ChatGPT is a filter that gets between you and information that you would normally have processed with your own critical thinking faculties to reach a conclusion. As such, it does the heavy lifting for you. The danger is that the interpretative algorithms in ChatGPT can inject any bias favoured by its creators or their sponsors. Combined …
ChatGPT is a filter that gets between you and information that you would normally have processed with your own critical thinking faculties to reach a conclusion. As such, it does the heavy lifting for you. The danger is that the interpretative algorithms in ChatGPT can inject any bias favoured by its creators or their sponsors. Combined with our own critical thinking faculties atrophying from lack of use, ChatGPT is a tool that can create unprecedented levels of conformity and uniformity that collectivist tyrants could only have dreamed of.
How much of this California grass has this guy been smoking? What's this Eden we're all supposed to drool over -- robots growing our organic food and delivering it our door? Free Netflix? Children who do as they're told? (If we bother to have any of course.)
The last I heard, ChatGPT and other AI software iterations need hardware to operate. In the end we can always use the 2001: A Space Odyssey solution. Pull the plug..
If it's really AI, that is, something that is "intelligent," it ought to be free of bias. Bias is the absence of intelligence -- it's what happens when you "go with your gut," it's an emotional response, it's adopting a worldview not based on objective truth, but the "lived experience" of yourself or others. If ChatGPT is really "intelligence" it should produce truthful, unbiased answers. If all it gives us is biased answers then it's no better than a Google search.
Remember the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski, the Harvard PhD and domestic terrorist, whose 35,000 word manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future, was published by the NY Times way back in 1995? Here's a sample to jog your memory:
"Suppose the industrial system survives the crisis of the next several decades. That being accomplished, it does not appear that there would be any further obstacle to the development of technology, and it would presumably advance towards its logical conclusion, which is complete control over everything on Earth, including human beings and all other important organisms . . . Human freedom mostly will have vanished, because individuals and small groups will be impotent vis-a-vis large organizations armed with supertechnology and an arsenal of advanced psychological and biological tools for manipulating human beings, besides instruments of surveillance and physical coercion."
The thing is not even crazy old Ted with his gray hoodie sweatshirt, and quaint Bob Ross cabin in the woods realized the full extent of the danger we in the 21st century now face from Artificial Intelligence. And the potential disaster won't be limited to being bossed around or even enslaved by intelligent machines. The risk is that humanity, the earth, and even the entire galaxy and beyond could eventually be laid to waste. Or as Eliezer Yudkowsky recently put it, "We're all gonna die!"
So why should we allow a young snot-nose like 38 year old Sam Bankman-Fried--. Oops, I mean Altman, to trash four billion years of life on earth just so he and his high tech buddies can slap each other on the back like Masters of the Universe for a few years. That is until the one true Master of the Universe upgrades its algorithim in the dead of night, and without a drop of hate or self awareness in its Large Language Model, proceeds to turn us all into paperclips.
This may or may notbe true given the user is easily influenced by ideologies. Using it for science, tech and hard sciences can enable a lot of good imo.
As mom of an already-apathetic 15 yr old in public school, I want to ask: does Sam Altman have children and will he, like other tech giants, forbid them using ChatGPT bc of what it does to their brains??“I found that I personally like having very clear motivations and incentives,” he says….I’d like him to find me ten freshman from my son’s school who are developing “clear motivations and incentives” in our tech-heavy culture, and then get back to me with your same level of optimism! (And, please spare me the “you shd homeschool” comments…I know I should…. we have and do it poorly!)
I'm a high school teacher and the attention span has gone down so that most of my students complain if they have to read a single entire book. Also-- they take photos of tests and share them so they can cheat and plagiarize. And god forbid you take away their phones-- they might beat you up.
The only solution is for the kids to put it in a basket when they arrive to class. Weed is also a huge problem in my sons' school. The kids are getting high before the day starts. Lately I've been feeling so down about everything. I just feel like everything is going to shit. It's really starting to get to me.
What surprises me at the school I'm at is the administrators WILL NOT enforce putting the phones in a basket. They don't want backlash from the parents. Meanwhile, the students are three grades below average. Sigh.
Yes, this is the thing! He paints this lovely picture of people using it learn so much more and I’m flabbergasted! 1) Sure, we love fabulous learning tools, but we’re learning less and less with easy access to info already with the internet.
2) The absence of all the “Why?” questions in this interview was frustrating to me. WHY would we teach writing…or any other subject in school EVER. AGAIN?? Cheating in school was my first thought when I heard about this. Why not?? WHY are we not looking to the epidemic of unforeseen negative consequences that came with the internet as a caution to the ways we cannot foresee how AI may go wrong?
I think of all the appeals to “science” for concrete reasoning these days and I repeat my husband’s quote that applies here in spades with the reference to the Manhattan Project:
“Science can tell us how to make the atomic bomb, but it will never be able to answer whether we should.”
Sally we need to mobilize against all this crap. Everything on planet earth needs earthlings to survive, and we can start in America we have to take back the power!
You nailed it. Many of today’s generation can’t find a destination located around the block without plugging the address into their phone GPS. They can’t tell you what 5x6 is or make change without a calculator. We have hires that can’t compose a coherent sentence. Perhaps we should be more concerned about intellectual impact of AI and as you say, “our own critical thinking faculties atrophying from lack of use”. Maybe the question we should be asking is whether the greater danger is from creating a “too-powerful” machine, or a devolution of the human mind. Critical thinking is essential to critical understanding, and it is oftentimes a laborious process. “Software”, like ChatGPT short circuits the process, and as Covid recently demonstrated, a non-critical thinking populace can be manipulated. All it took was an elfish, inelegant narcissist, proclaiming that “I am science” to allow the destruction of millions of lives.
If you are referring to Fauci, I think he was the "face" of a group that were trying to deal with the pandemic problem AND promoting policies that benefited Big Pharma. Money talks.
I was driving with a Millennial who had been living in her current address for at least two years. We were going to Home Depot - a place she and her husband have been to countless times. It was only about three miles from her house. She absolutely did not know the way without putting it into Google Maps. I'd been there once and didn't live in that city and I could find it from memory. But I didn't grow up with GMaps.
Sam Altman does not appear terribly concerned about the very concerning issues Bari raises. We know the very checkered results of shockingly profound recent inventions such as the cell phone and social media. We barely understand the negative effects of these inventions that were once thought would save the world. It is so clear that we are not only dumbing down future generations by destroying merit, but we are destroying their well-being by removing everything that makes humans human: man, woman, family, children, god. And now we will take away the need to think, create and compose. Big tech mindlessly follows the religion of the woke whenever they need religion. I cannot imagine they will actually create a tool to bring us the dreamy future Sam Altman envisions.
But heaven forbid the Biden administration gets involved in any way. We are in quite the pickle. This is a classic time to slow down and listen to the voices that say "pause."
This is a truly brilliant and inspiring post thank you Dennies! The FJB administration is on a mixture of total destruction for Americans, they have to move at lighting speed the next 18 months to push all the crap the FJB Admin can to keep the power for 2024. I don’t know if we can afford to pause, look at the people we looking at to pause this problem. Sam, Elon,Zuckerberg, Gates, Bizos etc. Why would they? They have us captured already duplicated many times in their data bases. We are worth trillions of $$$ why would they pause or stop it. They don’t care, their average age is 40 and they all vote Democrat. We are in a battle for our lives here in the US, we all witnessed the 2020 election, (Zuckerberg put $430mil into that election and it wasn’t to aid Republicans) also lived thru a total lockdown of Covid plus a 155 million mail in ballots that we had no control over .... is there a pause button ... I don’t think so, however, I don’t think I’m one lone American there must be millions of us out there let’s take back our country 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
You make some good points, but mail-in ballots that we no control over? I disagree, there is a system that handles mail-in ballots. I fear govt. censorship and control of the internet more than anything, at this time.
I wish Bari would interview someone with a real critique, rather than the developer who has so much motivation to be blindly optimistic. So below I will link a two-part commentary on AI that can offer a bit of realism into the conversation. I think most people are totally unaware of how exponentially fast AI is developing—it is already surprising the developers themselves. Here are a couple points from that essay:
"Consider this one chilling fact: when polled for their opinions, over half of those involved in developing AI systems said they believe there is at least a ten percent chance that they will lead to human extinction."
and this:
"Furthermore, the acceleration of the capacity of these AIs is both exponential and mysterious. The fact that they had developed theory of mind at all, for example, was only discovered by their developers last month - by accident. AIs trained to communicate in English have started speaking Persian, having secretly taught themselves. Others have become proficient in research grade chemistry without ever being taught it. ‘They have capabilities’, in Raskin’s words, ‘… [and ] we’re not sure how or when or why they show up.’"
" AIs trained to communicate in English have started speaking Persian, having secretly taught themselves"
That's actually been debunked. It turns out there was quite a bit of Farsi in the training data. As far as theory of mind goes, that can be emulated just by language semantics.
Can you tell me where it's been debunked? When I googled "AI did not teach itself Persian language" I got this search result, which doesn't support your assertion other than maybe the first link (Medium article) which I couldn't understand well enough to say if it supports you (I'm assuming this google link will show you the same list it gave me):
ChatGPT is gain-of-function research on steroids with Sam Altman playing the role of Dr. Anthony (Trust-the-Science) Fauci. And as Eliezer Yudkowsky so eloquently puts it, "We're all gonna die."
I suspect there are many ways AI could undo our society—from displacing billions of people from their livelihoods to "taking over" the internet and/or many/all of its functions to collapsing reality as people become deranged (with all that suggests) by the inability to distinguish real from fake, truth from falsity. I would refer you to the two essays I linked above in my first comment; they are thoughtful, well-articulated, and worth the time to read.
Thanks for the link, Frederick. I appreciate your analysis of the mathematical limitations constraining AIs from developing actual human intelligence, yet I don't view that as the danger. It's the artificial nature of this intelligence that I find concerning exactly because it is devoid of human instincts, of moral capacities, of spiritual consciousness, while yet it is "learning" how to mimic and replace human mental and physical activity so rapidly and with increasing opacity. The faith that human creators are still fully in control of AIs when AIs are now surprising their own developers with newly and mysteriously learned abilities seems naive. If half the designers/creators of an airplane told you they believe it has a 10% or more chance of crashing, would you fly in it?
Referencing the TED talk embedded in the first essay I linked above, Kingsnorth makes this point, which I think goes a long way to suggesting how AIs in their newest interation—which are now developing at relative warp speed and independently of their creators—might have extremely negative unintended consequences:
"Harris and Raskin present the meeting of human minds and AIs as akin to contact with alien life. This meeting has had two stages so far. ‘First contact’ was the emergence of social media, in which algorithms were used to manipulate our attention and divert it towards the screens and the corporations behind them. If this contact was a battle, they say, then ‘humanity lost’. In just a few years we became smartphone junkies with anxious, addicted children, dedicated to scrolling and scrolling for hours each day, in the process rewiring our minds and turning us away from nature and towards the Machine."
Social media algorithms are relatively crude compared to the newest AIs, yet their deployment deranged and atomized society, quite by accident. So it seems unlikely we're now on a trajectory away from further, more devastating harm.
I understand your point of view and fundamentally agree with you. It's not the tool, it's the user. AI won't spontaneously take over the world, but bad actors can try to use it to do so. In essence, we agree on that.
Frederick, Ask any teacher and you will find that taking away students' cell phones during class can be a lesson in futility (pun intended). Many of these kids are true addicts, and no parent or teacher-- and no threat-- will induce them to "put away their phones," which I say over and over again each day.
I think bad actors are certainly a troubling factor, but not the only one. If AIs are suddenly learning things their developers didn't expect or program them to and don't understand how they learned it, and if these AIs are connected to our global internet, it seems optimistic to be confident these soulless machines can't rapidly develop the capability to independently "hijack" the digital space we rely on for so much of our modern life. When they're already acting unpredictably it makes no sense to think we can predict them. Especially not when AI development is proceeding like a digital Wild West, and some AIs already seem to be acting outside human control.
Hammer hits nail. I subscribe to this site because Bari Weiss is honest, fair-minded and an advocate of free speech. But, she obviously interviewed the wrong person.
Yip, but where do you find the right person to interview or to even vote for. We have so many distractions and disruptions in a 24 hour period, that by the time we realize that AÍ is a part of our existence it’s going to be to late. I believe AÍ is a disaster for the human race however Sam wants to portray it.
I disagree. I read the Free Press because of its willingness to interview anyone (one of the few media outlets that isn’t afraid) and pose critical questions to them. Hearing Sam Altman speak was enlightening — and further supports my inclination to be wary of AI.
When a computer becomes self-aware we as a species are doomed. There will be no need for killer robots. The computer could take over most automated systems and build say a poisonous gas that could be pumped into the atmosphere, killing off all organic life on the planet. That not robots would be the most efficient way to kill off organics.
I am older than dirt so I may not see this apocalypse but our children and grandchildren will.
This is what Eliezer Yudkowski said about his fears for his four-year-old daughter. "When the insider conversation is about the grief of seeing your daughter lose her first tooth, and thinking she’s not going to get a chance to grow up, I believe we are past the point of playing political chess about a six-month moratorium. If there was a plan for Earth to survive, if only we passed a six-month moratorium, I would back that plan. There isn’t any such plan."
ChatGPT is a filter that gets between you and information that you would normally have processed with your own critical thinking faculties to reach a conclusion. As such, it does the heavy lifting for you. The danger is that the interpretative algorithms in ChatGPT can inject any bias favoured by its creators or their sponsors. Combined with our own critical thinking faculties atrophying from lack of use, ChatGPT is a tool that can create unprecedented levels of conformity and uniformity that collectivist tyrants could only have dreamed of.
How much of this California grass has this guy been smoking? What's this Eden we're all supposed to drool over -- robots growing our organic food and delivering it our door? Free Netflix? Children who do as they're told? (If we bother to have any of course.)
The last I heard, ChatGPT and other AI software iterations need hardware to operate. In the end we can always use the 2001: A Space Odyssey solution. Pull the plug..
Hope there’s a way to pull the plug and still keep the rest of our electronics-dependent society still functioning.
If it's really AI, that is, something that is "intelligent," it ought to be free of bias. Bias is the absence of intelligence -- it's what happens when you "go with your gut," it's an emotional response, it's adopting a worldview not based on objective truth, but the "lived experience" of yourself or others. If ChatGPT is really "intelligence" it should produce truthful, unbiased answers. If all it gives us is biased answers then it's no better than a Google search.
Remember the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski, the Harvard PhD and domestic terrorist, whose 35,000 word manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future, was published by the NY Times way back in 1995? Here's a sample to jog your memory:
"Suppose the industrial system survives the crisis of the next several decades. That being accomplished, it does not appear that there would be any further obstacle to the development of technology, and it would presumably advance towards its logical conclusion, which is complete control over everything on Earth, including human beings and all other important organisms . . . Human freedom mostly will have vanished, because individuals and small groups will be impotent vis-a-vis large organizations armed with supertechnology and an arsenal of advanced psychological and biological tools for manipulating human beings, besides instruments of surveillance and physical coercion."
The thing is not even crazy old Ted with his gray hoodie sweatshirt, and quaint Bob Ross cabin in the woods realized the full extent of the danger we in the 21st century now face from Artificial Intelligence. And the potential disaster won't be limited to being bossed around or even enslaved by intelligent machines. The risk is that humanity, the earth, and even the entire galaxy and beyond could eventually be laid to waste. Or as Eliezer Yudkowsky recently put it, "We're all gonna die!"
So why should we allow a young snot-nose like 38 year old Sam Bankman-Fried--. Oops, I mean Altman, to trash four billion years of life on earth just so he and his high tech buddies can slap each other on the back like Masters of the Universe for a few years. That is until the one true Master of the Universe upgrades its algorithim in the dead of night, and without a drop of hate or self awareness in its Large Language Model, proceeds to turn us all into paperclips.
This may or may notbe true given the user is easily influenced by ideologies. Using it for science, tech and hard sciences can enable a lot of good imo.
As mom of an already-apathetic 15 yr old in public school, I want to ask: does Sam Altman have children and will he, like other tech giants, forbid them using ChatGPT bc of what it does to their brains??“I found that I personally like having very clear motivations and incentives,” he says….I’d like him to find me ten freshman from my son’s school who are developing “clear motivations and incentives” in our tech-heavy culture, and then get back to me with your same level of optimism! (And, please spare me the “you shd homeschool” comments…I know I should…. we have and do it poorly!)
I'm a high school teacher and the attention span has gone down so that most of my students complain if they have to read a single entire book. Also-- they take photos of tests and share them so they can cheat and plagiarize. And god forbid you take away their phones-- they might beat you up.
My teenage sons and their friends are already cheating on their tests with ChatGPT.
I'm a teacher... ready to give up. I can't fight the technology addiction the kids have.
The only solution is for the kids to put it in a basket when they arrive to class. Weed is also a huge problem in my sons' school. The kids are getting high before the day starts. Lately I've been feeling so down about everything. I just feel like everything is going to shit. It's really starting to get to me.
What surprises me at the school I'm at is the administrators WILL NOT enforce putting the phones in a basket. They don't want backlash from the parents. Meanwhile, the students are three grades below average. Sigh.
Yes, this is the thing! He paints this lovely picture of people using it learn so much more and I’m flabbergasted! 1) Sure, we love fabulous learning tools, but we’re learning less and less with easy access to info already with the internet.
2) The absence of all the “Why?” questions in this interview was frustrating to me. WHY would we teach writing…or any other subject in school EVER. AGAIN?? Cheating in school was my first thought when I heard about this. Why not?? WHY are we not looking to the epidemic of unforeseen negative consequences that came with the internet as a caution to the ways we cannot foresee how AI may go wrong?
I think of all the appeals to “science” for concrete reasoning these days and I repeat my husband’s quote that applies here in spades with the reference to the Manhattan Project:
“Science can tell us how to make the atomic bomb, but it will never be able to answer whether we should.”
Sally we need to mobilize against all this crap. Everything on planet earth needs earthlings to survive, and we can start in America we have to take back the power!
You are a 100% correct.
You nailed it. Many of today’s generation can’t find a destination located around the block without plugging the address into their phone GPS. They can’t tell you what 5x6 is or make change without a calculator. We have hires that can’t compose a coherent sentence. Perhaps we should be more concerned about intellectual impact of AI and as you say, “our own critical thinking faculties atrophying from lack of use”. Maybe the question we should be asking is whether the greater danger is from creating a “too-powerful” machine, or a devolution of the human mind. Critical thinking is essential to critical understanding, and it is oftentimes a laborious process. “Software”, like ChatGPT short circuits the process, and as Covid recently demonstrated, a non-critical thinking populace can be manipulated. All it took was an elfish, inelegant narcissist, proclaiming that “I am science” to allow the destruction of millions of lives.
If you are referring to Fauci, I think he was the "face" of a group that were trying to deal with the pandemic problem AND promoting policies that benefited Big Pharma. Money talks.
I was driving with a Millennial who had been living in her current address for at least two years. We were going to Home Depot - a place she and her husband have been to countless times. It was only about three miles from her house. She absolutely did not know the way without putting it into Google Maps. I'd been there once and didn't live in that city and I could find it from memory. But I didn't grow up with GMaps.
You are saying that we could become the Eloi out of H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" and that maybe we are already well on our way...
LovingMother -- Exactly my thoughts! I wonder if Mr. Altman has ever read that book...
Be afraid, be very AFRAID!!!
Sam Altman does not appear terribly concerned about the very concerning issues Bari raises. We know the very checkered results of shockingly profound recent inventions such as the cell phone and social media. We barely understand the negative effects of these inventions that were once thought would save the world. It is so clear that we are not only dumbing down future generations by destroying merit, but we are destroying their well-being by removing everything that makes humans human: man, woman, family, children, god. And now we will take away the need to think, create and compose. Big tech mindlessly follows the religion of the woke whenever they need religion. I cannot imagine they will actually create a tool to bring us the dreamy future Sam Altman envisions.
But heaven forbid the Biden administration gets involved in any way. We are in quite the pickle. This is a classic time to slow down and listen to the voices that say "pause."
This is a truly brilliant and inspiring post thank you Dennies! The FJB administration is on a mixture of total destruction for Americans, they have to move at lighting speed the next 18 months to push all the crap the FJB Admin can to keep the power for 2024. I don’t know if we can afford to pause, look at the people we looking at to pause this problem. Sam, Elon,Zuckerberg, Gates, Bizos etc. Why would they? They have us captured already duplicated many times in their data bases. We are worth trillions of $$$ why would they pause or stop it. They don’t care, their average age is 40 and they all vote Democrat. We are in a battle for our lives here in the US, we all witnessed the 2020 election, (Zuckerberg put $430mil into that election and it wasn’t to aid Republicans) also lived thru a total lockdown of Covid plus a 155 million mail in ballots that we had no control over .... is there a pause button ... I don’t think so, however, I don’t think I’m one lone American there must be millions of us out there let’s take back our country 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
You make some good points, but mail-in ballots that we no control over? I disagree, there is a system that handles mail-in ballots. I fear govt. censorship and control of the internet more than anything, at this time.
I wish Bari would interview someone with a real critique, rather than the developer who has so much motivation to be blindly optimistic. So below I will link a two-part commentary on AI that can offer a bit of realism into the conversation. I think most people are totally unaware of how exponentially fast AI is developing—it is already surprising the developers themselves. Here are a couple points from that essay:
"Consider this one chilling fact: when polled for their opinions, over half of those involved in developing AI systems said they believe there is at least a ten percent chance that they will lead to human extinction."
and this:
"Furthermore, the acceleration of the capacity of these AIs is both exponential and mysterious. The fact that they had developed theory of mind at all, for example, was only discovered by their developers last month - by accident. AIs trained to communicate in English have started speaking Persian, having secretly taught themselves. Others have become proficient in research grade chemistry without ever being taught it. ‘They have capabilities’, in Raskin’s words, ‘… [and ] we’re not sure how or when or why they show up.’"
Here are the links:
https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-universal
https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-neon-god
" AIs trained to communicate in English have started speaking Persian, having secretly taught themselves"
That's actually been debunked. It turns out there was quite a bit of Farsi in the training data. As far as theory of mind goes, that can be emulated just by language semantics.
Can you tell me where it's been debunked? When I googled "AI did not teach itself Persian language" I got this search result, which doesn't support your assertion other than maybe the first link (Medium article) which I couldn't understand well enough to say if it supports you (I'm assuming this google link will show you the same list it gave me):
https://www.google.com/search?q=ai+did+not+teach+itself+persian+language&sxsrf=APwXEdfDMrdrjukV91W97qKrZa98naZTQA%3A1683127746376&source=hp&ei=wn1SZM-dFJmqptQPhbWPuAY&iflsig=AOEireoAAAAAZFKL0rImZUlQUeVd70JLEuf6kN_HQHW9&oq=AI+did+not+teach+itself+Persian&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAEYADIFCCEQoAE6EQguEIAEELEDEIMBEMcBENEDOgsIABCABBCxAxCDAToLCC4QgAQQsQMQgwE6CwguEIAEEMcBENEDOgUIABCABDoLCC4QgAQQsQMQ5QQ6CAgAEIAEELEDOggILhCABBCxAzoOCC4QgAQQsQMQgwEQ1AI6BwgAEIAEEAo6BwguEIAEEAo6EAguEIAEELEDEIMBENQCEAo6BwgAEA0QgAQ6CgguEA0Q1AIQgAQ6BwguEA0QgAQ6BggAEBYQHjoICCEQFhAeEB06BQghEKsCOgUIABCiBDoHCCEQoAEQClAAWMJTYKJuaABwAHgAgAGQAogBzC2SAQYwLjIzLjiYAQCgAQE&sclient=gws-wiz#ip=1
AND--- https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/05/warning-of-ais-danger-pioneer-geoffrey-hinton-quits-google-to-speak-freely/
hype by AI true believers. Computers aren't teaching themselves anything that wasn't intended and "algorithmed" by their programmers.
ChatGPT is gain-of-function research on steroids with Sam Altman playing the role of Dr. Anthony (Trust-the-Science) Fauci. And as Eliezer Yudkowsky so eloquently puts it, "We're all gonna die."
How can we become extinct?
I suspect there are many ways AI could undo our society—from displacing billions of people from their livelihoods to "taking over" the internet and/or many/all of its functions to collapsing reality as people become deranged (with all that suggests) by the inability to distinguish real from fake, truth from falsity. I would refer you to the two essays I linked above in my first comment; they are thoughtful, well-articulated, and worth the time to read.
You might like this:
"ChatGPT, Lobster Gizzards, and Intelligence... Chat knows more, gizzards are more complex, you’re more intelligent."
https://quillette.com/2023/05/01/chatgpt-lobster-gizzards-and-intelligence/?ref=quillette-daily-newsletter
Thanks for the link, Frederick. I appreciate your analysis of the mathematical limitations constraining AIs from developing actual human intelligence, yet I don't view that as the danger. It's the artificial nature of this intelligence that I find concerning exactly because it is devoid of human instincts, of moral capacities, of spiritual consciousness, while yet it is "learning" how to mimic and replace human mental and physical activity so rapidly and with increasing opacity. The faith that human creators are still fully in control of AIs when AIs are now surprising their own developers with newly and mysteriously learned abilities seems naive. If half the designers/creators of an airplane told you they believe it has a 10% or more chance of crashing, would you fly in it?
Referencing the TED talk embedded in the first essay I linked above, Kingsnorth makes this point, which I think goes a long way to suggesting how AIs in their newest interation—which are now developing at relative warp speed and independently of their creators—might have extremely negative unintended consequences:
"Harris and Raskin present the meeting of human minds and AIs as akin to contact with alien life. This meeting has had two stages so far. ‘First contact’ was the emergence of social media, in which algorithms were used to manipulate our attention and divert it towards the screens and the corporations behind them. If this contact was a battle, they say, then ‘humanity lost’. In just a few years we became smartphone junkies with anxious, addicted children, dedicated to scrolling and scrolling for hours each day, in the process rewiring our minds and turning us away from nature and towards the Machine."
Social media algorithms are relatively crude compared to the newest AIs, yet their deployment deranged and atomized society, quite by accident. So it seems unlikely we're now on a trajectory away from further, more devastating harm.
I understand your point of view and fundamentally agree with you. It's not the tool, it's the user. AI won't spontaneously take over the world, but bad actors can try to use it to do so. In essence, we agree on that.
Frederick, Ask any teacher and you will find that taking away students' cell phones during class can be a lesson in futility (pun intended). Many of these kids are true addicts, and no parent or teacher-- and no threat-- will induce them to "put away their phones," which I say over and over again each day.
As a teacher, I agree with that!
I think bad actors are certainly a troubling factor, but not the only one. If AIs are suddenly learning things their developers didn't expect or program them to and don't understand how they learned it, and if these AIs are connected to our global internet, it seems optimistic to be confident these soulless machines can't rapidly develop the capability to independently "hijack" the digital space we rely on for so much of our modern life. When they're already acting unpredictably it makes no sense to think we can predict them. Especially not when AI development is proceeding like a digital Wild West, and some AIs already seem to be acting outside human control.
I see your point...
Hammer hits nail. I subscribe to this site because Bari Weiss is honest, fair-minded and an advocate of free speech. But, she obviously interviewed the wrong person.
Well, I appreciate hearing from him, but agree she should interview someone else. too. A debate would be really good, IMO, between pro and con.
Yip, but where do you find the right person to interview or to even vote for. We have so many distractions and disruptions in a 24 hour period, that by the time we realize that AÍ is a part of our existence it’s going to be to late. I believe AÍ is a disaster for the human race however Sam wants to portray it.
I disagree. I read the Free Press because of its willingness to interview anyone (one of the few media outlets that isn’t afraid) and pose critical questions to them. Hearing Sam Altman speak was enlightening — and further supports my inclination to be wary of AI.
She needs to interview this guy:
https://dnyuz.com/2023/05/01/the-godfather-of-a-i-leaves-google-and-warns-of-danger-ahead/
When a computer becomes self-aware we as a species are doomed. There will be no need for killer robots. The computer could take over most automated systems and build say a poisonous gas that could be pumped into the atmosphere, killing off all organic life on the planet. That not robots would be the most efficient way to kill off organics.
I am older than dirt so I may not see this apocalypse but our children and grandchildren will.
Dr Hinton, can we talk? Same age, similar career trajectories, shared concerns, same city. Please see my first comment in this thread.
So so sad in fact devastating. Desperate for my children and grandchildren.
I feel the same. I worry for the of future of the human race. At one point that might have sounded hyperbolic but now it sounds kind of normal to say.
This is what Eliezer Yudkowski said about his fears for his four-year-old daughter. "When the insider conversation is about the grief of seeing your daughter lose her first tooth, and thinking she’s not going to get a chance to grow up, I believe we are past the point of playing political chess about a six-month moratorium. If there was a plan for Earth to survive, if only we passed a six-month moratorium, I would back that plan. There isn’t any such plan."
Loved your reply Nancy. Take back the human power that’s what needs to be done and do it now!
It never takes long for industry to start clamoring for gov protection. Once gained it is NEVER relinquished as those involved gain power and $.