelligence from the days of Socrates, or must explain why this is different. It is obviously not different. There are three mental skills being offloaded onto AI: 1. Domain-specific skills 2. General intelligence (g) 3. Recall Of these three, the danger with 1 is offloading them too early, before the AI is "good enough" to be better than human experts. This is a genuine concern and we should do things carefully. However, if the AI is good enough, there is no danger here. Recall is the mental skill that all of these innovations have "hurt", but it can simply be trained explicitly and synthetically. We will certainly have to structure our societies more and more in the future to synthetically exercising recall (like we're now synthetically exercising our muscles), but if we do this, offloading recall at work is not a big issue. As for general intelligence, this is the most harmless to offload, because, as far as I know from the literature, it cannot really be trained, and it does not really degrade either.
- alcomatt 6d ago
  "If AI is good enough there is no danger" ?? Who's going to be validating the AI expertise after the experts are gone? Another AI? This is a downward spiral into oblivion and worst case, obsolescence. The way the transformers work, getting to the point 1 will probably never be possible - more likely that the capital will just say it is good-enough "in the name of profits" and legislate to protect AI companies against any litigation from AI made mistakes. To a certain extent it is happening already - and all the IP and Copyright theft for model training has been brushed aside already. Yes there are few odd lawsuits here and there but they will be inconsequential and soon forgotten. Recall is already being massively affected. I see it in our teams at work and I am also affected myself to a point. I very much doubt there will be a massive restructure of societies to allow us to work our brains out - mental gyms. They do exist now, in various chess clubs and are not that popular - that this will become a norm is a wishful thinking, and anyway, we will be too busy fighting one another for the last few remaining jobs. General Intelligence without Recall and those hard acquired Domain-specific skills means nothing really - just our bioware defaults.
  - serbuvlad 6d ago
    1. I don't know, Transformers seem to be pretty good at those Domain specific skills. 2. I'm sure mental gyms will become common, although I'm not sure if chess is a very good mental gym. It may take a hundred years or so, though.
hackeridiot12 6d ago
[dead]

moolcool 6d ago

To be fair, many of the old anti-technology arguments were correct. We lived with the consequences, but life also went on.

vouwfietsman 6d ago
Depends on what you mean by correct. Do you think the world would be better if those anti-technology people succeeded and the technologies did not come to be? A world without steam engines, cars, computers, printing presses.
- happytoexplain 6d ago
  Possibly for some things and possibly not for others. It's hard to say. The upsides and downsides are very apples-and-oranges. The point isn't that the world would be objectively better in every case, but rather that the arguments of "anti-technology people" are frequently rational (and often don't even necessitate an elimination of the technology in question), and using their name as a cudgel as if they were cavemen is a low-quality rhetorical trope haunting all conversation about writing that is critical of AI. It's also a distraction. If the topic is AI, then it's better to simply talk about the ups and downs of AI than the ups and downs of e.g. cars.
  - vouwfietsman 6d ago
    Indeed it is, so it would be bad to just "resist ai"
- moolcool 6d ago
  Predictions and prescriptions are different things. E.g. they said that recorded music would cause fewer people to sing and perform in their own homes. This happened, but we're all largely just fine with it.

happytoexplain 6d ago

Why would they need to differentiate? You're implying those arguments were wrong? The argument usually isn't "I believe X will not happen," it's usually either "I believe X should not happen" or "I believe we should manage how X happens".

Planktonne 6d ago

> feel no need to differentiate themselves from other anti-technology arguments Why should they? Other "anti-tech" arguments include - Concern about global warming/pollution - Resistance to nuclear/chemical warfare It's not just, or even primarily, that anti-tech arguments are the equivalent of 'cameras will steal souls'.