Re: Open letter urging to pause AI

On 3/30/23 08:27, Georg Rehm wrote:
> This letter is nothing but hype. Emily Bender dissected the letter on 
> Twitter and put together the essence of it on Medium. I’d like to 
> invite everyone to have a look:
>
> https://medium.com/@emilymenonbender/policy-makers-please-dont-fall-for-the-distractions-of-aihype-e03fa80ddbf1


My problem with posts like this link above is that they are no longer 
about science and scientific discourse but about activism. This is not 
even mentioning how deeply misleading the parrot analogy is anyways.

I agree with Stefan's argument about the speed of major social 
disruption. Still, concerning the big picture, I worry more about human 
stupidity (killing thousands daily) than artificial intelligence.

IMHO, one of the major problems (and I see many positive aspects 
otherwise) with GPT-like bots is that they take the friction out of 
content creation. While this may be positive in some more distant 
future, for now, it means that the entire way in which the Web, flow of 
information, education, and social media 'content' works may see rapid 
change within months to a degree where a majority of content we may see 
in 2024 could be synthetic. After all, there will be enough folks (human 
intelligence...) that want to get rich quickly by getting paid from ads 
for the thousands of AI-generated articles and images they can now post 
on their portals or social media every minute.

Of course, this is not the only issue and maybe not the most important 
one, but it points to an underlying problem: too long have we called the 
universe, the brain, AI, and so on the 'last frontiers of science', 
thereby forgetting that it is, in fact, US. We (science, policymakers, 
etc.) do not understand society at large. We are puzzled by election 
results,wars, reactions to Covid measures, lack of action on climate 
change, and so on. Hence, we may struggle to maintain civil order and 
discourse during the disruptions to job markets ahead of us, all while 
being flooded with an unprecedented amount of content (e.g., fake 
videos) with super-human social/cognitive engineering skills.

Krzysztof



>
> Best regards,
> Georg
>
>
>> On 29. Mar 2023, at 21:46, ProjectParadigm-ICT-Program 
>> <metadataportals@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> This letter speaks for itself.
>>
>> https://www.reuters.com/technology/musk-experts-urge-pause-training-ai-systems-that-can-outperform-gpt-4-2023-03-29/ 
>> <https://www.reuters.com/technology/musk-experts-urge-pause-training-ai-systems-that-can-outperform-gpt-4-2023-03-29/>
>>
>>
>> I may not want to put it as bluntly as Elon Musk, who cautioned 
>> against unregulated AI which he called "more dangerous than nukes", 
>> but when Nick Bostrom, the late Stephen Hawking, and dozens, no 
>> hundreds of international experts, scientists and industry leaders 
>> start ringing the bell, is is time to pause and reflect.
>>
>> Every aspect of daily life, every industry, education systems, 
>> academia and even our cognitive rights will be impacted.
>>
>> I would also like to point out that some science fiction authors have 
>> done a great job on very accurately predicting a dystopian future 
>> ruled by technology, perhaps the greatest of them all being Philip K. 
>> Dick.
>>
>> But there are dozens of other authors as well and they all give a 
>> fairly good impression what awaits us if we do not regulate and 
>> control the further development of AI now.
>>
>>
>> Milton Ponson
>> GSM: +297 747 8280
>> PO Box 1154, Oranjestad
>> Aruba, Dutch Caribbean
>> Project Paradigm: Bringing the ICT tools for sustainable development 
>> to all stakeholders worldwide through collaborative research on 
>> applied mathematics, advanced modeling, software and standards 
>> development
>
> -- 
> *Prof. Dr. Georg Rehm <http://georg-re.hm>*
> Principal Researcher and Research Fellow
>  DFKI <http://www.dfki.de>
> DFKI GmbH <http://www.dfki.de>, Alt-Moabit 91c, 10559 Berlin, Germany
> Phone: +49 30 23895-1833 – Fax: -1810 – Mobile: +49 173 2735829
> georg.rehm@dfki.de
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>
>

-- 
Krzysztof Janowicz
Professor for Geoinformatics, Director Center for Spatial Studies
Geography Department, University of California, Santa Barbara
4830 Ellison Hall, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4060

Email:jano@geog.ucsb.edu
Webpage:http://geog.ucsb.edu/~jano/
Semantic Web Journal:http://www.semantic-web-journal.net