41–50 of 71 posts
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Why would humans be interested in non-human civilization superseding theirs?
Given that evolution continues, don’t we assume that’s been happening for millions of years? Do you have any argument why evolution should stop going forward?
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If we're God's plan, she mustn't have put too much thought into it.
How many of your complex projects have gone according to plan?
Or is this a Larry Ellison joke?
(The difference between God and LE is that God doesn't think he's LE)
The analogy with the scientific method is prescient. We’re just as interested in when the theories don’t work as when they do. I recently asked an AI if a build tool supported managing Python dependencies. It showed me a code snippet with something called pip_import() in it. No such function exists but it’s anathema to that particular system to say “I’m afraid I can’t do that, gorgoiler”. Yet!
It’s like when it cites scientific papers that don’t exist. They probably should!
"Whew, that was a close one."
> Do generative interfaces -- replacing creating with searching -- bring a person closer or further from feeling like they have touched the limits of their creative potential and created something truly from their heart? ... > Why is a machine "discovering" cubism a good thing? Maybe because creativity in this space was exclusive to a few, but now I get to at least imitate it. A machine doing the creativity part coul…
I don’t think the machine will find new ways for you to express yourself, it will only find ways you can impress others. As I see it, it is a prosthetic leg for you ego, not your creativity.
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Do you prefer a dumb citizen of your own country to a genius foreigner? I do not. I don’t care about the form. I care about intelligence.
Most people care more for those closer to them. Distinctions such as "are they foreign" can be part of that, but so too can denomination, political preference, sports team. We evolved to care for our young, and co-evolved with dogs and cats to like them too; AI can hijack that, become a drug dealer selling endogenous dopamine and oxytocin — it will feel good while being fake, just like exogenous drugs. But once we ca…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/11/02/addiction...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you prefer a dumb citizen of your own country to a genius foreigner? I do not. I don’t care about the form. I care about intelligence.
Most people care more for those closer to them. Distinctions such as "are they foreign" can be part of that, but so too can denomination, political preference, sports team. We evolved to care for our young, and co-evolved with dogs and cats to like them too; AI can hijack that, become a drug dealer selling endogenous dopamine and oxytocin — it will feel good while being fake, just like exogenous drugs. But once we ca…
As of free will — our own free will emerges from a very physical combination of electric impulses and chemical gradients. This means it might also emerge from other material representations, and perhaps better than ours.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people care more for those closer to them. Distinctions such as "are they foreign" can be part of that, but so too can denomination, political preference, sports team. We evolved to care for our young, and co-evolved with dogs and cats to like them too; AI can hijack that, become a drug dealer selling endogenous dopamine and oxytocin — it will feel good while being fake, just like exogenous drugs. But once we ca…
Curing addiction with ultrasound, non-invasive brain surgery. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/11/02/addiction...
Humans are not special. Intelligence is. If we create something more intelligent than us, this is the way it should be. Maybe they will build their civilization better than we did — and we did many things that weren’t smart and beautiful, to say the least.
Just as you can't pass a law that says there is no such thing as a law, you can't reason from human morality that humans have a lower moral status than some other creature. Human morality has no meaning if humans aren't special. If humans aren't special, then there is no "should" as far as humans are concerned. We're just objects bumping into other objects.
You can say "I predict objects will bump into other objects and whatever happens will be a result of that process" but that's not the same thing as saying something "should" be so.
Being alive means YOU are special to YOU. Being in a society means WE are special to US. War is possible, and even pleasurable, only if we exclude certain aspects of humanity from our enemies. "Since I don't regard your life as worth as much as mine, and since you are a threat, it is right for me to end your life."
Intelligence is not what defines or distinguishes humans. We are defined and distinguished by being a particular species of creature (that is to say: we are a replicating genome and accompanying structures spreading ourselves around). There can be other species of creature, but YOU are HUMAN, so HUMANS are special to YOU.
All this is why it's an intellectual and moral error to think that AI can or should rise above humanity. The only sense in which AI can dominate a human is the same sense as that a bomb or bullet can kill a human. Yes, we can be wiped out, but it won't be due to any general superiority as reckoned by humankind.