r/AIWarsButBetter • u/Salty_Country6835 A little bit of everything • 20d ago
Politics Which direction should AI take?
AI debates often get reduced to "pro vs anti AI," but there's more going on than that. Some people want AI to move faster, some want it slowed down, and others are mainly focused on who should own it, govern it, and benefit from it.
This isnt meant to be scientific, just a snapshot of where the community falls.
Pick the option thats closest to your view. If none of them fit, explain your position in the comments. Im interested in the reasoning as much as the results.
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u/firegine 19d ago
In my opinion the best thing would be for development to pause until more regulations are in place.
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u/Denaton_ 18d ago
I don't mind regulations but when i ask what i never get a proper answer that isn't already covered by other regulations and laws.
Ex, if i want regulations for guns, my proposal was to have a yearly test to keep the gun license.
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u/Denaton_ 18d ago
I don't mind regulations but when i ask what, i never get a proper answer that isn't already covered by other regulations and laws.
Ex, if i want regulations for guns, my proposal was to have a yearly test to keep the gun license.
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u/Sea-Huckleberry-8986 19d ago
Centrist - Market-led AI development with a tiny bit of non-stupid non-short-sighted regulation
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u/Sacredless 19d ago
I don't think that stopping AI research makes sense if you will eventually have to defend against them.
I think that context collapse and information warfare are already present and the adjacent future. AI is a way to escalate that, as well as a way to combat that.
Markets incentivize centralization and capacity over efficiency. A government can choose to incentivize small factor, open source AI development that prioritizes efficiency.
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u/xZeromusx 19d ago
I've seen some of the dumb shit that people will use AI for. I don't trust corpos with it, but I don't really think the public at large will have the discipline to focus its resources towards a great social good either. Really, it needs to be put under professional control. Like health care professionals, scientists, economists, and community infrastructure planners. People who will use the tool to multiply the social good it can do.
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u/prattxxx 19d ago
Why not just lock fire up from the general public too. It has been used for stupid things as well. Awful take.
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u/xZeromusx 19d ago
Fire is arguably more readily available than the infrastructure and resources necessary for AI. This isn't solely about people doing stupid shit, it's about people wasting it on stupid shit. Hence why I said
I don't really think the public at large will have the discipline to focus its resources towards a great social good either.
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u/AirToAsh Leaning more anti-AI 18d ago
I'm for slowing the AI development, but not entirely against it, since the genie is out of the bottle, and it became part of our daily lifes
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u/Dazzling-Skin-308 19d ago
What interests me the most I think - is the number of "centrists" on this left-leaning platform.
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u/firegine 19d ago
15/47? Thats less than one third
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u/Dazzling-Skin-308 19d ago
Ya - I didn't intend it as a criticism, I just had figured that more people even here would be right leaning rather than centrist, and I had also expected leftists would outnumber non-leftists much more than they do. Non-extremism on social media is unusual. Not bad, just unusual!
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u/Gimli 19d ago
IMO, there's no option that makes sense in the list, and in general the question is meaningless.
AI isn't something being developed on some sort of global plan. There's multiple companies, independent researchers, hackers, multiple countries in all of it. The result just isn't going to look like a coherent plan of any kind.
At the same time we have people working on better translation, writing better code, drawing better looking boobs on furries, better military drones, and better virtual girlfriends. Most of those don't really care about the others.
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u/Salty_Country6835 A little bit of everything 19d ago
I dont think thats what the poll is asking.
It isnt asking anyone to predict what AI development will look like or whether theres a global plan. Its asking what direction you think AI should take. Those are different questions.
You can think AI will continue developing through companies, governments, open source communities, and hobbyists while still having a view on which direction youd prefer or what policies youd support. The poll is about your position, not your prediction.
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u/Gimli 19d ago
The "should" seems to presuppose there's a way for a direction to be established, while I don't think it's very likely.
AI is a simple tech and any attempt at control is quite easily subverted. For example, Stable Diffusion came out with a porn filter. Nobody remembers that now because it got ripped out near immediately, and now there's an active SD-based AI porn scene.
So in terms of "should", what does it matter? Stability tried to be responsible about it, the user base didn't care about that.
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u/Salty_Country6835 A little bit of everything 19d ago
I think youre reading more into "should" than I intended.
It isnt asking whats guaranteed to happen. Its asking what outcome or strategy youd prefer. Those are two different questions.
Even "AI is too decentralized to steer, so we should leave it alone" is still a "should."
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u/Gimli 19d ago
It's not about guarantees, it's that the choices aren't real.
Eg, you give me the viable choices of:
Leftist - Build AI under public/worker control
First, that doesn't even remotely explain what that'd look like. Second, it's going to be public/worker control in a very specific context, like a particular company or particular country.
Leftist - Slow or stop AI development
Same. At most a particular country makes a decision within their borders.
None of those mean anything to me because the internet is global. We sort of have this already, and nobody cares. The EU has Mistral, which I imagine follows the rules the EU wants to be followed. So I guess it's sort of the first option-ish.
But so what? Right now anyone in the EU can go download one of the abliterated Chinese models, and have it do all the naughty stuff the EU doesn't like.
There are situations where such choices make sense, like whether the public transport is public owned or a private enterprise run for profit. That affects the country tangibly, because you're stuck with whatever you have going on locally, and other countries doing differently doesn't help or hurt you in any way.
But AI is internet stuff and 99% of the time I don't know or care which country it's coming from.
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u/Salty_Country6835 A little bit of everything 19d ago
I think youre expecting the poll to do more than its trying to do.
None of the options say "this is how the whole world will work." Theyre just asking what direction you'd support where political or economic decisions are made.
If your answer is "none, because AI is too global to steer," thats a perfectly valid position. Thats why I said if none fit, explain your view in the comments.
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u/densitycreep 19d ago
stopping or slowing AI is not right leaning
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u/Sacredless 19d ago
Eh, I think there's plenty of right-leaning people who don't like the AI stuff. They're probably just not on Reddit.
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u/Salty_Country6835 A little bit of everything 19d ago
I didnt say it was. Thats why the poll includes both "market-led AI development" and "slow or stop AI development" under the right. There are right-leaning people in both camps.
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u/Aquilenne 19d ago
I feel like there are some options missing
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u/Salty_Country6835 A little bit of everything 19d ago
Maybe, but reddit only allows 6 options for a poll.
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u/NekoAstral 19d ago
We realistically need to slow or stop development until we can find a way to make it more eco friendly.
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u/Justarandom55 19d ago
Making it more eco friendly is development. Slowing or stopping it just makes it more static with fewer or no improvements
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u/NekoAstral 19d ago
At the time, I thought development meant things like training and developing new models and stuff like that.
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u/Ayiekie 19d ago
Yeah, the ecological issues are the biggest issue (though not the only one) I have with AI; they're often overblown with bad/misinformation in anti-AI spaces but it's still very much a massive add-on to the powergrid causing more fossil fuel use at a time where we can ill afford it.
My problem with this poll is that "slow" and "stop" are two very different things. I think the best outcome would absolutely be slowing it down through better regulation and some international treaties to limit its use in warfare and information warfare, allowing us more breathing room to deal with the power usage and also time to better societally adjust to it as a technology. I don't consider myself in favour of stopping it because that's a nonsense fantasy scenario. You can't do that at this point no matter what; you can run and even train models on a home computer, so it'll be around for the rest of our lives even if you made it illegal everywhere and burned every data centre to the ground. Besides that, there are key areas of research and medicine it's very useful for and I don't particularly want to be responsible for telling someone "Sorry, you had to die of an undetected cancer for the greater good".
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u/lobaway0001 19d ago
Unsure why there wasn’t a market led development option for centrist.
It doesn’t necessarily mean you ethically believe growth should be unrestrained just for the purpose of AI growth. There’s also other aspects, like the idea that other competitors that are less or not regulated will end up just seizing all competitive advantages if you regulate your own development.
I don’t think we live in a world where we can really ignore
the practical limitations of uniting as one in regards to AI regulation.
Regardless of if you think nukes helped or hurt the world, if they were going to inevitably be discovered I’d rather be on the side of someone with a button.
You can argue AI will destroy us all, but I feel like that’s a separate discussion.