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Apple CEO sounds warning of algorithms pushing society towards catastrophe (zdnet.com)
55 points by nojito on Jan 31, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 28 comments


It’s interesting. There are all sorts of memes about AI killing us (Terminator, et al) but none that I’m familiar with about AI getting us to kill each other.

Tim might be onto something here, even if it’s only a new way to look at the problem.


The first exemple you give, Terminator, is exactly that. In the original story (T1 and T2, before they started rebooting the story again and again) Skynet doesn't fire on the US. It fires on Russia "because it knew the Russian would overwhelmingly retaliate and kill its enemies in the US".

The idea was that Skynet could not kill all us forces, no where close, but retaliating Russian could (given the strikes against them had let most of their forces and weapons standing, and the US didn't have access to its own to stop them), and Skynet could trigger MAD.


It will be nice when the last person alive at whichever FAANG can check the Git Blame for who caused the apocalypse.


the last person alive will not know what git is or how to use it


i don’t believe apple does anything out of a sense of charity. the subtext here is he wants congress to regulate their competitors


Just because it's in Apple's self interest doesn't mean Tim Cook is wrong--in fact, he is 100% spot on. In fact, maybe it's a good thing that there is a corporation as large as Apple that can throw their weight behind regulating social media behemoths, that means it will be taken far more seriously by the public.


Indeed. This is a logical trap that people fall into over, and over again.

Just because this may be self serving for Apple, it doesn’t mean their interests can’t align with your own.


Serious question. Why doesnt he run for president? We need someone like him to sort all this all out because clearly the technically inept people we have in office have no ability or want to deal with it. Nothing has been done. We need tech people to deal with tech issues in a tech era.


Does he want the job? Many smart people don’t.

But also, anyone desiring power is the least suitable person for it, or whatever that quote is.


Elon Musk warned about AI in a similar tone before all these problems came up. So far only Zuckerberg and Thiel were politically vocal that I know of.


Musk warns about AGI, Tim Cook is talking about the algos that are currently being used to increased engagement of services.


Well out of the four of them I’d certainly want Tim Cook in the job.


> Why doesnt he run for president?

His profile is similar to Buttigeg. He met with some resistance during his campaign due to that and was not able to go beyond a certain momentum. I believe something similar would happen to him (Cook) also if he ran. Or, maybe he's not interested.

Why don't you have a word with him and try to pursue - tim@apple.com ?


We would all be paying 30% income tax.

Edit: this isn't a tech problem and I don't want what tech (Apple) presents as a solution.


It is in large part a tech problem though. The solution may or may not be more tech, but a huge part of the problem is the explosion of new tech uncoupled from any assessment of social good.

I’d estimate a tech CEO understands the problem at hand better than an octogenarian lawyer, at any rate.


Cries in European. Looking at you California tech dudes fleeing California because paying 13% income tax is 'too much'.


>Looking at you California tech dudes fleeing California because paying 13% income tax is 'too much'.

I'm 100% sure this is the political narrative being pushed in order to reduce California's taxes, but most people I know are moving because of housing costs, not taxes.


housing costs are just a privately run tax scheme.


By that logic you could say that about anything that costs money, and is “compulsory”. Are food costs a privately run tax scheme?


I don’t think people who are fleeing CA are in the 13% tax bracket. Federal + state tax is around 40% for most engineers I know.


I see your Californian 40%, and raise you our belgian 60%, excluding VAT.


What's your point? That different places have different social arrangements and tax regimes?

Each month the employer pays a considerable amount on top of your salary into the social security fund. The employee also pays a proportion of his gross salary in social security contributions. This fund is then used to pay social security:

    allowances in the event of sickness
    unemployment benefits
    allowances in the event of incapacity for work through sickness or invalidity
    allowances in the event of accidents at work
    allowances in the event of industrial disease
    family allowances
    pensions

https://www.belgium.be/en/family/social_security_in_belgium

And what about healthcare? “Healthcare in Belgium is composed of three parts. Firstly there is a primarily publicly funded healthcare and social security service run by the federal government, which organises and regulates healthcare; independent private/public practitioners, university/semi-private hospitals and care institutions. There are a few (commercially run for-profit) private hospitals.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Belgium

I imagine this is all very different to how things are in California. So why are you comparing them?

Regarding VAT, at least where I'm from VAT is not levied on essential goods afaik. Secondly, some proponents of VAT claim it is a "fairer" tax than say income tax. One of Andrew Yang's ideas to fund UBI was to bring VAT to the USA (I am aware that VAT does exist to some extents in the States.)

So basically, what's your point?


There's no point.


Does that 60% include property tax?


> We would all be paying 30% income tax.

Only during the first year. Apple does cut it down to 15% - I guess after first year.

There's this also - https://www.imore.com/apple-reducing-app-store-cut-15-vast-m...


The article only really points out, from Tim, the right-wing organization and violence. Most of the violence the country saw over the Spring, Summer and Fall were organized, and still are, on Twitter and Facebook.

Here's just 1 twitter account that promotes the organized violence, with dates and times to appear. Just scroll through the last few months. Also check out the "suggested" twitter accounts to follow on this page, by Twitter. It leads you to more Antifa groups promoting the same types of things.

https://twitter.com/pnwylf/

Here's just one tweet that organized the group, Antifa, on Jan 20th during Biden's inauguration where they attacked the Democrat Headquarters and other small businesses in Portland: https://twitter.com/PNWYLF/status/1350938008254607361

  J20:
  Fuck the state. Fuck Biden. Land Back. Fuck 12
  January 20th
  Revolution Hall
  Meet: 2 PM // Move: 3 PM
  Bloc up!
  No Streamers // No Peace Police
Here is the result of that "march."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/inauguration-day-protesters-dam...

I would just like an honest discussion, where one doesn't lay blame solely at one side, but takes an honest accounting about all sides who are provably doing the same, if not worse, actions. Most on the left, particularly media and social media companies, seem to only want to talk about what happened on Jan 6th on a fairly obscure app called Parler, but not the almost year long trail of destruction perpetrated by the other side organized on the big players platforms. A decent case could be made that more destruction was caused in American cities since May that was organized on Twitter and Facebook, than was on Parler.

Let's just be honest about the shortcomings of both sides, or it perpetuates further divide.


Yes we should be honest about the shortcomings of both sides, but if you think what happened on the 6th is even in the same league as what happened in Portland then I think you might be misguided.

Aside from the death of the police officer, and the fact that this was the US Capitol and not some random democratic headquarters where some windows broke, and spray paint was left, it should astound and terrify you that one of these was done under the banner of, and at the direction of a political leader.

If there are Twitter handles that are provably inciting violence on either side, ban them and turn them into the authorities, but we’re not talking about the same thing here on both sides.


If you think that what happened on January 6th was "at the direction of a political leader" then you might be misguided.

Firstly, said political leader explicitly called for "peaceful" and "patriotic" protest, and "cheering on the brave senators" to help give them courage, because his strategy was to pursue the full constitutional extent of recourse and remedy to contest the election, which is his right. The senators were in the process of doing that on his and his voters' behalf, but the events that unfolded against his wishes destroyed his opportunity to have the objections heard.

Secondly, the group that stormed the capitol was a separate group that was already at the capitol, which is a 45 minute walk away, while Trump was still speaking so they could not have taken direction from Trump.

Thirdly, the Trump supporters that did arrive from the speech told everyone NOT to participate in the breaching of the capitol, because they understood Trump's words and intentions.

Lastly, while there were Trump supporters present that were caught up in the Q anon disinformation campaign that co-opted a minority of the Trump base to undermine Trump, there were also Antifa agitators present that led the charge and incited the violence (this is captured on video).

I know Trump is the ideal scapegoat, but you really cannot pin the blame for this on him if you know the facts.

What really happened on January 6th is that a small group of radicals at the fringe of Trump's base (+ antifa infiltrators), that are not responsive to Trump himself, but to an anonymous online cult leader going by the name Q, took advantage of the intentional lack of security measures despite the FBI monitoring Q world and knowing of nefarious plans, accompanied by some random bewildered folks walking around the capitol because they were let in, while the vast majority of Trump's supporters in DC did nothing but peacefully attend the rally hoping the senators would be able to present Trump's case convincingly, which was cut short by a few idiots that fell for an elaborately crafted years long disinformation campaign.

The media and democrats immediately ran with the insurreciton narrative to discredit Trump and promote more government surveillance and infringement of rights based on their fear mongering about domestic terrorism. You don't have to like or agree with Trump, but the misrepresentation of what happened on Jan 6th is dangerous to our rights.




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