Got my first "AI is going to revolutionize the world" dude to that thread from yesterday.
But, I want to be very clear to anyone else thinking "I'll debate this person about AI's value because-"
Let me stop you there.
If you tried to engage me in a debate about eating my own shit, I'd also tell you to fuck off.
*Just* the *extant* externalities of this technology make it, independent of its "value", worthless. Add to that the fact that it's garbage, and again, debate is worthless.
I always described this urge to debate *everything* as sitting down with the person who kidnapped your kids and civilly discussing, over coffee perhaps, the relative merits of child rape.
Like, no, I'm not going to be open to conversing about whether or not your need to have an LLM stroke you when you're lonely at night is worth burning the planet to a crisp.
@johnzajac @stanley The demotion of ethics is really astounding. Ethical considerations used to be proscriptive. In medicine or science if an experiment or trial could not be run ethically, it *could not be run*. Full stop.
Techbros have seemingly turned ethical issues into just a part of a larger calculus; merely a negative weight that can be outweighed by strong-enough upsides. "Sure, lack of informed consent isn't *ideal* but think of the data we would collect."
@checkmite @johnzajac @stanley
I think part of the reason why we've slipped down this slope is because the National Research Act of 1974 that mandates institutional review boards for research on human subjects only applies to research funded by the US Government. Unfortunately, quite a lot of our research is now conducted by private parties with private funding, and ethics regulations mostly don't apply.
@DaveMWilburn @checkmite @stanley
Interestingly, the vast majority of private commercial-application research relies on pure research funded by NSF et al. through grants to academic institutions, often State schools.
This is interesting, of course, because Trump and the oligarchs believe their own propaganda about things like pharma research and agricultural science and so have eviscerated US science funding
Soon-ish, US companies will collapse one by one as the global market moves on
@johnzajac @checkmite @stanley
It's not like we'll have anyone to conduct that kind of research after we've rounded up most of the scientists into camps.
@DaveMWilburn @checkmite @stanley
The good scientists will be long gone by then, if it comes to that. Just like the US essentially cornered the world on physics, materials science, military tech, nuclear tech, medicine, and most other industrial sciences by taking in scientists displaced by the Nazis, other nations have already started advertising shit like "we'll double your budget and let you do whatever you want".
When it becomes clear the US isn't recovering, they'll all emigrate.
John
Stanley Jones
Jake K
Dave Wilburn 