EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
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User ID: 78
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
1d ago
I agree, except that if you start with the assumption that one doesn't yet know what the capabilities of AI are, then one rationally ought to keep space for skepticism of doomsday scenarios.
But you're right, and I don't assume that trouble isn't coming; I just saw the obvious other explanation for the talk of vulnerability-finding AI and determined based on how people were behaving that hype was the more likely explanation, this time. And I think that fear is primarily driven by the materialism of our times.
After all, when people talk about artificial intelligence replacing humans, the unstated premise is that humans are really just computers or not much better. See how easily they can do what humans can do? Haven't they passed the Turing Test?
Obviously, this is an attempt at mind reading, but I think it is a better explanation than marketing. As a marketing strategy, intentionally making promises that will obviously be falsified and talked about widely when the product is released seems silly.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
1d ago
I thought all the talk about software vulnerabilities would peter out for now, but I don't think that marketing is the only explanation.
Materialists are making the logically consistent assumption that if humans are computers, then AI is guaranteed to surpass our capabilities in every respect. So they predict a future which may not be real if materialism isn't real, and are hallucinating that such a future has arrived out of a cycle of fear and a desire to get ahead of it.
Strictly speaking, just because one hyped-up thing failed to hit the mark, it doesn't mean that it isn't coming, especially given the pace of developments. But Charlie Kirk said it right: AI is destined to throw our assumptions into chaos one way or another, and I, for one, am curious to see exactly what gets discredited as our knowledge and actual experience is forced to increase. Though it would be nice if we had a better understanding of things before we're forced to learn it inadvertently.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
7d ago
So, what are you reading?
I'm finally done with Christie's And Then There Were None. Didn't have much preamble, it just goes straight into it. Seems like a book written to an audience already very familiar with her work. It was enjoyable enough, and the characters worked. I've more or less given up on the desire to figure out who the killer is beforehand in these kinds of books, and I find that it is pleasant to read them like that. I'm afraid that the only other thing which I can say is that my favourite character died.
Going to give another stab at Sayers' Whose Body?
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
14d ago
So, what are you reading?
I've finished The Handmaid's Tale. It's a book I'll have to read again sometime, since there's clearly a lot which I haven't noticed. Can't say it ever came together for me, but maybe that's because I didn't really understand its thrust. The tone throughout was sterile, which was probably intentional, given the motifs of waiting and idleness. The world itself never made a convincing dystopia; it was way too lax in just about everything, and the sense of fear of reprisals or of other people never became more than a literary suggestion. The writing was quite good.
It proved as curious as Atwood, who has not been a predictable simpleton when it comes to politics. On the one hand, it could be read as a screed against the religious right, but the picture is always muddled by something, like the quoting of the communist from each according to his ability. The last chapter muddies the picture even further, making us wonder to what extent this is to be taken as history or myth. As a myth, it may be something of value, something worth a closer look. As a history, it is laced with what seems like old arguments among old activists which seems to limp on eternally, even up to paranoia over viruses.
Going to try some Agatha Christie next, which perennialy seems to be collecting dust on my shelf.
LLMs have obviously poked some holes in the old argument that intelligence makes us separate from the soulless animals, but ambiguities abound.
For one thing, has the Turing Test really been passed? I haven't used LLMs, so I don't know how they respond to this, but if I simply repeated a question 1000 times would I not know the difference between man and machine? You can probably add in enough deceptions to partially hide from this, but that remains what they are: deceptions. If the machine is conscious, is it aware that it is deceiving me about itself? Or is it actually the human who it pretends to be?
For another, what would happen if an LLM was trained on the complete Library of Babel?
AI is good cause to reevaluate the classical arguments, but people still need to engage with them before any useful shift will happen.
Personally, the ambiguity of the relationship between consciousness and intelligence seems striking to me. On the one hand, we have to admit that at least some significant parts of intelligence can be performed by machines, although it remains possible that the mind and an LLM work very differently to achieve similar outputs.
But on the other hand, there is the curious question of how it is that consciousness is even compatible with thought, if it has no relationship to the thought process. To repurpose Nagel's famous formulation, why is it that there is something that it is like to contemplate a math problem? I'm not entirely willing to abandon the argument that humans have some native form of intelligence that requires a pre-existing consciousness, a form which a mechanism cannot reproduce.
Unfalsifiable philosophical constructs and arbitrary opinion
I could say the same of the theory of emergence, that "somehow" if I throw together enough moving parts consciousness would "evolve," and this in a world that is assumed by scientific fiat to be purely materialistic, ie. inherently without consciousness! We could throw epithets at each other until the sun dies.
IMO, no-one currently has a monopoly on good sense in this matter, and it is best to let people have the conversation which they seem to need to have.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
21d ago
So, what are you reading?
I'm getting interested in Ellul. Also about halfway through The Handmaid's Tale. Can't say it has really moved me yet one way or the other, but it seems to be moving towards something. It vaguely occurs to me that some of the undertone of resentment might be intended for readers like myself, but I can't quite figure out what precisely it is angry about yet. Hopefully it will be something that I can use.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
28d ago
So, what are you reading?
I'm trying to finish Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. This time around it is resonating, perhaps because the abstract desire for freedom is on my mind.
So, what are you reading?
I'm still on Sayers' Whose Body? Also reading Abelson's The Seven Liberal Arts after rereading Sayers' essay The Lost Tools of Learning.
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