Which raises a much more urgent question: does AI justify the diversion of such funding from, say, libraries, parks, schools, etc. to Google, Amazon, Microsoft on behalf of research? And if so, where's the hard proof backing this significant tradeoff? 7/
ETHICS
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Academic AI Research Dependency on Big Tech Infrastructure
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IRL, no academic can afford to pay retail ($100b training runs, y'all). So, academic labs vie for access/proximity to Big Tech infra in pursuit of doing 'relevant' research–something that should alarm fans of academic neutrality/those concerned w conflict of interest. 3/
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Government funding Big Tech deepens corporate AI infrastructure control
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BUT the current proposals to alleviate this imbalance largely exacerbate it. Insofar as they amount to gov paying Big Tech to get academics access to Big Tech resources. This strengthens Big Tech control & further normalize access to Big Tech infra as "the way AI gets done." 4/
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Big Tech AI Control Problem: Current Solutions Risk Extending Dominance
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Notable that this longstanding problem, which I and a few others have been naming for ~a decade, is now common sense. It's true. AI is fundamentally a technology controlled by Big Tech. But the current 'solutions' to this problem would extend, not dilute, Big Tech control. 1/ https://
x.com/jpalfrey/statu
/jpalfrey/status/1766863775427068240
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Big Tech dominance limits academic AI research access
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The issue: Big Tech has the $$ infrastructure, data, ability to pay talent, and access to market which no one else does. So as academics, you either pay retail for access, or get it discounted/free by yoking yourself to Big Tech (via dual affiliation, or just being hired). 2/
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Human Discernment and Detecting Artificial Intelligence: Evolutionary Selection
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How come humans have an eery ability to detect fakes? Why is the uncanny valley a thing? Because the people that survived the previous apocalyptic cycle and subsequent dark age were the ones with discernment, while the rest died out. #microfiction #maybe
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AI’s Transformative Potential for Medicine, Climate, and Society
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i think everyone’s world would transform for the better IF we could get there, safely. medicine, climate, etc all changed for the much better. IF.
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Confusion about consciousness and ethical treatment of sentient beings
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I'm genuinely legitimately confused about what you meant this conversational topic to be. If something has conscious experiences in the Chalmers sense, I care about what those conscious experiences are. Secondarily, I don't believe we should lie to or cheat beings that have a
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Moral status of consciousness and legal personhood in alien slavery
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Dath ilan considers it a tough moral question for 1-month-olds. I don't know what their science of consciousness says about age 2. Are you okay with enslaving conscious aliens who can talk and beg you to stop, if there's no law to tell you that they're people?
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AGI standards paradox: toddlers and the alien intelligence test
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By the standards we are now apparently using for 'AGI', human 2-year-olds are not AGI. When I was a kid, science fiction told me the legal first-pass test for aliens you're not legally allowed to enslave was going to be "talk and build a fire".