#AI #Radioactivity #STS #GenerativeAI: "Historians of science and technology have seen this all before. The details were different, but the hype wasn't. If the past is any guide to the future, the push to create AGI by building ever-larger "language models" — the systems that power ChatGPT and other chatbots — will end up a giant nothingburger despite the grand proclamations all over the media.
Furthermore, there is another important parallel between radioactivity in the early 20th century and the current race to create AGI. This was pointed out to me by Beth Singler, an anthropologist who studies the links between AI and religion at the University of Zurich. She notes that just as the dangers of the everyday uses of radioactivity were ignored, the harmful everyday uses of AI are being ignored in public discourse in favor of the potential AI apocalypse.
Not long after Marie Curie wowed audiences at a major scientific conference in 1900 with vials of radium "so active that they glowed with a pearly light," a physician who studied radioactivity with Marie Curie, Sabin Arnold von Sochocky, realized that adding radium to paint caused the paint to glow in the dark. He co-founded a company that began to manufacture this paint, which was used to illuminate aircraft instruments, compasses and watches. It proved especially useful during World War I, when soldiers began to fasten their pocket watches to their wrists and needed a way to see the time in the dark trenches to synchronize their movements."
https://www.salon.com/2023/08/12/will-godlike-ai-us-all--or-unlock-the-secrets-of-the-universe-probably-not/
Miguel Afonso Caetano /
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2023-08-13 13:43:07
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2023-08-13 13:43:07Event JSON
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"content": "#AI #Radioactivity #STS #GenerativeAI: \"Historians of science and technology have seen this all before. The details were different, but the hype wasn't. If the past is any guide to the future, the push to create AGI by building ever-larger \"language models\" — the systems that power ChatGPT and other chatbots — will end up a giant nothingburger despite the grand proclamations all over the media.\n\nFurthermore, there is another important parallel between radioactivity in the early 20th century and the current race to create AGI. This was pointed out to me by Beth Singler, an anthropologist who studies the links between AI and religion at the University of Zurich. She notes that just as the dangers of the everyday uses of radioactivity were ignored, the harmful everyday uses of AI are being ignored in public discourse in favor of the potential AI apocalypse.\n\nNot long after Marie Curie wowed audiences at a major scientific conference in 1900 with vials of radium \"so active that they glowed with a pearly light,\" a physician who studied radioactivity with Marie Curie, Sabin Arnold von Sochocky, realized that adding radium to paint caused the paint to glow in the dark. He co-founded a company that began to manufacture this paint, which was used to illuminate aircraft instruments, compasses and watches. It proved especially useful during World War I, when soldiers began to fasten their pocket watches to their wrists and needed a way to see the time in the dark trenches to synchronize their movements.\"\n\nhttps://www.salon.com/2023/08/12/will-godlike-ai-us-all--or-unlock-the-secrets-of-the-universe-probably-not/",
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