Why misleading?

I am advocating adopting methods of improvement rather than abandoning the persuit of beneficial results.

I think science was just a part of the solution to healthcare, much of the advance was also in what was considered allowable or ethical. There remains a great deal of harmful medical practices that are used today in places where regulation is weak.

Science has done little to stop those harms. The advances that led to the requirement for a scientific backing were social. That those practices persist in some places is not a scientific issue but a social one.

>> Even if the current impact of a field is predominantly harmful

>So let's just skip the first part then, you conceded it's predominantly harmful. On this we agree.

I'm afraid if you interpret that statement as a concession of a fact, I don't think we can have a productive conversation.

AI has the capacity to deflect accountability. That must be addressed. That does not mean that the intent, goal, or even primary result is dehumanisation.

Address the concerns specifically, suggest solutions for those concerns.

I have made a submission to a government investigation highlighting the need for explicitly identifying when an AI makes a determination involving an individual, and the need for mechanisms that need to be in place for individuals to be aware when that has happened along with a method to challenge the determination of they feel it was incorrect.

I have seen a lot of blanket judgements vilifying an entire field of research and industry and all those who participate in it. It has become commonplace use the term techbros as a pejorative to declare people as others.

There is a word for behaviour like that. That is what dehumanisation is.

>This would be a good counter if this were all that this technology is being used for.

Do you hold the position that a thing is bad because it is possible to do harm, or that it is predominantly causing harm?

Most criticisms cite examples demonstrating the existence of harm because proving existence requires a single example. Calculating the sum of an effect is much harder.

Even if the current impact of a field is predominantly harmful, it does not stand that the problem is with the what is being attempted. Consider healthcare, a few hundred years ago much of healthcare did more harm than good, charlatans and frauds were commonplace. Was that because healthcare itself was a bad thing? Was it a mistake to even go down that path?

I thought that this could be an opportunity for volunteers who can't dedicate the time to learn a codebase thoroughly enough to be a regular committer. They just have to evaluate a patch to see if it meets a threshold of quality where they can pass it on to someone who does know the codebase well.

The barrier to being able to do a first commit on any project is usually quite high, there are plenty of people who would like to contribute to projects but cannnot dedicate the time n effort to pass that initial threshold. This might allow people an ability to contribute at a lower level while gently introducing them to the codebase where perhaps they might become a regular contributer in the future.