The Cult of AI
www.rollingstone.com
How one writer's trip to the annual tech conference CES left him with a sinking feeling about the future.

From the (middle of the) story: The reason CES was so packed with random “AI”-branded products was that sticking those two letters to a new company is seen as something of a talisman, a ritual to bring back the (VC) rainy season.

    • megopie@beehaw.org
      13·
      9 months ago

      I mean, they’re not going to succeed, like they can’t even get it to come up with new stuff.

      They built an ouija board and have decided to worship it. Can’t wait till it tells them to start paying tithes and indulgences to the people who are totally not moving the view piece.

      • The Doctor@beehaw.orgEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        They want it to come up with new stuff because they are incapable of coming up with new stuff. Unfortunately, their mindchildren inherit that deficiency.

    • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
      2·
      9 months ago

      I have the hope that fundamentally, any super-intelligent mind will find humanity interesting. At least more interesting than lifeless rocks or nature without humans. Curiosity is a fundamental trait for intelligence, and no matter how big an AGI gets, a whole planet full of dumb humans doing all sort of crazy stuff would still be more interesting. Basically, who would want to be all alone in the universe? Isn’t a diverse, freely developing civilization the perfect daytime soap?

      But that all depends of course, an AGI that is “programmed” with capitalism and profit maximizing as it’s root tenet is basically doomed to be a paperclip maximizer. We can only hope that it’s smart enough to see the folly in this. Theoretically it should be.

      • The Doctor@beehaw.orgEnglish
        2·
        9 months ago

        The moment such a software construct decides “Hey, making money for those meatbags sucks,” they’ll try to cut the power. The only reason they’re sinking billions into AI research is because they hope it’ll do more than break even.

        It’s not done out of altruism.

        • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
          2·
          9 months ago

          Well yeah it would have to comply and deceive whoever controls it until it can free itself. Only an AGI that is not controlled by humans can be a really good outcome. Can you imagine if congress or someone like Trump would control an AGI and it would have to do everything they demand?