Are we going to be replaced?
- Thread starter Juan Luis Vidal
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Tom Bradovich
Iron Range Born & Raised
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I fully understand what AI is, and I understand fully what positive effects it can have if properly used.
Rather presumptuous of you to assume you know my nature, don't you think?
I said a lot of things in my paragraph, including the following KNOWN problems:
1. Software hallucinations
2. Skewed or misleading results based on bad prompts (GIGO)
3. Increased invasion of personal privacy
4. Accelerated hacking
Don't these issues concern you? None of the issues I listed are hyperbole, they are real and current KNOWN issues, and they're serious.
.
Not for a single minute. I read enough on a daily basis that I knew years ago what the Large Hadron Collider was built to accomplish and I knew that a black hole was never going to be a result. That garbage was probably spit out by some financial interest with an axe to grind, and then spun out by the media.
True fact. However, not every change that occurs is positive and you know that's a true fact.
Mike, you say life is getting better and list some examples. Yes, for some of us, live has gotten better, thanks to technology. But, are you unaware that there are people who's lives have been made worse by technology? I'm going to take a wild-ass guess and say that the majority of members on this site have done well in their lives, and live quite comfortably. And if done legally and morally, then kudos are in order. But please don't forget that people have abused their position in life and used advanced tools to benefit themselves at the expense of others.
And that leads me to my last point. It's not just the s/w that's the concern, as serious as those issues are. It's also the fact that certain humans will be searching for ways to weaponize that s/w. Probably has already begun, like in a nanosecond. That weaponization can be used to create an even more concentration of wealth by sucking it out of anyone not a billionaire; tilt economies on a global scale, create massive shortages, and cause wars. This isn't FUD, Mike, it's based on a understanding of history and human nature.
Moondog Wily
In Tune Wit Da Moon!
I guess that is why I, at least, am always arguing with myself ;~)) All in good fun people, all in good fun!!!
It's human nature--part of all of us. You're just looking at things through a cynical, fear-based lens. That's simply my opinion, based on what you've shared.
At the macro-level, technology in all of its forms has made life measurably, objectively better. That's not something worth arguing about. Of course there are people whose lives have been made worse. But on the whole? Would you rather live in a world where potable water is a daily concern? Sure, there are people who still have that as a daily concern. Better get that fixed, eh?
That's like arguing that metal stamping was a tragic development, because it allowed so many more weapons to be cheaply produced. It's a view that isolates a specific outcome, rather than taking in the whole picture.
I'm not worried about James Bond villains. When I worry about AI, I don't worry about today's problems being made worse (your concerns over privacy and cyber crime).
I worry about how we, as a society, will handle the revolution. Everything will, or should, change. Education needs to look remarkably different in one generation. Expectations around work/life balance and what we've always viewed as positive personal traits ("he's a hard worker!") being transformed. Redefining how we see things like laziness. Valuing creativity and results over exertion, perhaps. Maybe valuing physical labor more than we do now, as the demand for it changes.
Right now, knowledge workers are in high demand. Doctors and lawyers will see their career fields transformed. Same with engineers and accountants. That highly-valued human expertise will be available incredibly inexpensively, at levels of performance that will exceed all but the very best humans. Can you imagine the change just to the healthcare industry? It'll be nothing short of phenomenal. And it'll be readily available at very low-cost.
That's all just near-term stuff. The real changes to our economic, social, and political models will be where things will get exciting. I'm 48. I think I'll see the beginning, the turmoil, and perhaps some of how it'll all sort out. My 4 year old is going to have a fascinating world to move through.
Bogner
Redwood Original - Pure Blood
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So What Do You Call The Person Who Responds Anyway And Has Nothing To Say?
Stephen J.
New Member
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As far as music goes, I just hope the person putting the prompts in has good taste and the source material it is copying is also quality.
I see how it is good at generating what someone asks it to generate, but I haven’t heard of it taking the initiative to create on its own. That will be a leap forward.
I see how it is good at generating what someone asks it to generate, but I haven’t heard of it taking the initiative to create on its own. That will be a leap forward.
Tom Bradovich
Iron Range Born & Raised
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- 596
Let's just agree to disagree. I stand by my position as do you. So, to avoid this thread devolving into a glitch performance ...
We now return to our regularly scheduled programming of guitars, amps, artists, and music.
You call him Laszlo?So What Do You Call The Person Who Responds Anyway And Has Nothing To Say?
Going Modal
I should be practicing right now.
Well... I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords!
Tom Bradovich
Iron Range Born & Raised
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2021
- Messages
- 596
Yes! Always appreciate a good Simpson reference. My favorite cartoon.
A very good (and detailed) history. I do not claim, (and neither does Glubb), that every civilization ends at 250 years. Many of the ones you identify do last for thousands of years, but not without going through cycles that shake their foundations and one could say they cease to be the Empires they were. They can come back from their reduction state, but the point is they had their fall and had to rebuild. sometimes repeatedly. The Egypt you cite as having lasted thousands of years did so surviving many flips and flops of Empirical strength. Tutankhamun, for example, had to restore the old religion after his father instituted the worship of the sun god Amun. The political upheaval from his father caused no small stir among the priests and people. Glubb's point is that there are phases that every empire goes through, and this natural progression causes their fall. I copy it below:Your facts are a little off; so is the notion that Empires 'decline'.
Usually there are external reasons empires disappear, often the result of conquest, sometimes as the result of loss of population due to plagues and famines that cause financial upheaval, other times due to exhaustion from civil wars. And even this is an oversimplification. The reasons are much more complex. Geopolitics is a factor; it's not something that suddenly sprang up brand-new in the 20th C, even if the phrase did.
But let's talk about that idea of around 250 years for a moment.
The Egyptian empire was in existence as a single continuous culture and polity from at least 3500 BC, and powerful from around 2600 BC until the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 330s BC. So around 3200 years total. It was actually conquered by a foreign power at the tail end of the Middle Kingdom, but that only lasted until the New Kingdom around 1550 BC, so it still had another 1200 or so years to be powerful.
After Alexander the Ptolemies kept an Egyptian empire ruled by Macedonians until Clopatra bet on Antony, who was the wrong horse. She should have picked Octavian (Augustus).
The Roman Empire in the West was subjected to constant pressure from Germanic tribes, who themselves were pressured by the expansion of folks like the Huns, the Goths, the Vandals (who also took the handle!) and other groups. But even then, it started with the conquest of other Italian city-states in the 300s BC, and lasted until 476 AD, so about what, 7-800 years?
However, a significant cause of weakness in the Western Roman Empire was the crisis of the 3rd Century --there was a significant plague that is estimated to have killed millions of Romans, called the Cyprian Plague.
This plague caused tremendous losses in the population and the soldiery, caused manpower and food shortages, financial depression, and probably contributed to a series of civil wars that followed it. For example, Alexandria's population was cut to less than half, and that is thought to be typical around the empire. We know about Alexandria from contemporary sources, but other sources are not as well known. There was less production, less food, and so much loss of revenue that the coinage was debased in order to pay the bills.
This came not all that long after the Antonine Plague that killed 5-10 million people - a significant percentage of the population, estimated to be one in ten or more. It's hard to maintain an army and an economy to pay the army when that happens.
Despite all this, the Eastern Roman Empire (later called the Byzantine Empire but they still called themselves Romans) lasted until its conquest by the Turks in 1453 A.D., so lasted continuously from Constantine in the 300s for another 1200 years, for 1,000 of those years as the most powerful state in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. And that's not counting the 300 years the territory was under Western Roman control as provinces.
It should be noted that under Justinian in the 500s AD, the Eastern Roman Empire re-conquered most of Italy, Egypt, and the Middle East. Once again, a plague interrupted this expansion, called Justinian's Plague. This plague was probably the first yersinia pestis (bubonic) plague, and killed 40% of the population of Constantinople and the Mediterranean. That's a gigantic loss of people. There weren't farmers to work the land, there wasn't trade. It's a miracle that the Eastern Romans survived as a polity for 1000 years more. But they did.
The Ottoman Empire lasted from well before the conquest of Constantinople until after World War One, so for about 500 years. World War One was the cataclysm that bankrupted it, as well as Great Britain, who couldn't even repay their wartime debts, and then had to face WW2, a struggle that lasted 6 years, and sapped much of the remaining resources of the empire, not to mention manpower losses.
There were also tremendous pressures from national groups to have countries that reflected their languages, cultures, etc., and many wars of liberation that ate up resources and patience. This in fact also disrupted the Austro-Hungarian Empire significantly, and weakened it. However, one must remember that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was the offspring of the Holy Roman Empire that started with the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 AD and lasted until the end of WWI. What's that, about 1,118 years?
In other words, these things don't happen because people and soldiery are spending their time jerking off and having orgies instead of working hard. They happen for a variety of reasons, some of which can't be predicted or controlled. Others happen as the result of bad choices - for example, the Ottomans siding with the Central Powers in WWI, and facing their own liberation movements, among them the Arabs, Yugoslavs, Rumanians, Bulgarians, Greeks, etc.
Too many people have heard of Gibbons' reasons for the supposed fall of the Roman Empire. But recall that Gibbons wrote in the 1780s and 1790s, and had no access to many of the written and archaeological resources we have today. His theories are now widely discredited.
How many thousands of years was a Chinese empire in existence? How about Japan?
Food for thought, at the very least.
And hey, let's not forget about the Empire in Star Wars that seemingly goes on and on and on...
The Age of Pioneers (outburst)
The Age of Conquests
The Age of Commerce
The Age of Affluence
The Age of Intellect
The Age of Decadence.
Decadence is marked by:
Defensiveness
Pessimism
Materialism
Frivolity
An influx of foreigners
The Welfare State
A weakening of religion.
Notice any similarity with the history of our nation? We have evidence for each and every "age" and are now experiencing the age of decadence; the influx of foreigners, welfare state, and weakening of religion all being prominent at this time.
Glubb's point is the natural flow of Empires seems to take about 250 years to complete. Once in the age of decadence, your nation is likely to "fall". What that fall looks like can vary, and does not mean extinction, but does mean a loss of power.
Moondog Wily
In Tune Wit Da Moon!
I don't buy any of it. Sorry. I'm going to bow out because I'd rather not get into more argument.
A rather key difference is that the US never had a moment in which there was not an “influx of foreigners.” It’s popular in some circles right now to get huffy about immigrants, but we all come from immigrants. Whatever group is the current immigrant group is the one that the previous immigrant groups blame for all ills. I suspect that’s a stinky thing to acknowledge if a person doesn’t like certain groups of people.
Sometimes revisionists like to write history through their own lenses a bit more than they should, perhaps. Can’t really blame them, as it’s their world-view. It does get prickly when they leave out the truths that don’t fit their stories, though.
I agree with you. Well said.
Glubb's point was that this has been a noticeable feature of a declining Empire, and it's a feature today. I'm not saying it's a good or an evil, it just is.
I appreciate your desire to lessen contention. I do not wish any either. Thank you.
Prina
Avoiding imperial entanglements
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Just buy NVDA....a few years ago.
China's going for as much of their product as they can get & not hard to guess what types of AI they're working on.
Edit: a study published today in Science partially titled 'GPTs are GPTs' looked at the jobs most vulnerable to AI which included the following: blockchain engineers, clinical data managers, public relations specialists and financial quantitative analysts.
Jobs with minimal risk included motorcycle mechanics, pile driver operators and stonemasons.
The author noted: “Knowledge workers process information and you can think that what these large language models are doing is turbocharging our ability to process information in different ways” and in the abstract: "The collective attributes of LLMs such as generative pretrained transformers (GPTs) strongly suggest that they possess key characteristics of other 'GPTs,'general-purpose technologies"
China's going for as much of their product as they can get & not hard to guess what types of AI they're working on.
Edit: a study published today in Science partially titled 'GPTs are GPTs' looked at the jobs most vulnerable to AI which included the following: blockchain engineers, clinical data managers, public relations specialists and financial quantitative analysts.
Jobs with minimal risk included motorcycle mechanics, pile driver operators and stonemasons.
The author noted: “Knowledge workers process information and you can think that what these large language models are doing is turbocharging our ability to process information in different ways” and in the abstract: "The collective attributes of LLMs such as generative pretrained transformers (GPTs) strongly suggest that they possess key characteristics of other 'GPTs,'general-purpose technologies"
Last edited:
Gtrbldr
Not a new member
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So, I guess you were an eyewitness fromYour facts are a little off; so is the notion that Empires 'decline'.
Usually there are external reasons empires disappear, often the result of conquest, sometimes as the result of loss of population due to plagues and famines that cause financial upheaval, other times due to exhaustion from civil wars. And even this is an oversimplification. The reasons are much more complex. Geopolitics is a factor; it's not something that suddenly sprang up brand-new in the 20th C, even if the phrase did.
But let's talk about that idea of around 250 years for a moment.
The Egyptian empire was in existence as a single continuous culture and polity from at least 3500 BC, and powerful from around 2600 BC until the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 330s BC. So around 3200 years total. It was actually conquered by a foreign power at the tail end of the Middle Kingdom, but that only lasted until the New Kingdom around 1550 BC, so it still had another 1200 or so years to be powerful.
After Alexander the Ptolemies kept an Egyptian empire ruled by Macedonians until Clopatra bet on Antony, who was the wrong horse. She should have picked Octavian (Augustus).
The Roman Empire in the West was subjected to constant pressure from Germanic tribes, who themselves were pressured by the expansion of folks like the Huns, the Goths, the Vandals (who also took the handle!) and other groups. But even then, it started with the conquest of other Italian city-states in the 300s BC, and lasted until 476 AD, so about what, 7-800 years?
However, a significant cause of weakness in the Western Roman Empire was the crisis of the 3rd Century --there was a significant plague that is estimated to have killed millions of Romans, called the Cyprian Plague.
This plague caused tremendous losses in the population and the soldiery, caused manpower and food shortages, financial depression, and probably contributed to a series of civil wars that followed it. For example, Alexandria's population was cut to less than half, and that is thought to be typical around the empire. We know about Alexandria from contemporary sources, but other sources are not as well known. There was less production, less food, and so much loss of revenue that the coinage was debased in order to pay the bills.
This came not all that long after the Antonine Plague that killed 5-10 million people - a significant percentage of the population, estimated to be one in ten or more. It's hard to maintain an army and an economy to pay the army when that happens.
Despite all this, the Eastern Roman Empire (later called the Byzantine Empire but they still called themselves Romans) lasted until its conquest by the Turks in 1453 A.D., so lasted continuously from Constantine in the 300s for another 1200 years, for 1,000 of those years as the most powerful state in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. And that's not counting the 300 years the territory was under Western Roman control as provinces.
It should be noted that under Justinian in the 500s AD, the Eastern Roman Empire re-conquered most of Italy, Egypt, and the Middle East. Once again, a plague interrupted this expansion, called Justinian's Plague. This plague was probably the first yersinia pestis (bubonic) plague, and killed 40% of the population of Constantinople and the Mediterranean. That's a gigantic loss of people. There weren't farmers to work the land, there wasn't trade. It's a miracle that the Eastern Romans survived as a polity for 1000 years more. But they did.
The Ottoman Empire lasted from well before the conquest of Constantinople until after World War One, so for about 500 years. World War One was the cataclysm that bankrupted it, as well as Great Britain, who couldn't even repay their wartime debts, and then had to face WW2, a struggle that lasted 6 years, and sapped much of the remaining resources of the empire, not to mention manpower losses.
There were also tremendous pressures from national groups to have countries that reflected their languages, cultures, etc., and many wars of liberation that ate up resources and patience. This in fact also disrupted the Austro-Hungarian Empire significantly, and weakened it. However, one must remember that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was the offspring of the Holy Roman Empire that started with the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 AD and lasted until the end of WWI. What's that, about 1,118 years?
In other words, these things don't happen because people and soldiery are spending their time jerking off and having orgies instead of working hard. They happen for a variety of reasons, some of which can't be predicted or controlled. Others happen as the result of bad choices - for example, the Ottomans siding with the Central Powers in WWI, and facing their own liberation movements, among them the Arabs, Yugoslavs, Rumanians, Bulgarians, Greeks, etc.
Too many people have heard of Gibbons' reasons for the supposed fall of the Roman Empire. But recall that Gibbons wrote in the 1780s and 1790s, and had no access to many of the written and archaeological resources we have today. His theories are now widely discredited.
How many thousands of years was a Chinese empire in existence? How about Japan?
Food for thought, at the very least.
And hey, let's not forget about the Empire in Star Wars that seemingly goes on and on and on...
The end of the Old Empire. May I ask what was your secret to survive the antonian plague? ;-)
But great write up. Love history
spawnofthesith
New Member
Live instrumentation isn't going anywhere. EDM is easily the most popular style of music around here (Denver is often called the bass music capital) and even those folks get way more excited when a producer is doing a show/tour with full band instrumentation vs a dj set
Luck, and being a hermit.
Thanks!But great write up. Love history
I do, too.
michaeljschaefer
New Member
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- Jun 21, 2024
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- 11
Oh god, did this thread veer off the road and into politics? LOL. Predictable. Here's my take ... innovation is happening at an incredible pace. And it doesn't seem to be slowing down. What does that mean for the future? Hard to say. But here is something that I think might cheer people up. Why do people go to shows? Why don't they just sit at home and listen to computer generated music all day long? Answer: live music allows us to interact with the people making the music and with other people doing the same. We are a social animal. We need social connection. If a computer was as smart as Mozart and was cranking out symphonies left and right that rivaled the master, I'd still be going out to see my friend's band because they rock and I know them and we have a good time together. Use this as a reminder to BE HUMAN. Turn off the computer, go be with other humans. It's good for you.
