Saturday Stories And Must Watch Video On The Rapid Deployment Of Next Generation AI
Are concerns about AI dangers fear mongering or prophesy?
Without having the background in AI, it’s difficult if not impossible for me to feel confident in evaluating two stories that came across my feed this week - both of which I found terrifying.
The first was written by Eliezer Yudkowsky whose brief bio with the article notes is,
“a decision theorist from the U.S. and leads research at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. He's been working on aligning Artificial General Intelligence since 2001 and is widely regarded as a founder of the field.”
In his piece published in TIME he certainly doesn’t mince words and the piece is well worth reading in its entirety, but here’s its conclusion
We are not ready. We are not on track to be significantly readier in the foreseeable future. If we go ahead on this everyone will die, including children who did not choose this and did not do anything wrong.
The second was a video, this time featuring a presentation made by Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin from the Center For Humane Technology and who lead off their presentation by highlighting that a recent poll of AI researchers showed 50% of them felt there was a 10% chance that AI would lead to humanity’s extinction. The video is worth every second of its watchtime (and of course you can speed it up if you’re impatient like I am)
Finally some writing of mine from elsewhere, this time from Medscape where I explain how it's difficult for me to imagine a situation in which a drug other than an antiobesity drug would be found to have too many benefits to include in your cost-effectiveness analysis but where you'd be comfortable to run that analysis anyhow, and then come out against the drug's recommendation and fearmonger about its use
Have a great weekend!
Happy to see Dr. Freedhoff hammering away at the ignorant, concerning obesity bias and treatments. Personally, I have tried everything over the decades. Chubby as a kid: My dear mother first had me go on a low carb diet with her when I was 11! Did WW for the 1st time at 17/18. Cabbage soup diet, remember that one? The Diet Centre @33 before my wedding. Orlistat after kids. Books, government health programmes, Keto, intermittent fasting. Oh, and exercise omg: karate, modern dance, aerobics, step class, ski conditioning; was lifting weights in the 80s at the YWCA before it was a thing; Jazzercise, postpartum exercise, ballroom dancing, Nordic poling, +50s exercise class, tai chi, dog walking. And lots of sports over the years. Get the pic? Every effort worked short term but resulted in regain, plus more. No metabolic syndrome or T2D yet. Knee joints, foot probs. My understanding GP has prescribed Ozempic at my request. If I have to stay on it forever to maintain a good quality of life, I will, unless some unusual side effect gets me.