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Three Inverse Laws of AI

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Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#71

Post by myrmidon »

bonesss wrote: post #21
myrmidon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 F…

> 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?

Yes, yes and no: humans being knocked out or put to sleep involuntarily are not being murdered.

> 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

Thats why it is a hypotethical. There is zero reason to assume that a conscious machine would be built that way: Our machines don't do integer division by scribbling on paper, either.

> a meatspace neuro-plastic rewiring resulting in a cuddly puppy or person that barks “yes” aren’t the same.

If it quacks like a duck, how is different from it? If you assemble the dog brain atom by atom yourself, is the result then not conscious either?

You can take the "magic" escape hatch and claim that human consciousness is something metaphysical, completely decoupled from science/physics, but all the evidence points against that.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#72

Post by dijit »

miyoji wrote: 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…

> Asimov's laws of robotics are flawed too, of course.

Almost all of Asimovs writing about the three laws is written as a warning of sorts that language cannot properly capture intent.

He would be the very first person to say that they are flawed, that is the intent of them.

He uses robots and AI as the creatures that understand language but not intent, and, funnily enough that's exactly what LLMs do... how weird.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#73

Post by nyyp »

With regard to my personal use of LLMs, I strongly agree with this framing. But to each point:

Anthropomorphism: As we are all aware, providers are incentivized to post-train anthropomorphic behavior in their models - it increases engagement. My regret is that instructing a model at prompt time to "reduce all niceties and speak plainly" probably reduces overall task efficacy since we are leaving their training space.

Deference: I view the trustworthiness of LLMs the same as I view the trustworthiness of Wikipedia and my friends: good enough for non-critical information. Wikipedia has factual errors, and my friends' casual conversation certainly has more, but most of the time that doesn't matter. For critical things, peer-reviewed, authoritative, able-to-be-held-liable sources will not go away. Unlike above, providers are generally incentivized to improve this facet of their models, so this will get better over time.

Abdication of Responsibility: This is the one that bothers me most at work. More and more people are opening PRs whose abstractions were designed by Claude and not reasoned about further. Reviewing a PR often involves asking the LLM to "find PR feedback" and not reading the code. Arguments begin with "Claude suggested that...". This overall lack of ownership, I suspect, is leading to an increase in maintenance burden down the line as the LLM ultimately commits the wrong code for the wrong abstractions.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#74

Post by musebox35 »

Debating how not to use AI will not get anyone anywhere since negative framing almost never works with humans (it also does not work with llms). Let’s concentrate on how to build closed loop systems that verify the llm output, how to manage context, and how to build failsafes around agentic systems and then and only then we might start to make progress.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#75

Post by marcosdumay »

cobbzilla wrote: post #22
miyoji wrote: 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?

> Do you see any value whatsoever in promulgating safety guidelines for humans to use the tool without hurting themselves or others?

Are all the tool users required to train your safety guidelines and use it in a context that reminds them they are responsible for following them?

Because if no, then no the guidelines are useless and are just an excuse to push blame from the toolmakers to the users.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#76

Post by glenstein »

quectophoton wrote: post #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.

It's a great question, because I do think there are many cases that are neutral, or ones we're able to responsibly distinguish or even cases where it would be an appropriate and necessary form of empathy (I'm imagining some future sci-fi reality where we actually get conscious machines, so not something that exists right now).

But I think it's also at the root of disastrous failures to comprehend, like the quasi-psychosis of the Google engineer who "knows what they saw", the now infamous Kevin Roose article or, more recently, the pitifully sad Richard Dawkins claim that Claudia (sic) must be conscious, not because of any investigation of structure or function whatsoever, but because the text generation came with a pang of human familiarity he empathized with.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#77

Post by dijksterhuis »

goatlover wrote: post #34
dijksterhuis wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 focusse…

I don't think that really helps. If you believe rocks are conscious, then does extracting minerals resources cause them pain? Do plants suffer when we pick their fruits and eat them? I don't see any behavioral or physical reason to think those things have conscious states. As for what consciousness is, it's pretty simple. You're sensations of color, sound, etc in perception, dreams, imagination, etc. The reason to di…

you’ve misunderstood.

everything is consciousness. not everything has consciousness.

very different

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#79

Post by _vertigo »

miyoji wrote: 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…

The article makes practical suggestions; you do not. This is just hand-wringing, abdication. Practically speaking this mentality will get us nowhere.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#80

Post by atleastoptimal »

dijit wrote: post #72
miyoji wrote: 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…

> Asimov's laws of robotics are flawed too, of course. Almost all of Asimovs writing about the three laws is written as a warning of sorts that language cannot properly capture intent. He would be the very first person to say that they are flawed, that is the intent of them. He uses robots and AI as the creatures that understand language but not intent, and, funnily enough that's exactly what LLMs do... how weird.

LLM's now can capture intent. I think the issue now is that the full landscape of human values never resolves cleanly when mapped from the things we state in writing as being human values.

Asimov tried to capture this too, as in, if a robot was tasked with "always protect human life", would it necessarily avoid killing at all costs? What if killing someone would save the lives of 2 others? The infinite array of micro-trolly problems that dot the ethical landscape of actions tractable (and intractable) to literate humans makes a full-consistent accounting of human values impossible, thus could never be expected from a robot with full satisfaction.

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