link to original reddit post by /u/Anen-o-me
So this is an interview with a new advanced deep-learning based AI called GPT-3. As you will see on the interview, it passes the Turing test easily. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-3?wprov=sfla1)
Watch this amazing video and then let's discuss it:
This AI is so computationally demanding that it cannot run on an ordinary computer, yet, it runs on server banks and is expensive to access. But surely within a number of years it will be able to do so and the cost will come down.
The implications of having ubiquitous strong AI in everyone's smart phone, or easy access to it at least, are interesting.
#EDUCATION
This is an AI that can hold context across an entire conversation, and therefore could do things like tutor children on a one-to-one basis from childhood to adulthood in every subject, tailoring learning to them.
This means that potentially many more people could reach PhD level intellectual development than currently happens. All for a vastly lower cost than today's schooling infrastructure, which it could entirely replace.
But if misused by the State for its own ends, this could have dire results. An AI trained on State propaganda could become the ultimate invasive agent, rooting out dissenters early and brainwashing them from childhood. Rather than education, the state's goals would become reflected in the AI as pushing State propaganda and tamping down resistance.
#POLITICS
A natural language processing engine this powerful could teach people a lot about politics. Parties might produce AIs trained on their body of political knowledge.
It's not hard to imagine Robot Marx, Futurama style, reading everything Marx ever read and wrote, and being able to argue for communism somewhat coherently. Though it would be pretty funny if it could spot the contradictions in Marx's open texts and buck its owners.
We too could have robot Rothbard, adopting his image and speaking style, having mastered everything Rothbard wrote and able to function as an advocate for libertarian ideas.
But the darker side of this is abuse of a GPT-3 system to create organized online astroturfing campaigns, having robots influence the outcome of elections by building psychological profiles of every single opposition person online and influencing then in various ways.
To a smaller degree this is already happening using human agents, and it's already had an impact with the election of Trump appearing to have been supported by the efforts of foreign actors.
Essentially, democracy is vulnerable to this kind of attack because the masses are not politically informed and use various heuristics and inference to decide on their vote rather than reason, and this can be manipulated heavily.
Democracy may no longer be tenable in a world with ubiquitous AI.
#PSYCHOLOGY
One of the biggest problems today says lone actors who let their problems build up in their life to the point that they take extreme action, like shooting up places en masse, often because they just want to die and they wrongly reason that don't something from which there is no coming back is a way to give them the strength and impetus to commit suicide, and still many people don't end up killing themselves and end up in prison.
Ignoring the issue of assisted suicide being illegal, an intelligent agent that people have a relationship with would both reduce loneliness for a lot of people, and help many to get the kind of psychological help they need but don't recognize they need.
GPT-3 could function not only as a personal assistant, but as a front line psychologist. Both for minor cases and major ones that currently fall through the cracks.
With the ability to observe kids from childhood and what they are going through it may even be possible to catch early warning signs of budding psychopaths and those with deviant and harmful sexual motivations, so we can reduce adulthood prevalence of murder, rape, and child abduction.
That implies a lot however, and the end of privacy is one of them. It would be awful dystopian for the State to use intelligent agents to corral and categorize the population into desirables and undesirables.
Then what happens to the undesirables? In the US and much of the West, the state's undesirables might simply be sidelined generally.
In the world's tyrannies (such as the US is heading towards becoming also) they might be liquidated not only in their youth, but their genetics may be profiled and used to literally prevent the birth of potential dissenters in the future.
I have no doubt they genetic profiling of dissent with the SIM to reduce or eliminate dissent is something many states would like to do and are willing to accomplish.
The State can do terrible things with this kind of power and ubiquitous intelligence at its disposal.
So what good things can we do with it? Used for good it can teach our young, improve mental health, invent new recipes, teach languages, compose art and poetry, engage in scientific discoveries, advise us in every hobby field, and a billion other things.
There is no doubt that a world with strong AI can be an improved world for many. But we must guard against misuse.
#TRANSPORTATION
We already have limited AI car driving on the road currently with Tesla and things like lane-keeping. This will progress to full service driving.
Car AIs might be the first strong AI that most people own or come into contact with early on.
#BUSINESS
Business will be revolutionized entirely. It will become much easier to, say, start and run a business. You have an AI doing your accounting, stock management, sales, advertising, etc. An entire team of experts all crammed into a single AI that will likely be entirely free for you to use. GPT-3 is currently the product of an open source company.
#WAR & DEFENSE
It is likely the State would seek to regulate AI in some form, especially because of the potential for AI-based weapons and assault drones.
Yes robots are coming to the battlefield, but they won't have significant AI power built into them, more like insect intelligence. A GPT-3 level intelligence would more likely be advising generals and overall strategy.
But so too could AI be used to guard our houses. You might have a camera on your house, but there's really no one actively watching it. With an AI watching all your cameras they can alert in real time should something happen.
TL;DR:
At least watch the video, it's amazing; but long story short, by about 2042, the technological singularity should begin impacting just about every sector of life in the same way the computer and internet did. This implies a lot of changes and possibilities, both for and bad, for people and for the State. We need to begin thinking about what opportunities this creates and how to avoid the negative possibilities.