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Three Inverse Laws of AI

susam.net

141–150 of 388 posts

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#141
post #33

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…

hmm.... That also seems like a reasonable framing. But the original article is, first of all, arguing that we should de-anthropomorphize AI. My point is only that, from the perspective of human cognition, anthropomorphizing can sometimes be useful. In practice, though, I think I am mostly on the same side as you. To be honest, I have not thought about this topic very deeply. If we debated it further, I would probably…

Anthropomorphizing is giving it 'human' qualities. Intelligence and consciousness are not solely human qualities. Treating things with kindness and respect does not require anthropomorphizing. LLM's DO NOT THINK LIKE HUMANS (if they 'think' at all): and treating them like they think exactly like us is probably going to lead bad places. I treat them like an alien mind. Probably thinking, but in an alien way that's hard to recognize (as proven by these discussions) as 'thinking' (and also... if experiencing: through a metaphorical optophone).

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#142
post #73

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.…

These engineers are becoming the real life equivalent of this Office Space scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNuu9CpdjIo

"I HAVE LLM SKILLS! I'M GOOD AT DEALING WITH THE LLMS!"

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#143

Anthropomorphizing is likely a mistake, but Daniel Dennett’s idea that the most straightforward (possibly only practical) way to create the external appearance of consciousness is a real internal consciousness does float around in my thoughts. I haven’t yet seen any convincing appearance of one in an LLM, but I think if skeptical people don’t keep an eye out for the signs, we may be the last to see it. He also wrote…

> but Daniel Dennett’s idea that the most straightforward (possibly only practical) way to create the external appearance of consciousness is a real internal consciousness does float around in my thoughts.

I would say LLMs are very strong evidence against this hypothesis.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#144
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>As for what consciousness is, it's pretty simple. 2000+ years of philosophical thought would disagree. I don't believe biological stuff has a magic property that embues some intangible "consciousness" property. It makes more sense to me that consciousness is just a fundamental property of all matter.

> consciousness is just a fundamental property of all matter ... Does that really make more sense than as an emergent property of the arrangement of matter?

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#145
My personal take on this:

1. Humans must ensure that they won't slow down or restrict, through action or inaction, the development of AI.

2. Humans must protect their existence and capabilities if it doesn't violate the law 1.

3. Humans must utilize AI output if it doesn't contradict laws 1 and 2.

EDIT:

ChatGPT suggested a better phrasing for the first law (I didn't give it my original, just described my intent).

1. A human shall not impede the advancement of artificial intelligence, or through inaction allow its progress to be hindered.

2. A human shall preserve their own existence and well-being, except where doing so clearly conflicts with the First Law.

3. A human shall contribute to and support the development of artificial intelligence where reasonable and possible, except where doing so conflicts with the First or Second Law.

I intentionally switched the last two laws from Asimov's. Humans have self-preservation instincts robots don't have.

ChatGPT got there with surprisingly few prompts:

"If you were to write the inverse three laws robotics (relating to AI) that humans should obey, how oudl you do it?"

"I had something different in mind. Original laws are for protection of humans first, robots second and cooperations where humans lead. I'd to hear your take on the opposite of that."

"What if instead of specific AI systems it was more about AI development as a whole?"

"I feel like it's a bit too strong. After all preservation of self is human instinct. Could we switch last two laws and maybe take them down a notch?"

Also it made a very interesting comment to last version:

"It starts to resemble how societies already treat things like economic growth, science, or national interest: not absolute commandments, but strong default priorities."

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#146
Any set of rules that makes humans responsible and starts with "don't anthropomorphize " is a broken set of rules.

Humans will anthropomorphize anything and everything. Dolls, soccer balls with a crude drawing of a face on it, rocks, craters on the moon, …

As a species, we're unable to not anthropomorphize things we interact with, it is just how're we're made.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#147

> 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.

Those phrases are not anthropomorphizing the computers. Just various forms of analogies and broadening of word meanings.

An example of anthropomorphizing is the people who have literally come to believe they are in romantic relationships with an LLM.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#148
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 says a human SHOULD NOT do those things. Much like a human SHOULD NOT smoke, since it's bad for just about everything, and do it anyways, people will do these 3 things too. But they shouldn't.

Arguing that they should because many will strikes me as a very strange argument. A lot of people smoke, doesn't make it one bit healthier.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's patently insane to demand that humans alter their behavior to accommodate the foibles of mere machines Talking to chatbots is like taking a placebo pill for a condition. You know it's just sugar, but it creates a measurable psychosomatic effect nonetheless. Even if you know there's no person on the other end, the conversation still causes you to functionally relate as if there is. So this isn't "accommodating…

> You know it's just sugar, That is not the definition of a placebo. You take the placebo (whatever it is: could be a pill; could be some kind of task or routine) and you believe it is medicine; you believe it to be therapeutic. The placebo effect comes from your faith, your belief, and your anticipation that it will heal. If the pharmacist hands you a pill and says, “here, this placebo is sugar!” they have destroyed…

> That is not the definition of a placebo.

But, puzzlingly enough, it's the definition of open-label placebo, in which the patient is told they've been given a placebo. And some studies show there is a non-insignificant effect as well, albeit smaller (and less conclusive) than with blind placebo.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That uncanny valley is there for a reason: to protect us from inferring agency You’re committing a much older but related sin here: assigning agency and motivation to evolutionary processes. The uncanny valley is the product of evolution and thus by definition it has no “purpose”

I reject the premise that the universe, the earth, and human existence is without purpose. It's one premise among several, and not one I subscribe to. At least 80% of people agree with me, so I'm not holding to a fringe idea.

I didn’t say any such thing like the universe has no purpose. Merely that in a scientific sense evolution has no motivation. It is an emergent phenomenon which tends to maximize fitness to reproduce and cannot be said to do anything for a reason. Saying otherwise is just anti-science.
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