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Philosophy Eats AI

sloanreview.mit.edu

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Re: Philosophy Eats AI

#11

Post by jdietrich »

Sleaker wrote: post #5

I'm confused on the premise that AI is eating software. What does that even mean and what does it look like? AI is software, no?

There are a whole bunch of software problems where "just prompt an LLM" is now a viable solution. Need to analyse some data? You could program a solution, or you could just feed it to ChatGPT with a prompt. Need to build a rough prototype for the front-end of a web app? Again, you could write it yourself, or you could just feed a sketch of the UI and a prompt to an LLM.

That might be a dead end, but a lot of people are betting a lot of money that we're just at the beginning of a very steep growth curve. It is now plausible that the future of software might not be discrete apps with bespoke interfaces, but vast general-purpose models that we interact with using natural language and unstructured data. Rather than being written in advance, software is extracted from the latent space of a model on a just-in-time basis.

Re: Philosophy Eats AI

#13

Post by exe34 »

TJSomething wrote: post #8
Terr_ wrote: post #2

> what counts as knowledge (epistemology), and how AI represents reality (ontology) also shape value creation. As a skeptic with only a few drums to beat, my quasi-philosophical complaint about LLMs: we have a rampant problem where humans confuse a character they perceive out of a text-document with a real-world author. In all these hyped-products, you are actually being given the "and then Mr. Robot said" lines from…

That's one of the things. Even in human-written fiction, the depths of any character you read about is pure smoke and mirrors. People regularly perceive fictional characters as if they are real people (and it's fun to do so), but it would be impossible for an author to simulate a complete human being in their head. It seems that LLMs operate a lot like I would in improv. In a scene, I might add, "This is the fifth ti…

> it would be impossible for an author to simulate a complete human being in their head.

unless it's a self-insert? or do you reckon even then it'll be a lofi simulation, because there real world input is absent and the physics/social aspect is still being simulated?

Re: Philosophy Eats AI

#14

Post by [deleted] »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #4

Philosophy eats AI because we're in the exploration phase of the s-curve and there's a whole bunch of VC money pumping into the space. When we switch to an extraction regime, we can expect a lot of these conversations to evaporate and replaced with, "what makes us the most money" regardless of philosophic implication.

[deleted]

Re: Philosophy Eats AI

#15

Post by polotics »

I strongly disagree with the article on at least one point: ontologies, as painstakingly hand-crafted jewels handed down from aforementioned philosophers, are the complete opposite of what LLM's are bottoming-up through their layers.

Re: Philosophy Eats AI

#16

Post by Hoasi »

Sleaker wrote: post #5

I'm confused on the premise that AI is eating software. What does that even mean and what does it look like? AI is software, no?

It is even less meaningful than "software is eating the world". But it sounds catchy, and people can remember it.

Re: Philosophy Eats AI

#17

Post by SequoiaHope »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #4

Philosophy eats AI because we're in the exploration phase of the s-curve and there's a whole bunch of VC money pumping into the space. When we switch to an extraction regime, we can expect a lot of these conversations to evaporate and replaced with, "what makes us the most money" regardless of philosophic implication.

If that ever comes to pass. This is not guaranteed.

Re: Philosophy Eats AI

#18

Post by scoofy »

I have multiple degrees in philosophy and I have no idea what this article is even trying to say.

If anyone has access to the full article, I’m interested, but it sounds like a lot of buzzwords and not a ton of substance.

The framing of ai through a philosophical lens is obviously interesting, but a lot of the problems addressed in the intro are pretty much irrelevant to the ai-ness of the information.

Re: Philosophy Eats AI

#20

Post by anxoo »

Terr_ wrote: post #2

> what counts as knowledge (epistemology), and how AI represents reality (ontology) also shape value creation. As a skeptic with only a few drums to beat, my quasi-philosophical complaint about LLMs: we have a rampant problem where humans confuse a character they perceive out of a text-document with a real-world author. In all these hyped-products, you are actually being given the "and then Mr. Robot said" lines from…

> In all these hyped-products, you are actually being given the "and then Mr. Robot said" lines from a kind of theater-script. This document grows as your contribution is inserted as "Mr. User says", plus whatever the LLM author calculates "fits next."

and we are creating such a document now, where "Terr_" plays a fictional character who is skeptical of LLM hype, and "anxoo" roleplays a character who is concerned about the level of AI capabilities.

you protest, "no, i'm a real person with real thoughts! the character is me! the AI 'character' is a a fiction created by an ungodly pile of data and linear algebra!" and i reply, "you are a fiction created by an ungodly mass of neuron activations and hormones and neurotransmitters".

i agree that we cannot know what an LLM is "really thinking", and when people say that the AIs have "learned how to [X]" or have "demonstrated deception" or whatever, there's an inevitable anthropomorphization. i agree that when people talk to chatGPT and it acts "friendly and helpful", that we don't really know whether the AI is friendly and helpful, or whether the "mind" inside is some utterly alien thing.

the point is, none of that matters. if it writes code, it writes code. if it's able to discover new scientific insights, or if it's able to replace the workforce, or if it's able to control and manipulate resources, those are all concrete things it will do in the real world. to assume that it will never get there because it's just playing a fancy language game is completely unwarranted overconfidence.

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