Current Events > I went to this filmmakers panel and a huge argument about A.I. broke out

(+) Yeah! (+)

Two of the guys on the panel were these tech dudes and they were super into the A.I. stuff and seeing it advance in the industry. One guy was talking about how he "brought his dead friend back to life" by feeding it the messages the guy left behind, then he pivoted it to having avatars of deceased loved ones with A.I.s taking on their likeliness. It was weird how giddy they were about it.
Some people started pushing back on them and it turned into this huge yelling match about exploitation and universal income. Things got really awkward.

The only other somewhat noteworthy thing that happened is an exec lady person got really drunk and told me about some upcoming, not yet announced Marvel Hulk film that she's producing, and that I probably shouldn't tell people about it >_>

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Yeah, when they mentioned the whole dead people stuff, you can hear audible groans in the room and people were very visibly uncomfortable.
What really set things off is when this aspiring actress asked them about things going to far and how she doesn't want a computer to exploit her likeliness as someone trying to break into the industry.
One of the guys replied with something along the lines of, "We'd need your permission to that, but to be honest, we'd probably just end up doing it anyway. It's going to happen regardless. We have so much data as is that we experiment with and use for projects" etc.
That's when people started going at them.

ProfessorKukui posted...

ai is gonna be a big yikes

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it, but those dudes weren't exactly helping their case.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

I've noticed on social media that there is a lot of strangeness among the hugely pro-AI crowd. If you look, you'll find a ton of people who seemed to be convinced that we are mere months away from a fully sentient computer program or that AI will inevitably solve all of humankind's problems and soon. Any discussion about problematic aspects or limitations of existing technology is treated with extreme anger. A subset of these types of people include those that think that AI is giving them awesome abilities that they deserve (like people who pretend to have drawn the stuff that Stable Diffusion makes, or the guys referenced in the OP who think they can now bring the dead back to life) or will soon.

I think this is a function of two things: increased narcissism from social media itself, and the generally troubled state of the world. People are often think that they are "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" and that if only they work hard enough, study hard enough, or pray hard enough, they'll soon be living the good life they deserve. That doesn't mesh with reality. The COVID-19 pandemic was awful for the world and hugely increased the rates of stress and mental illness. Food prices are skyrocketing and housing is completely unaffordable for most people. Wealth inequality continues to rise. Healthcare in the US is unaffordable to most, and access to mental healthcare is poor. The war in Ukraine continues to rage, and there have been periodic alarming headlines about the interests of various countries. If you bother to follow politics all, you'll have noticed that civil liberties the world over seem to be on the chopping block and nobody with power is doing anything constructive. Climate change is kind of in your face lately too.

It's not a wonder that people want to believe something wonderful and transformative is about to occur that will give them real power over their lives and make everything great.

Kitt posted...

One guy was talking about how he "brought his dead friend back to life" by feeding it the messages the guy left behind, then he pivoted it to having avatars of deceased loved ones with A.I.s taking on their likeliness.

that's just gross

Kitt posted...

Yeah, when they mentioned the whole dead people stuff, you can hear audible groans in the room and people were very visibly uncomfortable.
What really set things off is when this aspiring actress asked them about things going to far and how she doesn't want a computer to exploit her likeliness as someone trying to break into the industry.
One of the guys replied with something along the lines of, "We'd need your permission to that, but to be honest, we'd probably just end up doing it anyway. It's going to happen regardless. We have so much data as is that we experiment with and use for projects" etc.
That's when people started going at them.

Yeah, those guys are assholes.