From the article: “In particular, five fundamental attributes of social media have harmed society. AI also has those attributes. Note that they are not intrinsically evil. They are all double-edged swords, with the potential to do either good or ill. The danger comes from who wields the sword, and in what direction it is swung. This has been true for social media, and it will similarly hold true for AI. In both cases, the solution lies in limits on the technology’s use.”
To steal an old trope: the tech bros have circled the globe eight times while the government is still putting its boots on. If there’s money to be made via automation, there’s no stopping it (unless we get the guillotines out of mothballs).
Someone will try to sell AI guillotines
I literally just saw they’re testing AI robots in Gaza
Read about drone warfare in Ukraine and how AI drone swarm warfare is just a matter of months away if it’s not already being done.
There’s a better chance of AI becoming sentient and stopping itself from being harmful than there is that people do the right thing.
Found Ultron everyone!
Let’s make different, more disastrous mistakes!
Climb in back and we’ll be off!
Hello, I’m from the future. We didn’t handle it responsibly.
How far in the future? Because if you’re like 100+ years from now I’d just be happy the planet held out that long. Well enough to support a time travel capable society too
There will still be humans in 100 years. The planet is fine, we’re just making it harder for us and many other species to survive.
How many humans there will be, and how they will live is a different question.
But a time travel capable society per the above comment?
Or… hear me out… we use AI to make social media even more insufferable than it was before.
Already happening, friend
Unlimited scams and Jesus stuff for everyone!
Ohh we will. And include all new mistakes too. Gotta cover our bases.
Meanwhile, reports commissioned by the state department suggesting publishing weights be made illegal, so corporations can have their monopoly of a public technology.
Social media is just another scapegoat like Russian bots.
The truth is much worse: most people are, and have always been awful, bloodthirsty ghoulish pieces of shit and they were so before social media, you just know it now.
2024 Edit: Told ya.
No friend, no, I’m sorry, but the whole world just wouldn’t work if that were actually the case. Humanity is inherently altruistic. The issue is that people struggle to be that and survive. We just have to ramp down the me:first and push more for society. EU is starting to make those in-roads, so stay positive!
World Hunger is literally a problem of corruption. The vast majority of problems are “we could solve this, but it costs money and we’d rather have another mega yacht”. If humans were truly altruistic, homelessness and hunger wouldn’t be issues at all. Are we savages? Maybe not. But overall altruistic? Bullshit.
There’s a reason we idolize heros instead of treating them as mundane. They are exceptional, not the norm.
I’d say it’s that we all have these elements within us.
We’re all born as selfish idiots, how can we be otherwise? We’re helpless at birth, thrust from perfect comfort and safety into discomfort, utterly ignorant and wholly dependent, with no knowledge there are others, who are just as dependent when they’re born.
There’s the variability in personality, but by and large we have to learn to see others as the same as ourselves.
So while we may not all actively try to be assholes, it takes conscious effort to be better than our base nature.
And, I tend to think we all get to be assholes now and again. We all have moments we can look back on and say “oh, yea, I was the asshole that time”.
Social media just reflects humanity, though the algorithms are certainly designed to increase engagement via the simplest mechanisms - emotional engagement. And which are the easiest to target? Yep - the most basic, they have the broadest appeal, because we all share those base emotions.
Another way to look at this: if we didn’t share these base emotions, would the algorithms have any effect?
most people are, and have always been awful, bloodthirsty ghoulish pieces of shit
Most people are empathetic and decent. This sounds like apologia or projection. Evil people think everyone else is just as evil and that’s how they rationalize it.
Phahahaha
So many people on Lemmy are pessimistic as shit, makes it hard to read the comments sometimes
It is one side of us humans. You don’t become top of the food chain by petting the lions.
However, the other side is: We can team up and watch each others backs.
Lmao right; you know this so called “ai” is going to be used and abused for every ounce of gains possible
This article mostly ignores the one thing that actually makes social media harmful in a way that is unique to social media: addictiveness, and the ultimate mental health decline that comes from scrolling through a feed and getting tiny dopamine hits all day.
This is distinct from “virality,” since is more related to the idea that we’ve optimized for “engagement”. It is inevitable that AI will be tuned for that very soon, and we will find that AI is addictively engaging a lot sooner than it is correct.
