My major issue in general is how much trust people would have for AI and blindnessly follow them without much doubt if whatever they are saying is true. Computers are stupid, they will make mistake which often cause by coders making one in the code.

Along with the other excellent comments. I would like to emphasize surveillance, policing, prison, war, genocide, etc.

This ties into the comment on accountability. I think that violence will continue to be a primary application of impunity.

I don’t think this is anything special about “AI”. It’s how technology is always used under capitalism. But it’s extremely obvious and potentially ubiquitous with “AI”.

Aside from dehumanization, grifting and the environment, I read somewhere that AI and Crypto companies will trigger the next financial crisis within a year. It is expected to be larger than the 1929 one. With the formerly most powerful nation of the planet being led by a demented baboon who is played by a bunch of tech millionaires, I find this very concerning.

I like having water… my friends in Texas and California have seen water levels lowering and their bills rising. I’m in Michigan and terrified for the Great Lakes

I have several problems with “Artificial Intelligence” and none of them are “main”. They are instead a morass of stupidity that makes the whole field rather suspect both academically and socially.

1. The terminology

There is no universally agreed-upon definition of what “intelligence” even is. Even in the very specific and most tightly-focused relevant field, cognitive science, there is no agreement on this. If you expand to include related fields like philosophy and biology, there is even less agreement.

But sure, a bunch of computer nerds are going to make an artificial version of the thing we can’t even define yet.

2. The grift

I get it. In the first wave of “AI”, the progenitors of the field got a bit big for their britches and called what they were looking into “Artificial Intelligence” because they had no idea how much work had already been done in the field of intelligence, consciousness, etc. (being computer nerds and not philosophers and biologists) and they done fucked up. It happens. Call it “aspirational naming”. Minsky and co. weren’t grifters. That happened later.

But when that field collapsed as it became increasingly clear that “symbolic logic” was not how our brains worked and was not moving us with any appreciable speed toward “intelligence” (whatever the fuck that is, c.f. #1 above), that should have been the end of it.

There was a second generation. Who referred to their little numerical parlour tricks as “neurons” placed into “nets”. Ask any biologist who specializes in brain structures if a “neural net” with its software (or sometimes hardware) “neurons” bears any resemblance to an actual neuron and how those operate and connect. (Just get ready to cover your ears because the laughter can get very sudden and very loud…) And here’s the thing: I’m positive the people in this generation knew damned well that what they were doing had nothing whatsoever to do with real neurons, but knew that if they called them what they actually were (“Differentiable Computational Graph” or “Universal Function Approximator”) nobody with academic purse strings would open them widely enough for them to get the hookers and blow they needed. I submit that the term “neural network” was specifically coined to disguise the truth of what they were in a fraudulent attempt to get more funding by wowing the non-technical (like me) into responding “Oh, my! They’re building actual brains! MOAR MUNNEEE!”

And there was continued histories of this in wave after winter after wave after winter. Genetic algorithms don’t work like genes. Ant colony optimizations don’t work like ant colonies. Even machine learning isn’t learning in any meaningful sense. Are they useful? HELL YES! They’re useful in a wide variety of niches. But none of them have anything to do with “intelligence” (whatever the fuck that is, c.f. #1 above) and the terminology is, in my considered opinion, very much a sales snowjob for the credulously bureaucratic.

So now we have “large language models”, which are probably the most honestly-named technologies (along with the various things like “diffusion” techniques for pictures, etc.) of anything in “artificial intelligence”, but which use a different grifts to sucker the credulous: the grift of conflating fluency with intellect and knowledge. (The reason for this conflation is obvious: we’ve never had examples before of fluency detached from intellect so we’re wired to confuse the two.)

3. The point you bring up

A whole lot of money and effort has been expended on a pipe dream: making an artificial version of something we can’t even define. (C.f. #1 above.) That money and effort would have been far better spent on fighting climate change, education, health care, and a bewildering variety of other things that would actually do humanity some good.

But grifters gotta grift.

It’s another wealth transfer; the wealth hoarding class wants to further devalue the skills of working class people.

Accountability. When the AI causes measurable harm to an individual or group, will the owner of the service be held accountable in the same way that an individual would be? I doubt it. The corporations will just pay settlements and keep doing everything in their power to avoid being held responsible for what their AI says or does. People are too trusting of corporations and anthropomorphized software.

I feel that AI really is like a two three edged sword.

• Used responsibly and double and triple checked by humans, it can do some amazing things.
• Used irresponsibly it can have millions of people under the false impression that someone said or did something that never happened.
• Used for obvious silliness and not trying to deceive people, well okay, everyone needs a laugh now and then.

For the most part, I think AI should never be used for serious purposes, but when it is, the results need to be triple checked by actual human experts. Fuckall with the deepfakes and slop though.

The AI race will use all resources.

My main concerns are resources and labor. We’re already struggling with getting off of dirty fuels and now we have this enormous demand to meet, plus water reserves are going to become more and more stressed. The interests of capital always wins over the needs of people especially in America where quite literally our economy now hinges on the success of AI companies.

As for labor, again from the US perspective, human life has no “value” to the ruling class if it cannot labor and produce a profit for others. As AI takes more and more jobs, people will not be taken care of, they’ll be left to suffer in poverty. Eventually the AI systems will become better integrated into better robotic systems and then the job loss spreads way past “office work” and an enormous amount of jobs are lost.

I don’t have a very bright view for the future to be honest. The interests of capital always win. :/