reasonableklout

Well, this isn't an argument or an essay in the typical LessWrong style, it's a short story. I thought it was really good, finished it all in one sitting. And I also usually don't get even halfway through most LW posts.

What are you planning to run on it?

What are we even doing here?

I suspect the author would respond with some form of "displaced people without capital will take on roles in the relational economy, or as human liability for the robots." I agree the material leverage of such jobs seems radically diminished.

Or we can show some compassion, and work towards a society that both benefits from technology and doesn't discard people at a moment's notice.

I think the argument is that OpenAI should have done the work of cleaning up the proofs in the first place before dumping them onto the math community (or worked with mathematicians to guide the research process). It's as if an energy company dumped 20 tons of waste next to a village and the townspeople decided to clean it up. "How does this benefit the energy company" might not be the right question to be asking.

Interesting, here Sebastien Bubeck comes across as a well-meaning if ultimately powerless figurehead for the OpenAI corporate machine. You can see token concessions to the mathematical community (like the withdrawal of sponsorship from the Mathathon) that someone on the inside had to advocate for but in the end it's all swamped by events like the October 6 proof dump. And people like Bubeck come up with their own rationalizations for staying, even when they are fully aware of the effects.

> BUBECK: 100% honest answer: personally I would like to spend my time on the other areas I care about, which are probably not your cup of tea, but like, healthcare. if we have a good machine, accelerating medicine seems like a good idea.

> NIHIL: And your corporation would botch it up exactly the way it’s botched up math academia. We know this.

> BUBECK: :-(

> NIHIL: You have left a trail of destruction at your wake. I mean I don’t blame you. But that’s what it is.

It harms people in any area that values authenticity because it creates a market for lemons. People will get halfway through a substack post before they realize there is no human behind the words. Again, this is why apps like Pangram are becoming popular. The end result is that people end up paying a tax to find the same value as before.

"Strictly a positive" is also a strange choice of words when the technology is ripping out the livelihoods of so many creators. I would accept "it has tradeoffs, but is a net positive over the long run". But the former is objectively false.

Yup. The headline is also about opposing more datacenters. The AI datacenter boom is now approaching 6% of US GDP and it's not surprising so many are feeling unnerved about the massive footprint of this tech on not only the economy but their physical spaces.

I don't think you understand the value that people actually look for in creative media.

First, people seek authenticity. In written content, people want to know there is a real human author thinking about every word, and in photos, people do not want to be deceived by deepfakes. It's much harder to tell in a world of AI slop, hence the rise of apps like Pangram. This is a significant negative externality.

Second, people who invest their time learning creative fields seek recognition for all the hard work they have put in. Now their skills are devalued, again because of slop. This is another negative externality.

Having more pictures and videos is nice in some ways but your head is in the sand if you think it's all roses.

But in many cases people are being forced into it. If you're a student in a college class of 20 where 1 person is using ChatGPT to cheat, you better bet you're going to start cheating too, unless you want to end up lower on the grading curve.

But why would these same trends not also vastly improve the capabilities of the top hardwares and ability of the trillion-dollar companies to leverage their economies of scale?

I'm all for the idea that AI capabilities can be democratized and help ordinary scientists outside of a handful of labs. But it seems there would need to be some checks against Big Tech and it won't happen by just letting the free market do its thing.