“And maybe that would be a good thing. Humanity is becoming too disconnected and dissociated as it is. We could all benefit from digging our roots into reality a bit deeper.” — this is a good thing!
The more we unplug from the digital world—since we don’t know what’s real—the more we’ll be forced to interact with that in our lives that we KNOW are real (like real world connections and all)
Becoming like the Amish doesn't really work (IMO). It would be like trying to enforce celibacy on everyone because sex can lead to rape. Problem isn't sex itself - it's the misuse and abuse of sex. Technology is the same. Technology can lead to all sorts of good things (MRI machines for example have saved millions) but technology also can be misused and abused.
And in order to achieve that "balance" requires regulations and an affirmation that open governments can play a viable role. Handing the regulation of AI over to billionaires and their corporations is a recipe for disaster.
The name "AI" is unfortunate. We used to mostly refer to this kind of deceptive activity as "photoshop." Lying is lying, no matter what you call it. How about we stop calling this stuff "intelligence?" So far, it's making me angry, not dumber, but I suppose that day will come soon enough.
You are conflating AI technologies with 'select' uses of the technology. AI can be used in medical diagnosis, helping people with disabilities learn, create new medicines (protein folding), doing boring 'drudge work' and time-consuming simple manual tasks (that can be automated so as to free people to focus on things that they want to spend more time on), and so much more.
AI (just like computers, etc.) are tools that can be used for good and bad, for positive intentions/outcomes and negative intentions/outcomes, to save time and to waste time, to connect us and to alienate us, to empower us and to rob us of our agency.
HOW we use the technology is up to us (in most scenarios, not all). Are we responsible users? Are we emotionally (and cognitively) mature enough to understand the risks and use the technology wisely? Will Govts./organizations help or hinder with positive uses (for humans and the planet) of the technology?
Everything is in flux currently, with MANY more questions than answers...
I agree. AI is a tool, it has its good points and bad points. Simply because there are increasing numbers of knife assaults does not mean everyone who uses a knife is a threat ( the jury is still out on Gordon Ramsay). There is an excellent book on the use and misuse of technology - "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman.
As Theodore Sturgeon said "90% of anything is shit because 90% of everything is shit" We simply have to commit to separate the good from the bad.
Good point. AI is just deterministic computer algorithms that have no capacity to reflect upon themselves, or make wholistic judgements like human beings can do naturally (AGI, despite what they say, is far, far from becoming a reality). AI will never, ever be capable of a single feeling or sensation like what we humans experience with our internal consciousness.
AI is a symbolic, exterior machination that will never become the interior semantic space of consciousness. Because consciousness itself is a type of phenomena that has the peculiar nature of not being reducible to anything else.
An excellent book I would recommend on this topic is "Irreducible", by the amazing Frederico Faggin.
All good points. Back in the 80's, a proposed definition of artificial intelligence was a black box experiment in which a human interacted with the black box. If the human could not tell the black box was not human, then we had artificial intelligence. Note that a black box candidate, under this definition, could be "intelligent" to one human and not to another. Similar to how if a professional magician goes to a magic show and observes a really well executed stunt. The current definition of AI is no definition at all; if it seems sophisticated or internally complex, the trend is to call it AI. This is what Jerry Weinberg used to call "name magic." It exists because we invoke it by a name. Belief systems develop around that. It's all smoke and mirrors.
Well this is my opinion of course. But it is also my opinion that it is only out on the jury for those who still cling to the old model of Newtonian physics. We now know, since Heisenberg and Planck, and the refutation of Einstein's PDR (i.e. his Hidden Variables argument) and confirmation in spades of Bell's Inequalities (for the last half century of modern scientific experiments) - that the philosophical argument regarding Determinism are now pretty much settled, at least in modern physics.
Which has opened up a more modern approach to human consciousness based on "Holevo's Theorem" and the "No-cloning Theorem" in quantum physics.
It is true reductive materialists have been pursuing vigorously an explanation of consciousness based on some kind of elusive "Emergence" concept - which there has yet to be any kind of substantial or even reasonable scientific explanation or definition for. And it is also quite clear now that electro-chemical reactions by themselves, no matter how complex an electrical circuit may be (or is artificially constructed) - can then become self-aware or produce semantic qualia that is the hallmark of consciousness. Science does have an immense amount of knowledge regarding the electromagnetic spectrum, and knows a great deal about the properties of chemical reactions - none of which have led to a working (proveable) scientific theory of consciousness itself. In fact, modern science is still completely in the dark when it comes to abiogenesis, despite over a century and a half of scientific effort.
when I read people describing A.I. as thinking or thinking like a person, I like to refer them to John Searle's Chinese Room argument.
it is very evolved pattern matching, but like some cognitive scientists who favor an evolutionary biology perspective, I believe without having experience of a physical world, Computer cognition ( I really hate the term "Artificial Intelligence") can be nothing but a phantasm-like imitation of Human cognition.
There is no interiority to computer cognition. Anyone who has worked with computers could tell you this. There is no there, there - that duplicates the self awareness, and semantic qualia we experience as human beings.
A.I. is extremely capable at doing mechanical things - and following human coded algorithms automatically. But computers are not able to see the "big picture" we humans see, understand (comprehend) the big picture - or even have the "free will" we human beings experience with our conscious choices. There is no experience of meaning in a computer's actions - it's all determined digitally, to the last binarily encoded instruction.
This is as true as it was in the 1960s with 'Eliza'. The level of mimicry has advanced exponentially, but it is still only mimicry.
While the algorithmic models try to emulate the human organic cognitive processes as much as possible, I feel an inorganic imitation will never be more than imitation. Many neuroscientists argue that A.I is barely equivalent to the cognitive capability of a cockroach.
I remember William Gibson describing the Internet as "there is no there there". Apparently this was taken from Gertrude Stein describing her hometown of Oakland California.
Whether the functioning of the brain somehow uses quantum phenomena is long-argued, and the pixie-dust-ish theories in favor of that have been reputably attacked in recent years.
Frederico Faggin (for example) and those who have studied quantum physics in this last century and a half are hardly disreputable scientists or intellectuals. You have a lot to learn.
Yeah, it’s those fries laced with Formaldehyde, lol. I live across the street from a Mikey D’s, and I know that that ain’t real food but boy oh boy, early in the morning when they’re firing up the grill, the smell of those “fries” SMH.. so yeah, there’s that.
I remember when these deep fakes started in the current president's first term. It was a problem then and it's a problem now. Bots discount real videos of the genocide and other issues as AI. So, it's dangerous from that angle, too. That limit is being tested everyday. AI has more disadvantages than it has advantages.
""It’s causing people to become divorced from their own humanity in weirder and weirder ways""
Here's a summary of the book "Future Shock" (written back in 1970, by Alvin/Heidi Toffler)... and ironically, it's an AI summary...
Future Shock is a 1970 book by Alvin and Heidi Toffler that argues rapid technological and social change can cause psychological stress and disorientation, a condition they call "future shock". The book explores how this acceleration of change impacts individuals, families, and society, and suggests that people's ability to cope with such rapid shifts is being overwhelmed, leading to a state of societal "adaptational breakdown" if not managed effectively.
Caitlin writes that “people won’t feel like they can find the connection they’re craving in any of the areas that are dominated by artificial intelligence, and they’re going to go looking for it elsewhere. Maybe they’ll start going looking for it in places where there are physical people in physical bodies they can touch and make eye contact with, who they know for a fact are real people with real feelings and hopes and dreams like themselves.”
Well - just wait for the transhumanist era to kick in. Then even physical contact will make it impossible to discern if thoughts and perceptions (your own or the others) are artificial or human.
Thank you Caitlin for taking on a difficult topic. My two cents tells me that the only thing that could save humanity is that humanity overwhelmingly believes that there's only one true morality - a morality founded on the scientific fact that all we humans are the same thing. We are the only extant human species and there's no significant difference among any of us that could justify one group to assert that "we are superior to all others." I call it "The Fundamental Human Principle." Any morality that purports to be above this most basic truth is a false morality. There are many false moralities in the world and the groups that profess such lies are destroying not only our human species, but also the precious ecosystems that Mother Earth has gifted us. Those ecosystems are disappearing now, and many of us humans are also disappearing. The reasons behind such destruction is not only AI and the criminal classes of morality that have taken over world governments, powerful lobbies that bribe our governments and brainwash our people, and many other ways some humans have found to satisfy their selfish desires. Good luck with your most important alerts to urge us all to share our common humanity.
Indeed, we have a fundamental HUMAN RIGHT to remain human if we choose. Why is this fundamental right being denied us? Without this right, we are not free.
AI is the excuse that corporations use to layoff workers, who under the "blame yourself for your misfortune" mindset of American society justifies the unequal status of rich vs poor. The privileged group in society will always find new ways to maintain their status to the detriment of everyone else.
They always find a way to blame the workers don't they? The latest I've been hearing is you need to "build more value" for yourself if you find yourself unemployed. Which pushes the myth that we currently live in a meritocracy - that it is your own fault and not the fault of the economic system itself - despite the fact we have a multi-billionaire POTUS who is having Great Gatsby parties while millions of Americans find themselves food insecure - because apparently, 42 million Americans (40% whom are children) are all lazy "welfare queens" - or even better, America can't afford to feed its poor - despite the fact Elon Musk is about to become the first Trillionaire - and corporations and Wallstreet have been making record profits for decades.
It's ironic to think about how the Serfs in Feudalism in the past, were not shamed for their poverty because you were expected to remain in your "Serf" class all your life. But today's modern day Serfs - not only find themselves in poverty all their lives (working their lives away for the rich) - but are brainwashed into believing their poverty is the result of their own deficiencies or laziness - and has nothing to do with a putrid, rotten economic system they currently find themselves enslaved by - rigged for benefit of the (soon to be trillionaires) obscenely rich.
What does it say about us that we're ready and willing to shout accusations of plagiarism at a composer whom we believe has lifted bits of a melody or a chord progression from someone else's music, but have no compunction about AI being fed a composers entire library of work and putting out something trivial that sounds like it belongs in that library?
It says that the law has not caught up with technology yet (if ever), and that it is easier to sue people (and organizations) than AI models (and tools). Remember, AI LLM models are BUILT based on copyright VIOLATIONS (i.e. grabbing all the data in the world without permission or compensation) in the first place (i.e. foundational layer). If it was feasible/productive to sue AI models (and now agents) successfully, then that would change the game of AI fundamentally.
Though, there are problems with the copyright/patent industry too that are intertwined with the AI industry (which also applies to media before the advent of AI).
And, there is the 'regulation' issue. For example, in a country like China that has a higher embedded SURVEILLANCE culture (and methods) for data extraction and less regulation on copyrights and trademarks, data acquisition and ingestion is easier with a higher throughput of volume of data with relatively less friction than regimes/environments where there are more rules/regulations/safeguards/protections. And since DATA is the BLOOD of AI systems, quantity and quality of data are factors of paramount importance. Hence, you will find Govts. like those of Western countries (that have higher regulatory standards in general over countries like China) have an incentive to WEAKEN regulations/safeguards/protections so as to compete with countries like China for the availability and ease of AI blood (data).
"AI LLM models are BUILT based on copyright VIOLATIONS (i.e. grabbing all the data in the world without permission or compensation) in the first place".
Thanks for making that point. The entire situation pisses me off. The law's unlikely to catch up if it interferes too much with profitability, hence that weakening of regs as you point out.
Humans have been trying to cope with AI for thousands of years. Religion was the first organized
AI, with its crude urge to inflict cognitive distortion on fearful people.
You can see it at work today in the mind traps being built by the creeps and cults of the 21st century. As ever, skepticism is an evolutionary advantage. Your free mind is your ally.
I too also support the separation of religion from government.
But Skeptics today make the mistake of attempting to control all religion via incredulity. This is a problem because as Joseph Campbell once wrote:
"Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble."
Myths (religion) are commonly metaphorical and are often expressed in metaphorical terms. Metaphors are neither true nor false - are meant to be symbolic of something that cannot be expressed, or even pointed to in real terms (such as Love, or Semantic Meaning). Religious metaphors attempt to convey the truths that come with the unobservable interiority we all have first hand experience with - our own consciousness. A phenomena that by the way, has sometimes been denied to exist by hardcore Skeptics (Daniel Dennett comes to mind).
Consciousness itself has the peculiar nature of not being reducible to anything else - although many Skeptics continue to argue otherwise. But their argument is only based on their own assumptions regarding reality - assumptions based on the unproven philosophy of reductive materialism.
I have found even today's modern day Skeptics often fall into a kind of religious fanaticism, a religion founded on reductive materialism, and the absolutism associated with the power of their faith in the "magical particle" - the Skeptic's version of God. Many modern day Skeptics for example, believe soon we will achieve sentience with digital computers. That in essence - we are all just walking (deterministic) biological computers.
Note: I myself do not associate with any type of organized religion.
That attack on skepticism, that science itself is a form of religious belief, is as old as the Enlightenment. But if there are first principles that are foundational to science, those principles are at least coherent with reality, coalesced from long ages of observation and parsimonious explanation that seeks to control the fantastical tendencies of the human mind.
It is unfortunate how often science is conflated with the recent modern day fanaticism of the Skeptical movement - a movement based on Atheism and reductive materialism. Science itself is a methodology based on collected repeated observations, verifiable by logical deduction (or induction) given collected evidence, and theoretical conceptual models made up by human beings - theories that sometimes have frequently in science, turned out to not be veridical over time and are then replaced with more modern scientific theories. That is to say, science itself and its accumulated knowledge is hardly set in stone, or fool proof against human fallacies.
Your claim is that scientific principles are at least "coherent with reality" - but if anything, scientists have come to discover reality is far from simplistic and far, far away a different beast than what Isaac Newton first proposed in 1687.
This is also true regarding human consciousness, which is an area of scientific investigation that the Skeptic's society has been more involved in repressing - due to the Skeptic Societies unchecked biases regarding their philosophical view of reality being strictly materialistic (mechanical and deterministic) as an absolute truth - ignoring some scientific work (over the last century) regarding non-locality , such as quantum entanglement, and non-determinism - given decades now of scientific confirmation of Bell's Inequalities. Not to mention the mountains of scientific work involving the investigation of Psi phenomena - which is completely discounted by Skeptics - like the church used to discount as a heresy the possibility that Earth was not the center of the Universe. Today's Skeptics are often little different from the old church bishop fanatics that burned Bruno at the stake.
Disagree, I think modern skepticism is largely consistent with scientific principles. Atheism is a sober expression of scientific parsimony. The Four Horsemen were bullshit, I’ll grant you that, because they were unfortunately influenced by racism (except maybe Dennett).
“Reality isn’t simple”, and the fact that scientific understanding of the world evolves, aren’t refutations of the principles science generally agrees on.
Quantum effects like non-locality are often introduced by proponents as a type of “woo”. Such people haven’t offered or proven lucid explanations of how the phenomena actually influence brain processes, much less in a way that are subordinate to a personal control required for a self-directed consciousness.
You're free to disagree. Doesn't make your view any more correct. Neither does a simplistic, Newtonian view of reality. Modern day skepticism hides itself under the banner of "Science" whenever it suits its faith in reductive materialism, but quickly abandons Science when research does not coincide with that same Skeptic's faith. Similar to most other religious "faiths".
I’m sure some people who identify as skeptics do that, but I don’t see that in the main. Mostly, I don’t see evidence against materialism that is compelling in the first place. The overriding human tendency is just the opposite of what you’re describing - it is rather to try to construct a reality where human consciousness is in control, front and center. Because that is the comforting explanation of the world.
Quite curious. You are just about as adamant in your own beliefs as many religious fanatics. For example, the belief that from nothing at all, the "Big Bang" just happened ...
Or that consciousness is reducible to "magical particles" that just happened to begin feeling, with semantic qualia ...
Seems to always be left out of the Skeptic's bible of truth.
"That essay could have been written by a chatbot. "
There are now young people graduating in subjects requiring submission of essays in coursework whose skill is limited to generating prompts for an AI chatbot, rather than a detailed knowledge and analytical insight into the subject that is printed on their degree certificates.
The academic community know this, but they are powerless to stop it. Worse, I suspect many would not even want to: education is now a business, after all. And undergrads submitting ghost written essays is nothing new. What will now happen to those unfortunate postgrads, who for decades have been boosting their meagre income from working in supermarkets or fast-food providers, by selling their services writing essays to order?
I was just speaking with a good friend of mine who lives in NYC. She said that she was in the rain that fell on the city a few weeks ago. She said that she got so many phone calls asking if she was safe due to the flooding. She said that there was rain, but no flooding and that the video reports of cars being submerged in the streets in Brooklyn were AI generated. Nothing of the sort actually happened in Brooklyn.
I remember when the Mainstream Media started to use Twitter and other social media outlets for their news reports instead of what their own reporters would give them. It always felt strange to me that they would rely on tweets and other social media posts for their news. Granted, if they did use news reports from actual journalists fine, but slowly but surely, actual journalists were not the source of their news reports but rather random people on the Internet.
I am not of the mind that a random person on the internet is "not" a journalist and a very good one, but whatever happened to due diligence?
AI is definitely the monster in the machine. And with the advent of Erotica, folks can just have their "porn" addiction with the unyielding support of their new AI partner. Who needs a real person who may disagree with you, when you can have a very compliant virtual one.
In the beginning of the Israeli assault on Gaza after Oct. 7, 2023, there were several videos of the assault as an operation so as to make it look like there really wasn't a war at all. Just a simulation. For several months it had people believing that, and they also believed that Pallywood was more of what was happening. That is, the Palestinians were making it all up.
I just saw a video of Robert De Niro (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97r2rTLedAo) talking about why Mamdani won and how his win proves, A, B, and C. If you don't read the comment section you would believe he actually said the things posted in the video. YouTube has in the description that the video was generated by, blah, blah blah, but most folks don't take the time to read the video description. And even though, YouTube asks folks to report channels that do not specify that it is AI, these videos are up long enough to get people to think that they are real. The comment section under the Robert De Niro video were praising him as if is was actually him. That's the sad part and crazy part too. Can someone sue someone for misquoting them even if they have it in the description
"How this content was made: Altered or synthetic content: Sound or visuals were significantly edited or digitally generated."
They are so willing to pull us into the AI machine, that all bets are off. It's about who can win the AI battle to the top. You can even get an AI browser that does your shopping for you. So yeah, it will certainly make us dumber and dumber, lazier and lazier and more and more controllable.
When I first learned of an upcoming internet from my intelligence connected stepfather, I knew immediately how it would end. What I did not comprehend at the time (late 70s) was that it wouldn't be immediate how it would end up like this - we would be slowly sucked in by the initial freedom and ability to meet like minded people. Once Facebook came on the scene, our connections got centralized and controlled by influencers. We are now at the point I foresaw but it took us 30 years to get there. Strangely enough, in the late 70s I also foresaw a future Biden and Trump at the helm before everything went to shite! The original freedom on the internet was a great idea but once advertising and money took over, it was game over. Of course, I think it was the intention all along - but we have been like slow cooked lobsters in the meantime. Some of us are now wisely crawling out of the pot while there is still time.
"Modern civilization has made it possible to work from home and eat ten thousand calories a day without ever exercising or leaving your apartment, but most of us have the good sense not to do this because we know it would be very bad for our health."
Sadly, some of us who are already in poor health or disabled are still stuck in our homes. The internet was a way for us to find human connection - to find others like us, other outsiders. Making that harder to do brings back the isolation that the disabled, the neurodivergent, the chronically ill have only recently escaped.
“And maybe that would be a good thing. Humanity is becoming too disconnected and dissociated as it is. We could all benefit from digging our roots into reality a bit deeper.” — this is a good thing!
The more we unplug from the digital world—since we don’t know what’s real—the more we’ll be forced to interact with that in our lives that we KNOW are real (like real world connections and all)
hence also caitlin's magazine and the imminent return of the spirit duplicator and clandestine printing press.
Becoming like the Amish doesn't really work (IMO). It would be like trying to enforce celibacy on everyone because sex can lead to rape. Problem isn't sex itself - it's the misuse and abuse of sex. Technology is the same. Technology can lead to all sorts of good things (MRI machines for example have saved millions) but technology also can be misused and abused.
It’s about balance. Use technology where necessary, connect with the human race for humanity’s sake.
And in order to achieve that "balance" requires regulations and an affirmation that open governments can play a viable role. Handing the regulation of AI over to billionaires and their corporations is a recipe for disaster.
are there some sites, like substack, that try to ensure that ai generated articles do not appear on substack (or whereever)?
Susan T, there are many substacks that have AI generated articles. Substack has no policy against (or for) AI generated content.
Here is some more info ->
(1) The Rise of AI in Substack: Balancing Innovation and Authenticity (https://techcontinues.com/the-rise-of-ai-in-substack-balancing-innovation-and-authenticity/)
(2) 1 in 10 Top Substack Authors Use A.I. to Create Content: Report (https://observer.com/2024/11/report-popular-substack-authors-use-ai/)
(3) https://on.substack.com/p/the-substack-ai-report
thanks for that info
I don’t have any hard evidence, but there is a lot of circumstantial evidence that a significant percentage of the trolls on Substack are chatbots.
The name "AI" is unfortunate. We used to mostly refer to this kind of deceptive activity as "photoshop." Lying is lying, no matter what you call it. How about we stop calling this stuff "intelligence?" So far, it's making me angry, not dumber, but I suppose that day will come soon enough.
You are conflating AI technologies with 'select' uses of the technology. AI can be used in medical diagnosis, helping people with disabilities learn, create new medicines (protein folding), doing boring 'drudge work' and time-consuming simple manual tasks (that can be automated so as to free people to focus on things that they want to spend more time on), and so much more.
AI (just like computers, etc.) are tools that can be used for good and bad, for positive intentions/outcomes and negative intentions/outcomes, to save time and to waste time, to connect us and to alienate us, to empower us and to rob us of our agency.
HOW we use the technology is up to us (in most scenarios, not all). Are we responsible users? Are we emotionally (and cognitively) mature enough to understand the risks and use the technology wisely? Will Govts./organizations help or hinder with positive uses (for humans and the planet) of the technology?
Everything is in flux currently, with MANY more questions than answers...
I agree. AI is a tool, it has its good points and bad points. Simply because there are increasing numbers of knife assaults does not mean everyone who uses a knife is a threat ( the jury is still out on Gordon Ramsay). There is an excellent book on the use and misuse of technology - "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman.
As Theodore Sturgeon said "90% of anything is shit because 90% of everything is shit" We simply have to commit to separate the good from the bad.
Good point. AI is just deterministic computer algorithms that have no capacity to reflect upon themselves, or make wholistic judgements like human beings can do naturally (AGI, despite what they say, is far, far from becoming a reality). AI will never, ever be capable of a single feeling or sensation like what we humans experience with our internal consciousness.
AI is a symbolic, exterior machination that will never become the interior semantic space of consciousness. Because consciousness itself is a type of phenomena that has the peculiar nature of not being reducible to anything else.
An excellent book I would recommend on this topic is "Irreducible", by the amazing Frederico Faggin.
All good points. Back in the 80's, a proposed definition of artificial intelligence was a black box experiment in which a human interacted with the black box. If the human could not tell the black box was not human, then we had artificial intelligence. Note that a black box candidate, under this definition, could be "intelligent" to one human and not to another. Similar to how if a professional magician goes to a magic show and observes a really well executed stunt. The current definition of AI is no definition at all; if it seems sophisticated or internally complex, the trend is to call it AI. This is what Jerry Weinberg used to call "name magic." It exists because we invoke it by a name. Belief systems develop around that. It's all smoke and mirrors.
To be fair, the jury is still very much out on whether the human mind itself is deterministic or not.
Well this is my opinion of course. But it is also my opinion that it is only out on the jury for those who still cling to the old model of Newtonian physics. We now know, since Heisenberg and Planck, and the refutation of Einstein's PDR (i.e. his Hidden Variables argument) and confirmation in spades of Bell's Inequalities (for the last half century of modern scientific experiments) - that the philosophical argument regarding Determinism are now pretty much settled, at least in modern physics.
Which has opened up a more modern approach to human consciousness based on "Holevo's Theorem" and the "No-cloning Theorem" in quantum physics.
It is true reductive materialists have been pursuing vigorously an explanation of consciousness based on some kind of elusive "Emergence" concept - which there has yet to be any kind of substantial or even reasonable scientific explanation or definition for. And it is also quite clear now that electro-chemical reactions by themselves, no matter how complex an electrical circuit may be (or is artificially constructed) - can then become self-aware or produce semantic qualia that is the hallmark of consciousness. Science does have an immense amount of knowledge regarding the electromagnetic spectrum, and knows a great deal about the properties of chemical reactions - none of which have led to a working (proveable) scientific theory of consciousness itself. In fact, modern science is still completely in the dark when it comes to abiogenesis, despite over a century and a half of scientific effort.
when I read people describing A.I. as thinking or thinking like a person, I like to refer them to John Searle's Chinese Room argument.
it is very evolved pattern matching, but like some cognitive scientists who favor an evolutionary biology perspective, I believe without having experience of a physical world, Computer cognition ( I really hate the term "Artificial Intelligence") can be nothing but a phantasm-like imitation of Human cognition.
There is no interiority to computer cognition. Anyone who has worked with computers could tell you this. There is no there, there - that duplicates the self awareness, and semantic qualia we experience as human beings.
A.I. is extremely capable at doing mechanical things - and following human coded algorithms automatically. But computers are not able to see the "big picture" we humans see, understand (comprehend) the big picture - or even have the "free will" we human beings experience with our conscious choices. There is no experience of meaning in a computer's actions - it's all determined digitally, to the last binarily encoded instruction.
This is as true as it was in the 1960s with 'Eliza'. The level of mimicry has advanced exponentially, but it is still only mimicry.
While the algorithmic models try to emulate the human organic cognitive processes as much as possible, I feel an inorganic imitation will never be more than imitation. Many neuroscientists argue that A.I is barely equivalent to the cognitive capability of a cockroach.
I remember William Gibson describing the Internet as "there is no there there". Apparently this was taken from Gertrude Stein describing her hometown of Oakland California.
Whether the functioning of the brain somehow uses quantum phenomena is long-argued, and the pixie-dust-ish theories in favor of that have been reputably attacked in recent years.
Frederico Faggin (for example) and those who have studied quantum physics in this last century and a half are hardly disreputable scientists or intellectuals. You have a lot to learn.
I definitely look at AI more negatively than I look at McDonald’s . . .
I see no good in McDonald's...
Yeah, it’s those fries laced with Formaldehyde, lol. I live across the street from a Mikey D’s, and I know that that ain’t real food but boy oh boy, early in the morning when they’re firing up the grill, the smell of those “fries” SMH.. so yeah, there’s that.
Soon there will be little difference. AI taking the orders, AI preparing the orders.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilsahota/2024/03/05/ai-in-the-fast-lane-revolutionizing-fast-food-through-technology/
I remember when these deep fakes started in the current president's first term. It was a problem then and it's a problem now. Bots discount real videos of the genocide and other issues as AI. So, it's dangerous from that angle, too. That limit is being tested everyday. AI has more disadvantages than it has advantages.
""It’s causing people to become divorced from their own humanity in weirder and weirder ways""
Here's a summary of the book "Future Shock" (written back in 1970, by Alvin/Heidi Toffler)... and ironically, it's an AI summary...
Future Shock is a 1970 book by Alvin and Heidi Toffler that argues rapid technological and social change can cause psychological stress and disorientation, a condition they call "future shock". The book explores how this acceleration of change impacts individuals, families, and society, and suggests that people's ability to cope with such rapid shifts is being overwhelmed, leading to a state of societal "adaptational breakdown" if not managed effectively.
And here is the more disturbing aspect…
Caitlin writes that “people won’t feel like they can find the connection they’re craving in any of the areas that are dominated by artificial intelligence, and they’re going to go looking for it elsewhere. Maybe they’ll start going looking for it in places where there are physical people in physical bodies they can touch and make eye contact with, who they know for a fact are real people with real feelings and hopes and dreams like themselves.”
Well - just wait for the transhumanist era to kick in. Then even physical contact will make it impossible to discern if thoughts and perceptions (your own or the others) are artificial or human.
Thank you Caitlin for taking on a difficult topic. My two cents tells me that the only thing that could save humanity is that humanity overwhelmingly believes that there's only one true morality - a morality founded on the scientific fact that all we humans are the same thing. We are the only extant human species and there's no significant difference among any of us that could justify one group to assert that "we are superior to all others." I call it "The Fundamental Human Principle." Any morality that purports to be above this most basic truth is a false morality. There are many false moralities in the world and the groups that profess such lies are destroying not only our human species, but also the precious ecosystems that Mother Earth has gifted us. Those ecosystems are disappearing now, and many of us humans are also disappearing. The reasons behind such destruction is not only AI and the criminal classes of morality that have taken over world governments, powerful lobbies that bribe our governments and brainwash our people, and many other ways some humans have found to satisfy their selfish desires. Good luck with your most important alerts to urge us all to share our common humanity.
Indeed, we have a fundamental HUMAN RIGHT to remain human if we choose. Why is this fundamental right being denied us? Without this right, we are not free.
AI is the excuse that corporations use to layoff workers, who under the "blame yourself for your misfortune" mindset of American society justifies the unequal status of rich vs poor. The privileged group in society will always find new ways to maintain their status to the detriment of everyone else.
They always find a way to blame the workers don't they? The latest I've been hearing is you need to "build more value" for yourself if you find yourself unemployed. Which pushes the myth that we currently live in a meritocracy - that it is your own fault and not the fault of the economic system itself - despite the fact we have a multi-billionaire POTUS who is having Great Gatsby parties while millions of Americans find themselves food insecure - because apparently, 42 million Americans (40% whom are children) are all lazy "welfare queens" - or even better, America can't afford to feed its poor - despite the fact Elon Musk is about to become the first Trillionaire - and corporations and Wallstreet have been making record profits for decades.
It's ironic to think about how the Serfs in Feudalism in the past, were not shamed for their poverty because you were expected to remain in your "Serf" class all your life. But today's modern day Serfs - not only find themselves in poverty all their lives (working their lives away for the rich) - but are brainwashed into believing their poverty is the result of their own deficiencies or laziness - and has nothing to do with a putrid, rotten economic system they currently find themselves enslaved by - rigged for benefit of the (soon to be trillionaires) obscenely rich.
What does it say about us that we're ready and willing to shout accusations of plagiarism at a composer whom we believe has lifted bits of a melody or a chord progression from someone else's music, but have no compunction about AI being fed a composers entire library of work and putting out something trivial that sounds like it belongs in that library?
Just wondering.
It says that the law has not caught up with technology yet (if ever), and that it is easier to sue people (and organizations) than AI models (and tools). Remember, AI LLM models are BUILT based on copyright VIOLATIONS (i.e. grabbing all the data in the world without permission or compensation) in the first place (i.e. foundational layer). If it was feasible/productive to sue AI models (and now agents) successfully, then that would change the game of AI fundamentally.
Though, there are problems with the copyright/patent industry too that are intertwined with the AI industry (which also applies to media before the advent of AI).
And, there is the 'regulation' issue. For example, in a country like China that has a higher embedded SURVEILLANCE culture (and methods) for data extraction and less regulation on copyrights and trademarks, data acquisition and ingestion is easier with a higher throughput of volume of data with relatively less friction than regimes/environments where there are more rules/regulations/safeguards/protections. And since DATA is the BLOOD of AI systems, quantity and quality of data are factors of paramount importance. Hence, you will find Govts. like those of Western countries (that have higher regulatory standards in general over countries like China) have an incentive to WEAKEN regulations/safeguards/protections so as to compete with countries like China for the availability and ease of AI blood (data).
"AI LLM models are BUILT based on copyright VIOLATIONS (i.e. grabbing all the data in the world without permission or compensation) in the first place".
Thanks for making that point. The entire situation pisses me off. The law's unlikely to catch up if it interferes too much with profitability, hence that weakening of regs as you point out.
Humans have been trying to cope with AI for thousands of years. Religion was the first organized
AI, with its crude urge to inflict cognitive distortion on fearful people.
You can see it at work today in the mind traps being built by the creeps and cults of the 21st century. As ever, skepticism is an evolutionary advantage. Your free mind is your ally.
The problem with faith is the same problem with science and government: whom do we allow to control it?
I would say that we must separate religious faith from government. I would also prefer a considerable distance between religious faith and science.
We try to control government via democracy.
We try to control science via peer review.
We try to control religious faith via incredulity.
I too also support the separation of religion from government.
But Skeptics today make the mistake of attempting to control all religion via incredulity. This is a problem because as Joseph Campbell once wrote:
"Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble."
Myths (religion) are commonly metaphorical and are often expressed in metaphorical terms. Metaphors are neither true nor false - are meant to be symbolic of something that cannot be expressed, or even pointed to in real terms (such as Love, or Semantic Meaning). Religious metaphors attempt to convey the truths that come with the unobservable interiority we all have first hand experience with - our own consciousness. A phenomena that by the way, has sometimes been denied to exist by hardcore Skeptics (Daniel Dennett comes to mind).
Consciousness itself has the peculiar nature of not being reducible to anything else - although many Skeptics continue to argue otherwise. But their argument is only based on their own assumptions regarding reality - assumptions based on the unproven philosophy of reductive materialism.
I have found even today's modern day Skeptics often fall into a kind of religious fanaticism, a religion founded on reductive materialism, and the absolutism associated with the power of their faith in the "magical particle" - the Skeptic's version of God. Many modern day Skeptics for example, believe soon we will achieve sentience with digital computers. That in essence - we are all just walking (deterministic) biological computers.
Note: I myself do not associate with any type of organized religion.
That attack on skepticism, that science itself is a form of religious belief, is as old as the Enlightenment. But if there are first principles that are foundational to science, those principles are at least coherent with reality, coalesced from long ages of observation and parsimonious explanation that seeks to control the fantastical tendencies of the human mind.
It is unfortunate how often science is conflated with the recent modern day fanaticism of the Skeptical movement - a movement based on Atheism and reductive materialism. Science itself is a methodology based on collected repeated observations, verifiable by logical deduction (or induction) given collected evidence, and theoretical conceptual models made up by human beings - theories that sometimes have frequently in science, turned out to not be veridical over time and are then replaced with more modern scientific theories. That is to say, science itself and its accumulated knowledge is hardly set in stone, or fool proof against human fallacies.
Your claim is that scientific principles are at least "coherent with reality" - but if anything, scientists have come to discover reality is far from simplistic and far, far away a different beast than what Isaac Newton first proposed in 1687.
This is also true regarding human consciousness, which is an area of scientific investigation that the Skeptic's society has been more involved in repressing - due to the Skeptic Societies unchecked biases regarding their philosophical view of reality being strictly materialistic (mechanical and deterministic) as an absolute truth - ignoring some scientific work (over the last century) regarding non-locality , such as quantum entanglement, and non-determinism - given decades now of scientific confirmation of Bell's Inequalities. Not to mention the mountains of scientific work involving the investigation of Psi phenomena - which is completely discounted by Skeptics - like the church used to discount as a heresy the possibility that Earth was not the center of the Universe. Today's Skeptics are often little different from the old church bishop fanatics that burned Bruno at the stake.
Disagree, I think modern skepticism is largely consistent with scientific principles. Atheism is a sober expression of scientific parsimony. The Four Horsemen were bullshit, I’ll grant you that, because they were unfortunately influenced by racism (except maybe Dennett).
“Reality isn’t simple”, and the fact that scientific understanding of the world evolves, aren’t refutations of the principles science generally agrees on.
Quantum effects like non-locality are often introduced by proponents as a type of “woo”. Such people haven’t offered or proven lucid explanations of how the phenomena actually influence brain processes, much less in a way that are subordinate to a personal control required for a self-directed consciousness.
You're free to disagree. Doesn't make your view any more correct. Neither does a simplistic, Newtonian view of reality. Modern day skepticism hides itself under the banner of "Science" whenever it suits its faith in reductive materialism, but quickly abandons Science when research does not coincide with that same Skeptic's faith. Similar to most other religious "faiths".
I’m sure some people who identify as skeptics do that, but I don’t see that in the main. Mostly, I don’t see evidence against materialism that is compelling in the first place. The overriding human tendency is just the opposite of what you’re describing - it is rather to try to construct a reality where human consciousness is in control, front and center. Because that is the comforting explanation of the world.
None of my meager material possession has the slightest divine property
None of them claim me as their divine offspring.
None of my few material possession arrived on Earth via virgin birth.
None of them asks me to eat their body or drink their blood or wear a funny hat.
Your so called "magical particle' has never demanded my faith. In fact it seem utterly indifferent to my existence, rather like the abrahamic gods.
Your disassociation with any type of organized religion seems incomplete.
Quite curious. You are just about as adamant in your own beliefs as many religious fanatics. For example, the belief that from nothing at all, the "Big Bang" just happened ...
Or that consciousness is reducible to "magical particles" that just happened to begin feeling, with semantic qualia ...
Seems to always be left out of the Skeptic's bible of truth.
"That essay could have been written by a chatbot. "
There are now young people graduating in subjects requiring submission of essays in coursework whose skill is limited to generating prompts for an AI chatbot, rather than a detailed knowledge and analytical insight into the subject that is printed on their degree certificates.
The academic community know this, but they are powerless to stop it. Worse, I suspect many would not even want to: education is now a business, after all. And undergrads submitting ghost written essays is nothing new. What will now happen to those unfortunate postgrads, who for decades have been boosting their meagre income from working in supermarkets or fast-food providers, by selling their services writing essays to order?
I was just speaking with a good friend of mine who lives in NYC. She said that she was in the rain that fell on the city a few weeks ago. She said that she got so many phone calls asking if she was safe due to the flooding. She said that there was rain, but no flooding and that the video reports of cars being submerged in the streets in Brooklyn were AI generated. Nothing of the sort actually happened in Brooklyn.
I remember when the Mainstream Media started to use Twitter and other social media outlets for their news reports instead of what their own reporters would give them. It always felt strange to me that they would rely on tweets and other social media posts for their news. Granted, if they did use news reports from actual journalists fine, but slowly but surely, actual journalists were not the source of their news reports but rather random people on the Internet.
I am not of the mind that a random person on the internet is "not" a journalist and a very good one, but whatever happened to due diligence?
AI is definitely the monster in the machine. And with the advent of Erotica, folks can just have their "porn" addiction with the unyielding support of their new AI partner. Who needs a real person who may disagree with you, when you can have a very compliant virtual one.
In the beginning of the Israeli assault on Gaza after Oct. 7, 2023, there were several videos of the assault as an operation so as to make it look like there really wasn't a war at all. Just a simulation. For several months it had people believing that, and they also believed that Pallywood was more of what was happening. That is, the Palestinians were making it all up.
I just saw a video of Robert De Niro (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97r2rTLedAo) talking about why Mamdani won and how his win proves, A, B, and C. If you don't read the comment section you would believe he actually said the things posted in the video. YouTube has in the description that the video was generated by, blah, blah blah, but most folks don't take the time to read the video description. And even though, YouTube asks folks to report channels that do not specify that it is AI, these videos are up long enough to get people to think that they are real. The comment section under the Robert De Niro video were praising him as if is was actually him. That's the sad part and crazy part too. Can someone sue someone for misquoting them even if they have it in the description
"How this content was made: Altered or synthetic content: Sound or visuals were significantly edited or digitally generated."
Welcome to the Wild, Wild West!
"Currently, there is no comprehensive federal legislation or regulations in the US that regulate the development of AI or specifically prohibit or restrict their use" https://www.whitecase.com/insight-our-thinking/ai-watch-global-regulatory-tracker-united-states
They are so willing to pull us into the AI machine, that all bets are off. It's about who can win the AI battle to the top. You can even get an AI browser that does your shopping for you. So yeah, it will certainly make us dumber and dumber, lazier and lazier and more and more controllable.
Hi Nana
The best way to disconnect from AI is to avoid websites that employ it.
I have neither a Facebook nor X account.
I will continue to connect with real, actual human beings such as Caitlin. AI is not unavoidable.
I think it might be about three years too late to be noticing this!
The advent of the World Wide Web began making us dumber at the turn of the century, AI is a natural evolution of the process.
When I first learned of an upcoming internet from my intelligence connected stepfather, I knew immediately how it would end. What I did not comprehend at the time (late 70s) was that it wouldn't be immediate how it would end up like this - we would be slowly sucked in by the initial freedom and ability to meet like minded people. Once Facebook came on the scene, our connections got centralized and controlled by influencers. We are now at the point I foresaw but it took us 30 years to get there. Strangely enough, in the late 70s I also foresaw a future Biden and Trump at the helm before everything went to shite! The original freedom on the internet was a great idea but once advertising and money took over, it was game over. Of course, I think it was the intention all along - but we have been like slow cooked lobsters in the meantime. Some of us are now wisely crawling out of the pot while there is still time.
"Modern civilization has made it possible to work from home and eat ten thousand calories a day without ever exercising or leaving your apartment, but most of us have the good sense not to do this because we know it would be very bad for our health."
Sadly, some of us who are already in poor health or disabled are still stuck in our homes. The internet was a way for us to find human connection - to find others like us, other outsiders. Making that harder to do brings back the isolation that the disabled, the neurodivergent, the chronically ill have only recently escaped.
Our 8-year-old granddaughter's school pictures came back this week, and they look nothing like her.
Looks like a celeb child who's already had work done.
AI-enhanced photos done without parental consent.
It's criminal.