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They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

theguardian.com

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Re: They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

#11

Post by anonzzzies »

slumberlust wrote: post #8
anonzzzies wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Start... We are already very far advanced as far as I can see. You wouldn't know if you hang with university students; they seem, at least the ones I employ/talk to, far more knowledgeable than the young me was, however, when I talk to other young people, they don't want to and are not very good at processing textual information. They need to have it spoken and in a very information sparse format. It's somewhat depre…

Name a generation that didn't think the youth 'lost it.'

Yep, like I said; I hope it's just me. That's fine too. It's just actively annoying that people just refuse to read stuff. It's very wasteful timewise for me.

Re: They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

#12

Post by ryao »

regularjack wrote: post #6
ryao wrote: post #3

The article is drama piece that makes you go on a scavenger hunt for the Five Ws. I stopped reading as soon as I noticed the pattern. I would ask AI to summarize, but my enthusiasm for learning anything from this kind of article has waned dramatically over the years.

It's a stylistic choice, many people like reading this kind of piece. You don't have to read it. There's room on the web for different kinds of writing styles.

If I wanted to read a novel, I would read an actual novel. I actually read foreign novels for fun, so that is not hyperbole.

That said, this stylistic choice works for computer security related things (e.g. the spy genre of news). It feels like a waste of time everywhere else.

Re: They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

#13

Post by pevey »

trumbitta2 wrote: post #2

ChatGPT, please summarize in bullet points.

This is a non-fiction piece, not really a news story. So not everyone's cup of tea. Joan Didion style. I enjoyed it.

I would summarize it as not being about AI per se. It's nominally about "rationalism," or the inclination to boil everything down to mathematics to an extreme degree. The story points out a growing subculture of rationalist who have become quite radicalized.

For a community like HN, which (rightly, IMO) places high value on rational and critical thought, it can seem strange that there could be a degree at which that sort of thinking is harmful. But there are a lot of examples where taken to an extreme, it can allow people to "rationalize" all sorts of actions. And the article goes into detail about some of the pitfalls this small group fell into.

Re: They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

#14

Post by senectus1 »

alhadrad wrote: post #4
trumbitta2 wrote: post #2

ChatGPT, please summarize in bullet points.

This is the start of modern illiteracy.

I mean.. yeah, but.. I just fed this into grok and it did a fair job of summarising it (I know because I've done a fair bit of reading on the zizian nutters.)

Re: They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

#15

Post by abofh »

ryao wrote: post #12
regularjack wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a stylistic choice, many people like reading this kind of piece. You don't have to read it. There's room on the web for different kinds of writing styles.

If I wanted to read a novel, I would read an actual novel. I actually read foreign novels for fun, so that is not hyperbole. That said, this stylistic choice works for computer security related things (e.g. the spy genre of news). It feels like a waste of time everywhere else.

It was more about the, ya know, murder cult thing, than technology. It's an artifact of telling a story - which is different than relaying a 'classic' journalism piece where the 5W's are most important.

"Years before she became the peculiar central thread linking a double homicide in Pennsylvania, the fatal shooting of a federal agent in Vermont and the murder of an elderly landlord in California, a computer programmer bought a sailboat."

I wanted to keep reading, so I guess I was their audience - not everything has to be up to your personal standards to be worth while.

Re: They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

#16

Post by ryao »

dasil003 wrote: post #10
ryao wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such sentiments have been expressed so many times that I have lost track of all of the times variations on them have been expressed. I think it started with Socrates who claimed the written word would damage human recall. When nobody believed him and he became popular because of the written word, people inverted “literacy is bad” into “literacy is good”. In more recent times, I believe radio and TV were said to be th…

Maybe Socrates was correct? I certainly think Google has damaged my memory, or maybe just age, hard to say.

Who knows? The guy was not a really good teacher. His student Plato ignored the meaning of what he said about learning to write a book on it. A major point of the book was that reading the book was pointless because it was a form of sophism.

Before I am downvoted into oblivion, the above text is half joking and half serious. Socrates in Plato’s Republic really does make the case that formal training via methods intended to teach is pointless by comparing education to training horses. I made that point in my college philosophy class hoping the professor would skip it on the basis that it was a bad book (my thoughts on a book that suggested you could not learn its material by being lead to it - see the cave analogy). The professor then stopped the entire class to try to make sure everyone understood the point and then continued as if the material was not criticizing him.

Re: They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

#17

Post by tomaytotomato »

For a group that applies rationalism, they appear to have ended up committing very horrible and irrational acts.

The article could have done more to condemn this group and line of thinking.

Also the part of the story on Curtis Lind is both sad and impressive, that old man was built of true grit:

"As he bent to look, something hit him on the head and he blacked out. When he woke up, at least three of the Zizians were allegedly standing around him with knives.

“[T]he right side of my skull was shattered,” Lind later said. “And I was bleeding from numerous puncture wounds … The back of my neck had some severe cuts. Like somebody was trying to cut my head off.” His torso was impaled with a samurai sword.

Lind drew his gun, which was concealed in a pocket, and started shooting. He wounded Leatham and killed Borhanian. He stumbled away with the sword still in him. He survived, but lost an eye."

Re: They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

#18

Post by pevey »

pevey wrote: post #13
trumbitta2 wrote: post #2

ChatGPT, please summarize in bullet points.

This is a non-fiction piece, not really a news story. So not everyone's cup of tea. Joan Didion style. I enjoyed it. I would summarize it as not being about AI per se. It's nominally about "rationalism," or the inclination to boil everything down to mathematics to an extreme degree. The story points out a growing subculture of rationalist who have become quite radicalized. For a community like HN, which (rightly, IMO…

A side note about my perspective: I studied economics as an undergrad at a time when the Northwestern "pure rationalism" school of thought completely dominated. Some of the conclusions from purely mathematical models built high on dubious assumptions were ridiculous on their face. But anything outside that dogma was heresy and treated as such. Academics were shunned, careers ruined.

It was a few years later that "behavioral economics" began to make inroads. The moniker of "behavioral economics" itself was to distinguish it from "real economics." Alas (for the establishment), behavioral economics proved very popular, and the genie was out of the bottle. It turns out mathematic equations are not all-powerful when it comes to describing certain phenomena, especially when it comes to individual or collective human behavior.

Collective blind faith in models built on dubious assumptions is what gave us the mortgage crisis.

Re: They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

#19

Post by FrustratedMonky »

ryao wrote: post #9
alhadrad wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the start of modern illiteracy.

Such sentiments have been expressed so many times that I have lost track of all of the times variations on them have been expressed. I think it started with Socrates who claimed the written word would damage human recall. When nobody believed him and he became popular because of the written word, people inverted “literacy is bad” into “literacy is good”. In more recent times, I believe radio and TV were said to be th…

Yes. People forget that Charles Dickens was considered trash, pulp, un-intellectual. That people were reading such trash would lead to the downfall of civilization. Basically what everyone says today about whatever latest media type.

Re: They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

#20

Post by FrustratedMonky »

ryao wrote: post #12
regularjack wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a stylistic choice, many people like reading this kind of piece. You don't have to read it. There's room on the web for different kinds of writing styles.

If I wanted to read a novel, I would read an actual novel. I actually read foreign novels for fun, so that is not hyperbole. That said, this stylistic choice works for computer security related things (e.g. the spy genre of news). It feels like a waste of time everywhere else.

"If I wanted to read a novel, I would read an actual novel."

As parent mentioned. You do have a choice not to read novels, or to read novels. That doesn't make a novel bad because it is a novel.

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