7 ms·

That is pure fantasy.

AngryData 4d ago
Why? There are numerous technologies we have ignored or abandoned for numerous reasons. Many of the benefits of AI is "requires less humans", but in an age where we question what work people could possibly do in the future, human labor isn't that hard to find. If the amish can do what they do for whack religious reasons, people could manage it with ai for cultural and social reasons. And I never saw an amish person starve to death. And that is if people don't get pissed enough to start burning stuff down and instead try to be peaceful hippie homesteader types.
- fc417fc802 4d ago
  But notably the amish don't preclude the rest of us from existing. Some subset of humans could turn their attention away from AI but it would presumably still exist and continue to be developed. I can't think of any economically beneficial technologies that we've collectively ignored. If you manage to come up with a counterexample then that's an opportunity to make some money for yourself. It's a fundamentally unstable state given our economic system.
  - Retric 4d ago
    Supersonic passenger aircraft were operated profitably and no longer exist. There’s levels of R&D required for many technologies where the question goes beyond could this be profitable to what are the risk vs reward that this specific project will succeed.
    - fc417fc802 4d ago
      But after accounting for maintenance & etc were they more profitable than sinking the equivalent amount of money into something else, such as slower aircraft? Notably there are currently efforts to develop new supersonic passenger liners.
    - ben_w 4d ago
      > Supersonic passenger aircraft were operated profitably Were they? IIRC joint project by British and French national airlines, they expected to sell loads, hardly anyone wanted to buy the planes, the two airlines kept them flying out of government embarassment.
      - cyanydeez 4d ago
        should probably spell it out: _it wasn't allowed to get to supersonic speed_. Same way we dont _allow_ eugenics.
        fc417fc802 4d ago
        Sure, the regulation that guarded against externalizing certain costs might well have been the only thing precluding profitability. Importantly it wasn't some shared cultural value leading to voluntarily leaving money on the table. Rather the regulator imposed it. We are able to effectively regulate things like the operation of massive aircraft, eugenics, the dumping of toxic waste, or the refinement of nuclear material. But there are also plenty of things that we can't effectively regulate for purely practical reasons.
        ben_w 4d ago
        Over the Atlantic? Nah, the problem was it was very expensive and not a great experience for the people rich enough to afford it. The US company trying to bring supersonic back are not only focussed on the flight speed, but also the entire customer experience.
    - necovek 4d ago
      Were they? Did Concorde provide return on investment? When was the break-even expected? Sure, if we look at it as R&D subsidized by governments of UK and France, then yet, it was profitable. In particular, the problem with it was that it could not get to supersonic speeds over urban areas, which significantly limited routes where it made sense, and the range was not good enough to cover longer distances.
    - shakow 4d ago
      > operated profitably Until the oil shocks, and until “normal” planes became faster. I happen to know a couple older and very wealthy people, and they say that even though Concorde was a lot of fun when it was a novelty, they now prefer to have a couple more hours flight and enjoy a 777 premium cabin rather than the cramped Concorde interior. Anyway, the proof is in the pudding: if no one but national carriers ever bought and operated Concorde or Tu-144 at scale, it's not because of some Amish-like sentiment in the flight industry, but simply because that didn't make sense money-wise.
- lacy_tinpot 4d ago
  You can't just stop AI without also stopping progress in computer hardware. You have to do both. The real implication of what they're saying extends beyond just AI. You have to stop the entire compute stack in order to prevent or slow down AI progress.
  - bedstefar 4d ago
    And even if we did manage to limit/cull hardware development, what would keep people from continuing to find ever more efficient models runnable on contemporary hardware?
    - ben_w 4d ago
      Unclear how much more efficient they can be. Bleeding edge models are putting the desk-job competencies of multiple professional fields into something with as many parameters as a single large rodent has synapses.
- kelnos 4d ago
  Because "we" embodies a hugely diverse set of beings with different wants, needs, goals, and priorities. Not to mention different morality and ethics. So sure, let's say you get 95% of the world to not use or work on LLMs. 5% is still enough to build something that brings forth the End Times. That's the old checklist trope of "Your idea won't work because: [x] it requires that everyone in the world agrees to do something, all at the same time." As the GP said: pure fantasy.
- teiferer 4d ago
  > There are numerous technologies we have ignored or abandoned for numerous reasons. Are there? Nukes are a thing. Chemical weapons are a thing. Cluster bombs are a thing. Biological weapons are a thing. What is not a thing that shouldn't be? We say certain things should not be a thing, but then behind the scenes we made them a thing anyway.
  - ant6n 4d ago
    Nukes are barely used. The technology of nuclear detonations was practically abandoned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare
    - teiferer 4d ago
      I find that a weird argument for saying humanity has "ignored or abandoned" nuclear weapons.
  - int_19h 4d ago
    On chemical weapons, most large state actors have got rid of them. Not because of any moral reasons, though, but simply because they don't actually work all that well in modern conventional warfare. This is then framed as an ethical issue, but you only need to look at where the same countries stand on e.g. landmines to realize how much bullshit it all is. Conversely, where you do still see chemical weapons used, it's usually asymmetric conflicts where "just gas the rebels" actually works much of the time and is much cheaper than other options. Big guys can afford the other options though, someone like Assad, not so much. More on this: https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical-weapons-anymore/ https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...
    - teiferer 4d ago
      So, you are actually arguing against yourself and are agreeing with me?
- hgoel 3d ago
  I'm baffled that people expressing your opinion don't understand what they're advocating for. Current generation smartphones are able to run AI models, people have managed to run very large models (even if slowly) via streaming from disk. The math for the underlying implementation is relatively trivial. Abandoning this technology means a cult-like extremist shift in culture against computers, or a global surveillance state of unprecedented scale and invasiveness. Not even getting into how much it requires us to give up on science, given the shared computational needs.
SV_BubbleTime 4d ago
Watch, very soon this is going to politically divide. They’re sowing the seeds right now with “antiai” campaigns. The right will for a change be for it but will be able to be talked into regulation because you know “small government” and all only when convenient. The left will bitch and moan about fairness and copyright and automation and UBI, they’ll be the doomers and worldwar chicken littles. The Uniparty will be for it, but only against the public having anything good. What will be funny to me is that normal tech people outside the frontier model companies are about to find themselves without a home on this topic.
- ben_w 4d ago
  The world isn't the American political nonsense. > What will be funny to me is that normal tech people outside the frontier model companies are about to find themselves without a home on this topic. Already happened, just from agentic coding.

Why? There are numerous technologies we have ignored or abandoned for numerous reasons. Many of the benefits of AI is "requires less humans", but in an age where we question what work people could possibly do in the future, human labor isn't that hard to find. If the amish can do what they do for whack religious reasons, people could manage it with ai for cultural and social reasons. And I never saw an amish person starve to death. And that is if people don't get pissed enough to start burning stuff down and instead try to be peaceful hippie homesteader types.

fc417fc802 4d ago
But notably the amish don't preclude the rest of us from existing. Some subset of humans could turn their attention away from AI but it would presumably still exist and continue to be developed. I can't think of any economically beneficial technologies that we've collectively ignored. If you manage to come up with a counterexample then that's an opportunity to make some money for yourself. It's a fundamentally unstable state given our economic system.
- Retric 4d ago
  Supersonic passenger aircraft were operated profitably and no longer exist. There’s levels of R&D required for many technologies where the question goes beyond could this be profitable to what are the risk vs reward that this specific project will succeed.
  - fc417fc802 4d ago
    But after accounting for maintenance & etc were they more profitable than sinking the equivalent amount of money into something else, such as slower aircraft? Notably there are currently efforts to develop new supersonic passenger liners.
  - ben_w 4d ago
    > Supersonic passenger aircraft were operated profitably Were they? IIRC joint project by British and French national airlines, they expected to sell loads, hardly anyone wanted to buy the planes, the two airlines kept them flying out of government embarassment.
    - cyanydeez 4d ago
      should probably spell it out: _it wasn't allowed to get to supersonic speed_. Same way we dont _allow_ eugenics.
      - fc417fc802 4d ago
        Sure, the regulation that guarded against externalizing certain costs might well have been the only thing precluding profitability. Importantly it wasn't some shared cultural value leading to voluntarily leaving money on the table. Rather the regulator imposed it. We are able to effectively regulate things like the operation of massive aircraft, eugenics, the dumping of toxic waste, or the refinement of nuclear material. But there are also plenty of things that we can't effectively regulate for purely practical reasons.
      - ben_w 4d ago
        Over the Atlantic? Nah, the problem was it was very expensive and not a great experience for the people rich enough to afford it. The US company trying to bring supersonic back are not only focussed on the flight speed, but also the entire customer experience.
  - necovek 4d ago
    Were they? Did Concorde provide return on investment? When was the break-even expected? Sure, if we look at it as R&D subsidized by governments of UK and France, then yet, it was profitable. In particular, the problem with it was that it could not get to supersonic speeds over urban areas, which significantly limited routes where it made sense, and the range was not good enough to cover longer distances.
  - shakow 4d ago
    > operated profitably Until the oil shocks, and until “normal” planes became faster. I happen to know a couple older and very wealthy people, and they say that even though Concorde was a lot of fun when it was a novelty, they now prefer to have a couple more hours flight and enjoy a 777 premium cabin rather than the cramped Concorde interior. Anyway, the proof is in the pudding: if no one but national carriers ever bought and operated Concorde or Tu-144 at scale, it's not because of some Amish-like sentiment in the flight industry, but simply because that didn't make sense money-wise.
lacy_tinpot 4d ago
You can't just stop AI without also stopping progress in computer hardware. You have to do both. The real implication of what they're saying extends beyond just AI. You have to stop the entire compute stack in order to prevent or slow down AI progress.
- bedstefar 4d ago
  And even if we did manage to limit/cull hardware development, what would keep people from continuing to find ever more efficient models runnable on contemporary hardware?
  - ben_w 4d ago
    Unclear how much more efficient they can be. Bleeding edge models are putting the desk-job competencies of multiple professional fields into something with as many parameters as a single large rodent has synapses.
kelnos 4d ago
Because "we" embodies a hugely diverse set of beings with different wants, needs, goals, and priorities. Not to mention different morality and ethics. So sure, let's say you get 95% of the world to not use or work on LLMs. 5% is still enough to build something that brings forth the End Times. That's the old checklist trope of "Your idea won't work because: [x] it requires that everyone in the world agrees to do something, all at the same time." As the GP said: pure fantasy.
teiferer 4d ago
> There are numerous technologies we have ignored or abandoned for numerous reasons. Are there? Nukes are a thing. Chemical weapons are a thing. Cluster bombs are a thing. Biological weapons are a thing. What is not a thing that shouldn't be? We say certain things should not be a thing, but then behind the scenes we made them a thing anyway.
- ant6n 4d ago
  Nukes are barely used. The technology of nuclear detonations was practically abandoned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare
  - teiferer 4d ago
    I find that a weird argument for saying humanity has "ignored or abandoned" nuclear weapons.
- int_19h 4d ago
  On chemical weapons, most large state actors have got rid of them. Not because of any moral reasons, though, but simply because they don't actually work all that well in modern conventional warfare. This is then framed as an ethical issue, but you only need to look at where the same countries stand on e.g. landmines to realize how much bullshit it all is. Conversely, where you do still see chemical weapons used, it's usually asymmetric conflicts where "just gas the rebels" actually works much of the time and is much cheaper than other options. Big guys can afford the other options though, someone like Assad, not so much. More on this: https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical-weapons-anymore/ https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...
  - teiferer 4d ago
    So, you are actually arguing against yourself and are agreeing with me?
hgoel 3d ago
I'm baffled that people expressing your opinion don't understand what they're advocating for. Current generation smartphones are able to run AI models, people have managed to run very large models (even if slowly) via streaming from disk. The math for the underlying implementation is relatively trivial. Abandoning this technology means a cult-like extremist shift in culture against computers, or a global surveillance state of unprecedented scale and invasiveness. Not even getting into how much it requires us to give up on science, given the shared computational needs.

SV_BubbleTime 4d ago

Watch, very soon this is going to politically divide. They’re sowing the seeds right now with “antiai” campaigns. The right will for a change be for it but will be able to be talked into regulation because you know “small government” and all only when convenient. The left will bitch and moan about fairness and copyright and automation and UBI, they’ll be the doomers and worldwar chicken littles. The Uniparty will be for it, but only against the public having anything good. What will be funny to me is that normal tech people outside the frontier model companies are about to find themselves without a home on this topic.

ben_w 4d ago
The world isn't the American political nonsense. > What will be funny to me is that normal tech people outside the frontier model companies are about to find themselves without a home on this topic. Already happened, just from agentic coding.