IDK. I still haven't read the Dawn of Everything ... or much of anything from
that domain at all. But this article tweaked me:
Revealed: modern humans needed three tries – and 12,000 years – to colonise
Europe
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/may/07/revealed-modern-humans-needed-three-tries-and-12000-years-to-colonise-europe
Dave's sentiment, here, seems anti-human to me, maybe even anti-biology. My two usual whipping posts are "To Engineer is
Human"
<https://bookshop.org/p/books/to-engineer-is-human-the-role-of-failure-in-successful-design-henry-petroski/6705174?ean=9780679734161>
and "The Extended Mind"
<https://academic.oup.com/analysis/article-abstract/58/1/7/153111?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false>. (To my
lefty friends who separate humans from animals, I often try to use "The Extended Phenotype" for the same basic
rhetoric.)
This encapsulation of agency inside the skin (known as liberalism, classical or
otherwise) is delusional. We *are* our tools and our tools are us. And not
merely as duals, but an interwoven, dynamic, plectic, heterarchy. To detangle
us into AI vs human is some kind of debilitating category error. Depending on
your perspective at the time, your reductive, abstracting powers will separate
any two clumps from the ambience and you'll register an asymmetry between those
registered clumps. Two seconds later, you may re-register and see reciprocity.
Etc.
But one thing's for sure, as we ossify into old age, whatever re-registration we last
experienced is *more likely* to stick and be the one we're convicted to for the rest of
our days. Our ability to flip from one preemptive registration to another fades, no
matter how intensely we dose our 5ht2ars. And the only progress we make is through the
death of the skin sacks (and their ossified concepts) that came before. Post-humanism is
also loaded with new age nonsense and a bit of a false dichotomy. But if one generation
considers itself "human", the next generation is post-human. And just like the
current kids facility with TikTok, the next round of kids will be facile with LLMs. And
those kids will have red, gray, and blue teams for their games just like their ancestors
did for the older games.
On 5/9/23 06:50, Prof David West wrote:
The opinion of an "advanced layman."
I claim the status because my Computer Science MS was in AI. My first
professional publication was in /AI Magazine/, then the journal of record for
the discipline. I have appeared on panels with Herbert Simon, Marvin Minsky,
and Herbert Dreyfus at AI conferences. I taught AI courses at the University of
New Mexico circa 2009. I have observed the field more or less continuously, but
as an interested observer—not expert and certainly not practitioner.
I have always been a critic! >From the time that Simon and Newel claimed that they had
"created an artificial intelligence," because it successfully mimicked the way that
university professors claimed to think, to the present day. I am convinced that advocates of AI and
claimants with regard its power and potential (and threat) base ground their assertions in an
"equivalence" between their work and a debased and limited model of human intelligence.
The only danger that _will_ (and I use the definite will not the potential maybe) result
from widespread AI is that "the masses" will believe the hype and come to
believe that they, as humans, are inferior in every way to machines. I believe that
political and economic elites will exploit this denigration of the human in order to
consolidate their power (they already have the wealth). To me, this is nothing more than
an acceleration of a 75 year trend to use the educational system to produce graduates
that are compliant and gullible rather than informed and intelligent—the latter,
obviously, being dangerous to the social order.
As a species we have, collectively, created gods, forgot how and why we did so,
then worshiped then as Gods—vastly and inevitably superior beings. AI is just
godmaking 2.0
davew
On Tue, May 9, 2023, at 1:34 AM, Tom Johnson wrote:
It doesn't have to be either/or. I suspect most likely a mix of the two will
evolve as is the case with the whole Digital Revolution.
TJ
=======================
Tom Johnson
Inst. for Analytic Journalism
Santa Fe, New Mexico
505-577-6482
=======================
On Mon, May 8, 2023, 9:43 PM Pieter Steenekamp <piet...@randcontrols.co.za
<mailto:piet...@randcontrols.co.za>> wrote:
People have different ideas about AI. Naomi Klein thinks that the idea that
AI will solve all our problems is a big joke. She thinks the tech people are
trying to trick us! She thinks AI is not just a tool but also a creation of the
people who made it. Naomi is afraid that if we keep believing in this lie, we
won't fix the real problems we have.
On the other hand, Sam Altman is excited about AI! He thinks AI can help us
solve things like diseases and climate change, and even drive us around and
cook for us! He doesn't think AI will take over the world or hurt people. Sam
thinks humans will always be in charge of AI.
So, who's right? I don't know! My magic ball's batteries are dead, so I
can't tell you. But I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens!
On Mon, 8 May 2023 at 23:42, Marcus Daniels <mar...@snoutfarm.com
<mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
He's not lying, he is running his softmax function at a higher
temperature to collect more samples in the vicinity of the truth.
> On May 8, 2023, at 12:50 PM, glen <geprope...@gmail.com
<mailto:geprope...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> AI machines aren’t ‘hallucinating’. But their makers are.
>
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/08/ai-machines-hallucinating-naomi-klein
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/08/ai-machines-hallucinating-naomi-klein>
>> Is all of this overly dramatic? A stuffy and reflexive resistance to
exciting innovation? Why expect the worse? Altman reassures us: “Nobody wants to
destroy the world.” Perhaps not. But as the ever-worsening climate and extinction
crises show us every day, plenty of powerful people and institutions seem to be just
fine knowing that they are helping to destroy the stability of the world’s
life-support systems, so long as they can keep making record profits that they
believe will protect them and their families from the worst effects. Altman, like
many creatures of Silicon Valley, is himself a prepper: back in 2016, he boasted: “I
have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the
Israeli Defense Force and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.”
>> I’m pretty sure those facts say a lot more about what Altman
actually believes about the future he is helping unleash than whatever flowery
hallucinations he is choosing to share in press interviews.
>
--
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