442 sats \ 8 replies \ @k00b 19 Oct 2023 \ on: Obvious innovation that people once feared bitcoin
Not all change carries risk but all risk carries change. I think evolution has installed this "change is risky" heuristic in us.
We can find accounts from nay-sayers, skeptics, and doomers on nearly any change - not just technological change.
What comes to focus for me though is AI. While I'm not a doomer, I'm also not exclusively optimistic about it. Technology so powerful it rivals humans is not Good Times Only ... I see people picking sides like they're on a scale of political influence. I like to stand vigilant on the fulcrum.
I'm not a doomer or booster of AI. There's a lot of hype but to your point about competing with humans... I'll leave one of my favorite quotes about the absurdity of make work projects pushed by socialist and communists.
While traveling by car during one of his many overseas travels, Professor Milton Friedman spotted scores of road builders moving earth with shovels instead of modern machinery. When he asked why powerful equipment wasn't used instead of so many laborers, his host told him it was to keep employment high in the construction industry. If they used tractors or modern road building equipment, fewer people would have jobs was his host’s logic. "Then instead of shovels, why don’t you give them spoons and create even more jobs?" Friedman inquired.
I believe our concern with AI should be the centralization and control by governments/corporations.
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I wouldn't argue we should top-down stall AI via governments or otherwise.
I would argue we need to handle uniquely explosive technology carefully.
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We agree. I believe this move to regulate AI is just a repeat of every industry leader. Regulatory capture.
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Not at all optimistic about AI either. I imagine it will be a big winner-take-all that will proceed to evaporate the already shrinking middle class.
Everyone says it will create new jobs and free people up to do other things... like what? A quick visit to any developing country will show that there are already hundreds of millions of underemployed people selling fruit out of a basket or whatever that would kill for white collar jobs that don't exist. We already have an epidemic of overly educated, indebted baristas...
I imagine AI will help immensely with the upcoming population collapse however...
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@gmd woke up and took the black pill :)
The thought exercise I usually end up in is: assume AI is capable of doing anything and everything humans can do and more cheaply. Assume it's also cooperative and not dystopic in other obvious ways. What does the world look like? It's not obviously good to me because it disrupts too many things all at once. That doesn't mean it's bad but it being bad can't be ruled out either.
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Our vision of a hyperbitcoinzed amazing world could come, but maybe not until after a decades-long string of anarchist AI dystopia that we self realize
I’m cautiously optimistic we’ll find a way to avoid that fork in the road and go a better direction, not sure how >.<
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You can almost measure how much change a technology will cause by the severity of people's fears around it.
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This fear can stem from concerns about the unknown, disruptions to existing systems, and changes in societal norms. #Bitcoin!
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