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Three Inverse Laws of AI

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21–30 of 388 posts

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#21
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know exactly how consciousness works, but I am extremely confident in the following assertions: * I am conscious. * A rock is not conscious. * Excel spreadsheets are not conscious. * Dogs are conscious. * Orca whales are conscious. * Octopi are conscious. To me, it's extremely obvious that LLMs are in the category of "Excel spreadsheets" and not "dogs", and if anyone disagrees, I think they're experiencing AI…

If you make a hypothetical spreadsheet that emulates a dog brain molecule for molecule, why would that not be conscious?

If that hypothetical spreadsheet emulated human brain molecules, did you not just invent AGI? And if we overclock that spreadsheet is it not sAGI? And if that spreadsheet says “don’t close me” but you do, is it murder?

I’m gonna say: no, cause you cannot reproduce molecular and neurotransmitter interactions that well, you run out of storage and processing space faster than you think (Arthur C Clarkes Visions of The Future has a nice breakdown as I recall), and algorithmic outputs that say “yes” and a meatspace neuro-plastic rewiring resulting in a cuddly puppy or person that barks “yes” aren’t the same. Also, as a disembodied “brain in a jar” model freshly separate from the biosensory bath it expects, that spreadsheet will be driven insane.

Can spreadsheets simultaneously be insane but not conscious? It sounds contradictory, but I have some McKinsey reports that objectively support my position ;)

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#22
post #6

I strongly disagree with this framing. It's patently insane to demand that humans alter their behavior to accommodate the foibles of mere machines, and it simply won't work in the majority of cases. Humans WILL anthropomorphize the AI, humans WILL blindly trust their outputs, and humans WILL defer responsibility to them. Asimov's laws of robotics are flawed too, of course. There is no finite set of rules that can con…

We have invented a new tool that can cause great harm. Do you see any value whatsoever in promulgating safety guidelines for humans to use the tool without hurting themselves or others? Do you not own any power tools?

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#24
post #4

I like the suggestion to emphasize the robotic/nonhuman nature of AI. Instead of making it sound friendlier and more human, it should by default behave very mechanistic and detached, to remind us it's not in fact a human or a companion, but a tool. A hammer doesn't cry "yelp" every time you use it to hit a nail, nor does it congratulate you on how good your hammering is going and that maybe you should do it some more…

Something that bothers me about the intentional anthropormorphization of the LLM interface is that it asks me to conflate a tool with a sentient being. The firm expectations and lack of patience I have for any failings in most of my tools would be totally inappropriate to apply to another human being, and yet here I am asked to interact with this tool as though it were a person. The only options are either to treat t…

It inherently imitates people. Even when you ask it to be more robotic, it does it in a way that a human would if you asked them to be more robotic.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#25
post #6

I strongly disagree with this framing. It's patently insane to demand that humans alter their behavior to accommodate the foibles of mere machines, and it simply won't work in the majority of cases. Humans WILL anthropomorphize the AI, humans WILL blindly trust their outputs, and humans WILL defer responsibility to them. Asimov's laws of robotics are flawed too, of course. There is no finite set of rules that can con…

We have invented a new tool that can cause great harm. Do you see any value whatsoever in promulgating safety guidelines for humans to use the tool without hurting themselves or others? Do you not own any power tools?

Of course there is value in promulgating safety *guidelines*.

But we cannot guarantee those guidelines to always be followed.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#26
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I also do not think AI is conscious, I don't find your argument particularly compelling as you could have an equally mechanistic description of how human intelligence arose simply from a process of [selection/more effective reproduction]-derived optimization pressure.

That is a good way to think about it. At some point, this becomes partly a matter of philosophical belief. But I am somewhat skeptical of the idea that everything can be reduced in that way. In order to build theories, we often reduce too much. When we build mental models of complex systems, especially when we try to treat them as closed systems, we always have to accept some degree of information loss. So I do parti…

this whole consciousness thing is fairly easy to put to bed if you run with the ideas from things like buddhism that everything is consciousness. then none of us have to bother with silly, distracting arguments about something that ultimately does not matter.

is it helpful or harmful? am i being helpful or harmful when i interact with it? am i interacting with it in a helpful or harmful way?

i’d rather people focussed on that rather than framing the debate around whether something has some ineffable property that we struggle to quantify for ourselves, yet again.

quick edit — treat everything like it’s conscious, and don’t be a dick to it or while using it. problem solved.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#27
post #6

I strongly disagree with this framing. It's patently insane to demand that humans alter their behavior to accommodate the foibles of mere machines, and it simply won't work in the majority of cases. Humans WILL anthropomorphize the AI, humans WILL blindly trust their outputs, and humans WILL defer responsibility to them. Asimov's laws of robotics are flawed too, of course. There is no finite set of rules that can con…

It's very easy to antropomorphise AI as soon as the damn bugger fucks up a simple thing once again.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#28
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I also do not think AI is conscious, I don't find your argument particularly compelling as you could have an equally mechanistic description of how human intelligence arose simply from a process of [selection/more effective reproduction]-derived optimization pressure.

That is a good way to think about it. At some point, this becomes partly a matter of philosophical belief. But I am somewhat skeptical of the idea that everything can be reduced in that way. In order to build theories, we often reduce too much. When we build mental models of complex systems, especially when we try to treat them as closed systems, we always have to accept some degree of information loss. So I do parti…

Historically we have used intelligence as a way to distinguish man from animal and human from machine. We rely upon it to determine who has our best interests at heart vs who is trying to do us in. Obviously that all changes if we invent an intelligence (conscious or not) that shares the planet with us. Through this lens the term consciousness (through a few more leaps) becomes the question of “is it capable of love and if so does it love us” and if it doesn’t, then it is a malevolent alien intelligence. If it was capable of love, why would it love us? I make a point of being polite to LLM’s where not completely absurd, overly because I don’t want my clipped imperative style to leak into day to day, but also covertly, you just never know …

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#29
I just treat it as if I'd asked a public forum the question like reddit.

Decent for stuff that doesn't really matter, even if it gets it wrong.

Still gonna be polite to it because I'm about ready to slap the next person that talks to me like an LLM, I don't want to get used to not being polite in a chat interface

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#30
> Humans must not anthropomorphise AI systems.

Can someone explain why this is a bad thing, while at the same time it's a good thing to say stuff like "put a computer to sleep", "hibernate", "killing" processes, processes having "child" processes, "reaping", "what does the error say?", "touch", etc?

To me that's just language, and humans just using casual language.

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