Comment by philipallstar
7 hours ago
> it is a very, very good thing for basically everyone other than the people who paid to build the original models
It's not a good thing if you think there's more discovery and progress to be made, rather than cannibalising a fully mature field with cheaper alternatives. Drowning R&D early is not good for everyone.
Is leveraging an enormous capital advantage to strip-mine the Internet and sell it back to us cannibalism or not? Confused on this point. I think they are exploiting a loophole in copyright law (and kind of redefining the meaning of "derivative work" in my opinion, but hey I'm not a lawyer) that collectively we tolerate because the end result is so useful
I think that's a slightly different topic, but: a) strip-mining the internet is definitely the most misleading way to think about it. Strip mining means aggressively removing something to the area's detriment, and nothing has been removed. If all AI is turned off today the internet has not lost all of its natural resources, and silly phrases like that fuel inappropriate emotions and consequent conclusions and b) the internet is not being sold back to us - that is also a highly misleading phrase, if not an outright lie. The internet is still there and we can use it. No one is selling back to us what we already had. AI is not the internet cordoned off and resold.
I don’t think many outside the US are actively hoping to be governed by Sam, Dario and Elon.
What does further progress get us? Mass unemployment? Extinction? Pick your dark future science fiction?
The happy ending where we're all living in a garden of eden cared for by benevolent AI is hardly worth considering when you look at the cast of characters who are in charge of the world right now.