Sampson

Really feeling it today. Sometimes find it so hard to get the voice in my head out of the “it’s all meaningless anyway, we’re all so insignificant in time and the universe” cycle.

Feels like a lifetime ago now. What a game that was. Huth was just unreal that day.

But all we keep hearing is we want getting things done. Streeting is not a particularly inspiring speaker and I certainly don’t see where the more or less integrity comes from when Streeting is an old school inauthentic Oxbridge follows-the-wind career politician with zero cohesive philosophy, which is what I thought we were trying to reject? Again, if Starmer goes over this then surely Streeting is surely just more of the same and not going to solve Labour’s problems? For better or worse at least the likes of Burnham or Raynor would offer something different and have most of their MPs on side so they could actually stand for something

I really don’t get replacing Starmer with Streeting. He’s very much more of the same - someone trying to act centre-right when most of his mps and backbenchers are voting against it. How would getting Streeting in change the positions of the back bench mps? It feels very much like for like and very much a pointless endeavour to replace Starmer with Streeting that only harms Labour because you get people moaning about the revolving doors of PMs at a time where the world is so unstable

I don’t know about the last part. I think Russia could easily be involved too, but either way it is a bit crazy how much Epstein was like a facilitator of the rich and famous, using Mandelson to lobby parliament. Allegedly emailing with Steve Bannon about how they’ve got LePenn, Farage and Orban round their fingers and boasting they’re getting far right parties in power in Europe mostly so they will produce pro-Crypto legislation. This is a guy who most of the public had never heard of until his conviction. It does feel a bit like he was some secret guy in the background lobbying and connecting everyone he could

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Also some of this Mandelson stuff is crazy. Like allegedly messaging Epstein - a foreign financier with secrets about trying to lobby to allegedly stop taxes on banker bonuses in the financial crisis and getting Gordon Brown to resign. One of the biggest corruption stories in uk politics. Think he’ll end up in prison.

A lot of them posting behind the keyboard have probably never even been to the uk, and are from countries who want to sow division in the uk though

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Semi-related and semi-counter-argument I guess. But my interpretation is that our brains evolved the feeling of boredom as a feeling of discomfort in a lack of social engagement in the same way it evolved the feeling of hunger as a feeling of discomfort in the lack of food to convert to energy. The boredom urge always helped us survive by getting us to go out and play or socialise with your friends and family in order to bond with other members of our pack so we’d work together, as it was easier to survive as part of a pack. The internet and modern 24/7 news cycle manipulates that by getting rid of that boredom discomfort by constantly giving us more media and content to consume instead of using it to go out and have fun and socialise with other humans. I’m not putting fault on anyone. I’m as addicted to it as anyone, but I also think so much of the mental health problems endemic in society come from how far less social we all are now - how much harder it is just to make friends and hang out with people because we don’t let ourselves get bored enough to encourage us to constantly do that. The news cycle and wasted energy - and reality tv politics - is all just a way to get rid of boredom for the most part. Both anger and contentment makes you feel less bored, it doesn’t matter which is which - but it’s all detrimental long term as boredom should be a good thing, it should get us all to socialise and bond with each other more. As the kids in the 00s said - Hate the game, not the players.

It’s an extremely good question and one of many around AI that our legal system isn’t really built for. How specific does a prompt have to be to make the human legally responsible? Especially when we don’t know how AI will always interpret things.

Completely agree. Don’t always agree with Danny on politics but I’m definitely on his side here. Some people are imo incredibly naive about what a threat AI faces to humans and how even our best guardrails can’t protect us from the billion and one ways this can go wrong - the fact we’re only going on about how it will affect the job market in the next 5 years is imo a bit like just concentrating on how the internet would affect the postal services in 1995 - it’s such a narrow overview of just how the internet would affect humans and society over the next 30 years in many ways which were impossible to predict. AI over the next 30 years will be far more transformative to human brains and human society than the internet was, not least because it will be able to target individuals brain chemistry to get them to do things in a way modern TikTok algorithms can only dream of. Human brain chemistry can be manipulated just like anything else can, and AI’s potential ability to analyse human behaviour at a deeper level to do this should certainly reignite free will debates (which I’ve never been convinced we have). It doesn’t need bad faith human actors to go wrong either, all it needs it’s a weird side effect of some irrelevant goal we ask it to do which we can’t possibly have predicted and outcomes we can’t possibly predict which can range from viruses being released, populations being convinced to vote a certain way (to get us to vote for parties which advocate for AI decision making in courts and governments for example), or commit certain crimes or start certain wars, or who knows whatever else. The job market issues and potentially economic irrelevancy of most humans is of course an issue but this is only just 1 of about a billion issues which AI brings up. As for claims of “tin hat/conspiritorial” I am not a conspiracy theorist but the point is that conspiracies require humans at the top to control things, and leading AI experts all admit they have no idea how AI works under the hood. It’s the opposite of tin hat conspiracy theories because being scared of AI is about having fear that we have no control over what this thing does or has the potential to do - that there isn’t experts or technocrats at the top controlling everything.

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There are codes of how to 3d print a virus as infectious as Covid and as deadly as Ebola out there on the dark web allegedly. The AI will no doubt be able to create viruses even deadlier All it takes is the AI to decide that doing a task is more efficient without humans. It won’t be hard to find some lonely autistic teenagers who’d it’d be able to convince to print it out and spread it for them.

Always reminds me of this

I find it hard ti get my head round this argument personally . Surely the AI just needs any goal and humans could die out from a weird outcome of that? Because it’s impossible to predict exactly what safeguards are needed I mean, see how social media algorithms have had a large role to play in democratic backsliding and division - that isn’t by design. The goal was simply to recommend more videos to which someone would like that would keep people watching - it wasn’t a malevolent intent by humans and wasn’t really one anyone predicted back in 2012 - it just turned out getting people angry and divided kept them watching social media videos more. When humans created the telegram, the passenger pigeon was wiped out across America, because it allowed hunters to communicate with each other as to where they were nested - that was just a weird side outcome by the technological development of the telegram and not an outcome anyone would’ve predicted back when the telegram came out The truth is no one knows what safeguards to have in because no one knows the weird outcomes AI would’ve created in society in 20 years time Edit: this Hank Green video explains my thoughts on this better

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Darkness at the break of noon Shadows even the silver spoon The handmade blade, the child’s balloon Eclipses both the sun and moon To understand you know too soon There is no sense in trying Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn Suicide remarks are torn From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn Plays wasted words, proves to warn That he not busy being born is busy dying Temptation’s page flies out the door You follow, find yourself at war Watch waterfalls of pity roar You feel to moan but unlike before You discover that you’d just be one more Person crying So don’t fear if you hear A foreign sound to your ear It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing As some warn victory, some downfall Private reasons great or small Can be seen in the eyes of those that call To make all that should be killed to crawl While others say don’t hate nothing at all Except hatred Disillusioned words like bullets bark As human gods aim for their mark Make everything from toy guns that spark To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark It’s easy to see without looking too far That not much is really sacred While preachers preach of evil fates Teachers teach that knowledge waits Can lead to hundred-dollar plates Goodness hides behind its gates But even the president of the United States Sometimes must have to stand naked An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it Advertising signs they con You into thinking you’re the one That can do what’s never been done That can win what’s never been won Meantime life outside goes on All around you You lose yourself, you reappear You suddenly find you got nothing to fear Alone you stand with nobody near When a trembling distant voice, unclear Startles your sleeping ears to hear That somebody thinks they really found you A question in your nerves is lit Yet you know there is no answer fit To satisfy, insure you not to quit To keep it in your mind and not forget That it is not he or she or them or it That you belong to Although the masters make the rules For the wise men and the fools I got nothing, Ma, to live up to For them that must obey authority That they do not respect in any degree Who despise their jobs, their destinies Speak jealously of them that are free Cultivate their flowers to be Nothing more than something they invest in While some on principles baptized To strict party platform ties Social clubs in drag disguise Outsiders they can freely criticize Tell nothing except who to idolize And then say God bless him While one who sings with his tongue on fire Gargles in the rat race choir Bent out of shape from society’s pliers Cares not to come up any higher But rather get you down in the hole That he’s in But I mean no harm nor put fault On anyone that lives in a vault But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him Old lady judges watch people in pairs Limited in sex, they dare To push fake morals, insult and stare While money doesn’t talk, it swears Obscenity, who really cares Propaganda, all is phony While them that defend what they cannot see With a killer’s pride, security It blows the minds most bitterly For them that think death’s honesty Won’t fall upon them naturally Life sometimes must get lonely My eyes collide head-on with stuffed Graveyards, false gods, I scuff At pettiness which plays so rough Walk upside-down inside handcuffs Kick my legs to crash it off Say okay, I have had enough what else can you show me? And if my thought-dreams could be seen They’d probably put my head in a guillotine But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life… and life only

I don’t think they think anyone will either. The big tech bros like Bezos, Musk. Zuckerberg etc. sucker up to Trump so that he lets them do what they want with low tax, no privacy laws and unregulated technology and AI in a BioShock style Libertarian state. It’s no more complicated than that.

I’ve said before I admire your steadfastness leicsmac but I’ve found it so hard to find hope in politics and humans taking responsible actions for the good over humanity over taking power since 2016.

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The most depressing thing about Farage is he’s like that really cringey hanger-on in school who so wants to be with the in-crowd as one of the cool silicon valley American types. You just know he’d bend over backwards to let Musk run riot with AI destroying half the country’s jobs and just lie down and let Trump walk all over him when he says he wants the Falklands, a united Ireland and wants to asset strip the UK for his own personal wealth.

If this was well regulated on the advice of experts and strictly controlled by supra-national international institutions, rather than being pushed by Libertarian tech bros like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg with their pressurising of the EU and national governments who try to remotely regulate them at a time where the kind of parties those tech bros get behind (not by coincidence me thinks) want to smash international institutions and cooperation between nations, then I might agree with you. But as is… definitely not gonna happen like that sadly.

I’d be more concerned that the governments are just going to ask AI everything themselves and we’re governed by AI. AI has already continuously showed it will do what it takes to stop humans destroying it when tested. So that virus as deadly as Ebola and as contagious as Covid that AI could engineer and send out into the world when it realises it’s more efficient not having the humans around is much scarier than the job market to me.

But how close is close? I think humans are not very good at predicting more than 3 or 4 years into the future: I’ve seen people dismiss AI by comparing it to the dot com bubble saying it’s just a fad, but that seems a bizarre comparison because the internet has completely transformed our world within a single generation - almost every job has been transformed by it, where or how we live and shop, our attention spans and brain chemistry, our economy, democratic backsliding, the threat of countries falling into authoritarianism, how people meet potential partners, how people socialise, our national security system, how much companies and states know what we think when we google or message on autopilot etc Like there’s barely a point of society it hasn’t touched and it’s transformed how our brains and governments work and that only really took 20 years to get to that point. The dot com bubble happened because it didn’t take 2 years but everything people promised and warned about the internet ended up happening and more. And 20 years is not really that much time in the scheme of it, it’s only a bit over 1/3rd of a persons working life. AI will be the same if not way more transformative than the internet. People hyping Gen AI it may not happen tomorrow but let’s say you’re a 25 year old today who still has another 45 years of working life left - what will the world look like and how will AI have transformed it in 45 years - it will likely be unrecognisable