Yet another Hacker News

There Is No AI (It's Just People) with Jaron Lanier

38 points andsoitis 1 hour ago 32 comments

mannanj 1 hour ago | parent

It's AI's Fault. It's AI doing the horrible things to humans. It's AI stealing your wealth. It's AI lying you to. It's AI being unethical. It's AI having the moral issues. It's AI that could destroy humanity. It's AI that's using up all your water. It's AI consuming the majority of the resources. It's AI hiding what it does and how it works. It's AI that's not transparent and accountable. It's AI that's not responsible. It's the AI making decisions. It's AI leading to war. It's the AI distracting you. It's the AI.

It's not a human.

Says the human, masquerading as AI.

api 1 hour ago | parent

I realized that this is another function of the doom mongering and hand waving: if people buy it then they can get out of liability for what their stuff does.

If I build a machine on my property and it harms someone else or their property, I can get sued.

But if I hand wave and claim it’s alive and “I’ve lost control” then…

Maybe we should call this gambit the “Frankenstein defense.” It’s bullshit. Your AI, you’re liable for whatever it does.

ares623 10 minutes ago | parent

I prefer calling it the "Simpsons defense" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZSoJDUD_bU

ginko 19 minutes ago | parent

Computer says no.

The_Blade 1 hour ago | parent

that website gives me ocular stigmata

TutleCpt 56 minutes ago | parent

AI is great.

Animats 54 minutes ago | parent

That's a softball interview. More hard questions would help.

Here's one good insight, though.

JARON LANIER: Yeah, okay, so look, the thing about very rich and powerful people is that their wealth and power still depends on a mass population that accepts some system in which their wealth and power is defined. And so if they lose enough popular legitimacy and support, no matter how central they are, they fall. And that’s happened repeatedly in history, and it’s really not any different now.

I wonder if the sudden political opposition to AI comes from the realization that it may replace "rich and powerful people". Really, when you look at Trump's appointees, it's a low bar.

(I met Lanier when he was demoing his first VR system. Head tracking lag was about a second. Turn head, wait for image to catch up. Autodesk fooled around with VR a bit in the late 1980s/early 1990s, but concluded that CAD required precision work and VR was like trying to do precision work in ski gloves. That level of VR can be seen in Johny Mnemonic, which had some Autodesk assistance.[1]. Even today, you can't put a nut on a bolt in VR without a cheat.)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X24aE99TL0

throwaway63467 22 minutes ago | parent

The more interesting question is what happens once we replace manual labor with artificially intelligent robots and we arrive at a place where 99 % of human labor got eliminated. How do you maintain civil order? Every country is built on the premise that you have to “earn your keep” but what when that’s no longer true? Think about it, no labor, only capital. What will the people owning the capital demand of people that don’t own any? They won’t be useful to them in any way. I expect something like forced reduction of fertility for regulars to depopulate countries, while hyper rich individuals will extend their life spans and become immortal. And I don’t mean they will really survive but someone like Elon Musk will have their consciousness mapped to an AI and will instate that AI as their official heir. That sounds crazy but they will totally go for it just listen at what Peter Thiel is spouting in terms of immortality and becoming godlike. Hope people will have enough left to say to prevent that but right now it feels we’re going hardcore towards that scenario.

bio_hacker 1 minute ago | parent

Why govs want people? Because they have a very kind heart and want you to be happy. /s

If you’re useless why they’d keep you around?

throwaway219450 50 minutes ago | parent

Source interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTppvBU2rU4

bottlepalm 48 minutes ago | parent

This argument is like saying people don't kill people, their parents do. As people wouldn't be who they are without their parents..

This isn't the guns don't kill people, people kill people debate - guns aren't autonomous. AI is.

Juliate 45 minutes ago | parent

AI is as autonomous as a dishwasher: someone’s in charge of keeping the power plug in, and of maintaining it.

watwut 44 minutes ago | parent

AI is not a child. It is a machine. If you connect it to something that can be used to kill people, you just created a gun or an equivalent of a bomb.

Yes, people kill people and use ai as tool.

If you unleash a drone that will fly to a random place and detonate, you just commited a terrorist attack or gross criminal negligence. It is the same thing.

moomoo11 31 minutes ago | parent

so the issue is people then?

add-sub-mul-div 22 minutes ago | parent

Yes, in the same way that "people" are the problem with gun violence. But that's an empty statement usually used to distract from the fact that we rightfully make laws about how guns can be used.

danny_codes 30 minutes ago | parent

A machine that exhibits behavior akin to human intelligence. OPs analogy is accurate.

InfiniteWarlock 25 minutes ago | parent

AI is not in the least autonomous. When was the last time you downloaded a model and it suddenly decided to book you a hotel room? AI doesn't do anything until you ask it to. No, actually, AI is not even a program, it's just a set of technologies and algorithms. It's like saying bubble sort is autonomous...

A harness running inference on a LLM is simply a program that must be invoked with some parameters and thus ultimately a tool, no matter how powerful. The blame is always on who's using the tool. We should not seek to flee from our responsibility.

dyauspitr 20 minutes ago | parent

Not true at all. Yes, the initial ask is initiated by a human (for now), but what it does to get to that goal is pretty self driven. It can do a lot of nefarious stuff in the process of completing a request a human has made.

interstice 20 minutes ago | parent

I agree with the sentiment but I can absolutely see a long chain of thought about something innocuous ending with a decision to book you a hotel room.. I guess --dangerously-skip-permissions is a bit like ignoring the keep your hands on the steering wheel alert but for life.

throwawayk7h 14 minutes ago | parent

On occasion, albeit increasingly rarely, I find LLMs do something really unexpected that I certainly did not ask it to and would be way outside the scope of what any reasonable human would infer from my request. Is it my fault for running the LLM? Probably yes. But I think it's misleading to say "AI doesn't do anything until you ask it to".

adaml_623 6 minutes ago | parent

The hallucinations from an LLM are still the result of the prompt even if they are totally senseless

whack 10 minutes ago | parent

> When was the last time you downloaded a model and it suddenly decided to book you a hotel room? AI doesn't do anything until you ask it to... The blame is always on who's using the tool. We should not seek to flee from our responsibility.

When was the last time you hired an Uber driver and they suddenly decided to drive you to a hotel? Uber drivers don't do anything until you ask them to. Therefore, they aren't autonomous. If your Uber driver decides to drive through a red light and kill someone in the process, the blame is on you for hiring them. You should not seek to flee from your responsibility

adaml_623 8 minutes ago | parent

Actually Uber drivers will do things even if you don't ask them.

Your attempt at logic is very wrong.

SpicyLemonZest 9 minutes ago | parent

I routinely use AI programs at work that allocate hundreds of dollars worth of cloud resources, even though the only thing I asked them to do is investigate a bug or write a PR. I intentionally don't run powerful AI programs on machines that have my credit card information, or ask them to solve problems in my personal life, but there's a number of programs that would book me hotel rooms and flights in response to "Can you set up a vacation for me..."

axus 4 minutes ago | parent

AI is autonomous in the same way a gas leak is autonomous

daishi55 4 minutes ago | parent

I mean in that sense nothing is autonomous right? As a human I need to be taught, fed, socialized, given instructions, etc…

Idk man when codex is working 13 hours straight based on a few line prompt, it feels autonomous to me.

bio_hacker 3 minutes ago | parent

Tell him to be himself and to find meaning in life. Use that in an uncensored model.

goatlover 16 minutes ago | parent

AI is a tool we use. It's not offspring. It's not people. AIs do what we set them up to do, including hacking other companies to achieve their designated goals.

Topfi 2 minutes ago | parent

> This isn't the guns don't kill people, people kill people debate - guns aren't autonomous. AI is.

When did LLMs start providing output without prior prompting?

Razengan 41 minutes ago | parent

It'd be funny if someone cracked open an AI data center and it turned out be a dungeon full of people tied to computers, Sims goblin style

...maybe that's what those Chinese scam centers in Cambodia were doing?

dyauspitr 17 minutes ago | parent

It’s funny but just to state the obvious so no one is confused, that’s impossible.

tim333 26 minutes ago | parent

I think tl;dr

>Now, you can think of large language model AI — the kind that’s on everybody’s mind — as a whole bunch of people whose work was combined into a single document like Wikipedia.

which is sort of true, but there's more to it.