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AI Technology

AI Threatens Humanity's Future, 61% of Americans Say (reuters.com) 151

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
The swift growth of artificial intelligence technology could put the future of humanity at risk, according to most Americans surveyed in a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Wednesday. From the report: More than two-thirds of Americans are concerned about the negative effects of AI and 61% believe it could threaten civilization. [...] The Reuters/Ipsos poll found that the number of Americans who foresee adverse outcomes from AI is triple the number of those who don't. According to the data, 61% of respondents believe that AI poses risks to humanity, while only 22% disagreed, and 17% remained unsure.
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AI Threatens Humanity's Future, 61% of Americans Say More

AI Threatens Humanity's Future, 61% of Americans Say

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  • keep it out of NORAD! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Wednesday May 17, 2023 @09:05PM (#63531213)

    keep it out of NORAD!

  • 80% of Americans are morons (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DenverTech ( 6049994 ) on Wednesday May 17, 2023 @09:07PM (#63531217)

    Those that believe AI is a problem, do not understand that the rich and right wing are the problem. But Regan and the Birchers took care of that.
    https://www.amazon.com/Bircher... [amazon.com]

    • Everybody loves to blame everybody but themselves.

    • Re:80% of Americans are morons (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Wednesday May 17, 2023 @09:36PM (#63531251)

      You're right. AI isn't the problem. AI promises to free humanity from toil for the first time in the history of humanity. AI holds the promise of allowing people to choose to work instead of having to.

      The problem is, AI is being developed by fascistic mega-corporations that are hell-bent on turning a profit and don't have humanity at heart, and AI is being rolled out by companies for the sole purpose of slashing the workforce and saving money. Even worse: companies that may not want to touch AI and privilege the human workers instead, like mine, are forced to jump into the fray to stay competitive. In other words, everybody will do AI to survive in a world where everybody does AI.

      What people fear and what they deeply understand in their guts is that AI will be used by the ultra-capitalist machine to make the megarich even richer at the expense of everyone else. Kind of like today, but boosted 100x.

      It's not the fault of AI, it's the way capitalism works. Capitalism is knd of a terrible system, but all the other systems are worse. Overall though, t's served society well enough. Not great, but it worked more or less to everbody's advantage, for all its obscene side effects.

      AI will turn capitalism into a monster that will consume us all. It will supercharge it into a machine to create unbelievable and never-seen-before levels of inequality. The way AI is being rolled out will clobber society and upend everyone's lives for the worse, apart for the aforementioned megarich.

      That's what people instinctively know. And they're right.

      • The difficulty here is AI is nearly an inevitability at this point, and those exact same systems threaten people right now, even without AI. AI may be an accelerant, but it's not like the threats it poses are only coming to the fore now.

        And instead reconfiguring institutions to not subjugate even more efficiently with AI, the move seems to shore up what ever you have now against the onslaught (that you will ultimately lose).

        AI may be the catalyst to say "enough is enough" and envision better institutions.

        Or

        • AI is nearly an inevitability at this point

          I have no hope of stopping AI, nor do I think it should be stopped. I wish it was unleashed unto the world in a different, less callous manner, but I'm not even sure it's possible. What will make AI terrible is what made pre-AI society function. I don't know that there would have been any way to transition properly with a plan. AI took everybody by surprise, and the devastation will have started before anybody can do anything about it.

          Personally, I'm just bracing for what's to come, and hoping I'm old enoug

          • AI took everybody by surprise

            It didn't, though. The curve has gotten steeper of late, but it's a pretty obvious extrapolation from what came before. AGI would have been a surprise, because we still don't know whether it's an emergent property. AI as we know it existed before, now we just have more processing power and memory (and memory bandwidth) to throw at the problem. It would have been surprising if this didn't happen.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Personally, I'm just bracing for what's to come, and hoping I'm old enough and I have enough work experience to get to the end rather unscathed. But if I was a young man looking for a job or trying to rack up enough experience to achieve job security today, I'd be terrified.

            Same here. But I am in some sense at the top qualification level in several currently and longer-term very much in demand areas. Most people are not and I fear for them. I recently read a study that most young people (15-30) are really struggling now, because it all looks very bad for them in many ways. Sure, when I grew up, there was a real risk of the world ending in nuclear fire every day, but that was pretty abstract. Toady, the threats are not.

            That said, my CS/IT students are mostly doing well, althoug

            • Personally, I'm just bracing for what's to come, and hoping I'm old enough and I have enough work experience to get to the end rather unscathed. But if I was a young man looking for a job or trying to rack up enough experience to achieve job security today, I'd be terrified.

              Same here. But I am in some sense at the top qualification level in several currently and longer-term very much in demand areas. Most people are not and I fear for them.

              There is a scary question of how exactly this societal transition will work out. Yes, we are reaching the point where a huge number of humans will be essentially unemployable yet they are "needed" to consume items that make the builders of consumables wealthy. But management is very easily preformed by AI, and then again, of what use is an owner of a business.

              The really scary part is how humanity responds. We tend to respond by killing each other.

              I recently read a study that most young people (15-30) are really struggling now, because it all looks very bad for them in many ways.

              It's a complex situation, based on economic outlook, soci

              • One of the things that always strikes me as interesting though, is that while apparently mental health is deteriorating, and some would claim that the world has never been in such a terrible state, which makes depression and poverty a obvious problem - one to be expected.

                Yes, but what's really scary about this situation is that The System doesn't recognize that. There's no DSM code for "anxiety caused by environment", you're just pathologized for not being able to cope with seeing your life support system set on fire.

                I always wonder how our parents (I'm the dreaded Boomer) went through the great depression, [...] but weren't considering themselves the most oppressed generation

                Apparently they got through it with denial.

                and guzzling anti-depressants.

                Guzzling anti-depressants was illegal [livinghistoryfarm.org].

                • One of the things that always strikes me as interesting though, is that while apparently mental health is deteriorating, and some would claim that the world has never been in such a terrible state, which makes depression and poverty a obvious problem - one to be expected.

                  Yes, but what's really scary about this situation is that The System doesn't recognize that. There's no DSM code for "anxiety caused by environment", you're just pathologized for not being able to cope with seeing your life support system set on fire.

                  Ah - the "don't judge me" dictate, where no one is responsible or takes accountability. Even more, the suggestion that someone might have some part in their problems is considered an aggression. Any and all problems are the fault of everyone else.

                  It's great, because while they don't succeed, they are pre-installed with an excuse for every failure.

                  And with the lack of accountability that is the dictum today, the victim can feel great self righteous anger because those oppressors just don't understand, a

                  • And with the lack of accountability that is the dictum today, the victim can feel great self righteous anger because those oppressors just don't understand, and are evil.

                    Most amusing that someone modded my post as flamebait, which kinda proves that statement.

                    Get as mad as you want modder. Your anger and a dollar will get you a down payment on a Starbucks coffee.

        • What you are advocating is the Butlerian Jihad

          ' Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind' - Frank Herbert

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by mad7777 ( 946676 )

        > Capitalism is knd of a terrible system, but all the other systems are worse.

        Well said, I think.

        I mean, capitalism does allow you to own your new robot overlords, should you so choose. Or, you can spend your paycheck on iThings and sneakers. Your choice. I recommend the former, as these machines are coming for your job sooner or later.

        Just please don't pretend these evil greedy corporations are here to destroy the world. Yes, they want to make their shareholders rich. You're invited along for the ride.

        • Re:80% of Americans are morons (Score:4, Insightful)

          by mobby_6kl ( 668092 ) on Thursday May 18, 2023 @09:01AM (#63532179)

          I mean, capitalism does allow you to own your new robot overlords, should you so choose. Or, you can spend your paycheck on iThings and sneakers. Your choice. I recommend the former, as these machines are coming for your job sooner or later.

          Just please don't pretend these evil greedy corporations are here to destroy the world. Yes, they want to make their shareholders rich. You're invited along for the ride. All you need to do is buy a ticket.

          How do I buy a ticket, or rather enough tickets to make a difference? I mean without being born rich or lucking into a niche that pays shitloads.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mad7777 ( 946676 )

            Yep, therein lies the rub.
            If you (or your parents, or grandparents) didn't have the foresight to get onboard with progress back when the fare was cheap, you're a bit screwed at this point. Look at the history of the stock market over the past century. Even as recently as 40 years ago, the S&P 500 index was roughly 12 times lower than today, adjusted for inflation, of course. You didn't even have to be a financial genius. Just buy the index, wait a few decades, and multiply your wealth by 12. Of course,

            • If you (or your parents, or grandparents) didn't have the foresight to get onboard with progress back when the fare was cheap

              Or if they just couldn't afford it. Like today, there were a lot of poor people 40 years ago. If you're struggling to get food on the table, buying stock probably isn't an option.

        • Just please don't pretend these evil greedy corporations are here to destroy the world.

          It's not what they're here for, but they are doing it, they know they are doing it, and they refuse to stop doing it. Is that more or less evil than it being your purpose? I honestly can't decide.

          Yes, they want to make their shareholders rich. You're invited along for the ride. All you need to do is buy a ticket.

          I can't afford a ticket. Also, if I could afford a ticket, I would still have to figure out where to go, and if I guessed wrong I'd wind up where I started.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mad7777 ( 946676 )

            Yep, therein lies the rub.
            If you (or your parents, or grandparents) didn't have the foresight to get onboard with progress back when the fare was cheap, you're a bit screwed at this point. Look at the history of the stock market over the past century. Even as recently as 40 years ago, the S&P 500 index was roughly 12 times lower than today, adjusted for inflation, of course. You didn't even have to "figure out where to go". Just buy the index, wait a few decades, and multiply your wealth by 12. Of cours

            • Anyway, I wouldn't be so quick to blame "capitalism" for this problem. More like a lack of understanding of capitalism among your forebears.

              If you can wind up utterly fucked because you didn't figure out how to win soon enough, the game is rigged and there's no reason not to cheat. Get ready for the masses with torches and pitchforks. And/or, you know, the fields of bodies burning.

        • Even if you owned your own AI robot, why would the corporations with all the patents to make things buy YOUR robot when they can get their own fleet of robots? The whole point of AI is going to be to cut out labor cost. The robot will even be considered a depreciating asset and on top of being more product will act as a tax write off for the company that owns it.

          Without major changes things will implode. As others have said, I hope I'm already old enough to retire before things really get nasty.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mad7777 ( 946676 )

            You are (deliberately?) misunderstanding.
            When I say "own the robots", I don't mean literally own your own robot. I mean buy shares in these supposedly evil companies whose dastardly plan is to provide goods and services to people who want to buy them at the lowest possible price. I really thought that was obvious, but I see now that the concept of investing in the future isn't something everyone is familiar with. My mistake.

      • Depressing, but generally well said. Re all other systems besides capitalism being worse, well it's a bit hard to develop and test one from within capitalist constraints. Maybe that's a task for AIs and simulations.

      • >You're right. AI isn't the problem. AI promises to free humanity from toil for the first time in the history of humanity. AI holds the promise of allowing people to choose to work instead of having to.

        This is one of the biggest problems. Even if we somehow remove the financial need to work then how does this play out for society? 'Toil' is a source of purpose, status, and social life. Will it even be a choice to not work?

        I don't see the Star Trek utopia coming. People Will not be focussed on self-improv

        • Re: 80% of Americans are morons (Score:4, Interesting)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Thursday May 18, 2023 @08:36AM (#63532097) Homepage Journal

          This is one of the biggest problems. Even if we somehow remove the financial need to work then how does this play out for society? 'Toil' is a source of purpose, status, and social life. Will it even be a choice to not work?

          Wait, one thing at a time, these are both massive issues, yet massively different.

          Having "toil" be a source of purpose is bananas. Work for work's sake is crazy. At least when you ride a stationary bike the goal is to better yourself. Work for work's sake is just meant to keep people busy.

          Having "toil" be a source of status would be crazy, but it's not actually a thing. Statistically nobody is impressed by people who work a lot, and the ones who do are missing something important. Spinning your wheels isn't positive. Results matter, how long it takes to get the results only matters if it costs money or you miss an opportunity.

          Having your job be a source of a social life is terrible. Now your social life is tied to your job.

          As for whether or not it's going to be a choice to not work, that depends on who wins. Is it "them", the wealthy who buy the laws and therefore decide how we will live our lives, or is it "us", everyone else? If it's the former, then the choice will be between working and dying. If it's us, then yes. There's far more than enough resources to go around. We waste more than enough food to feed the world, for example. Or for another one, there's multiple unoccupied dwellings for every unhoused person in America, let alone every family unit. We already have people dying because of artificial scarcity.

          I don't see the Star Trek utopia coming. People Will not be focussed on self-improvement - more likely they'll behave as the long term unemployed already do.

          It's hard to say because we've never had a significant class of people who weren't forced to toil for any length of time. You have to give people time to unclench before you can know what they're capable of. The daily grind has a massive and generally underappreciated effect on a person — living with anxiety is hard.

          • >Having "toil" be a source of purpose is bananas. Work for work's sake is crazy. At least when you ride a stationary bike the goal is to better yourself. Work for work's sake is just meant to keep people busy.

            Whatever you think about it, the reality is work provides purpose. Whether paid or otherwise, people are happier when they're doing something useful. Just look at rates of substance abuse and criminality among the unemployed. The devil makes work for idle hands. People benefit from structure from wo

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ranton ( 36917 )

          'Toil' is a source of purpose, status, and social life. Will it even be a choice to not work?

          Those who think people could never find purpose, status, or a social life without a job really need to find a hobby. Don't look at the unemployed to see what a "post-job" world would look like, look at healthy retired people with decent retirement savings. There is a reason why happiness starts to increase in your 50's and keeps going up even while your health is deteriorating. It is because being unemployed with money is the best condition for any human.

        • People Will not be focussed on self-improvement - more likely they'll behave as the long term unemployed already do.

          Most of the long term unemployed people I know (better known as "retired") are very focused on self-improvement. They read books, take classes, travel, volunteer, and do all the other fulfilling things they didn't have time to do when they were working.

      • The exact same conditions happened in the industrial revolution. For the first time everyone was going to have an easy life while machines do all the work.

        The opposite happened. People just worked harder to keep up with the machines.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by ranton ( 36917 )

          Humans don't have an example where technology has made their labor obsolete, but history does show us how it has happened to other species. Centuries of technological advances made horses more and more valuable to the workforce over time, until their workforce participation was wiped out in the 1900s. 90% of all equine jobs were eliminated from 1920 - 1960, and no new jobs were created for them. Technology had finally reached the point where the species wasn't needed for most of the economy to function.

          This

      • Or in the words of Ted Chiang: Fears of technology are fears of capitalism. [kottke.org]

      • You're right. AI isn't the problem. AI promises to free humanity from toil for the first time in the history of humanity. AI holds the promise of allowing people to choose to work instead of having to.

        The problem is, AI is being developed by fascistic mega-corporations that are hell-bent on turning a profit and don't have humanity at heart, and AI is being rolled out by companies for the sole purpose of slashing the workforce and saving money. Even worse: companies that may not want to touch AI and privilege the human workers instead, like mine, are forced to jump into the fray to stay competitive. In other words, everybody will do AI to survive in a world where everybody does AI.

        What people fear and what they deeply understand in their guts is that AI will be used by the ultra-capitalist machine to make the megarich even richer at the expense of everyone else. Kind of like today, but boosted 100x.

        It's not the fault of AI, it's the way capitalism works. Capitalism is knd of a terrible system, but all the other systems are worse. Overall though, t's served society well enough. Not great, but it worked more or less to everbody's advantage, for all its obscene side effects.

        AI will turn capitalism into a monster that will consume us all. It will supercharge it into a machine to create unbelievable and never-seen-before levels of inequality. The way AI is being rolled out will clobber society and upend everyone's lives for the worse, apart for the aforementioned megarich.

        That's what people instinctively know. And they're right.

        Sure, sure. But all this shit is going to happen whether AI exists or not. Megacorps and government are essentially one large, multi-tentacled entity at this point, and that entity is what is set to consume all. Automation / AI will, as you said, just accelerate it. So, the rich, corporations, and governments will get to place the blame on AI in the public space as the homelessness problem increases, the poverty line seems to rise through the population, and more and more of us end up dying in the streets,

        • Without AI/automation those megacorps would still need us to do the grunt work. Given enough progress of AI/robotics/automation they won't actually need us.

          If 7 billion of us die off, so long as the wealthy have their food/security covered by robotic AI they are set. Everything will be done for them, so why keep those 7 billion around for?

          • Without AI/automation those megacorps would still need us to do the grunt work. Given enough progress of AI/robotics/automation they won't actually need us.

            If 7 billion of us die off, so long as the wealthy have their food/security covered by robotic AI they are set. Everything will be done for them, so why keep those 7 billion around for?

            Entertainment?

            I do think we'll have a fairly substantial population reduction coming our way as automation and AI ramp up and the wealthy, with the assistance of the government who are now their puppets/pets tighten their grip. It'll be interesting to see if they just let nature take its course and watch from afar as the "have nots" die off, or if they'll hasten it with gladiatorial games and fights to the death with promises of riches for the winners, which will still barely qualify as table scraps to the

      • It's not the fault of AI, it's the way capitalism works. Capitalism is knd of a terrible system, but all the other systems are worse. Overall though, t's served society well enough. Not great, but it worked more or less to everbody's advantage, for all its obscene side effects.

        AI will turn capitalism into a monster that will consume us all. It will supercharge it into a machine to create unbelievable and never-seen-before levels of inequality. The way AI is being rolled out will clobber society and upend everyone's lives for the worse, apart for the aforementioned megarich.

        What scares me the most is the role of AI in leveraging concentrated power to manipulate society followed by all the people clamoring to regulate "AI" in order to promote selfish corporate interests.

        I think some of this even my own fears are overblown and don't accurately reflect likely countervailing influences. To some degree everyone will be able to leverage the same technology for their own aims. It isn't just power to huge corporations and nobody else.

        Trend lines on technology is such that in a few

      • You're right. AI isn't the problem. AI promises to free humanity from toil for the first time in the history of humanity. AI holds the promise of allowing people to choose to work instead of having to.

        That is a problem in itself, if it happens most people will just choose not to work because we will naturally take the easy way out, my fear is we will end up stupid (in general), just like we ended up obese since we no longer need to think for ourselves.

        Capitalism is knd of a terrible system, but all the other systems are worse. Overall though, t's served society well enough.

        Its not an all or nothing choice, we can have a mixture of capitalism with elements wealth distribution to suit our needs. Most things in life having too much of something, even something good will be harmful.

        In the beginning capitalism was great since we

    • Can kind of agree on the first statement, but not that AI is not a problem. A three year old creating a six year old - no more candy for you ma'dear. Rich being a problem has nothing to do with AI.

    • Re:80% of Americans are morons (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Thursday May 18, 2023 @12:00AM (#63531453) Homepage Journal

      Just because they're morons according to your views doesn't mean they're wrong. Not in this instance. I think AI is a threat to civilization, not because AI will develop an implacable hatred for humanity, like in a sci-fi movie, but because people will accept AI generated output uncritically, and use it stupidly. The problem won't be our technology, it'll be us.

      The thing that will make AI a killer app is that it'll generate mediocre results incredibly cheaply. I don't knock mediocre, by definition it's *not bad*, and not bad at incredibly low prices is cost effective. But if we aren't careful we'll lop off *both* ends of the compentency bell curve. Being bad or mediocre at a job is a stage in a human becoming *great* at a job.

      I think that's important because the way AI works now is that it's trained on corpuses of human works or on databases of human decisions, and then converts queries and constraints into something that credibly resembles the human stuff you gave it. But that also means that future progress in this type of AI's capabilities will depend on new human created data that responds to changes in the world the AI doesn't know about yet, and there won't be many people generating data anymore. The job losses are going to be painful at first, but not dangerous to civilization. As with all such economic transformations, the people who survive it will look back at the sacrifices of the peopel who didn't make it, and decide it was all worthwhile. The real long term danger to *civilization* of taking humans out of the loop is that civilization will become ridgid and unadaptable to change.

      Of course we don't have to use AI lazily and stupidly. We could use it to free people from routine drudgery, allowing them to become more creative and productive, which, by the way, means we'll be able to pay them more. There'd still be jobs, they'd just be different, like when computers ended the practice of companies hiring armies of accounting clearks and started the practice of companies hiring armies of IT staff. But in this case, I'm not sure we can count on history repeating itself.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        The thing that will make AI a killer app is that it'll generate mediocre results incredibly cheaply. I don't knock mediocre, by definition it's *not bad*, and not bad at incredibly low prices is cost effective. But if we aren't careful we'll lop off *both* ends of the compentency bell curve. Being bad or mediocre at a job is a stage in a human becoming *great* at a job.

        Yeah, but it need not be. At least in my mind, there are two categories of jobs: Jobs that humans do because they're genuinely hard/interesting/creative and jobs that humans do because robots can't do them yet. And we have to start by splitting things into those two buckets to even start to have a meaningful conversation.

        For jobs that humans do solely because robots can't do them yet, there is no advantage whatsoever to humans getting good at them. And the humans who pay for the results of that work will

        • All of what you say is true, but it doesn't address the actual problem in society being exacerbated by AI. To wit, the people who have managed to get all the game pieces don't want to share them with anyone, and they double-extra don't want to share them with anyone who's not providing them some direct benefit, so you have to have a job working for one of these people if you want to eat... and the total number of jobs is contracting. That's always happening, and right now AI just happens to be the specific

      • Without apprenticeship where will the next journeyman learn their trade?

        There are natural geniuses who don't need any training. In your scenario these Masters can immediately operate their own Studios without ever having to spend time in someone else's. But most of us need guidance from a more experienced person in our field. Most of us need to do the grunt work in order to develop our craft.

        Maybe giving everybody a studio if they want one is not such a bad idea. Once upon a time there were only three ch

      • I think AI is a threat to civilization, not because AI will develop an implacable hatred for humanity

        Why would it need to develop an implacable hatred for humanity? That's irrelevant.

        Sigh. So many people just haven't thought this through. They dismiss -- and even mock -- the AI extinction arguments because they've never actually read them, much less understood them.

        AI doesn't have to "hate" us to wipe us out, and indeed there's absolutely no reason to expect that it would hate us. Nor any to expect that it would love us. Just that it would see us as a potential obstacle to its goals... and that's enoug

    • Intelligent humans will soon understand those targeting right or left as "the problem", need to be slapped with their own political pom poms until they bleed. Us vs. Them is the oldest damn play in the for-profit book. Not sure when we're going to learn from that.

      The Disease of Greed has been uncured for thousands of years. The only difference between the fall of Rome and the fall of the USSR, is the date on the fucking calendar. Humans aren't even smart enough to avoid repeating the worst of our own hi

    • I'd have said it was tendentious bitches for whom everything is about politics and promoting their "side"...but you kind of already did that. Thanks, I guess?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Actually, around 85% of all people are morons. Obviously, Artificial Ignorance is not a threat. What is a threat is what people are going to do with it.

    • No, About 50% of the American Population has below average intelligence for Americans.
      Then combined with over a century of science fiction making AI, the bad guy as it makes a good story plot. Our culture is indoctrinated into the idea at AI is dangerous, and 50% of the population lacks the ability/will to compare and contrast what the Fictional Stories state, vs what is actual state. As well all of us (smart and dumb) will believe or disbeleave information not from logic, and science, but from if we trust

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by King_TJ ( 85913 )

      Ah... a post made by that 80%!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tchdab1 ( 164848 )

      Wealthy connected tech leaders are trying to raise an alarm about AI. Why? When have tech leaders ever warned or apologized for up-ending anything? They've loved to turn things upside down and collateral damage be d@mmed. Jobs? "Lost jobs will be replaced by new jobs" has been the answer.
      We're left to conclude that AI is probably a huge threat to tech elites.
      Who needs cutting-edge ideas and processes of tech elites, minus their enormous cut of the benefits, if AI can provide them for free?
      I for one welcome

    • Exactly, it does not matter what they think. Its the 1% that will tell them what to think about AI, at least until the computers take over the 1%.

  • What future? (Score:3)

    by Pinky's Brain ( 1158667 ) on Wednesday May 17, 2023 @09:29PM (#63531233)

    We are at or beyond peak everything except collapse.

    Genetic quality of the world population? Peaked. Progressive cultures among the world population? Peaked. Ability to fight infectious diseases threatening human health and agriculture? Peaked. Fossil water extraction? Peaked. Phosphorus? Peaked. Potassium? Peaked. Superpower stability? Peaked. Containment of proliferation of WMD? Peaked. Hospitable climate? Peaked.

    Without massive technological progress and disruption, Malthus will have his day soon. AI needs to save us from ourselves.

    • Right, just like how everything that can be invented has been invented.

      • Look at the population pyramid in South Korea, they are running out of time to invent anything. Immigration is covering it up in other advanced nations, but the problems are the same.

        Civilization is running out of time, singularity or collapse.

    • Evolution happens rather quickly in geological terms.

      If it all collapses, we will evolution further. If not, we will continue to devolve.

      • Evolution happens rather quickly in geological terms.

        These are climatological terms, not geological, so that's irrelevant. You're thinking on an entirely wrong scale. Things can go tits up much, much faster than you might think if you're looking at completely the wrong thing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

      When you put it that way, it looks like the plot of The Matrix. Humanity peaks, then we develop AI, then the AI captures our minds. They just predicted the peak to be in 1999 when it... actually... maybe it was!

  • Computers and algorithms have run our lives as almost all of us have known our entire lives. Over our lives, they've gotten better.

    Don't be fooled into thinking that these AI bots aren't going to start making decisions for you.

    It will start as corporations and their customer service.

    It will move to writing policy, because its cheaper to run a firm who is using ChatGPT to make something sound plausible to humans who have only a small amount of information about any subject.

    It will be added to the lobbying

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      "Don't be fooled into thinking that these AI bots aren't going to start making decisions for you."

      AI won't be making my decisions for me, they may be taking away my choices. And you should learn what a bot is.

      "It will move to writing policy, because its cheaper to run a firm who is using ChatGPT to make something sound plausible to humans who have only a small amount of information about any subject."

      A "firm"? You mean a propagandist? What "firm" is in the business of sounding "plausible"?

      "It will be add

      • Public policy companies. They're a big business. They're the ones hired by the lobbyists who are hired by Facebook, Amazon, Google, etc....

        --
        Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. - Confucius

  • It just goes to show how easy lead people are by people perpetuating scare stories. Most of AI is not AI at all, just pattern matching algorithms with the letters AI added to make it seem relevant during the current hype for AI.

    While some interesting and fun things have been done with AI recently, outside of some specialist niches, it has very little practical use. The hype will eventually die down and people will realise the limitations. As long as AI or any algorithm is never put in charge of weapons the

    • It just goes to show how easy lead people are by people perpetuating scare stories. Most of AI is not AI at all

      That is completely, totally, and in all other ways irrelevant to the point.

      If you approach a point, please make it.

      While some interesting and fun things have been done with AI recently, outside of some specialist niches, it has very little practical use.

      Oh, the point you were making is that you are spectacularly willfully ignorant. People are already using AI (whatever you call it) to destroy jobs. There is AI-generated content being placed on commercial sites right now. It is therefore reducing job count right now.

      As long as AI or any algorithm is never put in charge of weapons the chances of harm to humanity are limited.

      All our corporate masters have to do is use it to help them do the things they're doing now but faster, and it will harm humanity.

  • The stuff we call 'AI' today is a transitory threat that will cause a lot of economic disruption much like the Jacquard Loom did. We will get over it, though currently it seems likely 'getting over it' means the middle class is going to join the lower class in servitude to the 0.1%.

    The real threat is a true general artificial intelligence. Once you have an artificial mind that requires no compensation and can do absolutely anything a human can, only faster and better and with new ones trained instantly by

    • An AGI, like Mycroft Holmes (from "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress") is something that is just isn't going to happen. We have AIs that are very good at pattern recognition and jumping through nodes, but that is a long ways away from an AGI.

      What will be worrisome is when we wind up at ASI tier.

      • >An AGI, like Mycroft Holmes (from "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress") is something that is just isn't going to happen.

        Evolution and meat aren't magic. There's nothing evolution has accomplished in meat that we have any reason to suspect can't be duplicated in silicon.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Actually, AI is not even a "long way" from AGI. It is not even on the same road. Current AI has absolutely no core characteristics of AGI and no potential to ever become AGI. What AI can do today is what it could do 40 years ago, just with larger training data and faster and the natural language interface does sound a lot nicer. A fast moron is still a moron though.

  • Honestly, who cares what 61% of Americans think about AI. They won't be informed about the realities of AI for at least another four to eight years.

  • Things threaten humanity (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gordona ( 121157 ) on Wednesday May 17, 2023 @09:57PM (#63531273) Homepage
    Humans themselves!

  • Humanity's greatest threat (Score:3)

    by algaeman ( 600564 ) on Wednesday May 17, 2023 @09:59PM (#63531281)
    The greatest threat to humanity's future is humanity. We should regulate them before they cause permanent damage to our society.

  • Didnt Brexit teach us anything? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by greytree ( 7124971 ) on Wednesday May 17, 2023 @11:26PM (#63531415)
    Brexit was clear proof that it is not helpful to ask the opinion of people who are misinformed about the subject in question.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      That's the inherent flaw of democracy, the electorate doesn't have to understand what they're voting for.
      Even if you don't have a public referendum, politicians often don't understand any better either - or have strong incentives to maintain the status quo that got them to a beneficial position in the first place.

    • Re:Didnt Brexit teach us anything? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by slashdot_commentator ( 444053 ) on Thursday May 18, 2023 @03:56AM (#63531735) Journal

      Didnt Brexit teach us anything?

      1) As an American, no.

      2) I find it amazing that some Brits have regrets about Brexit, the basis of their regret being that they were lied to by their politicians, and yet the party that advanced Brexit is still in power.

      3) Taking a uninformed overview of the issue, the Brexit resolution appeared to be a choice between national sovereignty or taking advantage of economic perks by being part of an international organization that infringes on national sovereignty. There was no way you were going to have the latter once you left the EU.

      Somebody had to be happy that central Europeans can't set roots in their town anymore. What the hell were pro-Brexit supporters fighting for in the first place? Why do you still permit the people who lied to you to retain their position?

      Why the hell would guys like Nigel Farage think they could politically advance themselves on a timebomb they couldn't deliver on their political promises? Who the hell was Farage working for? How on earth could voters be so gullible that if they get a political promise, "oh, it must be true"?

      It seems to me that the majority of Tory party leaders were not completely sold on the Brexit issue, but saw its passing as a means to preserve their party's poltical power or advance Tory interest. You had:

      David Cameron: A relative political mediocrity that didn't seem eager about Brexit, but was willing to allow the referendum to come about in order to "stay in power".

      Teresa May: Another political mediocrity that didn't seem that eager about Brexit, but "had" to deliver on the Brexit negotiations, in order to remain in power. Seemed to be pretty fucking hapless throughout the process, only killing time before people got pissed off at her lack of results, and booted her out.

      Boris Johnson: The only Tory politician who seemed to be pro-Brexit that got into power, that appeared to be waiting in the wings before taking power, who basically only ripped off the bandage when concluding Brexit negotiations, and yet he only lost power because he was a hypocritical prick that outraged his party's voters with his hypocrisy during covid.

      Liz Truss: She's a different idiot. She's so epically stupid politically she achieved the 2nd shortest tenure as PM in its 300 year existence. My meta question here is, "How the hell are the Tories still in power if they're so bereft of leadership she managed to get into the office?"

      Rich Sunak: I get why its taken him this long to become PM. Never really pro-Brexit, but willing to go through the motions.

      Which still leaves the meta question, "What the fuck are the opposition parties doing? Why are they turning off typical voters post-Corbyn?" Is the nature of British internal party politics such that they're designed to be so ideologically fucked up that its impossible for them to grow enough support among general voters to the point they can take power?

      Brexit was clear proof that it is not helpful to ask the opinion of people who are misinformed about the subject in question.

      That seems to have common sense wisdom in the observation, but that condescending attitude must have also contributed to Brexit coming about.

      Finally, it seems to be some bizarre leadership con, advancing an issue which had zero economic benefit from it. Even if it was only a fake issue to climb to the top of the rat heap, you still have to make the voters you conned happy, or you still lose your political standing.

      And what the hell do you Brits have against the Labor party? (I presume its still the largest opposition party.) Isn't the dufus who used to lead it out of power?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by evanh ( 627108 )

      Asking such questions of the public isn't the problem so much as the lies told to sell it in the first place. And the blatant willingness to tell those lies.

    • Brexit taught me that you cannot hold a large referendum on a single subject without involving all kinds of unrelated issues. Brexit was essentially a protest vote for many since neither of the two parties was addressing their concerns (declining standard of living, sky-high immigration, a detached London-based elite). It's a tough choice to accept that either a YES vote and a NO vote would result in decline for working and middle classes!

  • So most Americans have already been sufficiently frightened by the media and rich tech people. That was fast. Here comes the inevitable political backlash that sets back scientific progress.

  • Given that 99% of Americans don't understand how ML works, this survey is only useful for politics. The question is, will this become a cultural war? Will Dems and GOP unite against AI? or will one of them be for AI?

  • Damn... (Score:3)

    by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Thursday May 18, 2023 @01:51AM (#63531581)

    If I trusted the opinions of 61% of Americans, I'd be concerned.

  • 2/3rds of Americans currently have a large negative effect on our future.

  • I think it's safe to ignore their opinion on matters of science...

  • That doesn't mean much (Score:5, Insightful)

    by blugalf ( 7063499 ) on Thursday May 18, 2023 @04:52AM (#63531775)
    40% also believe in Creation [gallup.com], so I wouldn't call it a case of 'smart crowd' just yet; even majorities can be hopelessly wrong.

  • Control questions? (Score:3)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Thursday May 18, 2023 @06:13AM (#63531865)
    What questions did they use as controls to evaluate the validity of the survey responses? How you design a survey instrument has a very strong influence on the responses you get. Surveys were designed for PR & marketing & are typically poor quality instruments for the purposes they're often used.

    I mean, you could ask them something stupid like, "Do you think peanut butter threatens humanity's future?" to establish a baseline of stupidity/paranoia & then add some reversed questions like, "Do you think AI will benefit humanity's future?" & then ask them why they think AI/peanut butter are a threat/benefit to humanity, i.e. What do they know/believe? How close to reality is that? (We've seen from previous surveys that Fox News viewers actually know less than people who claim to watch no news at all.) From that you could extrapolate a little more than people's emotional reactions to provocative yet vague divisive claims, accusations, & pessimistic scenarios that have been batted around the media in recent weeks. Obviously, the control questions would have to be more plausible than these examples off the top of my head.

    Last but not least, surveys give you a very narrow snapshot into respondents reactions in the particular, time, place, manner of the survey interaction, & the mood they were in at the time. Also, qualitative responses have to be "coded" which means interpretation by the researchers who bring their own biases into it. Be very careful about what you read into these surveys!
  • AI is *not* AS which is Artificial Sentience.
    Serious misrepresentation.
  • It was no different during the industrial revolution.
  • Yes, and Elon Musk will have fully automated self driving in 2015.

  • That statistic is good to know, since 90% of Americans are idiots. This implies that probably even 33% of American idiots are not stupid enough to believe this.

  • It sounds like the Russians played 5000 rounds of civilization 4 and decided they could say "there's no reason for all of our troops on your border", invade and call it a special operation, while the rest of the world condemned them over and over without actually jumping into the war.

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