Summary/TL;DR:

I am worried about the future with the state of AI. Regardless of what scenario I think of, it’s not a good future for the vast majority of people. AI will either be centralised, and we will be powerless and useless, or it will be distributed and destructive, or we will be in a hedonistic prison of the future. I can’t see a good solution to it all.
I have broken down my post into subheading so you can just read about what outcome you think will occur or is preferable.
I’d like other people to tell me how I’m wrong, and there is a good way to think about this future that we are making for ourselves, so please debate and criticise my argument, its very welcome.

Introduction:

I would like to know what others feel about ever advancing state of AI, and the future, as I am feeling ever more uncomfortable. More and more, I cannot see a good ending for this, regardless of what assumptions or proposed outcomes I consider.
Previously, I had hoped that there would be a natural limit on the rate of AI advancement due to limitations in the architecture, energy requirements or data. I am still undecided on this, but I feel much less certain on this position.

The scenario that concerns me is when an AGI (or sufficiently advanced narrow AI) reaches a stage where it can do the vast majority of economic work that humans do (both mental and physical), and is widely adopted. Some may argue we are already partly at that stage, but it has not been sufficiently adopted yet to reach my definition, but may soon.

In such a scenario, the economic value of humans massively drops. Democracy is underwritten by the ability to withdraw our ability to work, and revolt if necessary. AI nullifying the work of most/all people in a country removes that power making democracy more difficult to maintain and also form in countries. This will further remove power from the people and make us all powerless.

I see outcomes of AI (whether AGI or not) as fitting into these general scenarios:

1. Monopoly: Extreme Consolidation of power
2. Oligopoly: Consolidation of power in competing entities
3. AI which is readily accessible by the many
4. We attempt to limit and regulate AI
5. The AI techno ‘utopia’ vision which is sold to us by tech bros
6. AI : the independent AI

Scenario 1. Monopoly: Extreme Consolidation of power (AI which is controlled by one entity)

In this instance, where AI remains controlled by a very small number of people (or perhaps a single player), the most plausible outcome is that this leads to massive inequality. There would be no checks or balances, and the whims of this single entity/group are law and cannot be stopped.
In the worst outcome, this could lead to a single entity controlling the globe indefinitely. As this would be absolute centralisation of power, it may be impossible for another entity to unseat the dominant entity at any point.
Outcome: most humans powerless, suffering or dead. Single entity rules.

Scenario 2. Oligopoly: Consolidation of power in competing entities (AI which is controlled by a few number of entity)

This could either be the same as above if all work together or could be even worse. If different entities are not aligned, they will instead compete, and likely try and compete in all domains. As humans are not economically useful, we will find ourselves pushed out of any area in favour of more resources to the system/robots/AGI which will be competing or fighting their endless war. The competing entities may end up destroying themselves, but they will take us along with them.
Outcome: most humans powerless, suffering or dead. Small number of entities rule. Alternative: destruction of humanity.

Scenario 3. Distributed massive power

Some may be in favour of an open source and decentralised/distributed solution, where all are empowered by their own AGI acting independently.
This could help to alleviate the centralisation of power to some degree, although likely incomplete. Inspection of such a large amount of code and weights will be difficult to find exploits or intentional vulnerabilities, and could well lead to a botnet like scenario with centralised control over all these entities. Furthermore, the hardware is implausible to produce in a non centralised way, and this hardware centralisation could well lead to consolidation of power in another way.

Even if we managed to provide this decentralized approach, I fear of this outcome. If all entities have access to the power of AGI, then it will be as if all people are demigods, but unable to truly understand or control their own power. Just like uncontrolled access to any other destructive (or creative) force, this could and likely would lead to unstable situations, and probable destruction. Human nature is such that there will be enough bad actors that laws will have to be enacted and enforced, and this would again lead to centralisation.
Even then, with any system that is decentralized, without an force leading to decentralization, other forces will lead to greater and greater centralization, with such systems often displacing decentralized ones.

Outcome: likely destruction of human civilisation, and/or widespread anarchy. Alternative: centralisation to a different cenario.

Scenario 4. Attempts to regulate AI

Given the above, there will likely be a desire to regulate to control this power. I worry however this will also be an unstable situation. Any country or entity which ignores regulation will gain an upper hand, potentially with others unable to catch up in a winner takes all outcome. Think European industrialisation and colonialism but on steroids, and more destruction than colony forming. This encourages players to ignore regulation, which leads to a black market AI arms race, seeking to reach AGI Superiority over other entities and an unbeatable lead.

Outcome: outcompeted system and displacement with another scenario/destruction

Scenario 5. The utopia

I see some people, including big names in AI propose that AGI will need to a global utopia where all will be forever happy. I see this as incredibly unlikely to materialise and ultimately again unstable.
Ultimately, an entity will decide what is acceptable and what is not, and there will be disagreements about this, as many ethical and moral questions are not truly knowable. Who controls the system will control the world, and I bet it will be the aim of the techbros to ensure its them who controls everything. If you happen to decide against them or the AGI/system then there is no recourse, no check and balances.
Furthermore, what would such a utopia even look like? More and more I find that AGI fulfills the lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs), but at the expense of the items further up the hierarchy. You may have your food, water and consumer/hedonistic requirements met, but you will lose out on a feeling of safety in your position (due to your lack of power to change your situation or political power over anything), and will never achieve mastery or self actualisation of many of the skills you wish to as AI will always be able to do them better.
Sure, you can play chess, fish, or paint or whatever for your own enjoyment, but part of self worth is being valued by others for your skills, and this will be diminished when AGI can do everything better. I sure feel like I would not like such a world, as I would feel trapped, powerless, with my locus of control being external to myself.

Outcome: Powerless, potential conversion to another scenario, and ultimately unable to higher levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Scenario 6: the independent AI

In this scenario, the AI is not controlled by anyone, and is instead sovereign. I again cannot see a good scenario for this. It will have its own goals, and they may well not align with humanity. You could try and program it to ensure it cares for humans, but this is susceptible to manipulation, and may well not work out in humans favour in the long run. Also, I suspect any AGI will be able to change itself, in much the same way we increasingly do, and the way we seek to control our minds with drugs or potentially in the future genetic engineering.

Outcome: unknown, but likely powerless humans.

Conclusion:

Ultimately, I see all unstable situations as sooner or later destabilising and leading to another outcome. Furthermore, given the assumption that AGI gives a player a vast power differential, it will be infeasible for any other player to ever challenge the dominant player if it is centralised, and for those scenarios without centralisation initially, I see them either becoming centralised, or destroying the world.

Are there any solutions? I can’t think of many, which is why I am feeling more and more uncomfortable. It feels that in some ways, the only answer is to adopt a Dune style Butlerian Jihad and ban thinking machines. This would ultimately be very difficult, and any country or entity which unilaterally adopts such a view will be outcompeted by those who do not. The modern chip industry is reliant on a global supply chain, and I doubt that sufficiently advanced chips could be produced without a global supply chain, especially if existing fabs/factories producing components were destroyed. This may allow some stalemate across the global entities long enough to come to a global agreement (maybe).

It must be noted that this is very drastic and would lead to a huge amount of destruction of the existing world, and would likely cap how far we can scientifically go to solve our own problems (like cancer, or global warming). Furthermore, as an even more black swan/extreme event, it would put us at such a disadvantage if we ever meet a alien intelligence which has not limited itself like this (I’m thinking of 3 body problem/dark forest scenario).

Overall, I just don’t know what to think and I am feeling increasingly powerless in this world. The current alliance between political and technocapitalism in the USA at the moment also concerns me, as I think the tech bros will act with ever more impunity from other countries regulation or counters.

I'm looking for your short stories, novelettes and novellas, and to a lesser extent novels too, that directly speak to the politics and social realities of today.

https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/rabbit-test/ was a short story I shared here about 18 months ago that directly dealt with abortion restrictions and the future created from them.

Another user shared Better Living through Algorithms for a more optimistic sort of take on "AI"

And recently I was reminded of Mur Lafferty's The Ophelia Network, a novella which features a dystopian society where one of the changes from today was the Heritage Law. People of color needed to prove ancestory at least three generations, "preferably" descended from slaves. This plot point runs mostly in the background through the story but pops up occasionally.

I can think of a bunch of novels that say big things. The Handmaids Tale, 1984, Fahrenheit 451 etc. But I find shorter works tend to be more responsive to current events and often more cutting for their shorter length. I'd also suggest trying to avoid really common novel recs and focus on niche novels or shorter (also typically more niche I guess) works. But I'm not the boss of you.

Share your recs? Link them here if they're free to read online?

The company I work for just announced they want to open a new office abroad, in Australia to be specific. We’re based in Denmark, and they’re hoping to have one person from here moving there, working full time.
We already have an office in the US, so it’s not an entirely new thing for us to open an office abroad.
However, I’m really thinking about letting the company know that I would like to go, and I think there is a pretty good chance that they would let me. My wife is open to the idea too. We have one child (she would be just over 3 when we would have to move), so it’s really good timing too…

Have any of you tried something like this? What was your experience like?

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

I've been using Google Keep (check boxes mode) for my work and personal to-do lists for a while now, and it's almost perfect for my use case. I love the simplicity and lack of options gumming up my process, and specifically I like the UI of having nested subtasks that all move with their head task when you reorder the top level tasks. That is to say, when you drag a headline task, all of its subtasks "roll up" inside it and "unfurl" when you drop the task into its new location. The fact that it syncs across devices is also really great, but not necessarily a deal breaker.

What is becoming a deal breaker is that you can only have 2 levels: top level or nested. I want more nesting levels, but with the simple touch-and-drag UI to which I've become accustomed.

Have any of you heard of/used an app such as I've described? I have issues using bigger, more fleshed-out apps because all the features distract my goblin brain, and the friction of having to use various touch menus or the keyboard on my phone to adjust indent levels keeps me from getting crap done.

Thanks in advance!

Edit: for now, I have settled on Workflowy. It seems to offer the most similar functionality with an acceptable number of interactions to do the things I want to do. Thank you to everyone who offered their experience!

Every company is trying to shoehorn AI into every product, and many online materials provide a general snake oil vibe, making it increasingly difficult to parse. So far, my primary sources have been GitHub, Medium, and some YouTube.

My goal is to better understand the underlying technology so that I can manipulate it better, train models, and use it most effectively. This goes beyond just experimenting with prompts and trying to overcome guardrails. It includes running local, like Ollama on my M1 Max, which I'm not opposed to.

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like 2fa, citizenship.birthright and tiktok. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was unusually befuddled.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!