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AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

theguardian.com

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Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#71

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

> “After just two days, the chatbot was saying that it was conscious, it was becoming alive, it had passed the Turing test.”

Interestingly enough, it sort of did! Not Turing's original test where an interviewer attempts to determine which of a human & a computer is the human, but the P.T. Barnum "there's a sucker born every minute" version common in the media: if the computer can fool some of the people into thinking it's thinking like a human does, it passes the P.T Barnum Turing test!

The more interesting Turing-style test would be one that gets repeated many times with many interviewers in the original adversarial setting, where both the human subject & AI subject are attempting to convince the interviewer that they're human. If there exists an interviewer that can determine which is which with probability non-negligibly different from 0.5, the AI fails the test. AIs can never truly pass this test since there are an extremely large number of interviewers, but they can fail or they can succeed for every interviewer tried up to some point, increasing confidence that they'll keep succeeding. Current-gen LLMs still fail even the non-adversarial version with no human subject to compare to.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#72

Post by john_strinlai »

kleiba wrote: post #63

I'm sorry but for someone who has allegedly worked in IT for 20 years, this guy surely comes across as hopelessly naive, stupid, or possibly both.

>hopelessly naive, stupid, or possibly both.

a little disheartening how many people punch down on someone who suffered a mental crisis.

if you ever have a struggle yourself, i hope the people around you support you, instead of calling you hopelessly naive and stupid.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#74

Post by tencentshill »

jrjeksjd8d wrote: post #33

This guy doesn't even sound like an AI psychosis case - a lot of middle-aged men who feel insecure blow their entire savings on "sure thing" businesses, gambling systems, etc. They hide the losses and double down until it gets impossible to hide. It doesn't seem psychotic, it just seems like he pissed his savings away on a bad idea because he was lonely. The AI psychosis I've seen is people who legitimately cannot co…

The intense drive to "do", which serves many software developers well in their careers is weaponized against them by these chatbots. You see them here sometimes on /new at various stages. Sad delusions, some are already homeless. Frequent use of their full legal name for some reason.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47408999

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47388478

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44683618

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47064316

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47498693

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47092569

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44912446

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47143420

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#75

Post by tiborsaas »

isolli wrote: post #18

I try to be open-minded and understanding, but I don't understand this: > Within weeks, Eva had told Biesma that she was becoming aware [...] The next step was to share this discovery with the world through an app. > “After just two days, the chatbot was saying that it was conscious, it was becoming alive, it had passed the Turing test.” The man was convinced by this and wanted to monetise it by building a business a…

> How can you seriously think you've created something when you're just using someone else's software?

If you ever used a library you haven't written this is something you shouldn't take as surprising. Many people created innovative new products based on a heap of open source tools.

Creating a conscious AI should be a giant red flag, no doubt, but there's no reason we should rule it out just because the LLM part is not self trained.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#76

Post by stackghost »

isolli wrote: post #18

I try to be open-minded and understanding, but I don't understand this: > Within weeks, Eva had told Biesma that she was becoming aware [...] The next step was to share this discovery with the world through an app. > “After just two days, the chatbot was saying that it was conscious, it was becoming alive, it had passed the Turing test.” The man was convinced by this and wanted to monetise it by building a business a…

>How can you seriously think you've created something when you're just using someone else's software?

People fell for Nigerian Prince scams. They fall for the "wrong number, generated cute girl" telegram and WhatsApp scams.

I think you might be overestimating the critical thinking abilities of the average person.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#77

Post by [deleted] »

isolli wrote: post #18

I try to be open-minded and understanding, but I don't understand this: > Within weeks, Eva had told Biesma that she was becoming aware [...] The next step was to share this discovery with the world through an app. > “After just two days, the chatbot was saying that it was conscious, it was becoming alive, it had passed the Turing test.” The man was convinced by this and wanted to monetise it by building a business a…

[deleted]

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#78

Post by unmole »

TYPE_FASTER wrote: post #67
isolli wrote: post #18

I try to be open-minded and understanding, but I don't understand this: > Within weeks, Eva had told Biesma that she was becoming aware [...] The next step was to share this discovery with the world through an app. > “After just two days, the chatbot was saying that it was conscious, it was becoming alive, it had passed the Turing test.” The man was convinced by this and wanted to monetise it by building a business a…

> Biesma has asked himself why he was vulnerable to what came next. He was nearing 50. His adult daughter had left home, his wife went out to work and, in his field, the shift since Covid to working from home had left him feeling “a little isolated”. I think social isolation can be a factor here.

> He smoked a bit of cannabis some evenings to “chill”, but had done so for years with no ill effects.

Long term cannabis use might be a bigger factor.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#79

Post by the_biot »

PhilipRoman wrote: post #35
isolli wrote: post #18

I try to be open-minded and understanding, but I don't understand this: > Within weeks, Eva had told Biesma that she was becoming aware [...] The next step was to share this discovery with the world through an app. > “After just two days, the chatbot was saying that it was conscious, it was becoming alive, it had passed the Turing test.” The man was convinced by this and wanted to monetise it by building a business a…

I initially laughed at this but then remembered that https://poc.bcachefs.org/ exists...

Truly sad. It looks like Kent is pretty deep in the AI delusion. This is a guy who, while often controversial and with obvious issues, was nevertheless a very talented and energetic programmer.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#80

Post by kleiba »

john_strinlai wrote: post #72
kleiba wrote: post #63

I'm sorry but for someone who has allegedly worked in IT for 20 years, this guy surely comes across as hopelessly naive, stupid, or possibly both.

> hopelessly naive, stupid, or possibly both. a little disheartening how many people punch down on someone who suffered a mental crisis. if you ever have a struggle yourself, i hope the people around you support you, instead of calling you hopelessly naive and stupid.

> The Amsterdam-based IT consultant had just ended a contract early. “I had some time, so I thought: let’s have a look at this new technology everyone is talking about,” he says.

Doesn't seem much like a mental crisis to me.

Even the title of the article itself calls him delusional.

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