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Magnifica Humanitas

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Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#651

Post by threethirtytwo »

riccardomc wrote: post #640
threethirtytwo wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the technology that outputs decisions can also output reasoning that justifies such decisions. When a judge or a jury outputs a decision THEY are also a black box and you can only evaluate said decisions on reasoning THEY also output. I’m not taking a side here. I’m just saying this reasoning is flawed.

No, your reasoning is flawed: a judge or a jury is voted, appointed or selected through a process which is the result of centuries civilization, norms and legislation. As corrupt it might be in some cases, it is expression of mankind. They are not a black box, they passed rigourous examinations and they stick to principles enshrined in constitutions and laws. Technology, or better, the productization of it, is instea…

Your argument is just additional validations upon a stated fact that a jury and a judge is still a black box. Your retort is factual but illogical because it does not invalidate my point.

All humans are black boxes and the black box argument is completely invalid just like your statement. In fact your statement illustrates the downfall of human intuition. You could not logically invalidate my point so you descended into side channels that’s not far off from “hallucinations.”

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#652

Post by treis »

riccardomc wrote: post #640
threethirtytwo wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the technology that outputs decisions can also output reasoning that justifies such decisions. When a judge or a jury outputs a decision THEY are also a black box and you can only evaluate said decisions on reasoning THEY also output. I’m not taking a side here. I’m just saying this reasoning is flawed.

No, your reasoning is flawed: a judge or a jury is voted, appointed or selected through a process which is the result of centuries civilization, norms and legislation. As corrupt it might be in some cases, it is expression of mankind. They are not a black box, they passed rigourous examinations and they stick to principles enshrined in constitutions and laws. Technology, or better, the productization of it, is instea…

The system doesn't stick to principles enshrined in the constitution and law. Often or usually it does. Certainly not always. Theoretically there are other humans to force them to when they stray but that's gated behind 10s of thousands to appeal and is up against a system designed first to protect itself.

It also ignores the reality of going to a jury. Yes you have the right to trial by jury. But the price to exercise that right is to risk an much much more severe punishment, a lot of money, and a lot of time.

There's also tremendous upside here. Think getting a letter from your landlord withholding $2,000. Upload it to JudgeGPT for your jurisdiction and instantaneously find out it's legal.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#653

Post by jimbokun »

tom2026hn wrote: post #280
Xenoamorphous wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Scientists are actually preoccupied with accomplishment. So they are focused on whether they can do something. They never stop to ask if they should do something. From Crichton's book Jurassic Park, which like most of his books is about the perils of technological advancements. They used the quote in the movie, slightly tweaked.

I worry that companies like Anthropic, which are moving toward RSI, may prioritize speed over the timely identification of irreversible risks.

We need to force the executives and engineers working at Anthropic and other AI companies to read this encyclical and pass an exam demonstrating that they read it.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#654

Post by GoToRO »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #246
GoToRO wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hard disagree. No matter what gets built, it will be used for bad things if the society is not properly constructed. We need to fix our government and then you can build anything you want. I don't like putting the blame on the builders, building is already difficult as it is. Also you can't built something in isolation, word will get out anyway. That's why this speech is either naive or he just wanted to tick a todo…

> I don't like putting the blame on the builders Like it or not if you knowingly build stuff that is used for evil purposes you are complicit You can't build an orphan mulching machine and get away with just a shrug. "I don't really agree with mulching orphans but someone else paid me to build that. If I didn't build it someone else would have" just does not absolve you of your involvement in mulching orphans

In reality things are much more mundane. You build a custom blog framework, it can be used for good or bad. You build a better app framework, it can be used for good or bad. There's nothing you can build that will not be used by bad people. Canned food and radar came from war. Depending on which side you were, it was used to do good or to do bad. Technology is just that, technology. People are still under the marketing spell of US companies that invited engineers to "change the world". People assumed in a good way. In reality you just change the world, as the other people see fit.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#656

Post by threethirtytwo »

jimbokun wrote: post #605
threethirtytwo wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the technology that outputs decisions can also output reasoning that justifies such decisions. When a judge or a jury outputs a decision THEY are also a black box and you can only evaluate said decisions on reasoning THEY also output. I’m not taking a side here. I’m just saying this reasoning is flawed.

It’s a black box in the sense that we know the process used by LLMs to “reason” is very different than how humans reason and make decisions. The whole point of “jury of your peers” is that your guilt or innocence is being decided by people with common life experience to you and thus the possibility of empathy and judging you fairly.

We only know it’s different. But we don’t know how it reasons or how humans reason. Just because it is different doesn’t make his black box argument valid. It remains invalid despite your new irrelevant point.

Ignore the fluff. Focus on the logic and stay rational. The black box argument is not at all valid.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#657

Post by dubcanada »

sethbannon wrote: post #22

The overarching message is that builders should deeply consider the impact of what they're building on civilization. "Technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it." Therefore builders "bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility" because "every design choice reflects a vision of humanity." The questions shouldn't just be 'can we buil…

I frankly disagree, how do you know "will this make humanity better?" until the product is done? AI wasn't what it is today because of a specific companies innovations. It stemmed from decades of research built on top of other research. How did any of those builders know what they were getting into?

Every technology should be done to the fullest potential, how are we ever supposed to explore the stars or cure cancer if everyone is scared of accidentally building Skynet?

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#658

Post by Animats »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #650

I'm curious if there has ever been an instance where people have been able to "tame" a technology to consider a broader, societal good, or if we've always just been at the whims of how any particular tech naturally concentrates or dissipates power. For example, if you look at the boom of the middle classes in the mid 20th century, this appears to me largely a consequence of the fact that industrial technology at the…

Electricity. Eventually, it was everywhere, used by everybody, and a background to society. Electric utilities did not end up ruling the world.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#659

Post by jimbokun »

GoToRO wrote: post #153
sethbannon wrote: post #22

The overarching message is that builders should deeply consider the impact of what they're building on civilization. "Technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it." Therefore builders "bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility" because "every design choice reflects a vision of humanity." The questions shouldn't just be 'can we buil…

hard disagree. No matter what gets built, it will be used for bad things if the society is not properly constructed. We need to fix our government and then you can build anything you want. I don't like putting the blame on the builders, building is already difficult as it is. Also you can't built something in isolation, word will get out anyway. That's why this speech is either naive or he just wanted to tick a todo…

Oh, just “fix government”?

Glad there’s a simple, easy to implement solution to solve this problem! One that hasn’t been considered or tried before!

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#660

Post by Animats »

redfloatplane wrote: post #4
theletterf wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When he quoted Tolkien, my heart stopped. This passage might provide you with a suggestion on how to live a virtuous life: "The twentieth-century Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien, in the words of a protagonist in one of his novels, described our responsibility in this way: “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the e…

That is a really beautiful passage, thank you for sharing - I hadn't made it to that section yet and still haven't. I'm still reflecting on the stuff in the opening! > If we focus only on contingencies, we risk letting the succession of emergencies dictate the direction of our path. We are living through a rapid phase of transition, a “change of era,” in which — while some are vying for the future of new technologies…

> If we focus only on contingencies, we risk letting the succession of emergencies dictate the direction of our path.

That's a maxim for leaders generally. It's quite common for CEOs to spend all their time on managing crises and not enough on trying to progress and improve the business. It's even worse for politicians.

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