Earlier quoted context omitted.
A bit off topic, but about commencement speeches... Marvin Minsky spoke at my graduation. It was around the time when it seemed like genetic therapies might solve all kinds of problems, and there was a big debate, moral objections, etc. Most of the talk was a rambling rant against religion holding us back from scientific improvements to life. It did not go over in the mostly christian crowd. I loved it.
> Marvin Minsky spoke at my graduation. I don't know about mentioning that one.
Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence
501–510 of 575 posts
Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence
#502Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, humans developed language. Language is just a tool that let's us leverage our innate intelligence. I'm sure that we will eventually build artificial brains, capable of bootstrapping communications and language for themelves (if run en-masse in a simulation where the benefit of communication would emerge). An LLM can't do this since it is by definition/construction something only capable of learning a pre-existi…
I think it's interesting that you think we could bootstrap an artificial brain with no inputs from human culture. I disagree, but am open to an existence proof of this kind. Such an artificial brain would be totally alien to us, of course. I wonder how differently it would perform versus something more grounded in "real" culture and writing?
You could choose to lock it in a virtual or physical basement with printout of the Common Crawl dataset and raise it like an LLM that learns language with zero real world grounding, in which case it may feel a bit like an LLM (but smarter - able to learn, etc), or you could let it interact with the real world and learn everything, including language, that way and be a lot more grounded.
It's hard to guess how the grounded version would feel to talk to vs the CommonCrawl one - I think it would mostly come down to how far we wanted to go in making the artificial brain have all the moving parts of a human one. In an odd way the more human we tried to make it, the more alien it might feel, but not for the "uncanny valley" reason you might imagine...
The thing with an LLM that makes it feel so human is that they are designed to 100% copy humans - their output is 100% driven by the training goal of trying to exactly match the samples in the training set. As soon as we start to try to build something more brain-like then it's behavior is going to be a lot less predictable - not just auto-regressive "auto-pilot speech", but driven by it's own internal thoughts, emotions, innate traits, etc - depending on how much of our brain we tried to copy in the artificial one. I expect it would feel a lot more organic, less robotic, to talk to, but at the same time perhaps less human since unlike the LLM it's not built just to mimic human speech.
Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence
#503Earlier quoted context omitted.
He’s a seminal figure!
Now why'd you'd have to ejaculate that into the conversation? Anyway, Minsky, perceptrons, great debunking of AI hype at the time, but a horrible person, ya know, just like Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. https://www.christopherkremmer.com/post/to-sir-with-love https://web.archive.org/web/20240519113411/https://skepchick... Anyway, they're all dead. Can we move on? Although I remain astonished that Foundation got…
Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence
#504Unsurprising he'd be cheered for saying what they wanted to hear. But perhaps whether or not his stance is correct, the students needed to hear this. They (we) have to believe human brains still have value and find a way out; for otherwise there'd be no point to try anymore.
> They (we) have to believe human brains still have value and find a way out; for otherwise there'd be no point to try anymore. Our value isn't predicated on our utility. The simple fact that we are sentient beings, capable of joy and suffering, gives us value. This is why we continue to support and care for the elderly and the disabled - we value them regardless of any practical utility we may derive from them. If y…
Tell that to my landlord.
Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence
#505Actual intelligence is useless when decision makers send new weekly AI rules to be better employees. It’s race to the bottom. Race to an endless technical debt. Some companies will implode when codebases stop being manageable. The small minority will thrive. But majority not. I see it used in hardware world. Clever dudes without prior experience with software craft working Python scripts, automate tests, control hard…
This too shall pass. Among my software engineering friend group bubble: Every single individual (~12 of us) are actively and seriously tokenmaxing. We have middle-managers who have been given an AI mandate, upper-managers saying "uhh...maybe that brush stroke was too broad" when they look at the bill every month, and zero people in that chain have the authority or even ability to roll it back. This week one of my fri…
Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence
#506Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like I wasted 25 min watching that (at 2x). If your thesis is "The US was founded on anti-intellectual principles" and your only supporting facts are: - Some of the early colonists were religiously-driven - The inconvenient examples otherwise (e.g. the Enlightenment-influenced founders) can be ignored because some people at the time disliked them - Some presidents since have been populists Then that's a weak a…
You missed the education related points. Different strokes. I found it extremely entertaining.
A good example of a problem in the video is she makes the strong claim (multiple times) that America was founded on anti-intellectualism. Even stronger, that it's the only one. She jumps from saying it was ingrained in the culture before the constitution, then talks about the founding fathers, and moves straight to "early 19th century" with the discussion of Jackson. Jackson was president from 1829-1837. She's playing a bit fast and loose with the timelines here. Importantly, by the 8 minute mark she's done supporting the claim but there's no strong evidence. Then she launches into more with the education system but it feels weird that she's stressing things like sitting in rows. Europe has... classrooms too.
That isn't to say that everything she says is hogwash. But I don't exactly buy that this was all planned and coordinated. There's much better explanations than a deep state. As George Carlin put it, you don't need a deep state when everyone in power goes to the same schools and hangs in the same social circles; they end up thinking alike. Bubbles, not coordinated action. This also adequately explains the dysfunction across the US education system where different regions have different styles and curriculum. It would sound silly to say that Europe was designed for dysfunction with France having a different curriculum than Germany. The US was highly federated and became more centralized. That fracturization perpetuated through to today. It's also easier to buy this explanation given the premise of dysfunction and lack of critical thinking.
The reality of it all is much more complex than she explains. Maybe she left that because it's hard to convey in a video and is less engaging (which would undermine what she's trying to teach). Or maybe she didn't do enough research (she is a self described polyglot. Though she also criticized polyglots).
Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
>However, if matter is all there is, then there is no meaning in the world. This is not a way to flourish in the world. Things like this really make it hard, as an atheist, to receive the argument that my problem is with Christianity, and not with religion. You're saying that my beliefs mean there's no meaning, and are incompatible with flourishing in the world. I understand you feel the need to defend your beliefs a…
You need stories, preferable positive stories. Not those about endless wars and horrors, those stories work like a contraceptive. They are pure poison, no matter how true, scientific and educational.
Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence
#508Earlier quoted context omitted.
>However, if matter is all there is, then there is no meaning in the world. This is not a way to flourish in the world. Things like this really make it hard, as an atheist, to receive the argument that my problem is with Christianity, and not with religion. You're saying that my beliefs mean there's no meaning, and are incompatible with flourishing in the world. I understand you feel the need to defend your beliefs a…
> I personally don't find religion necessary to live an ethical and fulfilling life "I personally don't find science necessary to live a modern and fulfilling life" (I say, as I type using a computer on the internet) People love to remove attribution when it suits their short-sighted view. Just as you can attribute something I enjoy today to science, I can attribute something you enjoy today to religion.
Are you trying to argue that some things I consider valuable were first developed within religion (which I won't argue with, though I think there's more to dig into there than might be immediately obvious), or that I need to personally practice religion to live an ethical and fulfilling life, and I just don't realize it?
Because, if it's the latter, you're again refusing to consider the possibility that I don't need religion. And again, my argument isn't even that that isn't true, though I fervently believe that, it's that telling me that I'm wrong and I need religion even if I don't think I do is a terrible way to convince me that we can find common ground.
Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence
#509Earlier quoted context omitted.
A bit off topic, but about commencement speeches... Marvin Minsky spoke at my graduation. It was around the time when it seemed like genetic therapies might solve all kinds of problems, and there was a big debate, moral objections, etc. Most of the talk was a rambling rant against religion holding us back from scientific improvements to life. It did not go over in the mostly christian crowd. I loved it.
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Y’all are welcome to offer a counterpoint, and yet…
Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence
#510The man is hailed as a brilliant nerd in our circles. I didn't realize he's a great public speaker. He really read the room. The "McKenzie"-style lady and Schmidt from Google (who really seemed to resent the pushback and chided graduates), can go to hell. I'm happy that someone is telling the young people who are likely to suffer because of this tech that they matter. I can't imagine how much angst much exist after t…
> I can't imagine how much angst much exist after taking on debt to get an education and then this is the job market. Right... which they aren't going to be helped by continuing to find external causes or external enemies which are keeping them down instead of focusing on what they can control and what they can do to make money or make careers. It's nice and it feels good to say these things, but it's not going to ge…
What jobs? The job market is anemic AND these students are literally being told that jobs as we know them are soon to be a thing of the past. At the same time, no one is explaining how they are supposed to pay off debt or put food on the table outside of vague hand waves UBI or AI creating vast prosperity.