This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
My counter is that you're implicitly making a special pleading for how human brains work that is unlikely to be true.
I assume creating a Von Neumann-level intelligence is possible because a Von Neumann level intelligence existed. It has been created, so it could be done again. And repeated.
I'm not saying we clone Von Neumann, scan his brain and build an electronic copy of it. I'm saying even if we can only build a computer program that is approximately as smart as the smartest human ever... the mere fact that we can then copy that program and run it in parallel should result in technological improvement on par with the Manhattan project.
There is NO limiting principle I'm aware of that makes it impossible to build an electronic brain that meets those criteria. Even if we stumble into it rather than intentionally build it, eventually our millions of monkeys slamming away at keyboards can stumble into a viable method.
Evolution was able to stumble into building Von Neumann, after all.
So what I'd ask you, as a full counter to my arguments, what upper limit or barrier is going to appear BEFORE we get to the point we've built something smarter than our whole species?
You are still assuming the conclusion. We have not built a computer program that is as capable as even a sub-median human in all domains, as far as I can tell, unless there is a program that can tie a shoelace and correctly tell me if I should drive to the car wash.
I don't mean this as a gotcha. LLMs are prone to certain cognitive biases that humans are not, and vice versa, and they are highly useful in many fields. But it's clear that the capabilities frontier is not uniform, far from it.
I don't know. All I know is that the current paradigm relies on massive amounts of artificially generated example problems with answers and I don't believe that all of human knowledge is amenable to such treatment. So far I have not seen any reason to believe that actually general, rather than spiky, superintelligence is imminent. And the imminence is, again, really the key question that's motivating all this.
I guess its easy for me to believe that if a largely randomized optimization process (natural selection) was able to eventually get to Von Neumann intelligence, then humans working with a bit more inherent purpose towards the goal of building a Von Neumann level intelligence can probably get there, even if they make some mis-steps and wander around in the dark for a bit.
Especially if we can build some optimization processes that result in sub-Von Neumann intelligences that are nonetheless useful.
Like, the mountain peak we're seeking is visible, poking out above the fog, even if we can't see and specifically plan a route that will get us there, we have flashlights and climbing gear and GPS systems in place to make navigation through the terrain towards the peak much easier. We're not utterly lost with no clue on what we're doing, in that respect.
I don't think this is true. You can imagine it, but you can't see it. If we understood how human intelligence worked it'd be a different story, but we don't.
I can look at what highly intelligent humans have achieved, based on the records of such people, and we can know that there is some path to creating intelligence of that level.
I do have to 'imagine' what it would be like to interact with Von Neumann, but the actual output he produced is tangible and verifiable.
Yes it's called smart people having kids and educating them well.
You're taking the existence of a phenomenon in one substance and assuming it can be replicated in another. You're getting push back because this is an assumption of your world view, and it doesn't seem like you recognize it as such.
Brother it has ALREADY been 'replicated' in the other substance. You have literally no way of knowing FOR SURE that you're not interacting with an AI right now (I will give proof of flesh upon request).
I'm directly asking if any of the doubters have a specific, concrete piece of evidence that this won't just continue in the obvious direction. I would LOVE to hear it, this would substantially reduce my uncertainty and anxiety about the future.
Right now its all implied special pleading that grey matter is capable of feats that silicon is not.
Which is... fine. But not persuasive.
That's not special pleading at all. You have the burden of proof here. The fact that AI can do some things that human intelligence can do does not imply that it can do all of those things. Your faith that silicon can replicate every function of human intelligence is just that - faith.
And even if, theoretically, digital computer systems can do everything a human mind can (which is not at all certain), you'll still need to provide evidence that they can get there using our current technology paradigms (which seems increasingly unlikely from my vantage point - billions of dollars of hardware and the entire human corpus digested, and we can't even get AI to stop hallucinating). Without that evidence, your position is no more realistic than the visions of AI in sci-fi novels from a century ago.
Intelligence exists in carbon-based life forms.
We can interact with silicon-based intelligence right now.
I dunno how heavy this burden really is if the only thing I have to do is point at what we can see and say "look, if the silicon based intelligence catches up to the carbon-based, it'll probably outperform the carbon-based shortly thereafter."
That's what I'm talking about right here. Is there ANY aspect of human cognition which can't be replicated via digital simulation?
There's no rule of physics that I know of that would rule out any particular aspect of our cognitive abilities.
So on what basis are you UN-certain?
It'll continue to be unrealistic right up until it actually becomes real. Which is basically been a constant factor over the past 5 years. "AI can't do X, Y, or Z."
It knocked out X in 2022, Y in 2025, and we're pretty sure it'll knock out Z later this year. As of now I'm willing to stake my reputation and wealth on my prediction. I'm not sure what YOUR beliefs are actually predicting for the future.
I'm suggesting that it requires LESS faith to say that artificial intelligence can replicate the functions of human intelligence, than to say that human intelligence has some feature which renders it immune to artificial replication.
God may have decreed it as just so, but so far, our understanding of physics has been silent on the matter.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link