Appropriate Usage of AI
This was raised in episode #1099 and I'm struggling with the framing of how collectively we should use AI "appropriately" outside of purely moral vs immoral arguments.
If we accept that AI should automate human labour where doing so produces social value, then it's difficult to draw the line between "good" AI applications such as mathematics and engineering and "bad" applications such as art, poetry or writing simply because we have some subjective sense that machines should contribute in one domain and not the other. The engineer and the artist are now facing the same technological phenomenon: a machine becoming capable of performing tasks that previously required human labour. The analogy to the industrial revolution was apt, but in this case both "creative" and "procedural/analytical" professions may have to adapt. In my view the relevant ethical questions concern the manner in which that transition occurs and not whether one kind of human creativity is inherently entitled to be protected from it.
A mathematician might reasonably say: "The system was trained on decades of mathematical papers, including my work, and is now capable of solving problems that previously required mathematicians like me."
Structurally that is analogous to the artist saying: "The system was trained on decades of artwork, including my work, and is now capable of producing illustrations that previously required artists like me."
This is not to say that there arent perfectly legitimate moral and legal arguments against AI deliberately impersonating a living artist or passing AI work off as the artist's own work but to make a categorical assertion that AI's contributions in art or writing are somehow inherently less "valuable" than in mathematics and science strikes me as cleaving to an emotional argument that somehow the machines shouldn't be good at those things.
Personally, I dont really understand the general aversion to the use of AI art in games or other work product in the same way that I dont understand some people's preference for "organic" food. Both seem to be essentially a form of "values signalling" rather than genuine product preference. In future will we see mathematicians and scientists claim that a new discovery or proof was produced with only human derived theorems?
There are profound issues with the integration of AI into our society and I dont pretend to understand all of the complexities; socially, environmentally or ethically but directing the output of AI based on value judgements makes me uneasy.