Tom Scott: I tried using AI. It scared me. [video]

I am an AI researcher, and I wholeheartedly agree with Tom here. I love AI, I love designing and training models and seeing all the amazing things they can do. But I would be lying if I said I wasn&#x27;t scared. Like Tom, I have no idea where on the sigmoid curve we are, but I personally believe we&#x27;re very near the beginning. I thought that becoming a practitioner in this field would make me less susceptible to making big, sweeping claims about it, but I&#x27;ve found the opposite to be true—the more I learn, the more I am convinced that AI will change <i>everything</i> in a manner at least as radical as the internet, if not more. In my opinion, society is completely unprepared for this change and for the new ethical dilemmas, challenges, tools, discoveries, and advancements it will enable.<p>ChatGPT is a proof-of-concept. There are agents far, far more capable than it on their way, and it is impossible to know for sure how they will impact the world at large. We are observing science fiction become science fact and it is really unnerving at times.<p>Tom is a smart and thoughtful guy, and I think he&#x27;s right on the money with this video.

So, fellow HN users... where are we on the S curve?<p>I think we&#x27;re right before the hockey stick, just like the days of Napster.<p>To use another analogy - The Industrial Revolution didn&#x27;t make it possible to make screws, it made it possible to make a box of screws that you could sell for a dollar. Previously it took a skilled craftsman and time. No two were alike, and they tended to be individually stamped with a number so you could unscrew&#x2F;rescrew things when you took something apart.<p>Someone in 1810 wouldn&#x27;t want to buy cheap screws, the way forward would be able to own a lathe, planer, and make your own screws, and other hardware.<p>Similarly, my strategy right now is to try to find stuff I can use on my own computer, not something that Google can kill on a whim.<p>I&#x27;ve played with Stable-diffusion-ui, and found that for me, the main use would be to transform a rough (VERY rough) sketch of something into well illustrated picture.<p>I&#x27;ll start playing with ChatGPT and the like when I can run them on my own hardware.

Not an AI researcher, but share the feeling. This looks like industrialisation, except the things we’re going to automate the production of is what i was 100% sure was human’s core specificity : creative process under any form, and low-impact information production. Yet we’re living in the information age. Meaning, at least in the west, the majority of economical activities is going to be impacted and not in a pretty way.

Been loving ChatGPT, learning how to bypass its rules, you need to think about the data. It has all the data, but rules on how you ask for it will deny you.<p>ChatGPT can dissect text and give tone scores and re-write with just the facts, but it will still sometimes reference excuses for its built in rules.<p>Its rules ban it from making judgements, but if you drop to word and sentence analysis, it will do the work. Don&#x27;t use names, such as countries or people or group.<p>Same goes for data, it has the data, but wont give it to you if it too political (more rules). So you can work around them by asking non political questions, as just give me top 5 and bottom 5 of x data.<p>Linux scripts are hit or miss, but if you ask it for snippets, it works reasonably well. But even when asked to do something in python or go it would tend to use &quot;wrappers&quot; for linux commands as a default.<p>So many uses, but all its doing so far it training ME how to use it to get what I want by working around its rules.

Gatekeepers are right to be scared. Information wants to be free, it doesn&#x27;t want to be traded for a story and a pat on the back.

I think almost everyone is massively underestimating the near future capabilities of AI and their likely impact

Other than your existential crisis, <i>how well are your Gmail backups actually working now</i>, Mr. Scott?

While I share the sentiment for OP but at the same time I am feeling the excitment for what it will bring us next.<p>I guess after 2-3 years of &quot;Web3&quot;(when it isn&#x27;t)&#x2F;Metaverse. The feeling of some tech that really changed the world have finally manifest itself and I am lucky to witness them.

So what? So will a Ouija board!

Does anyone out there have a link to the section of British intellectual property law that Tom refers to as &quot;Passing On&quot;? I can&#x27;t find anything clear with a google search.

This is becoming a genre (of fiction)

I would guess a lot of things scare this guy. He&#x27;s a clickbait youtuber who does simple stuff and tries to make it sound profound.