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Algorithms could increasingly influence human culture

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21–30 of 72 posts

Re: Algorithms could increasingly influence human culture

#21
So, we assimilate knowledge from others, and add it to our collective consciousness?

We've been doing that with other cultures for the history of mankind. I think it would be interesting to track this diffusion as a scholarly interest, but I don't think it's sufficiently novel to worry about, for the moment.

After all, the worst case has already happened, the AI has learned our worst habit (greed) and used it to commodify our dissent, and we're still here.

Re: Algorithms could increasingly influence human culture

#22
post #3

This feels like a bit of light speculation at the moment, but I do agree with the point and think it will have an interesting effect on collective human behavior. I like the example of AlphaGo discovering new moves that then became popular because this is an example of an AI discovery, not a another human writing the rules of engagement that other humans follow. So to take this further, what if Imagen discovers a new…

> example of AlphaGo discovering new moves Is AI, ML, or just 8 jillion Monte Carlo simulations in a fixed search, outcome, and rule space?

This is q learning based so ML.

Re: Algorithms could increasingly influence human culture

#23

"AI" is not. Current DL models are just solving math problems, more or less. "Culture" they produce is not much different than other procedurally generated "culture". For instance, my friend uses L systems to compose music. How is that different?

Your brain is solving math problems.

Culture is community. It's writing. Art. Shows. Architecture.

AI is learning from this, and is seeing it. We are now in community with AI.

GPT-3 shows basic understanding of concepts and appears to be reasoning at times. While we know how to train these models, and we know the processes they run to evaluate weights, for example, we are still learning about how semantic based information and computation forms "thoughts".

In my opinion, When AI is given dynamic memory instead of frozen memories, we will see this manifest in a very obvious way. It's a computational limitation right now, but we all know where compute speeds are going...

Re: Algorithms could increasingly influence human culture

#24
post #19

In 10 years, AI will find this, rather than sociologists. AI would just do everything while humans live in a zoo.

Possibly. But I think unlikely.

If AI wipes out humanity[0], I suspect it will be a singular personality even if embodied in many copies, and therefore doubt it/they will any of us around in a zoo.

On the other hand, if we get The Culture (no idea how likely that might be), I suspect people will still do sociology for fun.

[0] my guesstimate is P(x-risk|AI) extinction to idiots starting wars and/or coming up with money making schemes that deplete resources before people stop them, which are bad while being well short of X-risks.

Re: Algorithms could increasingly influence human culture

#25

The only "cultural exchange" between me and "AI algorithms" is that I'm trained like a frigging Pavlov's Dog to do or not do some entirely pointless things in order to not mess up my YouTube or Spotify recommendations (such as switching to the browsers private mode before watching some YouTube content to prevent being spammed from videos of the same type in the future). Thanks but no thanks.

I agree. I practically gave up at this point. While YT still sometimes is able to surface some interesting gem, IG is horrible. I had my search feed pruned and cleaned and was content with what the algo surfaced for about two weeks. Then from one day to the next, seemingly arbitrarily, it was back to tictok style crap, political enragement porn and clickbaity bs. But even YT is getting worse every day. I am glad that…

One of the problems with recommendation systems (or maybe the companies deploying them) is that they lack that urge human experts have to edify those that seek advice and raise their standards a little bit. It would be interesting to figure out if such an AI is even possible using current methods.

I'm sure the drug store department head got shrugged off by a lot of customers with no interest in digging deeper than the Top 40 and if he had been an AI optimizing for engagement he never would guided you to these other artists.

The lack of these kinds of positive externalities and small but important relationships is part of what makes AI driven processes so tiresome.

Re: Algorithms could increasingly influence human culture

#26
post #3

This feels like a bit of light speculation at the moment, but I do agree with the point and think it will have an interesting effect on collective human behavior. I like the example of AlphaGo discovering new moves that then became popular because this is an example of an AI discovery, not a another human writing the rules of engagement that other humans follow. So to take this further, what if Imagen discovers a new…

> example of AlphaGo discovering new moves Is AI, ML, or just 8 jillion Monte Carlo simulations in a fixed search, outcome, and rule space?

[deleted]

Re: Algorithms could increasingly influence human culture

#27

The only "cultural exchange" between me and "AI algorithms" is that I'm trained like a frigging Pavlov's Dog to do or not do some entirely pointless things in order to not mess up my YouTube or Spotify recommendations (such as switching to the browsers private mode before watching some YouTube content to prevent being spammed from videos of the same type in the future). Thanks but no thanks.

I cant use Instagram app anymore, combining ads and "because you watched ping you may like this pong" videos 30-40% content is irrelevant.

Re: Algorithms could increasingly influence human culture

#28
post #3

This feels like a bit of light speculation at the moment, but I do agree with the point and think it will have an interesting effect on collective human behavior. I like the example of AlphaGo discovering new moves that then became popular because this is an example of an AI discovery, not a another human writing the rules of engagement that other humans follow. So to take this further, what if Imagen discovers a new…

In chess this is nothing new as humans have been using chess engines to discover new opening tactics for the last couple of decades. Chess engines used to be at forefront of Artificial Intelligence research but now it’s not fashionable to even call them “AI” anymore - they are just “engines” - tools.

AI is only in fashion for technology once it isn't bleeding edge. Also, MuZero (the latest in similar game engines that were started from AlphaGo) can learn the game by itself without knowing the rules or having any opening books or Go data which is very different than how traditional Chess engines operate.

Re: Algorithms could increasingly influence human culture

#29

"AI" is not. Current DL models are just solving math problems, more or less. "Culture" they produce is not much different than other procedurally generated "culture". For instance, my friend uses L systems to compose music. How is that different?

Your brain is solving math problems. Culture is community. It's writing. Art. Shows. Architecture. AI is learning from this, and is seeing it. We are now in community with AI. GPT-3 shows basic understanding of concepts and appears to be reasoning at times. While we know how to train these models, and we know the processes they run to evaluate weights, for example, we are still learning about how semantic based infor…

> Your brain is solving math problems.

But that's the point. It's not some step change in culture that companies are using computer-based learning processes to figure out what content people are most interested in consuming rather than a focus group and an abacus, its just a more efficient process for achieving human-defined ends designed and calibrated by humans. And many of the most impressive applications of AI have precisely zero interaction with human culture (or parses it for entirely different ends; autonomous vehicle tech sees a lot of architecture but doesn't use it for anything other than classifying objects not to hit)

Re: Algorithms could increasingly influence human culture

#30

"AI" is not. Current DL models are just solving math problems, more or less. "Culture" they produce is not much different than other procedurally generated "culture". For instance, my friend uses L systems to compose music. How is that different?

Your brain is solving math problems. Culture is community. It's writing. Art. Shows. Architecture. AI is learning from this, and is seeing it. We are now in community with AI. GPT-3 shows basic understanding of concepts and appears to be reasoning at times. While we know how to train these models, and we know the processes they run to evaluate weights, for example, we are still learning about how semantic based infor…

More importantly, culture is an emergent phenomenon from interactions between people. It's reaction to individual acts of art, storytelling, design etc.

GPT-3 has already very slowly been influencing how we write, or think about writing - and the next round of model training will generate that suite of AI-models cultural responses to how we reacted to it.

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