The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

Re:The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle C... by anigbrowl on Friday February 10, 2017 @05:27PM (#13619470)

I agree with you about the net benefit in purely economic terms, but it's easy to overweight the benefit when you were born after the costs were paid. Industrialization of production also inevitably led to the industrialization of warfare and we know how that turned out.

I can't say with any certainty that we're definitely better off than if WW2 had never happened. Suppose it had not, and that there had been slower technological development without the necessity of war, so that in 2017 the cutting edge of technology was 2400 bps modems and 300 dpi laser printers (ie a ~25 year technological 'peace handicap'). Is the actual progress we've made over that period worth the ~50 million lives lost in WW2?

Put another way, would you be willing to kill 100 million people now, today, in order to take a 25 year technological shortcut (with no certainty about how well it would pan out)?

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Re:The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle C... by problems on Friday February 10, 2017 @06:54PM (#13619986)

I think this is sort of silly - many disruptive technological advancements have happened without causing a war.

Many of the advancements you speak of had nothing to do with war time even, they were made by private companies building things like faster and faster microprocessors.

Yes, war spurts technological advancement, but not in all areas - it might be more realistic to compare something like rockets or nuclear power.

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Re:The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle C... by maverick_iceman on Friday February 10, 2017 @11:42PM (#13621057)

Technological changes caught WW2? A manic dictator, German resentment over Treaty of Versailles had nothing to do with it?

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