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Three Inverse Laws of AI

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Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#41

Post by largbae »

miyoji wrote: post #6

I strongly disagree with this framing. It's patently insane to demand that humans alter their behavior to accommodate the foibles of mere machines, and it simply won't work in the majority of cases. Humans WILL anthropomorphize the AI, humans WILL blindly trust their outputs, and humans WILL defer responsibility to them. Asimov's laws of robotics are flawed too, of course. There is no finite set of rules that can con…

The article offers practical advice to go along with this framing, like configuring AI services to write/speak in a more robotic tone. I think that's a decent path to try.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#42

Post by cobbzilla »

wolttam wrote: post #25
cobbzilla wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have invented a new tool that can cause great harm. Do you see any value whatsoever in promulgating safety guidelines for humans to use the tool without hurting themselves or others? Do you not own any power tools?

Of course there is value in promulgating safety *guidelines*. But we cannot guarantee those guidelines to always be followed.

Sure, and we can’t guarantee you’ll read the safety instructions that came with your chainsaw. That’s orthogonal to the questions of whether those instructions should exist, whether “power tool safety” concepts should ever be promoted in society, and who’s ultimately responsible for the use of a tool.

Absolving humans of all responsibility for the negative consequences of their own AI misuse seems to the strike the wrong balance for a healthy culture.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#43

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

> Humans must not anthropomorphise AI systems.

One of the most salient moments in Ex Machina, is near the very end, where it suddenly becomes obvious that the protagonist (and, let's be frank; "she" was definitely the protagonist) is a robot, with no real human drivers.

I feel as if that movie (like a lot of Garland's stuff), was an interesting study on human (and inhuman) nature.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#44

Post by bitwize »

quectophoton wrote: post #30

> Humans must not anthropomorphise AI systems. Can someone explain why this is a bad thing, while at the same time it's a good thing to say stuff like "put a computer to sleep", "hibernate", "killing" processes, processes having "child" processes, "reaping", "what does the error say ?", "touch", etc? To me that's just language, and humans just using casual language.

Dijkstra once said that "The question of whether machines can think is about as interesting as that of whether submarines can swim."

I think I understand his meaning. He wasn't claiming that machines cannot think, but that one must be clear on what one means by "thinking" and "swimming" in statements of that sort. I used to work on autonomous submarines, and "swimming" was the verb we casually used to describe autonomous powered movement under water. There are even some biomimetic machines that really move like fish, squids, jellyfish, etc. Not the ones that I worked on, but still.

For me, if it's legitimate to say that these devices swim, it's not out of line to say that a computer thinks, even in a non-AI context, e.g.: "The application still thinks the authentication server is online."

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#45

Post by wolttam »

cobbzilla wrote: post #42
wolttam wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there is value in promulgating safety *guidelines*. But we cannot guarantee those guidelines to always be followed.

Sure, and we can’t guarantee you’ll read the safety instructions that came with your chainsaw. That’s orthogonal to the questions of whether those instructions should exist, whether “power tool safety” concepts should ever be promoted in society, and who’s ultimately responsible for the use of a tool. Absolving humans of all responsibility for the negative consequences of their own AI misuse seems to the strike the w…

> Of course there is value in promulgating safety guidelines.

I don't think we disagree.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#47

Post by vunderba »

quectophoton wrote: post #30

> Humans must not anthropomorphise AI systems. Can someone explain why this is a bad thing, while at the same time it's a good thing to say stuff like "put a computer to sleep", "hibernate", "killing" processes, processes having "child" processes, "reaping", "what does the error say ?", "touch", etc? To me that's just language, and humans just using casual language.

That’s a different thing altogether. Read up on the history of Eliza, one of the earliest attempts at a chatbot and its unsettling implications.

https://www.history.com/articles/ai-first-chatbot-eliza-arti...

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#48

Post by layer8 »

taeshdas wrote: post #19

“Don’t anthropomorphise” is fighting the wrong layer. The entire product design of chat interfaces is built to encourage anthropomorphism because it increases engagement. Expecting users to resist that is like asking people not to click notifications. If this is a real concern, it has to be solved at the product level, not via user discipline.

The article does propose changes at the product level.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#49

Post by 3form »

technotarek wrote: post #35

“ Humans must not blindly trust the output of AI systems. AI-generated content must not be treated as authoritative without independent verification appropriate to its context.” I’m lost, how do individuals actually do this in our current world? Is each person expected to keep a “white list” of reliable sources of truth in their head. Please don’t confuse what I’m saying with a suggestion that there is no truth. It j…

Did AI change anything in that regard? I believe that same as before, you couldn't trust everything you see, and research effort was always more than keeping a white list; means vary, case-by-case.

And same it is now. It's a change in quantity, but not quality.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#50

Post by chrisweekly »

jdw64 wrote: post #12

I understand that AI output is generated from statistical and representational patterns learned from a vast amount of data. My understanding is that, during training, the model forms high-dimensional internal representations where words, sentences, concepts, and relationships are arranged in useful ways. A user’s input activates a particular semantic direction and context within that space, and the chatbot generates…

"I think it would be fascinating if another intelligent species besides humans could exist"

I wonder if replacing "exist" with "communicate using language we can understand" might better account for other animals, many of which have abundant non-human intelligence.

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