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Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

economist.com

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Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#281

Post by psalaun »

pibaker wrote: post #150
anjel wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In England, ca. 1500s common law established the legal precedent that if your cattle broke loose of its pen, wandered into your neighbor's field and trampled their garden, you were liable for the damage your cattle caused. Meanwhile, 500 years later Uber could disrupt the livery industry with VC cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless, and somehow that wasn't Uber's p…

> In England, ca. 1500s common law established the legal precedent that if your cattle broke loose of its pen, wandered into your neighbor's field and trampled their garden, you were liable for the damage your cattle caused. Ok. > Meanwhile, 500 years later Uber could disrupt the livery industry with VC cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless, and somehow that wasn't…

I'm not from the US, but if the NYC taxi system works like french one, entry on the market required buying an existing licence from a retiring driver for the price of a flat. Government should have forbidden Uber from operating in this market without any cost of entry (the cost could've been to end the regulation and pool money to compensate actors that were playing by the rules)

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#282

Post by aaron695 »

solid_fuel wrote: post #204
Self-Perfection wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am getting tired of hearing "next token predictor" from carbon-based facial expression predictors. You are saying this like an argument which allows somehow estimate upper bound of possible influence of these entities. And I do not see how this help to make predictions. It sounds to me like saying "but air is just molecules bobbing around". OK, that's true, but does it help calculate wing aerodynamic profile? Yup,…

> I am getting tired of hearing "next token predictor" from carbon-based facial expression predictors. That's not even a clever swipe, and it's tiring seeing such a knee-jerk reaction to a completely accurate description. LLMs are next token predictors. People are not. Humans have an inner world and subjective experience. Humans learn through their experiences, not just backprop. Token predictors are lesser, they are…

[dead]

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#283

Post by hackyhacky »

michaelsbradley wrote: post #249
hackyhacky wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Erroneous" is an opinion. Papal doctrine is the word of God until a subsequent pope says otherwise. Jean Gerson is entitled to his opinion, even if speaking that opinion made him a heretic.

> Papal doctrine is the word of God until a subsequent pope says otherwise No, that’s Hyperpapalism, which is an error. The Pope does not have the authority-power to transform error into truth, nor can he make “new truths” (of the Faith), whatever that might mean. He does have the solemn duty to faithfully hand on and explain the Apostolic Tradition. In an extra-ordinary act of his office, the Pope can, without error…

> No, that’s Hyperpapalism, which is an error.

> The Pope does not have the authority-power to transform error into truth,

The problem with your argument is that it is "left as an exercise for the reader" to determine what is actually true. If that were the case, then the Pope, as the representative of God on Earth, serves no purpose: everyone can individually determine what is true and what is an error. That does not agree historically with the role of the papacy.

If everyone has a right to their own interpretation of doctrine, what does the Pope do, and why should anyone listen to him?

Your position that absolute faith in the word of the pope is a fallacy is itself a self-supporting fallacy, which you hold only because you don't believe in the correctness of the pope.

> he taught was not somehow “intermittently true”

Yes, it was. God would not allow a Pope who spoke in error.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#284

Post by lebuffon »

rf15 wrote: post #279
stouset wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of research that suggests otherwise might be true for humans.

I think that can only happen to empire cultures: they only learn one language, and suddenly people think that's all there is. I speak five languages, my wife seven. Language synthesis is a feature, not the entire product, in my experience. Btw, this is only the third best language I can speak/write in. I didn't use AI, autocomplete, spell check, or a dictionary to construct any of my posts. All typos and imperfect gr…

As counter argument proposal; we should look into studies of children deprived of language until later in life. I have a dim memory of reading that one of these people never mastered complex language constructs. I could be that language and other cultural artifacts provide an "operating system" of sorts for the brain that allow higher level thinking. ?? (conjecture here by a complete layman)

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#285

Post by lebuffon »

merelydev wrote: post #7

I believe the great problem of our age is deciding who controls technology. The technologists who create it believe they should control it, the people who use it are starting to believe they should control it and the governments who write the laws believe they should control it. And now the priests believe they should also play role. So is the next phase of "Democracy" electing who controls technology?

My observation after numerous decades is that people who invent technology don't control it because they seldom imagine how the rest of humanity will ultimately use it. I am thinking of printing press versus newspapers with advertising business model. Same for Radio and TV. The techs made it work. The business weenies made the profit. The original "www" followed a similar path. How that plays out with AI is in motion I think.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#286

Post by solenoid0937 »

mekael wrote: post #224
solenoid0937 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How dramatic! No one is starving to death. Things will just be rough for a bit. People will get over it, as they always have, and the QoL gains will have been worth the cost many times over, just like they were for literally every Industrial Revolution before us.

Ummm. Plenty of people starved to death as a result of the industrial revolution.

Far fewer than before it. The Industrial Revolution dramatically lowered food scarcity.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#287

Post by joemazerino »

OrangeMusic wrote: post #275
somenameforme wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It poses a simple problem. Take humanity back not that long ago into the past and language didn't even exist - our expressed token base was practically 0. We went from that discovering the secrets of the atom, putting a man on the Moon, and more. If you put an LLM in that starting point, they're going to do nothing but endlessly cycle over basically nothing. If you give them an infinite amount of time and processing,…

> If you give them an infinite amount of time and processing, that wouldn't change. Hrm I doubt it actually. Llms are capable of discovery, as recent math news showed. This means a "society" of Llms could likely have progress.

Only through direction from a mind.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#288

Post by anon291 »

alecco wrote: post #188

They think a next token predictor model is alive or can become AGI/ASI. Altman talked about making a religion. Amodei talks about "building a God" and meets with religious leaders (including the Vatican). I'm convinced these CEOs have "AI psychosis" [1]. LLMs are extremely powerful pseudo-AI and will bring a pseudo-singularity, but they are not true AI [2] and a human at the wheel is still needed for the foreseeable…

What the hell is a true AI? Can you please provide a concrete definition. If your argument is that the Chinese room is not intelligent, then you have greatly misunderstood the thought experiment imo.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#289

Post by anon291 »

rf15 wrote: post #264
roenxi wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could an AGI/ASI exist that isn't a next token predictor? It has to be able to generate a next token in a string of text. Otherwise it can't communicate.

Don't worry, this is just humanity being too far up their own arse and conflating the map with the territory. Speech is a serialisation format, not the foundation of thought. Thus I think that any speech-first approach is inherently misguided. Speech must be a side effect.

The data seem to indicate just the opposite.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#290

Post by anon291 »

rf15 wrote: post #279
stouset wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of research that suggests otherwise might be true for humans.

I think that can only happen to empire cultures: they only learn one language, and suddenly people think that's all there is. I speak five languages, my wife seven. Language synthesis is a feature, not the entire product, in my experience. Btw, this is only the third best language I can speak/write in. I didn't use AI, autocomplete, spell check, or a dictionary to construct any of my posts. All typos and imperfect gr…

Doesn't really matter because internally your brain is speaking its own 'language' and you're just translating without conscious thought.

Five languages is impressive no doubt but as a dual language speaker myself, thought still takes the form of language even if it lacks words.

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