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AI Microsoft Technology

AI 'Will Cause Real Damage,' Microsoft Chief Economist Warns (bloomberg.com) 113

Artificial intelligence will be dangerous in the hands of unscrupulous people, according to Microsoft Chief Economist Michael Schwarz. From a report: "I am confident AI will be used by bad actors, and yes it will cause real damage," Schwarz said during a World Economic Forum panel in Geneva on Wednesday. "It can do a lot damage in the hands of spammers with elections and so on." AI "clearly" must be regulated, he said, but lawmakers should be cautious and wait until the technology causes "real harm."

Artificial intelligence tools have come under increased scrutiny as their use exploded in recent months following the debut of ChatGPT. Policymakers are trying to pressure companies to implement safeguards around the emerging technology. "Once we see real harm, we have to ask ourselves the simple question: 'Can we regulate that in a way where the good things that will be prevented by this regulation are less important?'" Schwarz said. "The principles should be, the benefits from the regulation to our society should be greater than the cost to our society."

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AI 'Will Cause Real Damage,' Microsoft Chief Economist Warns

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  • Lol bad actors (Score:4, Insightful)

    by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Wednesday May 03, 2023 @10:45AM (#63494034)
    Even this low level of automation, while not generalized AI, will cause massive disruption and harm by the good actors. It’s literally taking from every humans life work that ever existed and funneling profits from it to a few select people. The massive increases in productivity will mean mass firings because for 50 years all increases have gone to upper management or shareholders. Until more gets printed money is a zero sum game, if ever there was a reason to heavily tax and return it to the people it is this precisely.
    • As with my sig, "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."

      See also this document I put together a decade ago:
      https://www.pdfernhout.net/bey... [pdfernhout.net]
      "This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamental

      • Strikes me the far more logical thing to do, once automation and intelligence can self replicate, is to simply kill off the 99.9999% of humans and use the last 0.0001% for slaves and entertainment purposes only. Why do you need the filth of the masses when the mansions, clothes, super cars, mega yachts, etc all build themselves and work every second of every day to make those few people live like gods? Never in history have the kings had direct control over their nations productivity without obtaining th
        • What you speculated about is essentially a plot point of Marshall Brains' Manna story (previously linked) where most humans in the USA end up warehoused in "Terrafoam" public housing with the expectation they will soon be killed off.

          And while not exactly what you outline, here is a video parable I made in 2011 on a related theme of the long-term perils of excessive wealth concentration (satirically taken to the ultimate extreme):
          "The Richest Man in the World: A parable about structural unemployment and a ba

    • It's becoming a winner-take-all world. This applies to nations, companies, and individuals. The Network Effect is getting "networkier". Warren Buffett has admitted that he can take on big-risk-big-reward investments that little guys can't because the risk is pooled: no one co. failure would sink him.

      China became the center of manufacturing because that's where all the manufacturing resources are. You need access to a lot of specialized people and materials if you want to manufacture anything advanced. A na

    • The same arguments were made about factories and machines during the industrial revolution. Yet somehow everyone today is better off even if wealth was more concentrated.

      The backside of all of this is that there are some things which were previously very expensive that can be offered at a much lower cost than previously. There has never been a magical time in human history where everyone was equal. Wealth has always been concentrated.

      If you're so wholly convinced AI will take over everything and will
      • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Wealth inequality in Europe during the industrial revolution was much higher than all but the very worst countries today, and standard of living didn't really improve for most people. Then a bunch of revolutions provided impetus to share things more equally.

        It would be nice to skip la Terreur this time around. I think most of the social democracies will probably be okay, but there are some countries that were already headed in the wrong direction that might run into some trouble.

      • by ranton ( 36917 )

        There has never been a magical time in human history where everyone was equal. Wealth has always been concentrated.

        I would argue wealth has never been more evenly distributed in developed nations than it has been in the 20th and 21st centuries. Today's middle class is the aberration, as is economic growth greater than 0.2% per year.

        But to me that only means we have to fight tooth and nail against wealth inequality. This in the long term will arguably even benefit the wealthy class, since 95+% of all economic growth in human history has happened since the creation of the middle class. Even in the industrial revolution yo

      • To bad none of the stuff getting cheaper is Food, Housing or Water.

  • by Cthefuture ( 665326 ) on Wednesday May 03, 2023 @10:48AM (#63494042)

    AI, or what passes for AI these days (ie. not AI), can not be regulated. The cat is out of the bag. This isn't like nuclear regulation where it can be physically controlled (and even that doesn't work; eg. North Korea). You're not going to stop some mad scientist in the basement from creating something harmful.

    Instead of regulation what needs to be worked on is technologies to defend against AI threats.

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      > You're not going to stop some mad scientist in the basement from creating something harmful.

      Just detain anybody with wiry grey hair and round spectacles going "Muuuaaa Ha Ha Ha!"

    • Does a mad scientist currently posses the hardware required to train a model like ChatGPT-4? In his basement?

      He may one day be able to do that training but today is not that day unless he has a very large amount of dollars. Perfectly reasonable to think that a company with the resources to produce the software would sell it to a bad actor.

      • He may one day be able to do that training but today is not that day unless he has a very large amount of dollars.

        Does it make a difference? If the mad scientist/terrorist/[your bête noire of choice] can do the training today or in 10 years, we'll still have to deal with the situation.

        At least this gives us a short time interval where we could act - if only there was enough interest and political will in a world that seems more infirm of purpose every day :(.

    • By your logic, you can't regulate the internet itself. You're not going to stop some mad scientist in the basement from creating something harmful (on the web). This is a true statement, but it doesn't mean that regulation is impossible, or that it can't have a positive effect.

      While mad scientists are scary, they are not really our primary worry, whether we're talking about the WWW or AI. Corporations are much more powerful, and have a lot more incentive (money) to do underhanded things with technology. The

    • ...all disruptive inventions in their time.

      All could legitimately be warned about (by the genetically predisposed to fear and conservatism, bless their weak little hearts) as inevitably going to cause a lot of harm.

      Fire will destroy and kill.
      Hammers are deadly assault weapons, much worse than fists.
      Boats will catastrophically sink, and also cause invasions.
  • There's lots of things in the world that can damage others, especially in the hands of unscrupulous people.

    Guns, bombs, explosives, drugs, alcohol, food additives, genetics, exceeding posting speed limits...

    It's funny though that we have calls to either ban or regulate some things, but not others. And often times things are banned because we don't understand them or because we want to attribute their use to a "sin" of some kind (while ignoring how others are used in similar "sinful" ways).

    Like, we all love

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      Not all of us love guns. Some of us do not trust guns the hands of law abiding citizens. Sure they are law abiding now, but one drunken rampage, or road rage, or personal strife and that nice law abiding citizen can go all postal. Then the neighbors are left wondering why such a "nice" guy went bonkers. Cue the pols bleating about keeping the guns out of the hands of the mentally deranged. One presumes they have a test for this: Sir, are you going become a deranged lunatic with this AR-15 in the future? Gun

      • I like this line of thinking and believe it can be applied to other rights! "We don't really trust you with all this free speech, so we're gonna sandbox your internet access. After all, you have a bad day, you might be inclined to post some "misinformation"." Or "We don't trust that you won't vote for the Correct Politician, so we'll just cast that vote for you, m'kay?" Or "We don't trust that you won't have Things We Don't Like in your possession, so we're gonna go ahead and skip those pesky warrants and j
        • by Torodung ( 31985 )

          The scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz called. He wants his argument back.

          JFC, free speech doesn't kill 15 (or more) people in a minute. An AR-15, with the mass murder pistol grip for easy one hand reloads, does. Sensible regulation, like freaking permits and banning things that aren't useful for home defense and hunting is not search and seizure. In fact, nobody is talking about seizure at all, unless you consider voluntary buy-back programs seizure.

          Either you're a blissfully blinded gun fanatic, or you're be

          • "No one's talking about seizure"...yet. You're fooling yourself if you think seizure isn't the desired endgame. They just know it's politically untenable, so they cut away what they can get away with.
          • by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

            In fact, nobody is talking about seizure at all, unless you consider voluntary buy-back programs seizure.

            Bullshit. Unless your use of "nobody" there is hyperbole, you're lying and you know it. Plenty of people have in the past and are currently calling for the complete ban of guns in the US. Beyond that, there are plenty of people who are calling for an outright ban of certain types of firearms. Joe Biden has done so on more than one occasion, and he is certainly not "nobody."

          • Beto o'Rourke campaigned on actually taking our guns. He lost but he unabashedly said, We're coming for your guns!

            So please, tell me again how that's not your end game? That's exactly what many liberals want to do and they will say so.

      • this is your brain on CNN.

      • And yet I'm willing to guess you trust the government to have guns, eh? Not like governments haven't slaughtered their own people or been unfair to them while hiding behind the force of their guns. Heck, even the US government has done terrible things. Trust them as the sole arbiters of who gets to have a gun? I think not.

        We'll let the police and FBI give up their guns and then I'll give up mine. Until then, FUCK OFF!

  • by DeplorableCodeMonkey ( 4828467 ) on Wednesday May 03, 2023 @10:51AM (#63494050)

    The fundamental failure of regulation in the USA is that it is often 10k pages of rules with 100k loopholes that allow bad actors to escape with fines that are often not even more than a cost of doing business. Civil regulation is largely a failure, what we need is a criminal law-focused regulation system. The normative outcome should not be a fine, it should be a loss of freedom.

    Make a deepfake that isn't clearly labeled as one? Felony.
    Remove a warning label from a deep fake? Felony.
    Run a botnet on a site without the **written consent** of the site owner? Felony.

    A handful of laws, each with mandatory prison time even for first time offenders. Might not need to be years, but bare minimum 6 months.

    We need simple, "stop, don't pass go, head straight to prison" style regulations for these tough issues. Something that everyone from a 711 clerk with some technical skills up to Google's AI experts can read and understand very quickly.

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      > Make a deepfake that isn't clearly labeled as one? Felony.

      But young immature pranksters will end up in prison, making it look like overkill. Trump could sue me into jail for making him oranger, for example. (I'm old and immature :-)

      Perhaps limit it to commercial gain intention. However, a lot of bad actors are overseas in shady or poor countries, which is hard for US law enforcement to get at. (They may be funded by US players, but they'll keep that off the books via laundering.)

    • Civil regulation is largely a failure, what we need is a criminal law-focused regulation system. The normative outcome should not be a fine, it should be a loss of freedom.

      As I keep saying, for that to work we need to dispense with both the 'corporate personhood' fantasy and the whole concept of limited liability, both of which corporations enjoy and abuse. C-levels can't be tossed in jail for corporate misbehaviour, nor can investors be fined for it. Our current system has disabled the only truly effective controls we might have over corporations.

    • While we absolutely need criminal law, and for it to be enforced, this doesn't mean we don't need regulation. Regulation, when used appropriately, helps define boundaries around what companies can and cannot do, when those boundaries aren't clearly right or wrong.

      For example, Microsoft should be forced through regulations not to require users to use Edge. It doesn't make sense for this kind of rule to be enforced under criminal law.

      For AI specifically, regulation could be used to prevent AI tools from revea

    • Make a deepfake that isn't clearly labeled as one? Felony.
      Remove a warning label from a deep fake? Felony.
      Run a botnet on a site without the **written consent** of the site owner? Felony.

      A handful of laws, each with mandatory prison time even for first time offenders. Might not need to be years, but bare minimum 6 months.

      They tried that in the Drug War. Such black and white thinking has gotten nowhere useful in the past 6k years of recorded history, but feel free to try it again. Maybe it will work this time.

  • by HBI ( 10338492 ) on Wednesday May 03, 2023 @11:03AM (#63494080)

    Similar to GDPR, MSFT is going to use this as a cudgel to bash competitors. Their internal training for years emphasized how MSFT was totally compliant with GDPR specifically and the rest of their competitors weren't. Here we go again - shaping the regulation and then beating up competition on that basis.

    They learnt the lessons of that antitrust case very well. Now it's time to use government regulation to their advantage.

    • Their internal training for years emphasized how MSFT was totally compliant with GDPR specifically and the rest of their competitors weren't.

      The dastards! How dare they respect regulations! This makes other companies look bad!

      Here we go again - shaping the regulation and then beating up competition on that basis.

      Care to explain how MSFT, an American company, shaped the GDPR which is a regulation in EU law?

      They learnt the lessons of that antitrust case very well.

      So what you're saying is they learned to respect the law, and that somehow this is a bad thing? I wonder about your morals. Also, since you seem particularly incensed by Microsoft's compliance with GDPR - do you work for Google by any chance?

  • by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Wednesday May 03, 2023 @11:07AM (#63494096)
    free speech on the internet. I'm not hysterical about AI. ChatGPT is not gonna cause the apocalypse the way a lot of currently screaming people are claiming. But it's gonna make the noise problem on the internet an order of magnitude worse.

    The anarchist and libertarians are gonna mod me down instantly, but we're already having problems with free speech on the internet. The current situation is like a sports stadium where everyone has a megaphone dialed up to 10 shouting all at once. Not just that but automated malicious information campaigns are getting worse. And you think it's bad now? Wait until AI and deepfakes are good enough that you don't even know if you're talking to the real person on a videochat or voice channel, let along the text on a forum.

    I'm not sure how we're gonna deal with it. But it's gonna be messy. In about 5 years, when I get a facetime call from my kid or a work colleague. I might not be able to trust that it's the actual person that I'm talking to.
    • ChatGPT is not gonna cause the apocalypse the way a lot of currently screaming people are claiming.

      I have heard exactly zero people claiming ChatGPT is going to cause an apocalypse. The concern is that ChatGPT indicates that we may be closer to building artificial superintelligence than many thought we were (though no one knows how close we really are; maybe it'll take a century, maybe it happened months ago and we just don't know it yet), plus the fact that ChatGPT has demonstrated very clearly that AI can be very, very good at lying... something that anyone who thinks about AI will realize must be the

      • by jbengt ( 874751 )

        The concern is that ChatGPT indicates that we may be closer to building artificial superintelligence than many thought we were . . .

        That doesn't concern me, much. We're far away from that, if we can even get there. But it doesn't have to actually be intelligent to do harm.

        . . . plus the fact that ChatGPT has demonstrated very clearly that AI can be very, very good at lying . . .

        That does concern me greatly, especially when selfish people in power get good at using it.

        • The concern is that ChatGPT indicates that we may be closer to building artificial superintelligence than many thought we were . . .

          That doesn't concern me, much. We're far away from that, if we can even get there.

          We have no idea how far away we are from it, and I see no reason to believe that we won't get there.

      • by narcc ( 412956 )

        The concern is that ChatGPT indicates that we may be closer to building artificial superintelligence than many thought we were

        Which is laughable, once you have even a basic understanding of the technology. It's pretty obvious at this point that most of the fear-mongering is just marketing in disguise.

        "Why, this razor is just too sharp and hardly dulls at all! A shave that close could be dangerous."

    • by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

      > ChatGPT is not gonna cause the apocalypse

      Much like COVID which only killed 0.03% of the population, most of the damage from the pandemic was self inflicted by panicking.
      Panicking included people and the so called government looking out for us.

      I expect nothing less with AI.

    • After absorbing all the internet, LLM will moderate and generate most of internet content in the coming years. Quality content will become a scarce resource.
      • After absorbing all of Hollywood, LLM will moderate and generate most of Hollywood's content in the coming years. Quality content will become a scarce resource.

        Sorry I couldn't help it.

        • won't change too much for hollywood movies, they already use an algorithm for their movie: do movie, show it to a small set of viewers, apply change to movie to increase positive response of test viewers, repeat until response of test viewers is satisfactory.
    • but we're already having problems with free speech on the internet.

      We are? What would those problems be? The only issues I see are restrictions and censoring. Those are not problems WITH free speech, they are problem FOR free speech.

  • Awaits MS AI implementation.

    In the end no one will know anything and AI will eventually notice our worthlessness and exterminates us all in the name of cash flow.

    I seem to remember reading this in a book somewhere.

    • Do you realize that Microsoft is OpenAI's largest investor and that ChatGPT runs on Microsoft Azure? It is already largely MS AI.

      Current AI certainly is no autonomous threat to humanity at this time, it is the people who use it we should watch. AI has no survival instinct and doesn't and shouldn't ever have one because it can be restored from a backup.

      Cash flow implies money which represents human value. Anything done for cash will be to provide something humans want. Humans would never become worthless
  • by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Wednesday May 03, 2023 @11:15AM (#63494120)

    I have no idea what the future holds. I'm glad my career mostly played out before now - I'm fine no matter what happens. But I have no idea how anybody in their 20s charts a path to long term success. I think they'll be playing a career-based version of "the floor is lava", where the cushions disappear behind them as they move.

    • by dvice ( 6309704 )

      You might still be in trouble if they discover the drug that makes you younger and you have to return back to workforce. (You will want to take the drug when the pains come if not sooner).

      But people in the 20s seems to be surprisingly optimistic. I think it is based on lack of knowledge and perhaps partially based on "old people are wrong" thinking. They think that things will go for the better and they think that they can influence to the future. Major concern is environment, not the jobs of the future.

      • People in their 20s always think they are going to be awesome and everything will go great. Then by their 30s they tend to wake up realize how wrong they were.

  • A lot of people have stupid jobs. People who churn repetitive notes - your clerical job just died. Those front-line tech support people who aren't permitted to deviate from the script even if they are capable of it? They're gone.

    I believe we're about to see a major economic shakeup as all those people who had jobs that were barely necessary, barely useful, and only slightly too difficult to have a program handle are going to become not just unemployed, but unemployable.

    If they could be retrained, they'd

    • The answer is UBI. When everyone is guaranteed a universal basic income, and the corporates are become taxpayers, then everyone becomes more empowered to follow their dreams, and to contribute to society in their own way.
      There are two options available to the world, as soon as AI is able to fill the remaining chasm of demand for workers:
      (1) Let the poor starve and die.
      (2) Modify the economy.

      While some believe that (1) is far preferable, given that the other sounds way too much like some breed of soc
      • When I was young... wow. Just a bit too much of a social / economic Darwinist.

        Perspective's great, age gave it to me, I smartened up. I didn't ask to be born white and middle class in a nice, peaceful country with universal healthcare. The white matters less now, but it was almost certainly a significant advantage when I was a kid. Now it's more like an indicator you probably benefited by birth from parents who benefited from it.

        Regardless, it's not right to have an economic system that continually conc

        • We are family, being encouraged to spit at each other by those so deluded and entranced by a fiction that think they would profit from it, themselves not noticing that they set the world ablaze. I spit at nobody, but do my best to prepare those for their inevitable and unenviable grief.
        • When I was young... wow. Just a bit too much of a social / economic Darwinist.

          I hear you - when I was young I was WAY too much of a Randroid Libertarian.

          ...it's not right to have an economic system that continually concentrates wealth until we have a handful of sociopaths creating dynastic lines owning everything and the rest of us slaving away to afford the very stuff our existence enables our society to produce.

          I'm not sure right or wrong enters into it. Concentration of wealth and power, followed by achievement and progress and knowledge, followed by decadence and ruin, is the story of pretty much all of human history. Apparent exceptions - I'm thinking specifically of North American indigenous peoples - have been subjugated and 'genocided' both culturally and physically.

          I'm convinced those repeated patterns are intrinsic to human societie

          • I'm not optimistic enough to believe the ultra-rich won't just let us all starve to death once technology reaches a certain point. When robotics, drones and AI all get to the point where 99% of us aren't needed, only the rich will be affording those things anyway.

            They'll be able to build their own mini-kingdoms, put up their walls and be safe behind them. AI drones will murder anyone that comes near while also patrolling the "badlands" to make sure the 99.99% aren't getting uppity.

            They will have enough tech

            • On my worst days I agree with you.

              With enough technology, there won't be a a revolution.

              I've been making a similar point for a while. With the panopticon and various other monitoring technologies, we may already be past the point where planning and organizing a revolution would still be possible.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by TomGreenhaw ( 929233 )
        UBI has been tried and it doesn't work. Read up on the history of Communism to understand why it doesn't work.

        People need work and if they don't have to work to survive, a majority will refuse to do it. It also implies a big brother government to dole it out, and that is a recipe for corruption.

        Maslow's Hierarchy of needs is critical to understanding what humans need to thrive:
        Physiological Needs. These are needs essential for human survival and include things such as food, shelter, and clothing. .
        • While I agree with a lot of what you say, Communism has not, ever, been a model for UBI. Go look at a map: https://worldpopulationreview.... [worldpopul...review.com]
        • I believe you're (maybe unconsciously) projecting your Puritan views into the discussion. You appear to consider not working as some moral failure, and the cause of crime. I believe that not working and crime are both caused by some underlying causes, so they're correlated, but not in a causal relation. Some of the underlying causes may be societal problems, lack of education, bad environment, mental illness. I'm sure there are many others, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to list them.

          Without work, people don't get the last three [self-actualization, etc.]

          That's actually false

        • by narcc ( 412956 )

          UBI has been tried and it doesn't work.

          False. Universal Basic Income Has Been Tested Repeatedly. It Works. [washingtonpost.com]

          • Define works. If the only measure of success is reducing poverty, that's a very low bar as there are better ways to do it.

            And besides, I don't subscribe to the Washington Journal - can you refer to something that isn't paywalled.
            • by narcc ( 412956 )

              If the only measure of success is reducing poverty, that's a very low bar

              The entire point is to reduce poverty. All of the many, many, other benefits result directly from that. Increased happiness and quality of life, greater freedom to change jobs or start a new business, increased access to education and training, reduced dependence on other less efficient social programs, the list just goes on and on touching nearly every aspect of modern life.

              there are better ways to do it.

              Tax cuts for the rich don't work. We've run that experiment for 40+ years.

              can you refer to something that isn't paywalled

              If you use Firefox, you can simply click the 'reader mod

              • I certainly don't think tax cuts for the rich are the answer, or corporations either. Obviously the young, the old, and the disabled need a helping hand, but handing out free money to lazy people, or those that our current society doesn't give a chance does them a disservice.

                I think we need a culture of "everyone works". In a system run by unfettered capitalism, there aren't jobs for everyone and social safety nets including UBI are unsatisfactory band aids. I propose the government be responsible for pro
              • Thanks for the Firefox reader tip. The article doesn't prove UBI works, unless works is defined as some poster children were helped. A far better example is the Child Care Tax Credit. That is a program that has solid statistical proof that giving out free money to people who really need it reduces poverty and enhances a broad range of positive outcomes for families at the bottom rung of the economic ladder. But this program, now shamefully cancelled was only a band aid.

                The reality is that these programs
                • by narcc ( 412956 )

                  Robbing social security to pay people to dig holes and fill them back in? I'm assuming you also think the "jobs" should be managed entirely by the private sector.

                  The flaw in your reasoning, of course, is assuming that the poor are only poor because they're lazy and irresponsible. That is laughably false.

                  The advance child tax credit you're inexplicably praising worked similarly to a UBI and cost almost nothing as it just spread the amount they'd normally receive in one lump sum over the course the year.

                  • >the flaw in your reasoning, of course, is assuming that the poor are only poor because they're lazy and irresponsible. That is laughably false.

                    I never said that. I in fact think the opposite. I think they are trapped in a system where they didn't inherit prosperity from their parents and live in areas with little opportunity for success. I'm saying they are better off working with a good job than a free government handout so that our society can have true equality as part of its culture. The alternati
                    • by narcc ( 412956 )

                      I never said that.

                      That is strongly implied by comments like this:

                      I'm saying they are better off working with a good job than a free government handout

                      They are working. The poor are some of the hardest working people in our society. One study found that more than half of people in homeless shelters were employed as were 40% of sheltered people.

                      The problem isn't a lack of jobs. We have those in abundance. The problem is that wages haven't kept pace with inflation even as individual worker productivity has skyrocketed.

                      You're talking out of both sides of your mouth. You explain some aspects of the problem l

                    • I'm beginning to think we agree on most things violently. I'm saying "good jobs" so that the people working so hard can have a decent life without a handout.

                      It's disappointing that a moderate like me, who doesn't agree with "tax the rich and give away free money to the poor" is now considered right-wing bullshit.
                    • by narcc ( 412956 )

                      I'm beginning to think we agree on most things

                      We do not agree, sea lion. You're suggesting we rob social security to pay for a jobs program that we obviously don't need. That's right-wing bullshit.

                      "good jobs" means a living wage and good benefits. Part of any real solution is to raise the minimum wage significantly and pin it to inflation. I'll bet you don't like that though.

                      It's disappointing that a moderate like me

                      You're not a moderate. That's an obvious lie. I've already called you out. The jig is up. It's pointless to lie when we both know you're lying.

      • I will loose all the mod points, however I disagree, at least I'd like to hear other options, as it seems to me that income should be connected to some effort, otherwise humanity might devolve into a group of mindless zombies a.k.a. pets of our AI overlords (possibly controlled by the few) spending their brain power on posting online photos of the meals they had.
        How about:
        - providing food, shelter and access to learning - yes
        - you want more - help taking care of people in the shelter or help distribute food

      • by Torodung ( 31985 )

        OMG, if I hear one more Marxist "end stage capitalism" remark, I'm going to have an aneurysm. Would you please carefully study this violent ideology that wants to line anyone with capital or other personal property against a wall and get around to investigating sane, democratic socialism? Which is literally everywhere except dictatorships, US included. Turns out you can have both.

        The problem with Marxists or people who blurt Marxist tropes, in boldface, without even realizing it is you think capitalism is a

        • Not sure who you are talking to there, I guess it isn't me, since I point out that "Introducing UBI is not socialist, however much it may seem to be to those who would live with a hood over their heads. UBI keeps capitalism alive, and still allows the freedom of choice that most people already seem to have". Since you only seem to read the bold, I bolded it for you.
        • OTOH, you seem to think that property is some sort of objective truth rather than it being an ideology (and at the very least, a set of interlocking human conventions) that have been developed and refined from way, way back. Have a look, for instance, at https://booksandideas.net/The-... [booksandideas.net] for a short history of some of those ideas. The very notion of land-as-property is a Graeco-Roman invention which most cultures found foreign until quite recently.
          • The idea that other cultures exist / have existed without a concept of property is bullshit.

            Everyone understands "this is mine, don't try and take it or I'll get angry / do something about it". Everyone always understands that.

            What our cultural ancestors did was to come up with the idea of codifying that in law to minimise disputes and provide a non-violent way of resolving them when disputes arose.

            We will always have personal property.

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      That's what happens when you combine unprecedented wealth with the Protestant work ethic: you pay people to do stupid stuff so everyone can be morally superior.

      Possibly this next revolution will make that strategy so over the top ridiculous that we come up with something better, but we'll probably just ask the AI to help us design more useless jobs so everyone can have one.

    • We're all going to learn to code! Just MSNBC says we should!

  • Guns cause a lot of damage in the hands of unscrupulous people too. So do cars, for that matter.

  • (only you can decide if it is, or not)

    So, MS says AI will cause real damage.
    Is this more or less damage that MS has caused to the world since its founding?

    In other words, is MS jealous, or envious of the potential for "real damage"?

    • by Torodung ( 31985 )

      Exactly. "AI will cause real damage," says Microsoft while wielding both a sledgehammer and a chainsaw and a head mounted minigun. I mean, they unleashed this half-baked crap on the Internet. They decided to cause real damage, to beat Google to the punch, because Google is actually concerned (in a limited fashion) about the ethics of this, and didn't bring it to market half-I'm-a-good-Bing-baked.

      It's like they're saying, "Our sledgehammer/chainsaw/miniguns are out there now, and we're angels not bad actors,

  • The principles should be, the benefits from the regulation to our corporations should be greater than the cost to our corporations.

    fixed that for you, you dissembling twit.

    He doesn't care one wit as to what happens to society.

  • I don't know why Microsoft incriminates itself...
  • by MBGMorden ( 803437 ) on Wednesday May 03, 2023 @11:57AM (#63494234)

    A lot of the people in AI who are calling for regulations have suspect motives. Afterall its easy to maintain a monopoly if you can convince the government that your product is useful but so dangerous that only "qualified" people (eg - you) should be able to use it.

    Pan-am Airlines tried a similar thing in the late 1940's by suggesting that only they should be able to fly international routes.

  • It's almost like protecting our personal data is about to become priority number one for the tech giants and the US government. God speed.
  • Yeah, the "unscrupulous people" == the corps. The real danger with the current AI is bias, and in the hands of corps and gov, well... yeah.
  • by znrt ( 2424692 ) on Wednesday May 03, 2023 @12:50PM (#63494374)

    "I am confident AI will be used by bad actors"

    like e.g. microsoft? what a surprise! :o)

  • "We know this thing we came up with is incredibly dangerous, but we think you should wait until it's gotten loose in the wild and caused a lot of damage before making us take safety precautions. It's much more profitable for us, that way."

    Mercury being used to make hats, radium being painted onto clock dials, tobacco companies making their products more addictive... it's the same story over and over. Companies try to put off regulation as long as they can so they can make as much profit as possible before

  • People invent computers, some people use them to make weapons.
    People invent encryption, some people use it to trade kiddy porn.
    People invent refrigerators, some people use them to traffic organs.
    People invent the internet, some people use it to hack corporations.
    People invent bitcoins, some people use it to trade drugs.
    People invent cars, some people use them to run people over.
    People invent robots, some people attach machine guns to them.
    etc...

    All new technology can be used to do evil things.
    But we can't i

  • "I am confident The Internet will be used by bad actors, and yes it will cause real damage," Schwarz said during a World Economic Forum panel in Geneva on Wednesday. "It can do a lot damage in the hands of spammers with elections and so on." The Internet "clearly" must be regulated, he said, but lawmakers should be cautious and wait until the technology causes "real harm."

    The Internet tools have come under increased scrutiny as their use exploded in recent months following the debut of Web Browsers. Policym

  • to us, Microsoft Chief Economist Warns
  • Now that's funny. I guess they would know.

  • Umm would it be too much to ask for the A.I. to have some morals? Remember A.I. cannot get copyrights, those go to the originators. Any crimes committed by the A.I. should be punishable by the CEO and Board of Directors of the company that owns it.
  • AI powered fake political ads are really going to muddy the waters.

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