They more or less are. Consider this day-old thread[1] from Futurology, a default subreddit with 18 million subscribers. The comments are all lambasting the safety-minded statment of Sam Altman and decrying corporate control of AI. This is what most people believe.
Edit: Drawing on tech-related subreddits might be selecting for pro-free-AI people. A Pew Research Survey[2] did find that the number of people more concerned than excited about AI is double that of people more excited than concerned. The biggest concerns there are about job loss and surveillance though, and those people might not care about corporate AI or free-for-all AI, and might even for free-for-all AI.
In what universe is r/futurology a representative sample of the average person?
Pratchett said it best, the average person just wants that things go on as normal and tomorrow is pretty much like today. They want a predictable and secure existence, not a revolution whereby their years of education are rendered moot at the training of a new model.
With previous technological revolutions, there was some clearly articulable benefit to people. Smartphones help you get around, take photos and brought cheap computers to the masses. The internet helps you communicate and learn and be entertained. Those are human focused revolutions.
The main goal of AI is a profoundly negative one: to replace everybody with machines. Who ordered that? And this agenda is pushed by a small number of people with zero conception of what comes next when they eventually achieve that goal. Only vague notions of “we will have basic income!”
What is more likely to happen is that many will be made destitute by this technology.
I’m not naive enough to think that AI can be stopped. There is too much money at stake. But I don’t see the benefit in accelerating it, or making such technology more widely available than it already is. I don’t trust Microsoft and Google to be custodians of AI, but I trust even less the average internet user if such AI is broadly available. Microsoft and Google are at least answerable to law and democratic institutions.
archon1410|2 years ago
Edit: Drawing on tech-related subreddits might be selecting for pro-free-AI people. A Pew Research Survey[2] did find that the number of people more concerned than excited about AI is double that of people more excited than concerned. The biggest concerns there are about job loss and surveillance though, and those people might not care about corporate AI or free-for-all AI, and might even for free-for-all AI.
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/11wlh4s/openai_...
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/03/17/how-american...
zarzavat|2 years ago
Pratchett said it best, the average person just wants that things go on as normal and tomorrow is pretty much like today. They want a predictable and secure existence, not a revolution whereby their years of education are rendered moot at the training of a new model.
With previous technological revolutions, there was some clearly articulable benefit to people. Smartphones help you get around, take photos and brought cheap computers to the masses. The internet helps you communicate and learn and be entertained. Those are human focused revolutions.
The main goal of AI is a profoundly negative one: to replace everybody with machines. Who ordered that? And this agenda is pushed by a small number of people with zero conception of what comes next when they eventually achieve that goal. Only vague notions of “we will have basic income!”
What is more likely to happen is that many will be made destitute by this technology.
I’m not naive enough to think that AI can be stopped. There is too much money at stake. But I don’t see the benefit in accelerating it, or making such technology more widely available than it already is. I don’t trust Microsoft and Google to be custodians of AI, but I trust even less the average internet user if such AI is broadly available. Microsoft and Google are at least answerable to law and democratic institutions.