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

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331–340 of 548 posts

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

#332
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’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…

For anyone who wants to try out something like this there is a free iPhone app you can download and speak to. It is very convincing. https://callannie.ai/

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

#333

'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.

It's more of an open question. While we cannot use the scientific method to evaluate truth and even less so prove it in the mathematical sense with pure abstract reasoning without any wolrdly evidence, there could still be truths (in a weak sense of the word), at least for humans. Because as humans our morals are primarily based on our feelings/instincts/neurochemsitry/etc and those are highly similar (and of course there are exceptions and deviations such as psychopaths) across the world. Depending on our terminal goal as a civilization or society if humans really wanted to we could try and build some "axioms" of morals and build up other political and cultural truths from there.

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

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is actually going to be a huge next step of the self help industry... let's face it, beside getting your life in order, it largely is focused on building connections (friends/dating, etc). A multi-modal AI can easily critique your body language, voice tonality, choice of words, etc, and give you tips on how to be more charismatic.

Why do we need to keep changing who we are? Why can't we just be who we are and people learn to be more accepting of how others are? This sounds immensely boring, shifting everyone to use the same/similar body language, tonality, word choice, etc. Maybe I'm strange, but I must prefer the diversity of people as they are.

I’m all for expressing yourself socially but we do need to speak a common language to some extent otherwise those social interactions will quickly breakdown and never recur. If you want to create and maintain friendships you have to put in work to meet the other people where they’re at.

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

#335
post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having AI friends will be equivalent to consuming fast food instead of healthy home cooked meals growing up A person who is starving will do better with fast food than with no food at all. It's far from ideal, but for some people this will make their lives marginally more tolerable.

This analogy is not even wrong. Yes, if someone was suffering starvation I'd give them whatever food was available, but that is not a situation in which we find ourselves ever – it does not occur, nor does the analogous situation occur.

I absolutely does occur and we are an increasingly lonely society to the point it is a serious health concern. There are people with no meaningful social contact and for one reason or another the inability to get it.

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

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Lots of people have told me this in real life about their pets, and specifically why pets are better to have around than kids or family.

Pets are intelligent enough to show emotions, allow simple interactions, and occasionally be entertaining and goofy.

They also run around and are very pleasant to stroke, which is not true of LLMs.

We all know what's going to happen. The content on CIVITAI shows where this will go. Combine it with animation and some personalised responses and many people will find it irresistible.

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

#337

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…

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

#338
Humans spent thousands of years in a pre-truth world believing all sorts of crazy things, and many of those societies produced great things and had people living normal lives. It's only been the last 100 years or so that people's perception of reality has been anywhere close to accurate. And even then, most people believe plenty of things that are false. So basically people and civilization are going to muddle along as they always have. Deepfakes, etc. will make some things worse, they'll probable have some unrecognized upsides too. John Boyd used to say "People, ideas, machines. In that order." It was true about jets and its still true about modern technology.

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

#339

Counter point: sure they are. Humans are highly adaptable and like other changes to information availability in the past they will adapt. This is what societal norms and cultural memes are for. “Don’t believe everything you hear” “Don’t believe what you see on TV” “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” These are all ways that the human species uses memes and cultural norms to teach ourselves how not to f…

This is a hilariously naive take.

We, as humans, are well beyond being mentally ready for the internet and social media alone. Most of the key communication of the 20th Century was based on a tradition of duty and service in reporting and, generally, leadership. The Natzis of the 40s died not because the idea was 'wrong' (which it was) but because bad leadership and greed caused extinction. Before Poland, Europe was plenty happy letting Hitler be. Why was Hitler successful? Because he told people what they wanted to hear. You are better. We are better. We deserve more. It's their fault we are like this.

Self bias is the critical failure of the human mind. Tell someone that they deserve more and that they are better than others and they will believe you.

In a world where politicians and companies (same thing really) can use AI to collect your online persona and then fill your day with advertising designed just for you, telling you that you are right and it is 'them' who are wrong will work on nearly everyone. It already does. People watch news channels and follow influencers that make their feeds echo chambers, it drives extremism. How does a society tell you that you are wrong, that the other person is right?

Humanity and humankind made Hitler. Humanity and human kind will make tools that succeed at their goals to make others do what they want. We are already in freefall, this is a rocket booster on our back.

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

#340

A rough timeline of my list of "what will end humanity" candidates: 1990 -- nanotechnology 2005 -- rogue AI 2015 -- bio-weapons 2022 -- fake news/truth-indeterminability

the article is saying we're not ready for an ai information world, not that it will end humanity. also, all the candidates you've listed are valid we're just not there yet. some things change gradually until they change suddenly.
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