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626 points __rito__ | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source

Related from yesterday: Show HN: Gemini Pro 3 imagines the HN front page 10 years from now - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46205632
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collinmcnulty ◴[] No.46221809[source]
> But if intelligence really does become too cheap to meter, it will become possible to do a perfect reconstruction and synthesis of everything. LLMs are watching (or humans using them might be). Best to be good.

I cannot believe this is just put out there unexamined of any level of "maybe we shouldn't help this happen". This is complete moral abdication. And to be clear, being "good" is no defense. Being good often means being unaligned with the powerful, so being good is often the very thing that puts you in danger.

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doctoboggan ◴[] No.46222014[source]
I've had the same though as Karpathy over the past couple of months/years. I don't think it's good, exciting, or something to celebrate, but I also have no idea how to prevent it.

I would read his "Best to be good." as a warning or reminder that everything you do or say online will be collected and analyzed by an "intelligence". You can't count on hiding amongst the mass of online noise. Imagine if someone were to collect everything you've written or uploaded to the internet and compiled it into a long document. What sort of story would that tell about who you are? What would a clever person (or LLM) be able to do with that document?

If you have any ideas on how to stop everyone from building the torment nexus, I am willing to listen.

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1. tensor ◴[] No.46224626[source]
I think we need to stop focusing only on the AI aspect of this. Yes, it's an important component to the sort of mass surveillance system you're describing, but it's not the only component. The internet, advertising, privacy, all of these are integral to this outcome.

While I don't have a general solution, I do believe that the solution will need to be multi-faceted and address multiple aspects of the technologies enabling this. My first step would be for society to re-evaluate and shift its views towards information, both locally and internationally.

For example, if you proposed to get rid of all physical borders between countries, everyone would likely be aghast. Obviously there are too many disagreements and conflicting value sets between countries for this to happen. Yet in the west we think nothing have having no digital information borders, despite the fact that the lack of them in part enables this data collection and other issues such as election interference. Yes, erecting firewalls is extremely unpalatable to people in the west, but is almost certainly part of the solution on the national level. Countries like China long ago realized this, though they also use firewalls as a means of control, not just protection (it doesn't have to be this way).

But within countries we also need to shift away from a default position of "I have the right to say whatever I want so therefore I should" and into one of "I'm not putting anything online unless I'm willing to have my employer, parents, literally everyone, read it." Also, we need to systematically attack and dismantle the advertising industry. That industry is one of the single biggest driving factors behind the extreme systematic collection and correlation of data on people. Advertising needs to switch to a "you come to me" approach not a "I'm coming to you" approach.