But AI also carries tremendous risks, from something simple as automating warfare to something like a evil AGI.
In Germany we have still traumas from automatic machine guns setup on the wall between East and West Germany. The Ukraine is fighting a drone war in the trenches with a psychological effect on soldiers comparable to WWI.
Stake are enormous. Not only toward the good. There is enough science fiction written about it. Regulation and laws are necessary!
I think your machine gun example illustrates people are quite capable of masacreing each other without AI or even high tech - in past periods sometimes over 30% of males died in warfare. While AI could get involved it's kind of a separate thing.
Yeah, his automated gun phobia argument is dumb. Should we ban all future tech development because some people are a scared of some things that can be dangerous but useful? NO.
Plus, ironically, Germany's Rheinmetall is a leader in automated anti-air guns so the people's phobia of automated guns is pointless and, at least in this case, common sense won, but in many others like nuclear energy, it lost.
It seems like Germans area easy to manipulate to get them to go against their best interests, if you manage to trigger some phobias in them via propaganda. "Ohoohoh look out, it's the nuclear boogieman, now switch your economy to Russian gas instead, it's safer"
I think the argument was about automated killing, not automated weapons.
There are already drones from Germany capable of automatic target acquisition, but they still require a human in the loop to pull the trigger. Not because they technically couldn't, but because they are required to.
The switching to russian gas is bad for know, but was rational back then. The idea was to give russia leverage on europe besides war, so that they don't need war.
Only if you're a corrupt German politician getting bribed by Russia to sell out long term national security for short term corporate profits.
It was also considered a stupid idea back then by NATO powers asking Germany WTF are you doing, tying your economy to the nation we're preparing to go to war with.
> The idea was to give russia leverage on europe besides war, so that they don't need war.
The present day proves it was a stupid idea.
"You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war." - Churchill
It worked quite well between France and Germany 50 years earlier.
Yes it was naive, given the philosophy of the leaders of the UdSSR/Russia, but I don't think it was that much problematic. We do need some years to adapt, but it doesn't meaningfully impact the ability to send weapons to the ukraine and impose sanctions (in the long term). Meanwhile we got cheap gas for some decades and Russia got some other trade partners beside China. Would we better of if we didn't use the oil in the first place? Then Russia would have bounded earlier only to China and Nordkorea, etc. . It also did have less environmental impact then shipping the oil from the US.
>It worked quite well between France and Germany 50 years earlier.
France and Germany were democracies under the umbrella of the US rule acting as arbiter. It's disingenuous and even stupid, to argue an economic relationship with USSR and Putin's Russia as being the same thing.
Yes I agree it was naive. It is something people come up with, if they think everyone cares for their own population's best and "western" values. Yet that is an assumption we used to base a lot on and still do.
Did the US force France into it? I thought that it was an idea of the french government (Charles de Gaulle), while the population had much resentment, which only vanished after having successful business together. Germany hadn't much choice though. I don't think it would had lasting impact if it were decreed and not coming from the local population.
You could hope making Russia richer, could in them rather be rich then large, which is basically the deal we have with China, which is still an alien dictatorship.
It was a major success, contributing to the thawing of relationships with the Soviet Union and probably contributed to the peaceful end of the Soviet Union.
It supported several EU countries through their economic development and kept the EU afloat through the financial crisis.
It was a very important source of energy and there is no replacement. This can be seen by the flight of capital, deindustrialisation and poor economic prospects in Germany and the EU.
But as far as I know, many countries still import energy from Russia, either directly or laundered through third parties.
I don't disagree that we need regulation, but I also think citing literal fiction isn't a good argument. We're also very, very far away from anything approaching AGI, so the idea of it becoming evil seems a bit far fetched.
On the other hand, firstly every single person disagrees what the phrase AGI means, varying from "we've had it for years already" to "the ability to do provably impossible things like solve the halting problem"; and secondly we have a very bad track record for knowing how long it will take to invent anything in the field of AI with both positive and negative failures, for example constantly thinking that self driving cars are just around the corner vs. people saying an AI that could play Go well was "decades" away a mere few months before it beat the world champion.
Autonomous sentry turrets have already been a thing since the 2000s. If we assume that military technology is always at least some 5-10 years ahead of civilian, it is likely that some if not all of the "defense" contractors have far more terrifying autonomous weapons.
regulation does not stop weapons from being created that utilizes AI. It only slows down honest states that try to abide by it, and gives the dishonest ones a head start.
In Germany we have still traumas from automatic machine guns setup on the wall between East and West Germany. The Ukraine is fighting a drone war in the trenches with a psychological effect on soldiers comparable to WWI.
Stake are enormous. Not only toward the good. There is enough science fiction written about it. Regulation and laws are necessary!