Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Scale, speed, and costs all matter.

The Jevons paradox notes that an increased efficiency of some process or system increases the total utilisation. In particular, it makes previously nonviable applications viable.

Postal junk mail, telemarketing calls, email spam, popover/popunder ads, malware, robocalls, fake news, chatbots, and more, are all responses of previously nonviable applications becoming viable.

The underlying limitation seems to be the scope of attention of attackers based on private / personal data, and/or of the systems in which they operate. The role of AI in extending that institutional bandwidth ... strikes me as rather frightening.

There've been previous discussion of similar topics which point to the prospect of, say, automated lawsuit filing, or debt collections (already a problem), or more. The prospect of some trained algo running over deep, rich data, seeking arbitrage opportunities, strikes me as undesireable.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: