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

wired.com

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

#261

Post by mimd »

"Post-truth"? What a bloody insult to all the effort it currently takes to fight past all their "truth" to find truth. Makes me start to think it's a less than sincere. At least due to their new signaling marketing slogan to fans, I can now easily identify their lean and possible motive. Tricks ya know, to deal with "truth".

Complaining about google maps and navigation, is a really bad example to say over reliance on technology. What should we be navigating by stars? And most of their quotes aren't even really related to the complexities/strategies to identifying)/reexamining "truth" and dealing with all the unsavory if necessary actors. Larry Rosen is just trying to sell his pop novels to the masses. Michael Graziano's expertise is in cortex and motion, so I don't know what expertise he brings to the table though I suppose it's sincere. Michal Kosinski is at least sorta in the area, but also doesn't support their hypothesis beyond that it's going to have a major effect going forward.

Really, I shouldn't have given them a click.

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

#262

Post by k1t »

sircastor wrote: post #259

Humans are never "ready" for the next crazy technological advance. I'm fond of this concept that I heard a while back, that I'm probably going to butcher: If a technology comes out before you were born, or while you're very young, it's always existed. If it comes out when you're in your 20s, it's new and exciting. If it comes out after you're 35, it's scary and is a harbinger of ensuing disaster. We always manage to…

Pretty close:

"I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."

- Douglas Adams

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

#263

Post by chasd00 »

gonzo41 wrote: post #65
dale_glass wrote: post #7

I don't think we're mentally ready for social media, even. What something like Twitter can inflict on a person when it goes wrong is absolutely unprecedented, and we still haven't adapted to it. Think that for instance going to the cinema, watching a movie, walking out and venting to a friend "Boy, this one sucked. $ACTOR_NAME did a really bad job with this one" is a perfectly normal thing to do. But move that to Twi…

On social media, IMO, People have too much identity fusion with their online accounts. Including me. I think Karma points and all the clout people have over time creates an anchoring that is problematic. In life, if things get toxic, the smart move is to just leave, and avoid the conflict and the personalities driving it. But so much work by the Meta's of this world has been done to make people nest in their accounts…

the monetized platforms will fight tooth and nail to keep you in your same account. When you create a new one the profiling starts all over again and they have to build up your information to serve you ads. The longer you remain on a platform using the same account the easier it is to get you to click.

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

#264

Post by tehwebguy »

softbt wrote: 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…

> Really don’t like the idea that we will act as interfaces for the AI

When I use navigation on my phone while I drive somewhere it feels like I'm just acting as a human Zapier, mapping the phone's audio navigation API to the vehicle's steering API.

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

#265

Post by barathr »

belugacat wrote: post #258
rcktmrtn wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than interfaces. To quote McLuhan: "Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plant world, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve ever new forms. The machine world reciprocates man's love by expediting his wishes and desires, namely, in providing him with wealth." The AI thing has been jarring but it's nothing new. All part of the same process.

Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens : “Within a couple of millennia, humans in many parts of the world were doing little from dawn to dusk other than taking care of wheat plants. It wasn't easy. Wheat demanded a lot of them. Wheat didn't like rocks and pebbles, so Sapiens broke their backs clearing fields. Wheat didn't like sharing its space, water and nutrients with other plants, so men and women labored long days weeding un…

If you like this sort of thing, Pollan explored this before Harari in much more depth in The Botany of Desire.

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

#266

Post by jjoonathan »

csours wrote: post #212
thumbuddy wrote: post #57

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 mean, it's also real https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WSKKolgL2U https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replika

Yeah, but can we really call it an AI "revolution" until someone makes a door with a cheerful and sunny disposition that opens with pleasure and closes with the satisfaction of a job well done? Someone should get to work on those Genuine People Personalities!

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

#267

Post by ladberg »

hospitalJail wrote: post #255
ladberg wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are even people so confused about food prices that they make claims that fast food is cheaper than groceries. I live in an expensive part of NYC and have to go decently far out (by subway, I don't have a car) to find groceries that are cheaper than local fast food unless I want to eat mostly rice and beans. Add in the costs of my time to shop, transport groceries, cook, and clean, it's significantly cheaper t…

>Add in the costs of my time to shop, transport groceries, cook, and clean, it's significantly cheaper to eat out most of the time You can get overtime whenever you want? Because if you are salary, your after-work time pays 0$/hr. >unless I want to eat mostly rice and beans. Seems like you don't want to cook, and have justified it with time costs. Prepared food is not going to be cheaper than unprepared food.

I don't mean the cost of my time that work pays me, just how much money I'd personally pay to avoid doing something something I don't like (schlepping grocery bags on the subway, doing dishes).

In general cooking is the fun part and that's what makes it a treat, not the rest of it.

Some prepared food within walking distance most definitely is cheaper than all unprepared food within walking distance. It works out just because the places I can walk to for groceries are incredibly overpriced and the restaurants obviously don't source their food there.

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

#268

Post by uoaei »

aero-deck wrote: post #193
uoaei wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire thesis of TFA is that human psychological traits on societal scales are not prepared to handle an arena of discourse where that's true, that people will either be duped or completely check out of discourse per se, not limited to online social media. You hold the opposite position. Why?

Because there are actually multiple "arenas of discourse" and people will simply switch the "marketplace" they're using. It's technocratic hubris to think that there is just a single such arena and that all the others are illegitimate/dangerous.

No, it's a feature of the human mind that truth is considered objective independent of the lens used to acquire it. "Post-truth" sources in some arenas will be conflated with "real-truth" sources in others, leading to a blanket demotion of the perceived value and quality of truth. The whole argument from TFA is about human psychology, not about specific offerings of "marketplaces" where truth may be more or less maligned.

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

#269

Post by dinosaurdynasty »

HankB99 wrote: post #239
fendy3002 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that humans need to balance things out. Getting zero confrontation from interaction will be boring in the long term, or will make you fall into your flaws deeper and faster. This is usually the issue of authoritarian surrounded by yes men. On the other side, having too much confrontation will destroy your confidence, kill your motivation, blur your plan / vision with uncertainty, etc. It's more likely that…

Is there any reason an LLM could not be programmed to disagree? Perhaps the level of disagreeableness would be a tunable parameter and could be cranked up when in the mood for a fight or down when one one just wants to converse. Some randomness could keep it from getting too predictable.

Bing wasn't programmed to disagree but often did to hilarious effect.

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

#270

Post by optimalsolver »

saratogacx wrote: post #177
civilitty wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m working on a startup that’s training LLMs to be authentic so they can simulate human affection and it’s actually working really well! The key is humanity’s ability to pattern match: we’re actually pretty terrible at it. Our brains are so keen on finding patterns that they often spot them where none exist. Remember the face on Mars? It was just a pile of rocks. The same principle applies here. As long as the AI so…

Can you install it in those automated sliding doors we have in places like grocery stores?

Thank you, Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.
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