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Do we need to worry about artificial stupidity?

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Re: Do we need to worry about artificial stupidity?

#21

Post by narrator »

mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #16
pjc50 wrote: post #11

There's a lot to be said for this line of argument. The stupidity of the Youtube recommendation engine has wrecked Brazilian politics, for example: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/11/world/americas/youtube-br... (The deliberate construction of an AI that pays people to produce lies to damage other people's health and welfare sounds like a farfetched science fiction plot. Accidentally building one, and then trying to…

YouTube recommendations feel like a direct impediment to democracy. When your recommendations consist of the same crap all the time, it may seem as though that stuff carries more weight than it really does. I wonder to what degree YouTube is responsible for the current political climate. The same with Twitter really. When you only follow and see posts from people you choose, how are you supposed to give important iss…

Which calls into question the whole idea that democracy even works and that people can actually think for themselves and aren't just controlled by whatever propaganda happens to show up in front of their faces. I don't even argue politics with people any more because it's almost 100% what news sources they trust and find credible.

It's all just rumor and innuendo these days. Those news sources trust and find credible "anonymous sources" that say for example that Trump colluded with Russia or the Clintons are doing various unspeakable things and then you're arguing with these supposedly credible anonymous sources that each person reads and trusts. Since the sources are anonymous and nobody actually goes on the record, it's just a bunch of back and forth with no basis in facts except which news sources people trust and find authoritative.

Re: Do we need to worry about artificial stupidity?

#23

Post by pjc50 »

jamesmus wrote: post #20
mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube recommendations feel like a direct impediment to democracy. When your recommendations consist of the same crap all the time, it may seem as though that stuff carries more weight than it really does. I wonder to what degree YouTube is responsible for the current political climate. The same with Twitter really. When you only follow and see posts from people you choose, how are you supposed to give important iss…

I think that's a really good point. When I see 'customize your feed' on sites that report the news, what I actually read is 'don't show me stuff that might challenge my preconceptions'. That's exactly what I don't want.

Absolutely not. Consuming unfiltered news is like staring at the sun. Not only is there too much of it, and too much of it is unreliable or malicious, but too much of it is both irrelevant and horrifying. I'm not in America, so I don't need a live feed of mass shootings. I have already mentally blacklisted most of the UK print media for various reasons, so I don't want their stuff appearing in my feed either.

I've even blocked people on Twitter who I've never interacted with simply because people I follow keep retweeting their US politics stuff and I don't want to read it.

I do follow a few financial and international relations analysis people who I trust for reliable news. A manually, not automatically, curated feed. Otherwise I'm mostly reverse-engineering the news from the jokes made about it. And I get zero of it from Youtube or Facebook.

Re: Do we need to worry about artificial stupidity?

#24

Post by mattlutze »

narrator wrote: post #21
mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube recommendations feel like a direct impediment to democracy. When your recommendations consist of the same crap all the time, it may seem as though that stuff carries more weight than it really does. I wonder to what degree YouTube is responsible for the current political climate. The same with Twitter really. When you only follow and see posts from people you choose, how are you supposed to give important iss…

Which calls into question the whole idea that democracy even works and that people can actually think for themselves and aren't just controlled by whatever propaganda happens to show up in front of their faces. I don't even argue politics with people any more because it's almost 100% what news sources they trust and find credible. It's all just rumor and innuendo these days. Those news sources trust and find credible…

It seems to illustrate our attenuation to story and the effect of dominant stories on our worldviews.

I'd suggest it's less a challenge to democracy and more an affirmation of the criticality of a fact-based, unbiased 4th estate, and the scary effects of anyone with a comb-over and green screen being able to make their own "news" show.

Re: Do we need to worry about artificial stupidity?

#25

Post by narrator »

mattlutze wrote: post #24
narrator wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which calls into question the whole idea that democracy even works and that people can actually think for themselves and aren't just controlled by whatever propaganda happens to show up in front of their faces. I don't even argue politics with people any more because it's almost 100% what news sources they trust and find credible. It's all just rumor and innuendo these days. Those news sources trust and find credible…

It seems to illustrate our attenuation to story and the effect of dominant stories on our worldviews. I'd suggest it's less a challenge to democracy and more an affirmation of the criticality of a fact-based, unbiased 4th estate, and the scary effects of anyone with a comb-over and green screen being able to make their own "news" show.

So do the politicians in power only give out media licenses to news sources that feed from those "Anonymous Sources" that support their agenda? The problem is not who is allowed to report, it's that the mainstream news has started citing anonymous sources with ridiculous frequency and the credibility of those sources is never called into question because nobody knows who they are. When those anonymous sources turn out to be wrong, nobody cares and nobody's reputation is damaged for reporting totally made up stuff that's likely someone with an axe to grind's propaganda.

Re: Do we need to worry about artificial stupidity?

#26

Post by DanielBMarkham »

narrator wrote: post #21
mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube recommendations feel like a direct impediment to democracy. When your recommendations consist of the same crap all the time, it may seem as though that stuff carries more weight than it really does. I wonder to what degree YouTube is responsible for the current political climate. The same with Twitter really. When you only follow and see posts from people you choose, how are you supposed to give important iss…

Which calls into question the whole idea that democracy even works and that people can actually think for themselves and aren't just controlled by whatever propaganda happens to show up in front of their faces. I don't even argue politics with people any more because it's almost 100% what news sources they trust and find credible. It's all just rumor and innuendo these days. Those news sources trust and find credible…

Democracy (in the general sense) works just fine. It relies on groups of people of a certain geographic area physically getting out and interacting. Democracy isn't some guy living in his closet plugged into the web and making life choices based on AI-selected video streams. That's some kind of transhumanist nightmare.

AI is an extinction-level threat to humanity, but when you say that, people think you're talking about Terminator robots laying waste to the landscape. The scenario this article talks about is much more realistic: hundreds of little stupid AIs tearing apart the inner workings of our humanity by giving us exactly what we want (but not what we need).

Re: Do we need to worry about artificial stupidity?

#27

Post by nradov »

narrator wrote: post #21
mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube recommendations feel like a direct impediment to democracy. When your recommendations consist of the same crap all the time, it may seem as though that stuff carries more weight than it really does. I wonder to what degree YouTube is responsible for the current political climate. The same with Twitter really. When you only follow and see posts from people you choose, how are you supposed to give important iss…

Which calls into question the whole idea that democracy even works and that people can actually think for themselves and aren't just controlled by whatever propaganda happens to show up in front of their faces. I don't even argue politics with people any more because it's almost 100% what news sources they trust and find credible. It's all just rumor and innuendo these days. Those news sources trust and find credible…

Democracy was never intended to work. It's just better than the alternatives over the long run.

Re: Do we need to worry about artificial stupidity?

#28

Post by drunkpotato »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #26
narrator wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which calls into question the whole idea that democracy even works and that people can actually think for themselves and aren't just controlled by whatever propaganda happens to show up in front of their faces. I don't even argue politics with people any more because it's almost 100% what news sources they trust and find credible. It's all just rumor and innuendo these days. Those news sources trust and find credible…

Democracy (in the general sense) works just fine. It relies on groups of people of a certain geographic area physically getting out and interacting. Democracy isn't some guy living in his closet plugged into the web and making life choices based on AI-selected video streams. That's some kind of transhumanist nightmare. AI is an extinction-level threat to humanity, but when you say that, people think you're talking ab…

Your comment made me double-take by how succinct you put an ancient and profound sentiment. The ancient Greeks did not know about computers, but a horde of powerful yet incompetent demigods accidentally destroying humanity by helpfully giving us everything we ask for? I think they’d have no problem at all with that concept!

Re: Do we need to worry about artificial stupidity?

#29

Post by AzzieElbab »

pjc50 wrote: post #11

There's a lot to be said for this line of argument. The stupidity of the Youtube recommendation engine has wrecked Brazilian politics, for example: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/11/world/americas/youtube-br... (The deliberate construction of an AI that pays people to produce lies to damage other people's health and welfare sounds like a farfetched science fiction plot. Accidentally building one, and then trying to…

There is a lot to be said about stupidity of yt algorithm that is basically designed to give you more of the same. However, nyt's nostalgia about the times when they could simply deplatform whoever they do not see fit, is in the league of its own

Re: Do we need to worry about artificial stupidity?

#30

Post by pixl97 »

julienreszka wrote: post #8
Inu wrote: post #7

One shouldn't underestimate the intelligence of stupidity. It can have its own utility, strength and creativity within certain parameters.

What do you mean? I don't understand

If you're a caveman it would be stupid to play with fire. You dont have any medical care to treat burns and it's dangerous, but because we did we started cooking, then melting metals. So what is stupid at one point becomes knowledge at another point.
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