Comment by lifeisloving
20 hours ago
Where does it go? Machines owned by 10 people robbing us of the joy of discovery and the fruits of our labor... for what?
They certainly arent going to give you that cure for cancer, if it were to ever come.
20 hours ago
Where does it go? Machines owned by 10 people robbing us of the joy of discovery and the fruits of our labor... for what?
They certainly arent going to give you that cure for cancer, if it were to ever come.
> Where does it go? Machines owned by 10 people robbing us of the joy of discovery and the fruits of our labor... for what?
For what? So some guys can be richer and more powerful. What could possibly be more important than themselves? You? Your future? We're nothing, and have been told to be excited and curious about our coming obsolescence and powerlessness.
Seriously, what's special about oncology that convinces you there will be no progress?
I think gp was saying they'd never give it to you, not that they'd never make progress.
A normal conspiratorial comment about the cure for cancer being kept secret would have been downvoted into oblivion, but sprinkle in some spooky AI stuff and suddenly it's fine
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That is ridiculous. You cannot withhold something like an effective cure for cancer from broad adoption, and thinking you can is just conspiracy bullshit. Imagine an internal OpenAI model develops it tomorrow. Would everyone of the thousands of OpenAI scientists get in on the conspiracy to keep it secret, even though many of them probably know someone dying from cancer right now? Obviously not.
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What makes you think we'll be able to afford them? You won't be making any money anymore, hope you've saved up!
> Machines owned by 10 people robbing us of the joy of discovery and the fruits of our labor... for what?
This happened to software engineers already. Mathematics isn't special.
Mathematics has it slightly worse, since math is a "closed system" that does not require running experiments, talking to customers, etc.
That said the software folks can teach the math folks a thing or two when it comes to dealing with grief I am sure.
You don’t want to see Elon get to 100 trillion and start a sex slave colony on Mars? What are you crazy?
> They certainly arent going to give you that cure for cancer, if it were to ever come.
Conspiracy bullshit. You cannot keep something like an effective cure for cancer under wraps. There is no plausible logic how that would not leak sooner or later.
The information needed to build a basic nuclear explosive device is rather easily available. Now go build one.
I am talking about an *effective* cure developed by AI. If curing cancer with it is as complex as building a nuclear weapon, then the cure might as well not exist.
1 reply →
Knowing is the easy part. An effective cure for cancer will probably be a procedure where you get your tumors sequenced, an AI model considers the unique genetic context and creates a specific treatment. Think CAR-T cell therapy or mRNA vaccines. Then this needs to be manufactured.
All of this means you will need to be rich or have your country invest lots of money into health care systems. In a world where humans don't provide economic value anymore, why would that be?
The cost of such therapy will inevitably go down over time.
Well rich folks using such services will eventually push the price down, however complex and ridiculous the actual process will be. Its not like they are immune of all these ailments, not yet at least.
Trying to slow down this for the joy of discovery is a deeply anti-intellectual position. I think that position is similar to when everyday people get mad about the minor spending on the NSF, picking apart people who study beetles on Fox News with no context etc.
There are real safety concerns with AI that can be made very convincingly though.
I think I would feel a lot better if it wasn't a $15 million cannon being fired from a silicon tower inside of the labs across vast swathes of fertile ground that would otherwise be used to train budding mathematicians. For instance, if it was the budding mathematicians themselves who were making these discoveries using their own tools.
I feel something about human nature makes us treat joy of discovery, status, etc. as a source of energy and motivation. I hope we'll find other ways to keep some "strategic intellectual reserve" of mathematicians alive.
What if we just discovered an alien artifact with the next 200 years of math? I can see arguments to throw it away for safety, who knows if the aliens are getting us to nuke ourselves or whatever, but throw it away so a few hundred/thousand of the most elite thinking humans can have the joy of credit for discovering each thing?
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I never said they are trying. They already have.