It was a brilliant article, and it succinctly captured the offenses to ethics and humanism posed by LLMs.

I'm not sure it'll get a lot of reception in the technocracy here on HN, whether of the AI booster or AI nihilist sort. However, I think it's a very comprehensive digestion of the questions that will swirl around the idea of LLMs as a public good in the near to medium future.

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martialg 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Author here. Really appreciate you taking the time to read and for the kind comment.

I think the tension between these ethical questions and the practical realities (both the good and the bad) of AI is likely the defining issues for technology and perhaps society in this decade.

It’s important we’re thorough and rigorous with how we think and act here so I really appreciate you engaging with the topic.

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abalashov 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Thank you in turn, I have circulated your piece to thoughtful friends.

My immediate, from-the-hip thought is that we are slowly lumbering toward the idea that LLMs ("AI") should be a public utility. It may take us quite a while to get there yet, as an unprecedented concentration of wealth and power is arrayed precisely against this outcome, but I think that will be the eventual effect, in that, "in the long run, we're all dead" kind of way.

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martialg 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Thank you kindly

I’m working through thoughts on this as well and agree with your read on the incentives.

There is an interesting set of conditions that happens if/when models get so competent that they’re effectively indistinguishable from each other and inference becomes a true commodity. IRL impact will lag this ofc but it’s such a wild time to be alive.

	▲	abalashov 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I do think it's easy, in this technology discussion bubble in which we dwell, to overestimate the centrality of LLMs to the arc of developments in our time. They'll be important, but I don't think they'll be _that_ important, because the rest of society and the economy don't move at the speed of SV. Instead, they'll be overtaken by other, more traditional categories of events, ruptures and dislocations. Moreover, folks will eventually realise that while they are very impressive derivative databases of knowledge, they're not at all "AI" -- well, not the "I" part, anyway -- as the concept is traditionally understood. There's not any "I". It emits convolutions of its training, and it does so very impressively, and that can even be harnessed by agents to connect them to levers, servos and richer information sources. It's nifty. But it's just not intelligence. It's more of a kind of queryable database than a robot. Once that realisation diffuses more widely, I think it'll turn out to be a more prosaic and underwhelming development than is presently hypothesised, either here or by the press. It doesn't mean many business and managerial class folks won't try to squeeze everything they can out of so-called AI, but the idea that this can effectuate truly widespread labour displacement will probably quiet down considerably. (The valuations that depend on this assumption may collapse more abruptly and less gracefully.) The challenge is staying solvent until then. :-)

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nradov 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's so weird how technologists overestimate the importance of LLMs to society at large. It's going to be far less important than real world issues like nuclear weapons proliferation, access to fossil fuels, declining birth rates, and breakdowns in global free trade.

	▲	abalashov 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don't think we're going to agree about many things, but we definitely agree on that!

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CaptWorld 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What technocracy lol? people here turn into luddites if there's a positive reception of AI.. I can guarantee that there are at least 40 percent of the top 5 comments of any positive/negative post about AI gonna turn "hackers" to luddites. It was amazing before Covid times and now it's indistinguishable from reddit.

	▲	abalashov 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I suppose valid grounds for both perceptions can coexist. Opposition to AI here is more than understandable; it takes much of the joy out of programming as a craft, while leaving one with so much much more of what is hateable about it as a day-job.