Resolved: Artificial general intelligence, if created, will be beneficial for humanity long-term.

Thank you to Ultracrepidarian for accepting this exciting challenge! Thank you to Savant for hosting this tournament on his wonderfully developed website! I would like to Affirm the resolution.

Resolved: AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), if created, will be beneficial for humanity long term.

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” - Frank Herbert’s Litany against fear, from Dune.

I have two major contentions to support my theory. I am predicting I will need space and characters to respond to my opponents arguments, so two opening contentions seems like a good place to start.

Contention 1: We already have proof that AGI could create MORE jobs, not less.

“They took our jobs!” 

One of the major fears going into the future and opening up with technology, is that humans tend to worry a bit about being replaced. While this is a reasonable fear, I can assure you that the robots aren’t going to replace us. How can I assure this? Why, we already have outstanding proof that these things will require MUCH needed human time, attention, and care. In fact with AGI services like ChatGPT already becoming widely popular, we already have multitudes of jobs that are available to people, even at entry level opportunities. Yes, yes, not only am I providing you with an adequate debate argument folks, if you need a bit of cash on the side, I am literally going to be throwing some tried and true options to MAKE SOME MONEY all while working from home, thanks to AGI.

As much as it is exciting to fantasize in horror movies that AI can take on a mind of its own, it really isn’t possible. In fact you may think a creative response chatGPT gave you was intelligent enough, that it couldn’t have possibly been a non thinking robot that created that response right? Wrong. Michael Reeves explains that every time you send a new message to one of these AI services, you are really just sending your entire previous message thread to an LLM (Large Language Model) (1). That’s right, you yourself are giving the “Machine” context on how to interact with you. While your conversations are being saved in a database elsewhere, the actual chatgpt isn’t remembering it. Which means you can actually gaslight these services by editing your own responses to them! In a recent video he posts, Michael shows just how he made one of these ChatGPT services completely bug out simply by editing his own responses to his query, which more or less proves that these things cannot function without human training, or human input (2).

Now that you have context about why AGI needs human training and attentions, you can see what these sites are trying to accomplish. The first site is slowly becoming widely popular, and its called “DataAnnotation.tech”(3). This one is easily one of the more popular jobs that taking over in the Data training industry, because literally anyone can apply. They will give you a brief test taking on average, about 30 minutes to an hour to complete, and once you have completed the test, they will get back to you if you are qualified to join the team. Then they start sending you tasks to complete, that involve training their different AI programs to understand context. Because ultimately that is something AGI cannot do, is understand context completely. A lot of tasks help these chat bots sound smarter, more human, and give better answers to people looking for questions. Imagine that, if an AI’s intelligence is seeming to increase, it’s only because of the help of our fellow humans. Mike and Heather both do Datannotation from home, and have posted their own video on what it’s like working for this company part time, and explain they also do things like “describing videos” to teach these modules “How to see”. (4)

The next major job company worth talking about is Telus Digital. Telus digital is similar to Data Anotation Tech, but speaking from personal experience, this is one I have done myself. While they have multiple AI training jobs, there more open general one is teaching SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to be more efficient. Basically they give you tasks where you have to rate google searches and match them to their results, to make sure people are actually getting the appropriate results when searching for things they want. They have an entire guideline built out that you follow to make sure that search engines like google and bing for example are giving people the appropriate results by judging the search query on the context only a human can judge by. For example, if someone searches a restaurant name, that happens to be the name of a popular European beach, how does the AI know what result to generate? These advanced tools provided to google by companies like Telus, and trained by users like you tell it exactly what to look for, by looking at the location of the IP of the user, or determining the context of the search to figure out whether the person is actually hungry or just looking for a cool place to travel.

There are many of these AI training jobs that you can find right now and work from right from home, that require sitting at a computer desk for a few hours a day and pay competitively from 18$-25$ an hour entry level. While the two above are my favorite examples, here are a few others you can look into if you are interested: Outlier.ai, invisible.co, Maestro.org, joinandshake.com, rws.com, crowdgen.com (by appen). There are many many more I could add to this list. 

Contention 2: AGI could help human growth potential surpass expectations, as long as it is properly guided.

While human technology is constantly trying new ways to benefit society, by working on cures for diseases, or finding solutions to problems we as humans have daily, AGI can help us quickly and accurately find solutions. Think of how much pain caused by death and disease could be avoided, if a hypothetical AGI system aided by humans was able to help find that solution! Many of these solutions could be right in front of our eyes, that we haven’t noticed yet, but an advanced technology guided to think about advanced options may be able to identify some of these, and we just simply can never know until we take that next step!

While AGI doesn’t actually exist now, we cannot ultimately fathom what exactly it will look like in its entirety. A paper developed by a google/deepmind team talks about the importance of judging AGI based on its capabilities instead of on its processes.

The Turing Test:

“Turing’s “imitation game” attempts to operationalize the question of whether machines can think, and asks a human to interactively distinguish whether text is produced by another human or by a machine. The test as originally framed is a thought experiment, and is the subject of many critiques. In practice, the test often highlights the ease of fooling people, rather than the “intelligence” of the machine. Given that modern LLMs pass some framings of the Turing Test, it seems clear that this criteria is insufficient for operationalizing or benchmarking AGI. We agree with Turing that whether a machine can think, while an interesting philosophical and scientific question, seems orthogonal to the question of what the machine can do; the latter is much more straightforward to measure and more important for evaluating impacts. Therefore we propose that AGI should be defined in terms of capabilities rather than processes”. (6)

The case study concludes that if AGI is guided by humans, we can achieve such successes and avoid many of the common fears associated. 

“.Notably, we observed that AGI is not necessarily synonymous with autonomy. We introduced Levels of Autonomy that are unlocked, but not determined by, progression through the Levels of AGI. We illustrated how considering AGI Level jointly with Autonomy Level can provide more nuanced insights into risks associated with AI systems, underscoring the importance of investing in human-AI interaction research in tandem with model improvements.“

Advancements in technology we previously thought impossible could be at the very tips of our fingertips, and we wouldn’t know it if we don’t reach out and try. 

Conclusion:

While AGI is a scary concept to many, if we can allow ourselves to be open minded to some of the power and utility it can provide, we can develop as a species so much faster. Finding the cure for cancer, previously thought to be a steep challenge, could hypothetically be something solved very quickly if we are open to the process. This technology could also benefit us in terms of fixing the economy, and helping our government programs tax less, or to find more economical ways to lower costs of living, groceries, and gas expenses. We could accelerate human discovery, tackle global challenges, increase human efficiency, foster creativity, and even improve general health care with AGI, and none of that will be possible if we don’t allow ourselves the opportunity to brave this new challenge. None of this can be possible if we are fearful of the future. Because I agree with Frank Herbert’s Litany against fear, I think we can accomplish amazing things with AGI. I look forward to my opponent's response!

Sources:

1. https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ai/what-is-large-language-model/
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP5_XJY_P0Q
3. https://www.dataannotation.tech/generalist?worker_src=G&utm_source=google&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=21040832282&utm_adgroup=&utm_content=&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22434464778&gbraid=0AAAAAqBNCsUOZl-PYx2j9xL7uEntmi1HB&gclid=CjwKCAjw6vHHBhBwEiwAq4zvAzvfNKtB1bUcUDmW9MLgOn4wKDvPEzSDXC-1sOJ5nI5kWeS3Sy1TihoC6EEQAvD_BwE
4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aJ7LBfto4E
5. https://www.telusdigital.com/
6. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2311.02462

FORFEITED

First off I would like to apologize for the forfeit, this is very unlike me. The argument was due on a holiday (Halloween) and I had needed to catch up on sleep big time. Please forgive me and my opponent for this, and hopefully round 3 will go smoothly.

First I will respond to my opponents contention, then I will respond to his rebuttals to mine.

RC1: Humanity will be obsolete

While it is a popular concept in fiction stories and movies to propegate the idea that AI will become either take over humanity, or replace our usefulness, this simply isn't supported by fact. The entire purpose of AI is to help further humanity's goals, not replace us. Remember, we are the creators of this. We choose what we want these AI programs to do, and no business owners or CEO's benefit from AI completely replacing us. That is why these systems must be properly guided, as was talked about in the google/deepmind article.

With proper guidance, Artificial Intelligence will create more opportunities for humans as well as make life easier. Making life easier however isn't necessarily a bad thing. Some dangerous jobs should be replaced.

"During 2003–2013, 1,189 oil and gas extraction industry employees died while working, resulting in an average of 108 deaths per year and an annual average occupational fatality rate of 25.0 deaths per 100,000 workers. The highest fatality rate occurred in 2006 (32.4 deaths per 100,000 workers) with 125 fatalities (Figure). During this period all but 10 decedents were male, and the largest numbers of deaths were to workers aged 25–34 years (331 [27.8%]). Most were non-Hispanic whites (844 [71.0%])."

Imagine if AGI could help us come up with systems to make lives on the oil fields easier, where there is plenty of human death and injury every single year. Humans will still need to be involved with machine processes, but they can theoretically do so from a position of safety if we allow AGI to come up with better solutions for us. I have used examples as well concerning cancer patients, but the problem solving AGI could accomplish for humanity is actually limitless. I could shove examples of dangerous jobs, human suffering, diseases, for hours, but you get the point. Humans have always been innovative and had the urge to push forward and progress. Do you really think that Artificial Intelligence can replace generations of human instinct to persevere and strive forward? To me the concept is unfathomable. To operate in fear of AGI is to inhibit ourselves from many efforts that could improve humanity in so many ways we may have never thought possible.

My Case:

Contention 1 rebuttal: More Jobs

My opponent posts one source that contradicts the creation of jobs in the tech industry, however all of the sources I posted are jobs in the tech industry that have OPENED since the creation of apps like Chat GPT and AI technology. There are way more than what I originally listed as well, all at home jobs that start at entry level. The article my opponent posts shows jobs that are becoming obsolete, and being replaced, but it doesn't show data on jobs that are being CREATED in it's place. This will happen naturally over time even without AGI with many jobs. We don't need Billy Boy's, Telegraphists, Linotype Operators, Phrenologists, Elevator Operators, Milkmen etc. Even more new age jobs are being phased out with the increase of technology, such as Book Keepers, Administrative Assistants, Word processors/ Typists, Data Entry Clerks, Taxi Drivers, Meter Readers, etc. (2)

The loss and replacement of jobs is a natural part of the growth of technology, but we cannot ignore the fact that many new types of jobs are created in the process. Jobs like Machine Learning Engineers, Data Scientists, Web/ app developers, Cyber-security analysts, day trading, cloud architects, block chain developers, Social Media Managers, Robotics Engineers. (3) I could go on and on, but I think my point has been made.

Contention 2 Rebuttal: Surpassing human expectations

As far as my rebuttal I don't really know what to say here, because my opponent agrees with this point that AGI could surpass our expectations and accomplish great things. His argument is more centered around the ability to control this technology. This is why I mentioned the how the Turing Test was unable to prove that AGI was able to be "uncontrollable" however, and that developers said its focus on processes proved to be intensely accurate. The article also places a great focus on human guidance to make AGI work in a way that is promising. It acknowledges the risk of what AGI can become if left unmoderated, however human-kind should be very aware of the risks involved and make counter-measures to these risks when planning the creation of AGI. Just like we guide the processes around the creation of nuclear arsenals, and advanced warfare techniques, we should and will moderate the uses of AGI so it cannot become the danger my opponent fears it will become. Again, if we focus on fear we will never accomplish greatness.

Conclusion:

My opponent has made some great arguments. I thank him for his time in responding to this debate, and wish him luck in future rounds of the tournament. I think I have affirmed my position that artificial general intelligence, will however be beneficial to humanity in the long term. I hope you the audience have enjoyed this debate as much as I have. Thanks in advance to anyone who spends the time to vote on this debate.

Sources:

1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4584518/#:~:text=During%202003%E2%80%932013%2C%201%2C189%20oil,whites%20(844%20%5B71.0%25%5D).
2. https://powertofly.com/up/8-jobs-that-will-disappear
3. https://wearetechwomen.com/the-rise-of-new-tech-roles-jobs-created-by-innovation/
4.