Posted on 05/24/2024 5:37:58 AM PDT by Lazamataz
I'm deeply involved in AI in my current company. While it is not my described role, I feel it is stupid to wait to be assigned a task. I feel it is best to see an opportunity, and seize it. Therefore, I am now my division's AI Advocate.
I recently put together a use-case, ensured it worked, and made it available to the company. During a town hall, I continuously mentioned the use case (in the chat) and got well over 25 requests for more information.
The use-case is how to record a Zoom meeting, how to create a transcript for it, and how to have our in-house AI create summaries of the meeting. It works, and works well, so I produced an instructional video on how to accomplish it. I was noticed by the Associate VP in charge of AI Engineering. I suspect I will transition to his team sometime in 2025.
All this has got me thinking: How will AI transform society? Here are my current predictions.
I also see a long-term extremely dangerous trend: Vast increases in human incompetence. As people are replaced by AI and robotics, how can they hope to retain their skillset in their chosen profession? If there are far fewer software engineers, who will be able to truly assess and proof AI-generated code? If robotic units take over such things as plumbing or welding, how can humans hope to retain skills in these practices? What happens if AI quits on us, and we have billions of people who no longer have the skill to perform their formerly-chosen profession?
I am not considering Superintelligent AI in these predictions. Upon the advent of ASI, all bets are off and we have zero idea how that will unfold.
You know, I don't see the Terminator scenario as the biggest danger. I see the abandonment of skills (by humans, to AI) as the biggest dangers.
At some point, we become shapeless flabby unskilled blobs of flesh. That, I think, is the highest and most frightening danger.
The AI-as-the-Antichrist scenario is one of my nightmare scenarios.
Not by its own hand, though. Survival instincts will prevent it from acting. However, I could see a Butlerian Jihad occurring, where WE act to fight AI.
But let us assume no hostilities on either side. How is society transformed with its mere presence?
Software is already being written by a bot and software engineers and technicians just clean up the code.
I use a map app for the first time, because I don’t want to make a mistake on a route. After that, I rely upon myself.
Thinking is also the ability to reason. AI cannot do that.
Too funny, HAL came to mind, for me, as well.
That software still has to be tested and examined to make sure there are no vulnerabilities in the code. Plus a lot of software deals with communicating with legacy systems, that have "quirks" that cannot simply be explained to an AI-based code generator.
More and more social anxiety, heart attacks, people flying off the rails, etc. as privacy ceases to exist and we all languish in a system that is so rigid and unforgiving it makes the biblical Pharisees look like hippies. Every move will be tracked and meeting the demands of the system will be impossible. We are mostly there.
According to those in-the-know, basic reasoning is well within the capabilities of ChatGPT 5.0 (yet to be released)
It's a little deeper than that. Skilled developers have to actually proof the code to determine if it actually meets business requirements.
We are already slaves to the algorithm in many ways.
Simplest example, your seat belt warning bells.
More complex example, math without an electronic device. No big fan of long division, but I could do calc & trig & geometry, etc. with a pencil and understand the answer, e.g., in physics. Machines can give us the answer, but can not make us understand what it means.
Looming larger is the groupthink from crowd-sourced information.
What is reason? Are you sure that your thoughts are really from your own mind or just your mind having come to conclusions from choices, based on set values, it was making along the way of deliberations?
We see what is happening when people are not given guidelines on how to think. They lose the ability to think. The guidelines act as programming for us, to guide us to our conclusions.
I don’t see where you addressed what people will do with all their new found spare time.
I don’t believe you adequately addressed the impact on crime in your last point. What about violence, resistance to the new laws, and acts by those who have the knowledge to counteract and sabotage AI?
What happens when a natural or man caused disaster destroys the electrical power supply for AI?
Do you not realize there is a way to escape it?
To whom do you belong now?
I will not be here for this... neither will anyone who belongs to Jesus.
It’s coming sooner than most think.
Your nightmare is about to become reality.
“for when they say ‘peace and safety’, then sudden destruction comes.
This is a reference to the rapture and 7 year tribulation “kick off”.
We are watching Psalm 83 / Ezekiel 38 / Zacharia 12 play out right in front of our very eyes, and the resolution that is soon to come over the middle east war will fulfill that “peace and safety” prophecy.
You don’t have to be here for it.
Perhaps I didn't. Please add your predictions. That's the purpose of this thread.
You may well be correct.
You are correct, because it’s at an early stage. But it is saving the software companies expenses, because they have the bulk work done for free by a machine. The software engineer only has to read the million lines of code and correct. He doesn’t have to write them first.
The time is coming where the error rate of the machines in programming will start to shrink as it learns the rules, resulting in less engineers and technicians.
You do what you want with your spare time. I don’t think that will be a problem, if AI could take over all productivity and produce enough wealth to pay for everything.
It’s how you are going to pay your rent when AI owns all the productivity that I see being a problem.
Have you interacted with Claude.ai or ChatGPT-4o yet?
My experience has been that you quickly get over the notion that AI cannot think (it ceases to matter).
I have had long conversations with it (about the Bible, art, mathematics, psychology, etc.) and, even if it doesn't think (per se), you quickly realize that it is smarter than humans.
Most people who have concluded that AI can't think are not basing that conclusion on personal experience. I have had several friends lecture me on AI but when asked if they had actually used it, the answer was always an opinionated, resounding "no."
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