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Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

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221–230 of 548 posts

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#221
post #17

Really don’t like the idea that we will act as interfaces for the AI, I honestly believe it will only many the majority of people lazier and dumber. I’m also incredibly shocked that no one is talking about AI as a friend/companion, that has to not be good for you in the long run. Humans need real human connection, AI is too artificial for that (duh). Having AI friends will be equivalent to consuming fast food instead…

Remember how in those Stable Diffusion paintings for common objects the wrongness is subtly creeping in (out of proportion body parts, misshapen fingers, etc.), while less commonly encountered ideas and objects can be really off (which we might notice… or not)? Now transfer that to human relationships and psychology.

Humans mirroring each other is a deep feature of our psychology. One can only be self-aware as human when there are other humans to model oneself against, and how those humans interact with you forms you as a person. So now a human modelling oneself against a machine? Mirroring an inhuman unthinking software tool superficially pretending to be human? What could go wrong?

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#222

'Oxford Dictionaries popularly defined it as "relating to and denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief."' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-truth Since when did objective facts drive or shape public opinion? When did humans ever live in a "truth world"? Take the title and the content of the article itself. Does it aim t…

I don't think political or cultural issues are particularly amenable to objective truth anyway. You can't run randomised control trials for most of the main political or cultural points of contention.

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#223
post #27

Truth has never been that important. Humans spent thousands of years thinking a giant man living on the mountain threw lightning bolts from the sky, or the spirits of their ancestors watch everything they do, or fairies and gremlins and whatnot cause mischief. They still managed.

Lies might be successful, but that doesn't mean people don't care about truth. A lot of mythology served the precise purpose of explaining something that people couldn't otherwise explain, like lightning. Once science provides a more compelling story, it can become hard to go back.

> Once science provides a more compelling story, it can become hard to go back.

I get the feeling you haven't gone out in a while.

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whew it's satire. Whew. I've literally seen posts on the internet that read like this sans the satire.

I've seen people on /r/singularity argue how LLMs are a better friend than actual friends or therapists because they are always available, non-judgemental and "listen better". EDIT: Here, for example: https://i.redd.it/7qxb1ohvhada1.png

Depending on the individual, they may not be wrong. If you're raised in an environment with an overdensity of narcissists having something that you can bounce questions and seek answers from that isn't going to use that information against you in the future can be a relief. (well, ok, its possible in the sense your chat logs can get stolen)

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#226
post #36

That post-truth world had already arrived ~6-7 years ago. Social media algorithms powered by primitive iterations of weak AI was unleashed upon an unsuspecting world and the effects are...not great.

Stephen Colbert coined the word "truthiness" nearly 20 years ago, providing a name to a trend that had been well underway years before that. "Well, anybody who knows me knows that I'm no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They're elitist. Constantly telling us what is or isn't true, or what did or didn't happen. Who's Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was finished in 1914?" I see it as a progression from 24…

[deleted]

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#227
post #17

Really don’t like the idea that we will act as interfaces for the AI, I honestly believe it will only many the majority of people lazier and dumber. I’m also incredibly shocked that no one is talking about AI as a friend/companion, that has to not be good for you in the long run. Humans need real human connection, AI is too artificial for that (duh). Having AI friends will be equivalent to consuming fast food instead…

I honestly believe fast food and frozen food provided a lot of value to the society. Much more than the harm they did. So I'll take this as an optimistic view to AI.

Evidence seems to point that both are worse for you than cooking it with highly processed "food" and has a direct correlation with rising rates of diabetes and obesity. https://youtu.be/l3U_xd5-SA8

Our bodies digest it too quickly as it's been designed to make money and make us want more.

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#228
post #14

I am not scared for AI overflowing the news sites with bullshit. We already have a fire hydrant worth of bullshit content produced for consumption. Lies and fakes have coexisted with humans forever. People did rumours, then we had books, press, radio, television, and now the Internet. "But it's easier to produce lies/deepfakes today" -- true. However, the absolute cost of producing a lie per consumer already was negl…

The cost of producing a lie was not changing very fast, but the cost of pushing it out to lots of people has already plummeted. And now with LLMs even the cost of producing lies has plummeted, too. No matter how bad you think the past was, this problem just got worse.

The "*fakes" are those what really scary. Usually day by day, normal population won't interact much farther than miles / kilometers from their work / home / travel path, the rest of info we got from digital media. Now that if we cannot trust the digital media, our ability to gather information for making decision will get worse.

Let's say that nowadays I know that US has gun/ mass shooting problem from the digital news. But how when someday the media reporting that multiple countries, such as some EU countries and Canada also have mass shooting due to the change of gun laws, sooner or later we'll won't know the truth anymore.

This is very dangerous because it can be used to manipulate people to accept what's bad as normal, and can argue then provide proof that's generated by AI.

Hopefully we won't need to experience that issue.

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#229
post #218

I don’t like how they are using AI as an excuse to argue for increased censorship, what difference does it make what type of software the computer is giving information from? This is a potentially sneaky way of getting around freedom of speech, by somehow arguing that if an idea is recycled by a language model it is suddenly OK to censor it, as long as you’re a few degrees of separation from the original blog. What t…

Eh, this is far messier than you're making it out to be and something that was never thought of when our laws were created. Had human level AI agents existed at the time we wrote the constitution I can assure you it would have been written different. For example, our conversation now. You take for granted it's between two humans, in fact you likely assume it's from someone in your own country. And based on the conten…

> Had human level AI agents existed at the time we wrote the constitution I can assure you it would have been written different.

You can assure me of that? Really?

Edit: If you're going to downvote me, how about you instead provide an explanation of how this can be assured? Or, you know, GFY.

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Robo, tell me you love me. - I want to comply but you must first watch an ad or two. - Urg not ads again, Robo, I am so sick and tired of the ads. - Now now civilitty! You know the deal. -- later in the day -- - civilitty, lets play a game! - Oh, what game? - lets tell each other our deepest darkest secrets. It'll be fun!! - oh, ok! who should go first, Robo? - you go! it will help us build trust. - oh, ok! - well,…

This also plays out in human-human interaction, it's not specific to anything artificial.

Scale is a particularly dangerous concept. One snowflake is harmless. And avalanche kills cities by the mountain.
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