19 Comments
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Bob Hannaford's avatar

So you think that if you were born in China, you would volunteer to be a spy. This does not make sense if you have not become a spy for the US. Unless there’s something you don’t want to tell us. 🧐

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Some Guy's avatar

I would spy on a Chinese lab if that was required to save my family.

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Carlos's avatar

Believing we can make a mind seems pretty incompatible with believing in God, no? Presumably, only God decides what gets a soul, not us with our contrivances. It would mean believing minds emerge from matter, instead of being something that comes from beyond-matter.

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Some Guy's avatar

We grow these, don’t make them. The way I think of it is that we press mold math around the underlying shape of reality. We didn’t put that shape there and yet the math bent around it as if by magic. Things don’t have to be unexplainable for them to be signs of a higher order. In fact, I would say that the highest order is explanation itself.

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Carlos's avatar

You're saying that, in some sense, the "mind" of an LLM is already there and we give it a suitable vessel?

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Some Guy's avatar

Yes, in a very loosey-goosey philosophical sense. We don’t invent circleness when we draw circles either. It already existed.

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Carlos's avatar

Pretty much Plato or Plotinus. But then, we can observe circles. We can't observe minds, so how could we distinguish a non-sentient device with the facade of a mind from an actual ensouled being? You don't believe falsifying a mind is possible?

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Some Guy's avatar

Some things we take on faith. We can’t verify each others minds either.

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Carlos's avatar

Why take on faith that an ASI is ensouled? I think Buddhism is just about the only tradition that would sign on to that (and they don't even believe in souls, haha). There is also the principle of inverse analogy to consider: what is greatest in the eyes of the world, is least in the eyes of heaven. And viceversa.

An ASI would be the greatest thing the world has ever seen, so...

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SunshineToRoses's avatar

If AI takes over so many jobs, how will people be paying for their robot housekeepers and gardeners? What you are also not figuring into the equation is chaos and the evil in men’s hearts. It exists, I have run into it.

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Some Guy's avatar

That will happen yes but you have to think about this too. The people whose jobs will be replaced first are high class and organized. They’ll lobby government for UBI quickly.

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SunshineToRoses's avatar

And UBI will cover their lost income? Not a chance. Where will all that money come from exactly if there is no income to tax?

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Some Guy's avatar

Inflation, offset by the deflationary pressures of automation.

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Kathleen Weber's avatar

I too am relating to AI primarily on the level of horse sense, but much less than yours. It has been absolutely clear to me that if AI is dependent on the Internet for its data, it will be a case of "Mediocrity in, mediocrity out.” Thus, I currently find most AI generated text and graphics limp and disappointing. My experience is that greatness in literature and art comes from making connections between ideas that are not yet commonly recognized. Obviously, AI can't do this.

Consequently, I am glad to see you agree that more powerful need AI needs better data.

Here's my what if. What if an evil genius wants to program AI to kill people? How do we stop that?

BTW, my experience with bears exactly mirrors your own. Incidentally, my cat reacts to rats as prey but has no such reaction to baby possums although they are about the same size.

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Some Guy's avatar

See, I might be closer to their side of things. I think it will do incredible things just not quite in the same way. I do think data curation is going to be one the longest lasting human jobs.

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Kathleen Weber's avatar

I know you have a project for organized human curation. I hope it lives up to yours and everyone else is expectation.

My other big question: Why on Earth would those who own/control AI care to pay lesser, superfluous human beings a living wage?

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