mid wrote:
I have already brought up Wombo. I've already seen people I know using it for their wallpapers, instead of paying a real artist for work they may enjoy and money they may earn. I've already seen videos that used 15.ai, without paying for real voice actors. IOW, artists have already started being replaced.
You are also talking about wallpapers. Not exactly Dali.
mid wrote:
It seems you people took my post to be speaking of terminators and Skynet, when it's nothing of the sort. It's more insidious than that.
Nothing of the sort, I assure. I do not think there is a sinister intent behind the trajectory we are currently on. People acting with the best of intentions, each making rational decisions for their particular situation, are ending up sending humanity down a path that can only end up somewhere between the Matrix and Logan's Run.
mid wrote:
It's not even AI in itself, it's just the last straw. Over the years, I've witnessed people around me change "thanks" to modern technologies, as they've been deployed here quicker than elsewhere, I've seen what they've caused clearly. That map app you have on your smartphone may have made you more efficient, but it had destroyed your spatial awareness, and socially isolated you further than you already have. Cashless has also isolated you from further human contact and worsened your mental arithmetic. The Alexas and Googles that listen in on you have given you even less reason to get off your arse and flip a light switch. Constant availability has only made us more irritable and impatient. I can't concentrate even for a short time at something without being distracted by myself. Most people can't handle a webpage loading for more than a few seconds. That used to not be. We had been using binary search in our books for long before it had been discovered, and now it's all Ctrl+F.
Yes. It is laziness. Laziness is the rational choice for all animals facing a lack of anything to do (e.g. lions will laze about 90% of the day). And technology allows us to do things more quickly or delegate our unpleasant duties on someone else. Replacing the duties thus abdicated, however, would be the harder choice, and so most people choose not to replace those duties with anything. Leaving them with a surplus of time, that is then filled with entertainment instead of anything worthwhile. Which leads to degeneration of their abilities, because the brain isn't trained anymore (and no, solving a crossword every now and again is not the same thing). And yes, I am probably guilty of that very thing myself, at least in some ways.
And then people lose their ability to even read a map, let alone place themselves on it. My siblings all have children now, and they are spending their car journeys looking into tablets. When I was a kid, I used to watch my parents drive, and in so doing learned the rules of the road (and the mechanics of driving).
But the most insidious thing is the loss of the ability to make a decision, and own the decision. You go left because the GPS tells you to go left, not because it makes sense with the information you have. The GPS was wrong, so now you are mad at the GPS. At the same time, you do not make the decision yourself anymore. No no, leave it to the GPS, then get mad at the GPS. Then you transpose that pattern on anything. You got fat because the food in the supermarket is unhealthy, not because you failed to educate yourself on cooking, or what the little numbers on the packaging mean. Corona got out of hand because the politicians are doing the wrong thing, not because tons of people are not vaccinating on spurious grounds (or failed to change their behavior before vaccines were available). You got hacked because that is just what hackers do, not because you employed an insecure system, and failed to verify its security. The kids are learning garbage in school because of corrupt school boards, not because you failed in your duty to elect a competent one. And on and on it goes.
AI merely aids in the laziness, it is not causing it.
mid wrote:
My conclusion is that it's either-or: you cannot have smart machines and smart humans at once. As AI improves, humans will regress. Willingly.
Here you make the mistake of collectivism. Not all humans are the same, not all are equally OK with losing abilities they once had, some people like to preserve knowledge. I believe we will reach some middle-ground at some point. For example, I highly doubt that self-driving cars would entirely replace human drivers. Some people are just to stubborn for that. No, skills will be retained by some people.
And I'm OK with that. We have a society because not everyone has to be equally good at everything. If we do end up at Logan's Run, someone has to be the old hermit, and I would be OK with being that at least.