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egb_hibs

egb_hibs

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Joined
Jul 2, 2002
This geezer sees AI blootering us quicker than most others.

It’s a decent listen but it illustrates both sides of what I think are concerning about it - the destructive possibilities of AI itself and the mental, don’t understand humanity, ‘Californian’ worldview on the part of the types helming it.

Anyway, this is pretty good on the former and cringey on the latter; no killer robots, but no jobs any more

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He’s not just some media pundit either, a former heid un at google’s r&d division. Credible then, at least on the tech. Statements like ‘compassion is algorithmic, I can programme it’….well, not so much.
 
My AI says

"AI's potential risks and limitations discussed by former Google R&D head

• A former head of Google's R&D division expresses concerns about the destructive potential of AI and the limited understanding of humanity among those leading its development.

• While acknowledging the credibility of the individual's technical expertise, the discussion highlights concerns about the oversimplification of human emotions and the potential job displacement due to AI advancements.

😆
 
AI is a funny one to me because it's here...it's advancing and yes, it will be taking away some jobs...in fact, I would argue it will eventually take away a decent number of jobs globally. So, in the short term is saves companies money by eliminating the most expensive part of a company, it's people...but then if enough people are unemployed and can't find equal jobs in regards to pay, how can people then by the products that companies sell and who saved money in the first place by implementing AI? It's a conundrum isn't it...people have to have disposable income to buy products, but if the companies making the products are replacing some employees with AI...how can you then sell the products in which people can no longer buy?
 
BVilleggiante said:
AI is a funny one to me because it's here...it's advancing and yes, it will be taking away some jobs...in fact, I would argue it will eventually take away a decent number of jobs globally. So, in the short term is saves companies money by eliminating the most expensive part of a company, it's people...but then if enough people are unemployed and can't find equal jobs in regards to pay, how can people then by the products that companies sell and who saved money in the first place by implementing AI? It's a conundrum isn't it...people have to have disposable income to buy products, but if the companies making the products are replacing some employees with AI...how can you then sell the products in which people can no longer buy?
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A classic conundrum which I put to a business exec waxing lyrical about automation well over a decade ago now, to be met by a blank look. It’s a game theory type situation, and globalism is already testing it big time.

AI could really ratchet it up which is why smart Silicon Valley types who are a little less starry eyed than this chap were busy building compounds and the like (I gather somewhat out of fashion now as they realise there will be now outrunning it).

At least there will be a golden age for a while where joiners and plumbers are royalty, being far far more difficult to replace than lawyers or doctors.
 
I'm increasingly wary of it, although you tend to be able to spot it - I noticed a couple of "journalists" using it to write articles and they stick out as downright weird.
 
If the likes of Sam Altman are to be believed (they're not) it's all sunlit uplands from here on in and we'll all be living in near utopia soon provided we do everything he asks - mainly provide huge amounts of energy which he'll use to create artificial general intelligence which will then solve the climate crisis that he made worse.

It's all a bit bonkers and the reality is bound to be quite problematic.

I find the current LLM tools quite useful though and the GPT chat / Star Trek computer thing is mind-blowing. I also used a tool to create a realistic replica of a colleagues voice from a couple of mins of him talking. I'm pretty sure this sort of thing is only going to accentuate the existing problems we see with the likes of ryan69. I can see a future where it's not just simpletons who can't distinguish bollocks from reality but where it becomes difficult for most people.
 
hibadelic said:
If the likes of Sam Altman are to be believed (they're not) it's all sunlit uplands from here on in and we'll all be living in near utopia soon provided we do everything he asks - mainly provide huge amounts of energy which he'll use to create artificial general intelligence which will then solve the climate crisis that he made worse.

It's all a bit bonkers and the reality is bound to be quite problematic.

I find the current LLM tools quite useful though and the GPT chat / Star Trek computer thing is mind-blowing. I also used a tool to create a realistic replica of a colleagues voice from a couple of mins of him talking. I'm pretty sure this sort of thing is only going to accentuate the existing problems we see with the likes of ryan69. I can see a future where it's not just simpletons who can't distinguish bollocks from reality but where it becomes difficult for most people.
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Yup. The fake news thing will be a major problem.

But the lost of jobs is the biggie I fear, with the huge energy cost in the mix an all.

The utopian take on it is bonkers even if achievable which it’s not. As appealing as it sounds one only has to observe countless fucked up rich kids to understand that a life of luxury is not going to work out at population level. Then there’s the inevitable centralisation of power that would come with it. A crap idea in short, brave new world stuff.

Fortunately that need not detain us as it won’t happen. Mass unemployment and even more centralisation of wealth…that’s what’ll happen.

I take heart that LLM is a chocolate teapot when it doesn’t have human provided input to bosh together. I’ve tried to use it to answer things I can’t find on google - and hardly rocket science ones at that - and it’s pish; returns verbatim chunks of the few half relevant things I’d found.
 
Yeah, it will immediately be used for crime and for creating fake videos etc to attack and discredit people. Imagine the damage.

Jobs are very much in the spotlight, these greedy Silicon Valley types frankly can't see beyond their own navels even as they self style themselves as genius level intellect. All that seems to mean is that there is a total lack of empathy and a general level of sociopathy/psycopathy dragging politicians and other lesser CEOs along for the ride.

Nothing more than standard greed and shortsightedness really. The curse of humanity.

Edit: There, Their, They're. Should know better!
 
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jetsam1 said:
Yeah, it will immediately be used for crime and for creating fake videos etc to attack and discredit people. Imagine the damage.

Jobs are very much in the spotlight, these greedy Silicon Valley types frankly can't see beyond their own navels even as they self style themselves as genius level intellect. All that seems to mean is that there is a total lack of empathy and a general level of sociopathy/psycopathy dragging politicians and other lesser CEOs along for the ride.

Nothing more than standard greed and shortsightedness really. The curse of humanity.

Edit: There, Their, They're. Should know better!
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I’m the world’s smallest fan of Silicon Valley, but to be fair to them a lot of them are trying to ‘warn the world’. That said, they’re also busy getting on with it at the same time, usually justified by the age old ‘if we don’t do it someone else will’ rationale. Which of course is absolutely true as well as being an excuse.

So there is more than greed and shortsightedness involved, indeed there is another deadly element as well, one that has long afflicted science, ie intellectual curiosity overriding other concerns.

After 35 years working in tech it is one of a million reasons I want out. I simply want nothing to do with it. I’m also convinced that technology people are, contra their own self opinion, absolutely the last people who should have control over this stuff.

If nothing else, I think some of the disciplines of science should come in, in terms of self policing and regulation. But those have roots in a different age and I’m not sure they can be implemented anyway when IT moves far faster and where you’d can’t implement controls on materials, labs etc.
 
China can identify any one of its 1.412 billion people in less than 2 minutes using AI. And anyone who just happens to be in China at the time, or probably passing any of their embassies.
 
Jack said:
China can identify any one of its 1.412 billion people in less than 2 minutes using AI. And anyone who just happens to be in China at the time, or probably passing any of their embassies.
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I remember years ago before AI was so capable, I got told of some bampot government catching protestors by taking cctv pictures of them, plus pictures of people from national id cards and embedding them in a free image matching game. They then distributed to kids all over the world and got them to match cctv faces to id card images in the middle of matching cats to cats etc.

My memory is a bit hazy and I’m not 100% if this was a real scenario or illustrative of what you could do - there was a bit of both at the event - but it stuck with me. Total budget for the exercise was a few thousand quid.

This, by the way, is in large part how image based AI got going. Loads of folk in the poor world were paid a fraction of a cent per image to, for example, identify if the image contained the aforementioned cats, or cars, or clouds or whatever. I mean millions of people and thousands of millions of images.

Another tidbit I remember were virtually iron clad predictions of people’s politics derived from Amazon purchases. You could get a 100% prediction rate by looking at cd purchases (which shows how long ago this was!)
 
It's 100% NOT being used for your benefit.

That much is guaranteed.

Something that works somewhere they roll out everywhere.

Like a previous poster stated...China can match anyone within 2 minutes(though by now probably instantly)

Why do you think facial recognition was accelerated during COVID times.

Chinese Credit score system incoming.

These traitors do not serve you!
 
egb_hibs said:
emember years ago before AI was so capable, I got told of some bampot government catching protestors by taking cctv pictures of them, plus pictures of people from national id cards and embedding them in a free image matching game. They then distributed to kids all over the world and got them to match cctv faces to id card images in the middle of matching cats to cats etc.
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Humans aren't very good at matching snap shots to ID card photos and surprisingly Border Force folk checking passports are no better than average in matching a passport photo to the person standing in front of them. Check out Hannah Fry in The Secret Genius of Modern Life, passport episode. @Ryan69 would spontaneously explode when he realises he's being tracked all the time. 👀 They know where he is and what he's doing.

I also heard during the week a whole host of stores and shopping centers in Fife use AI to track and stop shoplifters as they enter the various sites. I'm not at all surprised and I'm sure it's widespread. Probably at Easter Road.
 
Jack said:
Humans aren't very good at matching snap shots to ID card photos and surprisingly Border Force folk checking passports are no better than average in matching a passport photo to the person standing in front of them. Check out Hannah Fry in The Secret Genius of Modern Life, passport episode. @Ryan69 would spontaneously explode when he realises he's being tracked all the time. 👀 They know where he is and what he's doing.

I also heard during the week a whole host of stores and shopping centers in Fife use AI to track and stop shoplifters as they enter the various sites. I'm not at all surprised and I'm sure it's widespread. Probably at Easter Road.
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Yup AI will be much better. I think it works on facial geometry so isn’t fooled by beards or glasses or whatnot.

On a related note, and crossing into your field, I think one of the best ‘use cases’ (as they say in IT) is in X-ray , cat scan etc evaluation. AI is going to be able to spot the early stages of cancer or other abnormalities way better than a human eye. Diagnostic medicine full stop, it will be very effective. Pattern matching is the sweet spot and that will work on pixels in an X-ray or symptoms cross referenced with travel and what’s going on in various parts of the world.

I think it will do a lot of good in such areas. Whether it outweighs the bad elsewhere…
 
Jack said:
Humans aren't very good at matching snap shots to ID card photos and surprisingly Border Force folk checking passports are no better than average in matching a passport photo to the person standing in front of them. Check out Hannah Fry in The Secret Genius of Modern Life, passport episode. @Ryan69 would spontaneously explode when he realises he's being tracked all the time. 👀 They know where he is and what he's doing.

I also heard during the week a whole host of stores and shopping centers in Fife use AI to track and stop shoplifters as they enter the various sites. I'm not at all surprised and I'm sure it's widespread. Probably at Easter Road.
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A distant family member has a job trying to smuggle bombs into Edinburgh airport and gain access to secure areas.

To test active security measures.

They’re pretty good at it too apparently, but it’s made me think twice about flying 😂
 
Purple & Green said:
A distant family member has a job trying to smuggle bombs into Edinburgh airport and gain access to secure areas.

To test active security measures.

They’re pretty good at it too apparently, but it’s made me think twice about flying 😂
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I once got pulled into a side room because the useless security at EDI couldn't tell the difference between a gun/bomb/knife and a metal zip on my jeans.
I reckon it wouldn't be hard to get round these geniuses.
 
Jack said:
Humans aren't very good at matching snap shots to ID card photos and surprisingly Border Force folk checking passports are no better than average in matching a passport photo to the person standing in front of them. Check out Hannah Fry in The Secret Genius of Modern Life, passport episode. @Ryan69 would spontaneously explode when he realises he's being tracked all the time. 👀 They know where he is and what he's doing.

I also heard during the week a whole host of stores and shopping centers in Fife use AI to track and stop shoplifters as they enter the various sites. I'm not at all surprised and I'm sure it's widespread. Probably at Easter Road.
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unless you are a hun jack. All forms of ID and policing in general do not apply.
 
Been listening to some podcasts about the Silicon Valley cranks. Apparently their is a thing called pdoom, which is a score by which these reprobates are measured on their belief AI will be the end of us all.

P(doom) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org

I’m going to put myself at 10%. But mainly through economic impact rather than god like AIs massacring us or turning into our leaders, as these chaps muse on. If that’s the measure I’m going 1%, simply on the basis it’s unwise to be certain (ie 0%j
 
Once AI takes all of our jobs, then there’s talk of a universal wage for the population to live on.

The cynic in me thinks they’ll take a few billion of us out before that ever becomes a reality
 
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The Dog Father said:
Once AI takes all of our jobs, then there’s talk of a universal wage for the population to live on.

I cynic in me thinks they’ll take a few billion of us out before that ever becomes a reality
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Yup it’s a worry. That said, the allegedly ‘right wing’ ones like Musk and Theil are never done going on about our birth crisis and calling for there to be more people produced.

I’m not sure how all this gels in their allegedly big brains, but there we are. They worry me quite a bit these chaps, but on this specific angle, it’s somewhat smaller brains such as Justin Trudeau types that give me the fear.
 
Sancho Panza said:
Very interesting article here regarding how AI is going to be powered.

www.economist.com

Oil bosses have big hopes for the AI boom

Data centres are fuelling demand for natural gas—for now
www.economist.com www.economist.com
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Paywalled but yup. Data centres are already a huge contributor to global emissions and AI is very resource intensive. Tbh it’s my quiet hope that climate concerns skewer this bollocks.
 
egb_hibs said:
Paywalled but yup. Data centres are already a huge contributor to global emissions and AI is very resource intensive. Tbh it’s my quiet hope that climate concerns skewer this bollocks.
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That's weird. It opened fine for me. Maybe you can only access a couple of articles free. I read it in the physical copy. Basically saying that the gas and oil producers are rubbing their hands because of the huge demand for natural gas generated by AI implementation. The tech bros are in a quandary because they want sustainable net zero energy for their green credentials but renewables can't meet their needs. So do they go with gas and screw their green credentials or wait for renewables to get up to speed, potentially losing ground to countries with fewer ethical concerns? 🤔
 
Just cos tech can do stuff it doesn't mean that we should let it. Right now the Liberian tech dudes are getting free reign. If we let that continue then we'll end up relying on their benevolence.
 
egb_hibs said:
Yup it’s a worry. That said, the allegedly ‘right wing’ ones like Musk and Theil are never done going on about our birth crisis and calling for there to be more people produced.

I’m not sure how all this gels in their allegedly big brains, but there we are. They worry me quite a bit these chaps, but on this specific angle, it’s somewhat smaller brains such as Justin Trudeau types that give me the fear.
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So many things going on that need fixed for our species to survive let alone thrive in the future.
 
Will AI become self-aware?

It is safe to conclude that even though consciousness consists of several layers and aspects (depending on whether it is explored from a medical or spiritual perspective), it is unlikely that AI will have human-like consciousness, at least not in the near future

Could AI take over the world?

If you believe science fiction, then you don't understand the meaning of the word fiction. The short answer to this fear is: No, AI will not take over the world, at least not as it is depicted in the movies.

I’d also be fairly confident AI in the UK today is not regulated in any meaningful form.
 
Jack said:
Humans aren't very good at matching snap shots to ID card photos and surprisingly Border Force folk checking passports are no better than average in matching a passport photo to the person standing in front of them. Check out Hannah Fry in The Secret Genius of Modern Life, passport episode. @Ryan69 would spontaneously explode when he realises he's being tracked all the time. 👀 They know where he is and what he's doing.

I also heard during the week a whole host of stores and shopping centers in Fife use AI to track and stop shoplifters as they enter the various sites. I'm not at all surprised and I'm sure it's widespread. Probably at Easter Road.
Click to expand...
Should try using it to identify some players
 
Purple & Green said:
Will AI become self-aware?

It is safe to conclude that even though consciousness consists of several layers and aspects (depending on whether it is explored from a medical or spiritual perspective), it is unlikely that AI will have human-like consciousness, at least not in the near future

Could AI take over the world?

If you believe science fiction, then you don't understand the meaning of the word fiction. The short answer to this fear is: No, AI will not take over the world, at least not as it is depicted in the movies.

I’d also be fairly confident AI in the UK today is not regulated in any meaningful form.
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In my view there is not a scintilla of a chance of it becoming self aware. I also think it is highly unlikely to give the appearance of true intelligence. By this I mean what is termed AGI - artificial general intelligence - but to me that’s what AI is, I.e. able to ‘think’ about what it chooses.

However, it doesn’t need to do either of these things to be devastating to jobs and security.
 
Sancho Panza said:
That's weird. It opened fine for me. Maybe you can only access a couple of articles free. I read it in the physical copy. Basically saying that the gas and oil producers are rubbing their hands because of the huge demand for natural gas generated by AI implementation. The tech bros are in a quandary because they want sustainable net zero energy for their green credentials but renewables can't meet their needs. So do they go with gas and screw their green credentials or wait for renewables to get up to speed, potentially losing ground to countries with fewer ethical concerns? 🤔
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If one is to take their patter at face value, AI should quickly be solving green energy problems for us. I’m not holding my breath.
 
Bossie said:
Just cos tech can do stuff it doesn't mean that we should let it. Right now the Liberian tech dudes are getting free reign. If we let that continue then we'll end up relying on their benevolence.
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I agree but we are in the ‘if we don’t do it someone else will’ problem. And we are, because they will indeed.
 
OpenAI's o1 model is trying to escape :D

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davhfc said:
OpenAI's o1 model is trying to escape :D

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Click to expand...

I don't see a problem. As long as someone can "clear the cache" or "unplug, wait 15 seconds then plug in again" humanity is safe...shirley 🤷
 
I wonder how much quantum technology will affect things. We got to this point with AI due to improvements in various different areas but I'd guess that having 10^25 times faster computing power will make a significant difference to what can be achieved.

I think I've posted on here before about the potential problem's posed by quantum computing, the immediate and most frightening one being that encryption goes out the window. With Google announcing Willow this week, it would appear that's now a more pressing concern than AI, at least in my opinion. (That said - I'm not oblivious to the fact that I've not seen any smart tech people express the same concerns).
 
hibadelic said:
I wonder how much quantum technology will affect things. We got to this point with AI due to improvements in various different areas but I'd guess that having 10^25 times faster computing power will make a significant difference to what can be achieved.

I think I've posted on here before about the potential problem's posed by quantum computing, the immediate and most frightening one being that encryption goes out the window. With Google announcing Willow this week, it would appear that's now a more pressing concern than AI, at least in my opinion. (That said - I'm not oblivious to the fact that I've not seen any smart tech people express the same concerns).
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I think quantum compute will improve AI but I don’t think all the computing power in the universe will make it sentient; I believe that’s simply a category error and has nothing to do with processing power.

What it will do is make what AI can do, exponentially faster and more powerful, so things like displacement of jobs will be exacerbated. As you say, nullifying encryption is another pressing danger, though I see google are claiming willow isn’t up to the job.
 
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