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The Dark Side of Competition in AI | Liv Boeree | TED

Competition is a core part of human nature, and it can drive us to extraordinary feats. But when it goes wrong, the results can be devastating. Poker champion and science communicator Liv Boeree introduces us to “Moloch’s trap” — the dark force of game theory driving many of humanity’s biggest social problems, which is now…

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Competition is a core part of human nature, and it can drive us to extraordinary feats. But when it goes wrong, the results can be devastating. Poker champion and science communicator Liv Boeree introduces us to “Moloch’s trap” — the dark force of game theory driving many of humanity’s biggest social problems, which is now threatening to derail the AI industry.

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50 Comments

50 Comments

  1. Brain STEM

    November 9, 2023 at 3:19 pm

    Hatred is the low hanging fruit. It’s much easier to go negative than to remain positive. AI is just taking the easy route to maximum clicks. It needs to be taught to take the high road.

  2. David Devine

    November 9, 2023 at 3:23 pm

    “Capitalism is not the problem!” … (narrator voice) Despite capitalists cries to the contrary, capitalism was the problem.

  3. Brain STEM

    November 9, 2023 at 3:29 pm

    Moloch tempts people by preying on their base fears. People can’t be satisfied with “enough”, they have to have it all. Greed and Pride are the ultimate drivers.

  4. Brain STEM

    November 9, 2023 at 3:35 pm

    If we want to see that race to the top happen, I see no other way than to provide cash incentives. Award a significant cash price to the winners in the categories where we want to see change. The UN could do this. The question is, is there enough political will for countries to pony up the money?

  5. 6th Wilbury

    November 9, 2023 at 3:43 pm

    Shows how little I’ve been following the MTT world that I didn’t know until this video that you had retired from poker.

  6. Bright Matolo

    November 9, 2023 at 3:51 pm

    -★ I believe we are meant to be like Jesus in our hearts and not in our flesh. But be careful of AI, for it is just our flesh and that is it. It knows only things of the flesh (our fleshly desires) and cannot comprehend things of the spirit such as peace of heart (which comes from obeying God’s Word). Whereas we are a spirit and we have a soul but live in the body (in the flesh). When you go to bed it is your flesh that sleeps but your spirit never sleeps (otherwise you have died physically) that is why you have dreams. More so, true love that endures and last is a thing of the heart (when I say ‘heart’, I mean ‘spirit’). But fake love, pretentious love, love with expectations, love for classic reasons, love for material reasons and love for selfish reasons that is a thing of our flesh. In the beginning God said let us make man in our own image, according to our likeness. Take note, God is Spirit and God is Love. As Love He is the source of it. We also know that God is Omnipotent, for He creates out of nothing and He has no beginning and has no end. That means, our love is but a shadow of God’s Love. True love looks around to see who is in need of your help, your smile, your possessions, your money, your strength, your quality time. Love forgives and forgets. Love wants for others what it wants for itself. Take note, love works in conjunction with other spiritual forces such as faith and patience. We should let the Word of God be the standard of our lives not AI. If not, God will let us face AI on our own and it will cast the truth down to the ground, it will be the cause of so much destruction like never seen before, it will deceive many and take many captive in order to enslave them into worshipping it and abiding in lawlessness. We can only destroy ourselves but with God all things are possible. God knows us better because He is our Creater and He knows our beginning and our end. Our prove text is taken from the book of John 5:31-44, 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12, Daniel 7-9, Revelation 13-15, Matthew 24-25 and Luke 21. Let us watch and pray… God bless you as you share this message to others.

  7. Adam

    November 9, 2023 at 3:56 pm

    Well, role of CEO is to make company profitable as much as possible. We need to change incentives (for example require companies make actions to prevent harm or getting fine). It’s naive to just count on good will of actors if incentives and rules of game result in different behavior.

  8. Doc Skate

    November 9, 2023 at 4:32 pm

    Yes mam, I am part of an advanced, parasitic species on this planet. Created through evolution – the pursuit of more and better is therefore not a decision, but a destiny. We penetrate everything to consume what surrounds us. There will therefore only be enough people willing to make a change when the life of every individual is noticeably and immediately threatened – i.e. when it is too late. The rich and unscrupulous will hold out the longest, and also their own instinct for survival or will to improve will always prevail in case of doubt – which has always been part of the problem. We are most important to ourselves, the change of focus on the well-being of everyone, which is essential for survival, will not happen, or will happen too late. No escape to new worlds – maybe to Mars to delay the end a little. And that was it. It’s completely ok, we are not the first dominant species on tjus planet to appear and disappear again – due to our very own origins on this planet, and despite (or because of?) so-called intelligence and individual consciousness.
    You mam can step up on podiums and make a little money by describing and analyzing symptoms.
    But you will not make everybody stop walking towards their destiny. Will not happen.
    Also our selfmade gods won’t do a thing about it.
    Our faith lies within our origin.

  9. Kayla Inglima

    November 9, 2023 at 5:30 pm

    Fantastic!!!!!

  10. Alfredo Sanz

    November 9, 2023 at 6:17 pm

    Qué claro que la tiene esta dama.! Me impresionó lo de los medios, porque acá en mi país estamos atrapados por una polarización cada vez más profunda.

    Saludos desde La Ciudad el Humo.

  11. Rex Chizzy

    November 9, 2023 at 6:27 pm

    *The wisest thought that is in everyone’s minds today is to invest in different income flows that do not depend on the government, especially with the current economic crisis around the world. This is still a good time to invest in gold, silver and digital currencies (BTC, ETH…. stock,silver and gold)*

  12. 1901 Society Member

    November 9, 2023 at 6:49 pm

    This was great until she brought up the bible, then she lost all credibility.

  13. Casual Gamer

    November 9, 2023 at 6:58 pm

    Dont hate thr players, change the game. Wow…. : 🤯

  14. Jesahn

    November 9, 2023 at 7:22 pm

    Spitting facts here. This lady gets it.

  15. non_plussed

    November 9, 2023 at 7:22 pm

    ppl will use concepts like ‘dark force of game theory’ and do insane mental gymnastics to avoid critiquing capitalism. “capitalism” (undefined) can “cause problems” which it then “can also solve”. bruh. “it’s something much deeper.”

    no, actually, several of the dark forces of game theory cluster and are actively rewarded by CAPITALISTIC SOCIAL SYSTEMS.

    the dark forces of game theory will *not* be eradicated from human interactions, but if they are actively reinforced and reproduced en masse BECAUSE they efficiently support short-term, artificial scarcity based win-lose/negative-sum games that the elite have been gaming and hacking for centuries, concentrating and magnifying them so that a tiny minority can accumulate insane amounts of power and affluence through extreme exploitation of ~everyone else, trashing the life-supporting systems of earth in the process — literally omnicidal and deeply anti-social structura dynamics — then we may seriously f this whole global industrial civilization project up.

    something has to give, and there’s not going to be globalised industrial capitalism without the dark forces of game theory.

  16. Tom Batterbury

    November 9, 2023 at 7:25 pm

    Bravo Liv! Congratulations on a fascinating and insightful talk

  17. nesseiht gnay

    November 9, 2023 at 8:00 pm

    no its just called being human, we are the cancers to this planet. why are you blaming something fictional? like moloch? thats not real, we humans are the moloch of the world, we humans are the good and evil of this world, we have to change ourselves, not blaming the devil or moloch? the blame is on each and everyone of us.

  18. NikoKun

    November 9, 2023 at 8:13 pm

    Capitalism IS actually increasingly becoming more of the problem. It simply won’t be necessary or compatible with the end goal of AI automation.

  19. Liv Boeree

    November 10, 2023 at 1:46 pm

    Thanks for watching everyone! If you’d like a deeper dive on Moloch there’s a lot of related content on this channel, come visit 🙂

    • Falah Mar'ie Amanullah

      November 11, 2023 at 12:35 pm

      This is just so good. Thank you for such a talk!

    • Chloe Rose Astrology

      November 11, 2023 at 2:43 pm

      on it !

    • ılılıᴘᴀʟᴇʙʟᴜᴇᴅᴏᴛɢᴜʏılılı

      November 12, 2023 at 6:30 am

      you’re awesome

    • Corr Pearce

      November 12, 2023 at 8:50 pm

      Brilliance and smoking hot?
      Totally works 😊

    • Ruben CB

      November 12, 2023 at 11:59 pm

      Estás guapa ❤

  20. PeiPei Yu

    November 10, 2023 at 7:18 pm

    Wery eloquent speaker and insightful observations. Reminds me that I need an AI filter for my profile pic… or maybe not?

  21. Matthew Christian Roche

    November 10, 2023 at 11:46 pm

    Great talk Liv! I really hope enough people get this message or are in this mindset to really change the game, as we need it ❤🙏🏽

    Love what you’ve done with your path, maximum respect to you 👏🏼

  22. 서동휘

    November 10, 2023 at 11:49 pm

    1. People nowadays would burn their offsprings for success.
    2. This is because of Moloch’s trap which is special type of game theory.
    3. If AI falls into Moloch’s trap. We are doomed.
    Well said speech. Really appreciate it.
    We the east Asians are already familiar with sacrificing Asian kids for family’s success though.

  23. Gamini Gunarathna

    November 11, 2023 at 1:32 am

    The world is goes of pollution ai technology in future.because the human has a dengrous with ai technology.i think,the world is being king of the robort in future.😭😭😭

  24. Keltic Fury

    November 11, 2023 at 6:37 am

    In the race for a handful of dudes to get rich faster than the next guy the future of the entire human race is balanced.

  25. TV Week Highlights

    November 11, 2023 at 6:48 am

    Thanks fior the Molloch definition. A variation on the notion of eating your own children in order to progress.

    AI appeared to start out as an extension of fact checking, when the fact checking industry was being hampered by subjective prejudice that was intended to preserve the crowd-control narratives designed to deflect the exposure of inconvenient and unfashionable truths.

    The finest misdirection is 99.99% truth, with a carefully nuanced and contived 0.01% of targetted misinformation.

    But as widely agreed, AI development is unstoppable; the challenge is to train human intelligence to frame and use paradoxical propositions to try and trip it up. When the platform has obvious bias like GPT, it’s quite possible for human intelligence to expose contradictions within a couple of prompts.

  26. N D

    November 11, 2023 at 6:50 am

    There’s too much pride, prestige, power involved to stop people

  27. Raphael Chan

    November 11, 2023 at 9:06 am

    Unlike the capitalist who might be contributing to the world’s pollution, A.I won’t be a gradual process which even if we went a little too far, we can put on the brakes and implement policies to reverse the damage. A.I. won’t progress in small increments but in a series of quantum breakthroughs as each innovation accelerates the development of the next phase or innovation. Each advancement is a series of “tipping points”, or a critical mass from which there is no return. We have already seen this, even as we hear new developments every year, then every month and now there are advancements in many areas of A.I that even the news has difficulty keeping up with. Sure it’s good that some of the captains of this industry are practicing some responsibility and restraint. Just concerned about the tyrants and dictators of this world who are driven to extremes to get ahead militarily and control their people or others… they won’t care about restraint.

  28. Gui Go

    November 11, 2023 at 11:06 am

    Very good lecture, congratulations, but I’m sorry to say that it didn’t change, in the slightest, my perception that the problem is capitalism. On the other hand, I think it is almost impossible to escape capitalism because this system of living life has been in our DNA for millennia and the attempts we have made to get out of it have not been very successful. AIs are a very serious problem, of course, but they are only a small part of all the problems we have created in the last few centuries. There is only one way to resolve this whole mess and it is not ideal: totalitarian states (bad news for democracies), centralization of decision-making power and the end of countless comforts and luxuries of the modern world. That is if there is still time because we are very late. And forgive me for being pessimistic. I hate being pessimistic.

  29. Naked Sage Astrology

    November 11, 2023 at 12:30 pm

    The really ironic part is that I was able to get a nearly identical speech from chat GPT that mirrored this video nearly word for word.

    It seems runs the show now.

  30. Naked Sage Astrology

    November 11, 2023 at 12:30 pm

    The really ironic part is that I was able to get a nearly identical speech from chat GPT that mirrored this video nearly word for word.

    It seems A.I. runs the show now.

  31. Manlikehaz_

    November 11, 2023 at 1:07 pm

    Moloch is greed, greed will only get you so far

  32. What

    November 11, 2023 at 1:26 pm

    I’m extremely pessimistic on this. All of these measures seem far too naive.

  33. DSAK55

    November 11, 2023 at 2:22 pm

    Artificial “Intelligence” succeeds because Natural Stupidity is far more abundant than Natural Intelligence

  34. Abhijith Vm

    November 11, 2023 at 2:48 pm

    Amazing presentation i am really enjoyed. In my view point is competition are good because without a proper competition we cant get proper good and also the proper quality. The best example was we can a take any product and its only one seller in our market so there is have lot of issue like quality, price and also the service moreover there have multiple competitors they are regularly compete and as a customer view point it is a good sign. I want to share a few points about Ai because AI is very popular tool today and we can use Ai as good manner or bad manner however in my view point as i looking the positive side only like after the implementation of AI we can reduce lot of work and also reduce the time but i am also concerned the negative side and its really want a strict protocol for prevent AI crimes. Finally thank you Tedx for the informative video.

  35. Dav Wunderbrrd

    November 11, 2023 at 3:21 pm

    totally rad and well stated, thanks <3 🙂

  36. edbop

    November 11, 2023 at 5:53 pm

    All points well made but if we want to change the incentive structure, we have to stop using bank credit as money and democratically allocate new investment capital, so we can do away with interest bearing debt.

  37. Riff King

    November 11, 2023 at 7:20 pm

    It’s really tough because we can’t know for certain what actions within a field will count as falling into a moloch trap, and to some degree we need to be pushing the boundary. For anything obviously bad, we’d typically have fairly clear legislation, but the critical failures come from the ambiguous grey areas within a competitive landscape. It’s those points at which pragmatism over-rides idealism in ways that are totally understandable, even if there are clear downsides.

    Maybe we need to fall into the trap to hold the edge long enough to generate the practical idealistic solution?

    In thinking about all of this stuff I always think that it’s a failure of knowledge and understanding which holds us back from adequately addressing the problem. I suspect that going into the AGI era is going to many of us entering into a race to either solve the world, or win the world. Maybe this has always been the race, but we might finally get to the finish line. At least for as long as that equilibrium holds.

  38. R T

    November 11, 2023 at 8:23 pm

    Brilliant. Thanks so much for putting this together and giving us all something new to think about.

  39. Consumer0.3

    November 12, 2023 at 1:23 am

    its very informational like social media we start to unlike our like

  40. Consumer0.3

    November 12, 2023 at 1:25 am

    like this information creat fear

  41. Alex Achtar

    November 12, 2023 at 4:27 am

    Liv the fact you are calling out the Moloch agenda has exceeded my respect for you. My favorite poker player of all time and now one of my favorite humans. Thank you for promoting AI safety in a dangerous world, in san fransisco wish i saw this live. Much love

  42. Jonathan Lindsey

    November 12, 2023 at 8:12 am

    This content was already covered by a YouTuber named David Shapiro.

    • Oz Tolle

      November 13, 2023 at 2:07 pm

      Neat

  43. Silent1Majority

    November 12, 2023 at 11:36 pm

    This was an absolute awesome breakdown on various issues, and an excellent offer for solutions.

  44. Nahum Espinosa

    November 13, 2023 at 4:25 pm

    *Moloch modern*

    In the Promised Land,
    Moloch still demands sacrifice.

    Children, women, men,
    all are welcome
    to his fiery altar.

    The Israeli-Palestinian conflict
    is a cycle of violence
    that knows no end.

    It is a modern Moloch,
    that continues to devour lives.

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