If you told someone in 1950 that smartphones would dominate they wouldn't have a hard time believing you. Hell, they'd add it to sci-fi books and movies. That's because the utility of it is so clear.

But if you told them about social media, I think the story would be different. Some would think it would be great, some would see it as dystopian, but neither would be right.

We don't have to imagine, though. All three of these things have captured people's imaginations since before the 50's. It's just... AI has always been closer to imagined concepts of social media more than it has been to highly advanced communication devices.

▲ inopinatus 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

the idea that we could have a stilted and awkward conversation with an overconfident robot would not have surprised a typical mid-century science fiction consumer

	▲	godelski 20 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Honestly, I think they'd be surprised that it wasn't better. I mean... who ever heard of that Asimov guy?

▲ tines 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Some would think it would be great, some would see it as dystopian, but neither would be right.

No, the people saying it’s dystopian would be correct by objective measure. Bombs are nothing next to Facebook and TikTok.

▲ godelski 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don't blame people for being optimistic. We should never do that. But we should be aware how optimism, as well as pessimism, can so easily blind us. There's a quote a like by Feynman

  The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

There is something of a balance. Certainly, Social Media does some good and has the potential to do more. But also, it certainly has been abused. Maybe so much that it become difficult to imagine it ever being good.

We need optimism. Optimism gives us hope. It gives us drive.

But we also need pessimism. It lets us be critical. It gives us direction. It tells us what we need to fix.

But unfettered optimism is like going on a drive with no direction. Soon you'll fall off a cliff. And unfettered pessimism won't even get you out the door. What's the point?

You need both if you want to see and explore the world. To build a better future. To live a better life. To... to... just be human. With either extreme, you're just a shell.

▲ ghostofbordiga 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You really think that Hiroshima would have been worse if instead of dropping the bomb the USA somehow got people addicted to social media ?

	▲	tines 8 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Yep. Look around you. The bomb leveled a city; Facebook killed a country. We are but the walking dead.
	▲	rightbyte 17 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Well they got both I guess?
	▲	KerrAvon 10 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Really crude comparison, but sort of. It would have taken much longer, and dropping the bombs was supposed to bring about an end to the war sooner. But in the long run social media would have been much more devastating, as it has been in America. The destruction of the American government today are a direct result of social media supercharging existing negative internal forces that date back to the mid 20th century. The past six months of conservative rule has already led to six-figure deaths across the globe. That will eventually be eight to nine figures with the full impact of the healthcare and immigration devastation inside the United States itself. Far worse than Hiroshima. Took a decade or two, but you can lay the blame at Facebook and Twitter's doorsteps. The US will never properly recover, though it's possible we may restore sanity to governance at some point.

▲ energy123 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> But if you told them about social media, I think the story would be different.

It would be utopian, like how people thought of social media in the oughts. It's a common pattern through human history. People lack the imagination to think of unintended side effects. Nuclear physics leading to nuclear weapons. Trains leading to more efficient genocide. Media distribution and printing press leading to new types of propaganda and autocracies. Oil leading to global warming. IT leading to easy surveillance. Communism leading to famine.

Some of that utopianism is wilful, created by the people with a self-interested motive in seeing that narrative become dominant. But most of it is just a lack of imagination. Policymakers taking the path of local least resistance, seeking to locally (in a temporal sense) appease, avoiding high-risk high-reward policy gambits that do not advance their local political ambitions. People being satisfied with easy just-so stories rather than humility and a recognition of the complexity and inherent uncertainty of reality.

AI, and especially ASI, will probably be the same. The material upsides are obvious. The downsides harder to imagine and more speculative. Most likely, society will be presented with a fait accompli at a future date, where once the downsides are crystallized and real, it's already too late.

▲ godelski 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

  > It would be utopian

People wrote about this. We know the answer! I stated this, so I'm caught off guard as it seems you are responding to someone else, but at the same time, to me.

London Times, The Naked Sun, Neuromancer, The Sockwave Rider, Stand on Zanzibar, or The Machine Stops. These all have varying degrees of ideas that would remind you of social media today.

Are they all utopian?

You're right, the downsides are harder to imagine. Yet, it has been done. I'd also argue that it is the duty of any engineer. It is so easy to make weapons of destruction while getting caught up in the potential benefits and the interesting problems being solved. Evil is not solely created by evil. Often, evil is created by good men trying to do good. If only doing good was easy, then we'd have so much more good. But we're human. We chose to be engineers, to take on these problems. To take on challenging tasks. We like to gloat about how smart we are? (We all do, let's admit it. I'm not going to deny it) But I'll just leave with a quote: "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard"

▲ cwnyth 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

All of this is a pretty ignorant take on history. You don't think those who worked on the Manhattan Project knew the deadly potential of the atom bomb? And Communism didn't lead to famine - Soviet and Maoist policies did. Communism was immaterial to that. And it has nothing to do with utopianism. Trains were utopian? Really? It's just that new technology can be used for good things or bad things, and this goes back to when Grog invented the club. It's has zero bearing on this discussion.

Your ending sentence is certainly correct: we aren't imagining the effects of AI enough, but all of your examples are not only unconvincing, they're easy ways to ignore what downsides of AI there might be. People can easily point to how trains have done a net positive in the world and walk away from your argument thinking AI is going to do the same.

	▲	godelski 20 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		`> You don't think those who worked on the Manhattan Project knew the deadly potential of the atom bomb?` I think you have missed an important part of history. That era changed physics. That era changed physicists. It was a critical turning point. Many of those people got lost in the work. The thrill of discovery, combined with the fear of war and an enemy as big as imagination. Many of those who built the bomb became some of the strongest opponents. They were blinded by their passion. They were blinded by their fears. But once the bomb was built, once the bomb was dropped, it was hard to stay blind. I say that this changed physicists, because you can't get a university degree without learning about this. They talk about the skeletons in the closet. They talk about how easy it is to fool yourself. Maybe it was the war and the power of the atom. Maybe it was the complexity of "new physics". Maybe it happened because the combination. But what I can tell you, is that it became a very important lesson. One that no one wants to repeat: it is not through malice, but through passion and fear that weapons of mass destruction are made.
	▲	energy123 20 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> You don't think those who worked on the Manhattan Project knew the deadly potential of the atom bomb? They did. I am talking about the physicists who preceded these particular physicists. > And Communism didn't lead to famine - Soviet and Maoist policies did. Communism was immaterial to that. The particular brand of agrarian communism and agricultural collectivization resulting from this subtype of communism did directly cause famine. The utopian revolutionaries did not predict this outcome before hand. > People can easily point to how trains have done a net positive in the world and walk away from your argument thinking AI is going to do the same. But that is one plausible outcome. Overall a net good, but with significant unintended consequences and high potential for misuse that is not easily predictable to people working on the technology today.