AI doomer/optimist?

[SvennoJ]

TallSilhouette said:

Somewhere between ambivalence and agnosticism. I'm not sure if it's a bubble or a true revolution that's here to stay. People like to clown on its shortcomings but the speed of its progress is truly staggering at times. Whatever you think about the ethics of it all won't change anything about its capabilities and in the end that's all that capitalism really cares about. I don't know if it will end up putting everyone out of a job; the potential is there but then that's what they said about every other form of automation and yet humanity continued to flourish.

I'm just going to do my best to adapt to whatever comes. If the bubble does pop then cool; maybe we'll return to a little bit of normalcy. If not then sticking your nose in the air or burying your head in the sand isn't going to do you any favors. Lately I've adopted a hybrid approach to my independent learning. I'm still learning software the 'old fashioned way' but I'm also keeping up to date on the latest progress of AI models and how they might change modern workflows, even experimenting a bit with ComfyUI myself.

Like the Industrial Revolution or the Atomic Age this is probably going to be a very messy transition that leaves a lot of people in the lurch, but if we don't kill ourselves then hopefully we'll come out the other side better over all, however long that takes.

We're paying now for the industrial revolution with climate change and oil wars verging on WW3. The messy transition is still fully ongoing with the hope now that AI will fix the mess from the industrial revolution. It comes awfully close to sunk cost fallacy, pump more resources into AI in the hope it will solve climate change, food and water shortage. Things that we can already solve without AI, yet capitalism stands in the way. So while I do think AI can certainly help to optimize food, water and combat climate change (put AI to use to speed up Nuclear Fusion research/improvements, solar panel production and transition to hydrogen fuel cell economy) I don't think the current political and economic environment allow for that. I'm afraid in the current climate AI will only accelerate civilizations' downfall. So far it provides a great distraction from tackling actual real problems.