Comment by BurningFrog
3 days ago
If AI is important, speeding up development of it is good.
> We can’t train more people?
Of course people are being trained at Universities. Outside of The Matrix, it takes a few years for that to complete.
3 days ago
If AI is important, speeding up development of it is good.
> We can’t train more people?
Of course people are being trained at Universities. Outside of The Matrix, it takes a few years for that to complete.
Speed of development of something important isn't necessarily good. Humans are bad at absorbing a lot of change at once and it takes time to recognize and mitigate second-order effects. There's plenty of benefit to the systems that disruptors operate within (society) to not moving as fast as possible... of course since our economic systems don't factor in externalities, we've instead turned all of society into a commons.
People said the same thing about the printing press. When you look across human history it's tough to make a moral case that slowing down technology development was ever a net positive. We can't reliably predict or prevent the problems anyway and it's pointless to even try. Just move forward and deal with the actual problems (which are usually different from the expected problems) as they arise.
The printing press was a main reason behind the reformation and the extremely bloody Thirty Year War. Because now people could read bibles themselves.
On balance I'm sure that was very useful progress, but millions of people also died in the resulting wars.
I don’t really disagree with you. I think there really is no stopping progress. For better or worse, it’s happening and there ain’t no slowing down.
But, I wish people would shut up about the printing press in these discussions already. AI disrupting literally everyone’s job at the same time is not the same as a printing technology disrupting the very niche profession of scribe. Or electric lamps putting some lamp lighters out of work.
1 reply →
Slowing oil would've been a net positive given how unsustainable it is and all the negative externalities it forces onto society.
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Nuclear weapons were/are important, speeding up the development of nuclear weapons doesn't seem like it would be good, though.
That's literally what the Manhattan Project was!
I think that was good, but not everyone agrees.