By "benign systems" I mean ML models + how they're embedded to = cancel the apocalypse.

I don't think an AI system can be understood as benign or dangerous without analyzing how they are embedded within other systems.

There is so much potential for affordable therapy! But the problem is the potential for abuse. A bunch of people using AI for therapy also means a bunch of people putting themselves in the path of manipulation. There are a lot of implications to deep learning systems coming to deeply understand the human psyche :-/

AI? What could go wrong?

(I'm kidding)

(Edit to add something useful) It's crazy to me that this is happening and most people think either "students will cheat" or "some people will lose their jobs" are the big issues.

But the problem is that any legislation will only stop the good actors. Private interests can just take development overseas and nothing's going to stop militaries from weaponizing AI. Thus legislation will stop public institutions and everybody else will develop their models in secret or elsewhere. There's really no way to stop it, so a better plan is to adapt and move fast with benign systems.

I say all that not really being an expert!

Yes, it’s a fine line between doomerism and urgency. Climate change is going to get real very quickly, and hundreds of millions of people could starve. Urgency is critical.

Hmmm.... the first video is pretty good, but I wouldn't say it's reasons to be optimistic. I think more reasons to not give up hope... or to save space for optimism. I agree that doomerism and pessimism is toxic and counterproductive. If all the doomers would just join team yay-future, we'd turn things around much faster!

As far as technological solutions go, I think we absolutely know the way forward. It's social behaviour and political will that are holding us back, but that will probably change quickly if we experience some unfortunate climate shocks, which is likely to happen over the next few years. I'm just hoping those shocks won't be too bad, and the response will be strong!

I would love to know your sources of optimism! I subscribe to the Future Crunch newsletter, which helps me stay optimistic. I'd love to plug into more sources of solutions.

If there's a fire in the basement, it's a pretty good idea to tell people on the top floor.

The future is definitely exciting, and we get to influence how awesome it will be for how many. My favourite discussions are when people are willing to look at how serious the looming issues are, while also looking at the awesome ways forward and how to choose the latter.

Hot wings

Ok, totally agreed. The question is: how many teachers really have those skills themselves?

Won't prompting simply change? It will still be a garbage in, garbage out situation, no?

That said, I'd be very curious to see any resources about how they expect prompting to evolve. I'm hoping to stay on top of ML services as they evolve.

...but my understanding is that a good understanding of formal logic will help with getting good results, no matter how good the language interpretation becomes. So one of my plans is to put more time into my own formal logic skills. That said, one of the things that blows my mind about chatGPT is the way it will point out false premises in my prompts :)

Fair. Yeah, maybe misinformation is more intentional. But it’s not just over-hype either. It’s misleading sensationalism.

Agreed, the misinformation that is spreading about the fusion milestone is painful. (EDIT: “misinformation” may not be the right term. “Misleading sensationalism” is probably more accurate. Suggestions?

I very much want Canada to follow the bit about making things better, while avoiding the bit about letting things get really bad first :-/

There has been progress in Canada, but industry and government are a long way from really listening to the ecologists. I do think there are people in government and industry who care... and others who don't.

In Canada there are official standards, and a commission that checks every mining/extraction operation that might impact biodiversity etc... but the mining/extraction operations almost always get the green light because they promise jobs, and biodiversity keeps declining. Keystone species like the caribou are on the edge of endangered status. Meanwhile, studies show that those companies never create nearly as many jobs as they promise.

Seeing what is "officially" happening in Canada, and then reading the independent reports inspires me to have healthy scepticism about what industry/government presents to the public.

Ah, yes, I've heard good things about Scotland. You're doing a fair bit of re-wilding too, and lots of renewable energy, yes?

There are indeed signs of hope around the world. I want to see more of it!

No, I said we have issues here, and I asked about documentation about sustainable practices elsewhere.

I've certainly read about unsustainable practices elsewhere, but I've heard of sustainable practices, and it's possible that other places are doing better than Canada. For instance Switzerland has better management from what I've seen and heard, but I think they're the exception not the rule. I'd be happy to learn that sustainable practices are more widespread than I'd realized.

Can you point to any documentation of sustainable logging practices on a large scale? Here in BC we're far from sustainable. The logging companies like to say they're "planting the forests of the future," but I was out there for years and they sure seem to be putting profits ahead of future generations and future ecosystems.

I trust the ecologists and environmental organizations more than I trust what the industry says. Dr. Suzanne Simard's critique of BC's forestry practices aligns with what I saw out there: basically they're planting rows of trees that they think will be worth the most money, but the health of the ecosystems are degrading, which is leading to increased disease and reductions in water retention and resilience, all of which is compounding with climate change to result in increased wild fires.

Also, here in BC they are still cutting old growth forests, despite how little we have left.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208360119

Yes, it’s very happening now

There are better solutions than most people realize. Off-river pumped hydro has great potential but most people don’t know what that means

Solar is more intermittent than wind but as the energy gets cheaper there will be increasing incentives to build storage solutions. The storage will probably lag though

Yes, machine learning is another great example. Now that it’s happening, it’s happening fast.

I’m pretty confident that we’ll also get next generation solar panels by end of decade

Funny, but I’m not sure whether it has anything to do with the Luddites. I assume it’s not supposed to?

How so? Do you know what their goals were? They wanted to have a say in how technology was being designed. How would that make things worse?

Ok we’re on the same page. But note that OpenAI Has an “alignment problem” team and they certainly think we should be concerned (also excited). Also it took less than 24 hours for people to trick chatGPT into being evil.

I think we’re approaching an “all hands on deck” situation, where we need a whole lot of people to realize that things can work out, but only if we work together

Not sure what you’re referring to