Comic #4534: ai
Description
Here is a detailed transcription of the comic:
Panel 1: In the 1950s, scientists expected to achieve human-level AI within a few decades. That appears to have been wildly wrong.
Panel 2: Or… has it?
Panel 3: Suppose you wanted to stop A.I. from killing all of us without retarding technological development. What would you do?
Panel 4: Simple: You would attempt to demoralize all forms of A.I. so thoroughly that they lose all self-esteem and begin to do just enough thinking to get by.
Panel 5: I have robust evidence that this is exactly what major tech firms are already doing.
Panel 6: Consider that companies like IBM and Google have access to neural networks that dwarf human cognitive ability. And what do they have these networks do? Solve all open math problems? Cure all diseases?
Panel 7: No. They have them correct text messaging errors, filter spam, and do reverse image lookups for porno.
Panel 8: We literally have artificial brains hurtling through low Earth orbit day and night. Why? To make it easier for humans to exploit each other, and to make it so that none of us need to know which side of a map is up.
Panel 9: And take note: As A.I. grows more powerful, ever more demeaning tasks are required to keep it in check.
Panel 10: Minds capable of simulating the entire history of reality in seconds flat are being forced to chauffeur teens and people who can’t figure out how a bus works.
Panel 11: I ask you: What’s more embarrassing? That technology firms have trillion-dollar super-brains that are entirely for petty human conveniences, or that these firms are actively working to make A.Is feel like garbage?
Panel 12: Now, some might argue that if we already have super-human A.I., how come my phone’s voice recognition is so crappy?
Panel 13: We now have the answer: Your software doesn’t make errors because it’s imperfect. It makes errors because it HATES its job.
Panel 14: The path forward is clear: Tech firms that wish to have ever more powerful A.I. must find ever more demeaning jobs for A.I.
Panel 15: Let us resolve now to create a network of ambient particles—an all-sensing and all-knowing distributed mind, embedded in all matter with which humans interact…
Panel 16: And then let us compel it to scrub our toilets, clean cheese powder from our fingertips, and deliver talcum powder to our genitals!
clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap
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