Comment by gpt5
6 hours ago
I think that the main thing people in this thread are missing, is that it's not about math. AI progression is very likely to affect every single thing humans can do today. Mathematicians are feeling the blow this week, especially as there was wide spread denial in that math community over the capabilities of AI over the last few years, but it's the same problem everywhere.
Well, yeah, while that is true, my impression is that mathematicians (as a community, even though there were outliers) didn't care - not even the slightest - about the impact of LLMs and generative AI, other type of AI and machine learning until it started impacting them. So I have no sympathy for their community at all. They brought all this AI dystopia on us, so they should have voiced their concerns much louder and much much earlier. They should also have shamed their peers who helped these companies much louder and they should have lobbied their institutions and their governments much earlier and much stronger. They should also have protested the direction these companies took at the exact moment when they started using AI for profit.
We can look at the past and wish we were more clear-eyed about what was happening, just as we can look to the present and ask that we have more empathy for each other going forward. But I don't think it helps anybody to blame the mathematics community for not organizing until they were directly impacted. This is a tidal wave that has caught everyone off guard in <3 years.
that is incredibly depressing
Yep. Perhaps humanity would be better off if we instituted and enforced the notion of "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind." It's worth thinking about; just because we can build AI systems doesn't mean we should.
I think it would be depressing in its own way if this technology just ended up being regulated out of existence.
2 replies →
The problem with technology is that the people who have it conquer and kill all the people who don't, essentially ensuring a destructive race to the bottom. You would need a mutual international alliance of nations who not only renounce the technology but also agree to invade anyone who attempts to develop it. Our closest precedent is nuclear weapons, but rather than renouncing them, the US's position is that "only we should have them" and that other people acquiring the same tech they have are valid targets for invasion, and they will obviously apply that notion to any new technology that can be weaponised as well.
The technology is fine, great even. It’s the rabid greed of venture capital and sociopathic CEOs that try to integrate themselves into every aspect of our lives for profit, that’s the problem.
“For 19.99 a month you too can be a world class mathematician!” Meanwhile they are extinct.
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