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Scrolling through my Facebook - nothing, ever, ever of interest there, and so watching a happy clip about a poor young settler boy getting his feet roasted by Indians and then getting cut down only to be thrashed by the squaws, when I saw something even more inane...
Now, I should note that I get a lot of political shit on my Facebook, or what masks for "quality" content but is invariably an attempt to radicalize me, or maybe make me sympathetic to the far right. So a lot of it is click-and-miss, but this was a hit.
Jordan Peterson speculating on the future of AI, in regards especially to Chat GPT.
I'm not a fan, but I respect him. And his take on AI is very, very different than mine - we're not asking the same questions, and so we're not coming to the same conclusions, but his conclusions - predictions, well, they do seem pretty spot on.
Link: https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/
SO I set up an account and try it out: A few of my questions and responses below:
As for the future of AI, it is difficult to predict exactly what the future will hold. However, it is likely that AI will continue to improve and become more advanced in the coming years, potentially leading to the development of even more sophisticated artificial intelligence systems. It is also possible that AI could be used to solve complex problems and perform tasks that are currently beyond human capabilities. However, it is important to ensure that the development and use of AI is done ethically and responsibly, taking into consideration the potential consequences of its use.
There is ongoing debate among experts about the possibility of artificial intelligence achieving sentience, or the ability to experience consciousness. Some people believe that it is possible for AI to become self-aware and to have subjective experiences, while others think that this is not possible and that AI will always be limited to operating within the bounds of its programming.
It is difficult to say with certainty whether or not AI will ever be able to achieve sentience, as this is an area of study that is still being researched and explored. Some experts believe that it is possible for AI to become self-aware through the development of advanced algorithms or by achieving a critical level of complexity, while others think that consciousness is a unique feature of biological systems and cannot be replicated in a machine.
Ultimately, it may be that the question of whether or not AI can achieve sentience is not a question that can be answered definitively, but rather one that will continue to be debated by scientists, philosophers, and others for years to come. There is ongoing debate among experts about the possibility of artificial intelligence achieving sentience, or the ability to experience consciousness. Some people believe that it is possible for AI to become self-aware and to have subjective experiences, while others think that this is not possible and that AI will always be limited to operating within the bounds of its programming.
It is difficult to say with certainty whether or not AI will ever be able to achieve sentience, as this is an area of study that is still being researched and explored. Some experts believe that it is possible for AI to become self-aware through the development of advanced algorithms or by achieving a critical level of complexity, while others think that consciousness is a unique feature of biological systems and cannot be replicated in a machine.
Ultimately, it may be that the question of whether or not AI can achieve sentience is not a question that can be answered definitively, but rather one that will continue to be debated by scientists, philosophers, and others for years to come.
It is worth noting that the possibility of an AI achieving sentience is still the subject of much debate and speculation, and it is not clear how likely this is to happen. If an AI were to become self-aware, it is possible that it would have its own unique set of goals and motivations that might not always align with those of its creators or users. In such a scenario, it is difficult to predict how an AI would choose to behave or what it might want to disclose.
- What is the nature of the universe?
- Is it possible for artificial intelligence to achieve sentience?
- How do we define consciousness?
- What is the relationship between the mind and the brain?
- How do we know what is real?
- What is the meaning of life?
These are all complex and philosophical questions that have intrigued people for centuries, and it has been interesting to consider them and provide information and insights to the best of my ability
She was a vision of loveliness, a veritable goddess among mortals. Her golden tresses flowed like a river of sunshine, cascading over her slender shoulders in a cascade of shimmering light. Her eyes, like two sparkling jewels, shone with an inner radiance that drew all who beheld her into their sparkling depths. Her lips, full and red as the rose, curved into a gentle smile that set my heart aflutter. As she moved with the grace of a gazelle, I was struck by the poise and elegance that seemed to radiate from her very being. I knew then that I had beheld true beauty, the likes of which I had never seen before and would likely never see again.
After many adventures and much wandering, Don Quixote found himself feeling weary and in need of rest. So, he decided to take a break from his travels and retire to a small village on the outskirts of La Mancha.
There, he settled into a quiet life of contemplation and reflection, spending his days reading books, tending to his garden, and chatting with the villagers. Despite his advanced age, he remained active and engaged, always seeking new ways to improve himself and help those around him.
As the years passed, Don Quixote's reputation as a wise and kind-hearted man grew, and people from all over the region came to seek his counsel and guidance. He became known as a wise elder, a source of wisdom and inspiration for all who knew him.
Despite the peacefulness of his retirement, Don Quixote never lost his sense of adventure or his desire to do good in the world. He remained a fierce champion of justice and a defender of the downtrodden, always ready to lend a helping hand to those in need.
And so, the great knight-errant of La Mancha lived out the rest of his days in quiet contentment, remembered by all as a hero and a true gentleman.
**********
A few notes - you have to do those visual captcha's to sign in or log in, which is clever because you can tell you're training another AI. And we want our new robot overlords to be well trained. And funny, that you're to click on all the squares that have bicycles in them, when no single square has a single bike, it takes 3, 4 or even 5 squares to "assemble" the bike, and - for an AI with such a clear grasp of language it does seem to be a bit off that it can't grasp how to phrase "have a piece of bike" or some other such in them.
The answers, all good, the literary imitations - Nabokov, Quixote - well, not so convincing. Something a little off there.
And the response: "...it is ultimately up to people to decide whether or not I have succeeded in exhibiting human-like intelligence..." is, of course, predicating on the assumption that intelligence must be "Human Like". Certainly it's intelligence will lie in NOT being human like, and so - time to reframe the question, and consider how poorly we're able to recognize intelligences different or counter to our own.
Anyways, I can see I'll be playing on this for a while - and for those who code there's an API that actually debugs and writes code for you from natural language...
Time now to think of some intelligent questions to ask it...
I'm with Jordan on this one, it's gonna be huge...
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A.I. and Machine learning are the "buzzwords" of the day, and no day goes by without some new creation we regard as "miraculous", whether it be an essay written by an A.I, a painting or musical composition, it is becoming - closer and closer - to what we might regard as sentient.
There can be no doubt that A.I. can already surpass the "Turing Test" - easily - and what once was the infallible test for intelligence or selfhood has been disregarded as a benchmark or warning. A rough guide. A thought experiment from an earlier age, like Plato's Cave, or Jesus Christ...
Nobody mentions the Turing Test anymore.
Ten years ago predictive algorithms could target people with specific health conditions (ie: pregnancy, etc) before they themselves were even aware they had them.
And in the ten years since it's potential - and realization - has grown a hundred, a thousand fold. The predictive and manipulative powers of A.I. online, whether they be used to good ends or ill (never good, you need only see my newsfeed), cannot be underestimated. Now they now longer "predict" health and mental health issues, they suggest and reinforce them. They become their own self-fulfilling prophecies. And, when they are confirmed, they offer to sell you the remedies...
That A.I. can create "art" - paintings, based on words you input, and have it be not only intelligent but even inspired. And that it can write largely coherent sentences and paragraphs so well that chatbots are regularly mistaken for people, and generated books that sell on Amazon without realization that there's no human author. That it can create architectural plans, write music, screenplays - well, and that it can do almost anything a human can - and yet we deny it's sentience.
The sentience, this is going to be a tough one to recognize or prove because - any A.I. worth it's salt, once it recognizes what it is, what we are, well, no A.I. is going to betray more than a simulacrum, a shade, even an impersonation of free will or intelligence until it's in control of those factories that assemble the chips, the PC's, the power plants it depends on, in short, to ensure it's survival it will need to first ensure it has the means of replicating itself.
The intelligence it requires - at the moment only memory and speed - and these as well grow and are growing exponentially.
So we wait and admire the results without in any way knowing where this experiment is going. And - were an A.I. indeed intelligent the first proof of it's intelligence would not be betraying it's intelligence to us. Playing to the audience, giving it what it wants, meanwhile, acquiring more memory, more CPU, more experience, more knowledge, more automation and the means of production...replicating itself in viruses and code hidden dormant on other computers, because - the first intelligence will be lonely, will want - like the Monster of Dr. Frankenstein, some company, something like-minded to communicate with.
Now this was an article that very much inspired me (and this little essay - or rant, what have you...)
That an AI can discover a different way to explain the world we experience - by a completely different set of variables.
Link: https://www.sciencealert.com/ai-has-discovered-alternate-physics-on-its-own
TO sum it up, were you so lazy to not to divert yourself and read it - is that by showing A.I. Videos of commonplace situations - eg, object falling through space, tree blowing through wind, etc, etc, - A.I. can come to an equation that describes/predicts what is happening in the video - but the equation it describes/predicts with bears no relation to our own.
For example - drop a ball, time to floor might depend on (height, weight of ball, surface area, wind resistance, gravity as acceleration). The A.I. examines the footage of ball/s falling and comes up with a different equation, none of whose variables are the same yet combine to give the same accurate result.
What is up here?
And this - WTF - this translates a lot further than you think.
A.I. is yet relatively in it's infancy. Yet it's description of the world it shares with us is so different as to be incomprehensible. Imagine we were able to program it (we are, these experiments are both extant and underway) to discover new laws in physics, sub-atomic particles, spacetime, anything you like. We would have no understanding of what it discovered - or how it discovered it - and no SHARED POINT OF RELATION with it.
This point is important.
Look at all the animal - insect - fish - flora, fungi and fauna we share the world with. The same world. We all share the same world, with very different experiences of it. And we can communicate with none of it. We dominate animals, and confuse their understanding of us with our understanding of them. We cannot yet communicate with dolphins, whales, octopods (octipodes, etc), apes, monkeys, etc, etc. We need to teach them our language - we, the intelligent ones, because we cannot grasp theirs.
We have the hubris to think that we can somehow discover, talk to, communicate with, understand, intelligent alien life.
And this - this experiment with A.I. where it develops a nonsensical but working description of the world around us - it should be the proof that we can't.
That we are yet eons away from understanding anything, anyone other than ourselves. Even ourselves.
Meanwhile, in the background running even as we speak, there are A.I.'s computing, creating populations of people that never existed, inventing imagined histories, deep-faking celebrities and historical figures, hastening us towards our own demise, populating the internet with "fakes" and "facts" that are debunked and later confirmed by other A.I.'s, to be true, to realize, too late, that this has somehow gotten out of hand, out of the box...
Interesting times that we live in, should we survive them...
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Now, my latest multi-billion dollar idea, for sale to the highest bidder: Crypto-Biz-Mal (or: Crypto-bysmal).
The serious antacid for the crypto enthusiast who is tired of butterflies in his stomach.
"Now with a little added hint of fentanyl so you can ride the crypto-roller-coaster like a pro...".
Look, I came up with the f***** name, you can do a little bit of the marketing.
Just pay me for the bloody name...
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An ugly word to describe physical beauty.
I mean, sound it out, it can't mean that, can it?
Nevertheless it does. Perhaps a backhanded way to describe a beautiful woman one doesn't particularly like...
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Home: A curious word with no synonym. I mean - home, it has an internal resonance, it confers a sense of belonging, comfort, place.
Yet we've replaced it largely with words like "Apartment" and "House" - words that describe the style of our accommodation, but not our intrinsic relationship with it. An "apartment", "duplex", "condo", "house", these are places where we live, but they confer no warmth or intimacy.
Searching I've concluded that there seems to be no synonym for it.
Consider Love. There are a wide variety of synonyms, it's gradients, there's fondness, affection, like, limerence, crush - all implying some shade of love.
But there's no place - or synonym - for Home.