@fembot @seachanger The impetus for this has been an important thing in North America for a very long time. So important that storm water control, and ground water recharge have been mandated via the C.3 requirements for construction since the late 1990's. In California where we have allowed corporate lobbyists to short circuit our planning process with SB330, the C.3 requirements are still enforced regardless of the significant amount of deregulation we've had on the development process. And due to issues of storm water in San Francisco a major lawsuit in the early 2000's drove the green school yard movement there, resulting in educational gardens to replace asphalt, and capture rainwater.

If you are really into this stuff you can also check out the work done by Brad Lancaster in Arizona on urban forestry and using rainwater capture to maintain it.
https://www.harvestingrainwater.com/

I read this paper because I disagree that "AI" is based in race science. I think it influences the current development of it and for me that is an important distinction.

This paper does not support the assertion that AI is based in race science. BUT if you feel attacked by the assertion that AI is based in race science, you really should read this paper and take the time to digest what it says.

The problem with this (read the paper to get a deeper understanding of this) is that AGI is not a well defined goal.

Pursuit of AGI results in nightmarish levels of scope creep.

Due to the nature of the tools being developed this is a bigger problem than just painful software development.

All kinds of toxic ideological bullshit joins that scope creep and gets embedded deep in the models.

And I would like to add that on top of that the uses to which people imagine these tools can be applied also include everything under the sun which just drives the potential for even more madness finding its way into computer models that are supposed to mimic human thought processes.

I thought Altman was just playing Musk (who's ideas are mostly just fuzzy unserious variations of woo woo sci-fi bullshit) in order to get money out of him for the founding of OpenAI. I thought that that was what all the talk about saving us from potential apocalypse driven by hostile AIs was all about. Just snake oil to get the ball rolling on investment.

But there's significant funding and organization behind research, indoctrination, education, and funneling talent toward developing AGI.

Whether they are afraid that AGI could happen somewhere and be weaponized or they are genuine believers that it will be a good thing for humanity and just want to ensure that they profit... either way they believe in it.

Did these idiots have parasocial relationships with the fucking ELIZA program as kids? What is wrong with them?

The ground is laid in the paper for the following assertion:

"The AGI race is not an inevitable, unstoppable march towards technological progress, grounded in careful scientific and engineering principles. It is a movement created by adherents of the TESCREAL bundle seeking to “safeguard humanity” by, in Altman’s words, building a “magic intelligence in the sky”, just like their first-wave eugenicist predecessors who thought they could “perfect” the “human-stock” through selective breeding."

I agree.

@emilymbender Depending on what you mean by "based in race science" I am of course resistant to that.

The assumption of most people who hear that is that the tech can never be of any value because of such a taint. I completely disagree. I think the tech could potentially be of value. (I think AlphaFold is valuable for example)

If you however mean that the history of the development of this stuff has race science all over it, and that the people driving its development right now are influenced by race science or believers in it, YES I agree. Of course.

Anyway, thank you for those articles. I've been reading them for the past hour. I don't have your expertise and thus didn't find them.

@emilymbender I understand you pushing me off toward what you posted given that this is the internet and comments like mine are usually a misrepresentation and a trap. But I am actually genuine here, and I don't have much interest in that documentary after reading her interview which seemed quite shallow.

I think there is something to the history of this, but I would rather read something in depth to understand what the connection and influence actually is rather than the guilt by association that she is relying on.

I appreciate the work that you are doing and wish you the best.

@emilymbender Can you point me to something to read on how the race science influences the technology and science of AI?

This isn't a gotcha. I just don't get it - unless I am thinking about this wrong and it has more to do with the culture of the people developing this stuff, how the LLMs are trained and so on where the race science creeps in.

I have tons of criticisms of AI but they are primarily linked to who is funding this and why not the roots of the tech itself.