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I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy

naomibashkansky.com

161–170 of 233 posts

Re: I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy

#161
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see legit use cases where people simply can't communicate in any physical way. People with locked-in syndrome, etc. But, obviously those only make up a small number of people. Strapping a mind-reading machine onto some detainee is probably the more likely case.

It’s fairly common for gifted people to struggle to communicate when they’ve made a multi-step inference in their heads. Whether this technology actually allows them to express themselves at the speed of (excited, fully focused) thought or not, I can see how the possibility of achieving that is exciting.

Sounds like a lot more work than just teaching communication skills.

Re: I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the text-to-thought direction feels less sci-fi, and combining both would amount to kind of telepathy. But sure, you're right. Reading is not a deterministic mapping of text to thoughts. Apart from the trouble of defining what a thought is, independent from the person who thinks it. Me thinking of grabbing a mug of coffee is a different thought from you doing the same... defining "thought" pulls in a whole jung…

how is whatever “thought to text” or “text to thought” are different from writing and reading?

In the case of "thought to text", it's clearly the context, and the intent.

When I write something, I deliberately curate my thoughts in order to convey an idea, often heavily depending on the context. Context encompasses the whole slice of the world that is connected to my individual life, who I want to address, and what I want to convey.

As a simpler counterexample: it's possible to write down lies, deceptively. The definition of a lie means that I know better than what I say.

So, "honest thought" != "fact":

where does this take us?

People who lie not only try to deceive others about facts, the core of most lies is deceiving about intent.

I used the word "idea" here, and I think it is nothing more than a rephrasing of Platonic ideas, but I ought to be careful, because we are more than two thousand years in the future from there.

Re: I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy

#163

This seems strictly worse than speech to text as input to AI? I cannot comprehend the output from AI fast enough for the speed difference between a verbal and thought response to matter. Not to mention the privacy nightmare of logging my raw thoughts in a corporate environment and potentially routing them to an LLM provider.

Most people get quite tired when talking for long periods. You can train that over a long period, but putting on a headset would certainly be more convenient.

Re: I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy

#164
post #113
post #80

> The AI is no longer “other” > My AI is a natural extension of me. It feels like a sixth sense and another limb. I wonder about a problem, feel as though I’m literally surfing the web, see glimpses of the websites, get flashes of intuition about the problem, and ultimately derive the answer. We call this AI psychosis.

This just confuses me so much. They know the definition of what "self" means, is it just broken because this is the first time they can interact with another seemingly complex system without feeling exploited or manipulated? Have they never cooperated with another person with a mutual goal? Not that LLMs would ever be on that level.

Seems to me that empathy hijacking turns LLMs into a kind of mental cordyceps.

Re: I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy

#165
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Help me understand... If one uses AI for anything but coding, or purely utilitarian purposes, they are psychotic? This is not intended to be provocative. I am asking sincerely. I have a lot of AI sessions, that I value enough to have reviewed multiple times, over months. And indeed, I explored much that I never would have without the AI, and enjoyed it. Even appreciated it. The bulk of my saved material is research,…

“meaning” emerges from a mental process. That mental process can consume things which were built to convey meaning (e.g. a novel) or were not (a waterfall). Just because an AI bot says things that are meaningful, that doesn’t mean you need to assume it is intentional, sentient, or intelligent. It could vomit out a random Rorschach test and if you found meaning for yourself, you can still understand it was random. I t…

Exactly. From my arts background, I'm not scared of LLMs as a replacement for human art because anything good that LLMs produce exist somewhere between "found art" and mechanically-produced art, like photography. In either case, there is a huge amount of work done by the clankers, but it has absolutely no human meaning until humans assign it meaning.

This applies to math discoveries as well. The Jacobian conjecture was always invalid, only our human understanding of it has changed thanks to human inquiry and validation, despite LLMs doing the hard work.

I feel like we are in that narrow window of time when humans grapple with a new technology by personifying it before we realize it is just another tool humans have created to amplify human capabilities.

Re: I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy

#166

> 2027 — A morning at Conduit > I put a band around my head, and open my laptop at Conduit. It’s 9 am. My device pairs with my laptop over Bluetooth. I open, without loss of generality, Codex. At least we are reassured that short-range networking protocols will be invariant under the apocalypse.

Good to know I'll still have the reassurance of a 9:30 standup even though AI is reading my thoughts.

Re: I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy

#167

> My prediction: In a couple years, the main way we'll talk with our AIs is with our thoughts. They will not be a super-smart automated intern or coworker that you desperately try to keep up with. They will be a natural, joyful extension of you. “A couple years” Not “a few years” — “joyful extension” — that’s an optimistic prediction in two ways…

..."on Mars in a self-driving Tesla."

Re: I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy

#168

> 2027 — A morning at Conduit > I put a band around my head, and open my laptop at Conduit. It’s 9 am. My device pairs with my laptop over Bluetooth. I open, without loss of generality, Codex. At least we are reassured that short-range networking protocols will be invariant under the apocalypse.

> My device pairs with my laptop over Bluetooth

Sounds magical

Re: I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy

#169

I feel like people are focusing on the wrong thing here. He starts off at 2027, where he’ll have a headband that can read his thoughts. That’s in 4-16 months. Correct me if I’m wrong, but last I checked we‘re quite far from being able to read people’s thought from a headband. Do these clowns actually forget that part?

> Do these clowns actually forget that part?

No, they are aware. You and I are not the audience for this post. People with capital to invest are the intended audience.

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