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The best response to AI slop and online noise is from Robin Williams

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Re: The best response to AI slop and online noise is from Robin Williams

#61

Post by shermantanktop »

akiselev wrote: post #20
shermantanktop wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT has taken to saying things like “What I would do now is…” or “if I were you I’d…”. I know these are figures of speech, but it reminds me that this thing doesn’t do anything, it doesn’t learn anything, it can’t try anything and find out. And yet it uses speech patterns drawn from real humans who can and do all those things.

When I ask it to tweak recipes and stuff, it frequently says stuff like "my favorite way to..." or "I really like [x]". I have a viscerally negative reaction to a machine claiming it has a favorite anything.

Recipes! Dude, the only thing you eat is other people’s data.

Re: The best response to AI slop and online noise is from Robin Williams

#62

Post by derektank »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #32
esafak wrote: post #4

In movies r̶o̶b̶o̶t̶s̶ AIs have delivered speeches on the meaning of life too: I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tears_in_rain_monologue

I, Robot (2004) dealt with this issue, too Human beings have dreams. Even dogs have dreams, but not you, you are just a machine. An imitation of life. Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a... canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?

After which of course, Sonny the robot guilelessly asks the detective, somewhat in awe, “Can you?”

Re: The best response to AI slop and online noise is from Robin Williams

#63

Post by falcor84 »

Springtime wrote: post #54
falcor84 wrote: post #46

It's a well-written monologue, with a fabulous delivery, but I think it fails spectacularly for this argument. From what I just looked into, neither of the main people involved, including Damon, Affleck, Williams, Van Sant, Reiner or Goldman, had personally experienced those scenarios of fighting on the front lines and having a friend die in their arms, or of losing their spouse to cancer. But nevertheless, they had…

This angle is touched on in the article, as the words on a page script vs Robin's performance of it which is drawing from his unique human experience which would have been different from another actor (the lived experience throughline the article is making, not necessarily the experiences being described in the script, mind). I do think though that article is a bit nebulous in parts, in the sense that articles and bo…

Are you referring to this part?

> Where did his performance come from? How did those moments take shape? Only the actor could tell you, and actually, he probably couldn't. It was sensed more than it was consciously considered, but the alchemy required his lived experiences

That just seemed to me like a cop-out - what exactly is it about his lived experiences that made him well suited to effectively convey the experiences of a made up man written up by two others? Because it's clearly not "write what you know".

Re: The best response to AI slop and online noise is from Robin Williams

#64

Post by moezd »

Empowering speech for all beginners in all fields for sure. If you're struggling today because LLMs seem to eat your lunch in one way or another, it's a good feeling to remember this.

And yet, it's also a sign of how far we're going down the rabbit hole of trusting next token predictors to do everything for us. No amount of harness, allowing it to complete tasks by matching the templates it memorized, should convince anyone that LLMs have novel ideas, because it never will. Stop publishing your own framework's code on the Internet for six months and it will diverge, always producing legacy code. Stop writing your latest spicy analysis on international diplomacy and it will continue to sound like the hopeless optimists that we all once were last year.

LLMs are golden mean generators. They will continue to rehash what's genuinely useful out there while being far from inspirational. It will get your job done, probably, but won't shock and awe people, let alone experts.

Re: The best response to AI slop and online noise is from Robin Williams

#65

Post by klodolph »

munificent wrote: post #57
klodolph wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. I watched the movie recently and really hated that monologue. I truly hated it. It seemed just so out of character for somebody who is supposedly a psychologist in their mid-40s—the whole speech is taking Matt Damon’s character down a peg. The fact that he’s downplaying his own experiences (he doesn’t understand what it’s like to be an orphan) doesn’t make the speech any better.

> the whole speech is taking Matt Damon’s character down a peg. That's the entire point . That's why the speech ends with "your move, chief". Sean (Williams' character) is deliberately being confrontational because Will is avoiding making any psychological progress by putting on a fake mask, an avoidance strategy which has been successful with previous psychologists. Sean sees what Will doing and knows that the only…

> That's the entire point.

Yeah, that’s the entire point, and I think it makes no sense.

People will take off their mask if they feel like it’s safe. They don’t take off their mask because you make a big speech and confront them about it. The perspective that this speech has—it is telling me that a forceful, paternalistic approach can fix people. If somebody needs to talk but won’t, you can break down the walls. I disagree with that.

I remember feeling like the world worked this way. I remember feeling that maybe I could be broken down and fixed by the right person. Back when I was the age Matt Damon was when he wrote this movie, maybe I would have agreed with it.

But what have I seen since then? I’ve seen that these speeches alienate people. That the person giving the speech rarely understands their target well enough to know which buttons to push. That trained psychologists know better than to try and take their patients down a peg.

Re: The best response to AI slop and online noise is from Robin Williams

#66

Post by thinking_cactus »

randallsquared wrote: post #33

I don't remember how I received that speech when I saw it in the movie, decades ago. Reading it now, though, it's so smug and patronizing. "I have had experiences you haven't, so I'm wiser and know better than you." In some ways, that's true. In other ways, it seems like another path to being overconfident and making larger mistakes. In my mid-50s, I've learned so much more and had so many more experiences than when…

If you over-commit to uncertainty that's another error. Like there's a dying screaming child and you go "I don't know, I'm not sure of anything, what is life about anyways? Does anything really matter?". Well, I for sure would know that child is probably suffering and is probably worth saving. If we can't be certain of anything, the answer is not don't do anything, but do things taking into consideration uncertainty, and the different degrees of it. I am damn sure I don't want my teeth pulled out without anesthesia right now. I am not so sure which policy on international trade is the best.

It's even quite healthy, I believe, casting into doubt and analyzing all the things we've long taken for granted (this is something the philosopher Russel, among many others, mentions for example). But this exercise can be made somewhat independent of our daily lives and in a good, not excessive, measure.

Re: The best response to AI slop and online noise is from Robin Williams

#67

Post by apsurd »

fn-mote wrote: post #22
sublinear wrote: post #2

> This moment threatens to convince too many of us that our lived experiences do not matter. Does anyone really take AI that seriously? I only hear that from reddit and blogs. > I've heard it said that scientific discovery would happen regardless of who does it In this regard, science isn't that different from art. You heard wrong. Scientific discovery is not as trivial as replication, proof, etc. Discovery is what a…

>> This moment threatens to convince too many of us that our lived experiences do not matter. > Does anyone really take AI that seriously? Young people are having a very hard time developing a feeling of competence because LLMs produce better work than beginners in many fields. Without experience as a beginner, it is hard to progress to a level where you don’t believe in the magic anymore.

llms don’t produce anything on their own.

the sibling reply puts it very well how it doesn’t really make sense to gg mankind because a computer can endlessly answer questions and code. it is truly amazing! technology has been mind blowing for centuries now.

people still need to put in the work to master the tools.

Re: The best response to AI slop and online noise is from Robin Williams

#68

Post by neonstatic »

shermantanktop wrote: post #14
jimbokun wrote: post #8

I agree. This Robin Williams monologue nails exactly why LLMs make us so uneasy. They speak fluently and confidently about experiences it’s impossible for them to have. They can’t taste a strawberry or do any of the things Robin Williams names. There are a number of people building these machines who literally believe the machines will replace us and because they will be more powerful than us so nothing meaningful wi…

ChatGPT has taken to saying things like “What I would do now is…” or “if I were you I’d…”. I know these are figures of speech, but it reminds me that this thing doesn’t do anything, it doesn’t learn anything, it can’t try anything and find out. And yet it uses speech patterns drawn from real humans who can and do all those things.

I only use it sporadically, but I am always irked by it saying things like "I personally like to..." or "I prefer...". It does it so often, that I am convinced it's part of the system prompt.

Re: The best response to AI slop and online noise is from Robin Williams

#69

Post by hack1312 »

vardalab wrote: post #38
hack1312 wrote: post #26

I love Cambridge

Scene is in Boston Public Garden

Yes but Harvard, where the majority of the movie takes place, is in Cambridge. And that’s where I lived (well, Somerville).

The Public Garden is obv beautiful as well, that whole area of downtown is great.

Re: The best response to AI slop and online noise is from Robin Williams

#70

Post by yggy »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #34
manytimesaway wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replicants are not robots, and are arguably not AI. LLMs aren't AI either, but once the bullshit's out of the bag...

AI can be anything from depth first search to superhuman intelligence on a chip. I like to refer to it as automated statistics.

Guessing machine
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