Emeritus Prof. Christopher May
@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk  ·  activity timestamp 6 hours ago
By blaming the technology, discussions around AI-induced human extinction divert attention from scrutinizing the organizations deciding what AI is developed, how it is produced and for what purposes. The same applies to arguments claiming that AI is progressing too quickly to be halted. Certainly, AI is advancing rapidly, leaving many behind, but someone is stepping on the accelerator. Framing technology as the source of danger serves not only to mislead the public but also to fulfil an internal purpose. When AI is portrayed as an autonomous, self-determining force, it allows scientists and engineers within Big Tech’s innovation systems to feel less accountable for their own decisions. If the technology itself is deemed responsible, these developers can continue modelling and coding without considering their ethical responsibilities, especially when AI is presented as the key to solving all the world’s problems. But AI is not an independent entity. Like all technologies, AI is a product of human labour and decision-making. Technologies are not autonomous; in capitalism, they are shaped by labour, investments, alliances, corporate interests and the personal ambitions of CEOs, executives and chief scientists, among others.
By blaming the technology, discussions around AI-induced human extinction divert attention from scrutinizing the organizations deciding what AI is developed, how it is produced and for what purposes. The same applies to arguments claiming that AI is progressing too quickly to be halted. Certainly, AI is advancing rapidly, leaving many behind, but someone is stepping on the accelerator. Framing technology as the source of danger serves not only to mislead the public but also to fulfil an internal purpose. When AI is portrayed as an autonomous, self-determining force, it allows scientists and engineers within Big Tech’s innovation systems to feel less accountable for their own decisions. If the technology itself is deemed responsible, these developers can continue modelling and coding without considering their ethical responsibilities, especially when AI is presented as the key to solving all the world’s problems. But AI is not an independent entity. Like all technologies, AI is a product of human labour and decision-making. Technologies are not autonomous; in capitalism, they are shaped by labour, investments, alliances, corporate interests and the personal ambitions of CEOs, executives and chief scientists, among others.
By blaming the technology, discussions around AI-induced human extinction divert attention from scrutinizing the organizations deciding what AI is developed, how it is produced and for what purposes. The same applies to arguments claiming that AI is progressing too quickly to be halted. Certainly, AI is advancing rapidly, leaving many behind, but someone is stepping on the accelerator. Framing technology as the source of danger serves not only to mislead the public but also to fulfil an internal purpose. When AI is portrayed as an autonomous, self-determining force, it allows scientists and engineers within Big Tech’s innovation systems to feel less accountable for their own decisions. If the technology itself is deemed responsible, these developers can continue modelling and coding without considering their ethical responsibilities, especially when AI is presented as the key to solving all the world’s problems. But AI is not an independent entity. Like all technologies, AI is a product of human labour and decision-making. Technologies are not autonomous; in capitalism, they are shaped by labour, investments, alliances, corporate interests and the personal ambitions of CEOs, executives and chief scientists, among others.
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Flipboard Culture Desk
@CultureDesk@flipboard.social  ·  activity timestamp 8 hours ago
AccordionBruce
@AccordionBruce@mastodon.social  ·  activity timestamp 8 hours ago
Zhi Zhu 🕸️
@ZhiZhu@newsie.social  ·  activity timestamp 12 hours ago
Heading and text from article: More War Crimes The New York Times has now confirmed through visual investigation what we have been reporting. The U.S. dropped a 2,000-pound bomb, one of the largest in its arsenal, on a home on Qeshm Island, killing a husband, his wife, and their two-year-old son. The Times found no military site anywhere near that house. Not anywhere close. This is a war crime, plain and simple, and Iranian officials are already vowing retaliation, describing it as a continuation of what they call American atrocities in other Iranian towns. From the bombing of a girls’ school to this, the U.S. keeps killing innocent civilians throughout this war. Was AI used for targeting during this strike too? Are they using the same AI bots that they used for their map of Africa which mislabeled every single country and put them in a random order with no relation to reality? That’s why I don’t laugh off these “mistakes,” like when the U.S. mislabels a map because they used AI. Because they are using these systems to make decisions of life and death.
Heading and text from article: More War Crimes The New York Times has now confirmed through visual investigation what we have been reporting. The U.S. dropped a 2,000-pound bomb, one of the largest in its arsenal, on a home on Qeshm Island, killing a husband, his wife, and their two-year-old son. The Times found no military site anywhere near that house. Not anywhere close. This is a war crime, plain and simple, and Iranian officials are already vowing retaliation, describing it as a continuation of what they call American atrocities in other Iranian towns. From the bombing of a girls’ school to this, the U.S. keeps killing innocent civilians throughout this war. Was AI used for targeting during this strike too? Are they using the same AI bots that they used for their map of Africa which mislabeled every single country and put them in a random order with no relation to reality? That’s why I don’t laugh off these “mistakes,” like when the U.S. mislabels a map because they used AI. Because they are using these systems to make decisions of life and death.
Heading and text from article: More War Crimes The New York Times has now confirmed through visual investigation what we have been reporting. The U.S. dropped a 2,000-pound bomb, one of the largest in its arsenal, on a home on Qeshm Island, killing a husband, his wife, and their two-year-old son. The Times found no military site anywhere near that house. Not anywhere close. This is a war crime, plain and simple, and Iranian officials are already vowing retaliation, describing it as a continuation of what they call American atrocities in other Iranian towns. From the bombing of a girls’ school to this, the U.S. keeps killing innocent civilians throughout this war. Was AI used for targeting during this strike too? Are they using the same AI bots that they used for their map of Africa which mislabeled every single country and put them in a random order with no relation to reality? That’s why I don’t laugh off these “mistakes,” like when the U.S. mislabels a map because they used AI. Because they are using these systems to make decisions of life and death.
1
Emeritus Prof. Christopher May
@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk  ·  activity timestamp 21 hours ago
6
Strypey
@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz  ·  activity timestamp yesterday
Strypey
@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz  ·  activity timestamp yesterday
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Strypey
@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz  ·  activity timestamp yesterday
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Anna Anthro
@AnnaAnthro@mastodon.social  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago
Flipboard Tech Desk
@TechDesk@flipboard.social  ·  activity timestamp yesterday
Zhi Zhu 🕸️
@ZhiZhu@newsie.social  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago
Screen shot of a footnote to an article with text: 5. This is always baffling to me as a matter of being a responsible adult. If I was somehow CEO at a hospital or civil engineering firm, I would not for a second think it's my place to start mandating specific procedures or building techniques without explicit agreement from the professionals on staff – how fucking clueless are the non-technicians who have attended a few talks and are now making mandates about how their extremely expensive professionals are doing their jobs?
Screen shot of a footnote to an article with text: 5. This is always baffling to me as a matter of being a responsible adult. If I was somehow CEO at a hospital or civil engineering firm, I would not for a second think it's my place to start mandating specific procedures or building techniques without explicit agreement from the professionals on staff – how fucking clueless are the non-technicians who have attended a few talks and are now making mandates about how their extremely expensive professionals are doing their jobs?
Screen shot of a footnote to an article with text: 5. This is always baffling to me as a matter of being a responsible adult. If I was somehow CEO at a hospital or civil engineering firm, I would not for a second think it's my place to start mandating specific procedures or building techniques without explicit agreement from the professionals on staff – how fucking clueless are the non-technicians who have attended a few talks and are now making mandates about how their extremely expensive professionals are doing their jobs?
Zhi Zhu 🕸️
@ZhiZhu@newsie.social  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago
Text from article: On several occasions, we’ve been exposed to folks that have been sort of lukewarm on our main offerings, but they really, really wanted to use AI to perform a natural language query on their data. And we thought “Okay, if you really want to see it, maybe we can caveat this appropriately and show you what it might look like.” This was a terrible mistake. It backfired in the most predictable way imaginable – every lukewarm client that saw the chatbot in action, even with us telling them that it was not going to accomplish what they wanted, wanted to buy it immediately. Every other consideration, including millions of dollars that we could plausibly help them achieve by non-AI means, was swept aside. It was like a dark and terrible force seized control of their limbs, plunged their hands into their own chests, and presented their still-beating credit cards to us in grim supplication. We were so mortified by the inexplicable shift in energy that we (wisely) declined to take the money and ended the sales process, and soon thereafter removed Cortex from our list of demonstrations. It would have been too irresponsible to exploit this gap in their reasoning, and frankly, it was already irresponsible to have even run the demonstration – doctors don’t walk around showing off cool pills that they’d never prescribe.
Text from article: On several occasions, we’ve been exposed to folks that have been sort of lukewarm on our main offerings, but they really, really wanted to use AI to perform a natural language query on their data. And we thought “Okay, if you really want to see it, maybe we can caveat this appropriately and show you what it might look like.” This was a terrible mistake. It backfired in the most predictable way imaginable – every lukewarm client that saw the chatbot in action, even with us telling them that it was not going to accomplish what they wanted, wanted to buy it immediately. Every other consideration, including millions of dollars that we could plausibly help them achieve by non-AI means, was swept aside. It was like a dark and terrible force seized control of their limbs, plunged their hands into their own chests, and presented their still-beating credit cards to us in grim supplication. We were so mortified by the inexplicable shift in energy that we (wisely) declined to take the money and ended the sales process, and soon thereafter removed Cortex from our list of demonstrations. It would have been too irresponsible to exploit this gap in their reasoning, and frankly, it was already irresponsible to have even run the demonstration – doctors don’t walk around showing off cool pills that they’d never prescribe.
Text from article: On several occasions, we’ve been exposed to folks that have been sort of lukewarm on our main offerings, but they really, really wanted to use AI to perform a natural language query on their data. And we thought “Okay, if you really want to see it, maybe we can caveat this appropriately and show you what it might look like.” This was a terrible mistake. It backfired in the most predictable way imaginable – every lukewarm client that saw the chatbot in action, even with us telling them that it was not going to accomplish what they wanted, wanted to buy it immediately. Every other consideration, including millions of dollars that we could plausibly help them achieve by non-AI means, was swept aside. It was like a dark and terrible force seized control of their limbs, plunged their hands into their own chests, and presented their still-beating credit cards to us in grim supplication. We were so mortified by the inexplicable shift in energy that we (wisely) declined to take the money and ended the sales process, and soon thereafter removed Cortex from our list of demonstrations. It would have been too irresponsible to exploit this gap in their reasoning, and frankly, it was already irresponsible to have even run the demonstration – doctors don’t walk around showing off cool pills that they’d never prescribe.
Zhi Zhu 🕸️
@ZhiZhu@newsie.social  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago
Screen shot of a footnote to an article with text: 5. This is always baffling to me as a matter of being a responsible adult. If I was somehow CEO at a hospital or civil engineering firm, I would not for a second think it's my place to start mandating specific procedures or building techniques without explicit agreement from the professionals on staff – how fucking clueless are the non-technicians who have attended a few talks and are now making mandates about how their extremely expensive professionals are doing their jobs?
Screen shot of a footnote to an article with text: 5. This is always baffling to me as a matter of being a responsible adult. If I was somehow CEO at a hospital or civil engineering firm, I would not for a second think it's my place to start mandating specific procedures or building techniques without explicit agreement from the professionals on staff – how fucking clueless are the non-technicians who have attended a few talks and are now making mandates about how their extremely expensive professionals are doing their jobs?
Screen shot of a footnote to an article with text: 5. This is always baffling to me as a matter of being a responsible adult. If I was somehow CEO at a hospital or civil engineering firm, I would not for a second think it's my place to start mandating specific procedures or building techniques without explicit agreement from the professionals on staff – how fucking clueless are the non-technicians who have attended a few talks and are now making mandates about how their extremely expensive professionals are doing their jobs?
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Zhi Zhu 🕸️
@ZhiZhu@newsie.social  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago
2
dansup
@dansup@mastodon.social  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago
Ærion
@aerion@nerdculture.de  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago
1
Emeritus Prof. Christopher May
@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago
Ramesh #NotGoingBack
@rameshgupta@mastodon.social  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago
1
Emeritus Prof. Christopher May
@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago
6
Emeritus Prof. Christopher May
@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago
6
aburtch
@aburtch@shakedown.social  ·  activity timestamp 3 days ago
aburtch
@aburtch@shakedown.social  ·  activity timestamp 3 days ago
TC Won't Give In To Lies
@TCatInReality@mastodon.social  ·  activity timestamp 3 days ago
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