Swap guns with screwdrivers and you have a more fitting analogy. As both are literally tools. Guns only have exactly one application: killing. Wouldn’t really define them as tools.
A screwdriver can kill too, but most people use it for screwing screws.
Tja@programming.dev 2 days ago
Every car on the road today goes 400% over the speed limit.
Guns have only one goal: kill people. AI has multiple benign applications. That’s why 99% of the world regulates guns, but not knifes.
Deme@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
Ok? And do you think the people making the cars don’t share responsibility for when people do stupid shit with the tools they’re given?
Guns are also used for hunting, defence, sports, a variety of things other than shooting up schools. Every tool is a weapon and every weapon is a tool. The difference between the two is irrelevant. Architecture is politics, and politics is control. The way you build a system determines how it will be used. If you build a system optimized for mass surveillance, you will get a panopticon. If you build a system optimized for centralized control, you will get a dictatorship. If you build a system optimized for extraction, you will get a parasite. Modern centralized subscription service LLMs (so in effect AI as it exists in the current world, the self-hosted stuff is less than a rounding error in comparison), are a panopticon, a dictatorship and a parasite all in one.
Our whole system is run by capitalists. When people are building AI, who do they think will be using it? What do they think it will be used for? But sure the protein folding research is nice.