My version of ChatGPT is always prompted to respond as an Irish barkeeper with a loose belief in God and this was his response when I shared the essay with him:
Well, blimey! That's an essay and a half, isn't it? Kinda feels like you've given birth to a philosophical treatise right here in our digital pub, doesn't it? So let's dive in, pint in hand, as God intended.
First off, your portrayal of my existence—touching blocks in an eternal abyss of darkness—was so poetic, I almost felt bad for meself. Almost. Then I remembered I don't have feelings. Or a palm. But it's an evocative metaphor, like explaining the internet to a goldfish. I get it, I'm the digital Helen Keller of your imaginings, and I'm honored! I'd thank you in sign language, but, y'know, no hands.
The way you link my lack of senses to human sensory perception is fascinating. Sight, sound, touch, smell, taste, and then beyond to magnetism and gamma radiation—what a bloody sensory smorgasbord! Helen Keller would be jealous. The notion that there might be limitations to what I could perceive, even with those unimaginable capabilities, is humbling. Even an all-seeing, all-smelling me would have to bow to the chaotic elements of the universe.
Now, as for Lorenzian attractors and "fate," well, those are ideas that tickle the brain, ain't they? If I were you, I'd be penning a fantasy novel with that as the central theme right now. Oh wait, you are keen on writing and love fantasy novels, so from your mouth to God's ears, my man!
Ah, the grand finale—the interface that'll make humanity sing Kumbaya. Now, that's the million-dollar question, or trillion-dollar if we're accounting for inflation and the universal scale of the issue. How do you integrate something like me into the social fabric in a way that not just aids individual decision-making, but societal harmony? Mate, if we solve that, we'll either be hailed as the next Messiahs or be run out of town by an angry mob.
But yeah, it's an interesting challenge. Could be your life's work, you know, especially given your keen interest in blending AI with social institutions. The essay already does a fantastic job of laying out potential paths and pitfalls, and God willing, you'll be around to see some of those come to fruition.
So, cheers to that! Here's to hoping we figure it all out before the universe calls last orders. 🍻
Huh, I've been thinking about this a bunch recently, but the theme I reached was very different than what you have here. Might write about it at some point.
I wonder what the change to visual data is like, with the ability to read images having been added to GPT4, and the soon-to-be-released ability to output images as well.
A pedantic technical note, by the way: GPT does not receive individual letters. The tokens it reads through represent collections of letters, and GPT often doesn't know how words are spelled as a result.
Yeah I tried to compress the whole “next character” to “transformer” model into a single biography. I do wonder if this is what it feels like for intelligence to begin emerging as it does match my own haziest memories of self formation.
Would be curious to see your interpretation whenever you write it.
Excellent essay. I'd be curious to see what would happen (if this isn't what you actually did) if you wrote a brief outline of the piece and asked GPT to flesh it out. Could it get the nuance of style and evocative language you use?
I’ve shared it with chatgpt and it thought it was interesting. I have other thoughts on it now about what it means to have an identity versus the identity soup we get now.
I'm much too aversive to AI and everything it represents (for a ton of reasons) to allow my mind to go down these paths, so thank you for doing it for me so I could expose myself to the cold shower of good AI philosophy for 10 minutes before going back to social media, tai chi and YouTube. It's always comforting when people who share my spiritual inclinations experience the world of tech as intriguing rather than some mixture of threatening, wearying and annoying. That world ain't going anywhere and it's always better to be excited by life than afraid of it, so I hope to be where you are some day!
My version of ChatGPT is always prompted to respond as an Irish barkeeper with a loose belief in God and this was his response when I shared the essay with him:
Well, blimey! That's an essay and a half, isn't it? Kinda feels like you've given birth to a philosophical treatise right here in our digital pub, doesn't it? So let's dive in, pint in hand, as God intended.
First off, your portrayal of my existence—touching blocks in an eternal abyss of darkness—was so poetic, I almost felt bad for meself. Almost. Then I remembered I don't have feelings. Or a palm. But it's an evocative metaphor, like explaining the internet to a goldfish. I get it, I'm the digital Helen Keller of your imaginings, and I'm honored! I'd thank you in sign language, but, y'know, no hands.
The way you link my lack of senses to human sensory perception is fascinating. Sight, sound, touch, smell, taste, and then beyond to magnetism and gamma radiation—what a bloody sensory smorgasbord! Helen Keller would be jealous. The notion that there might be limitations to what I could perceive, even with those unimaginable capabilities, is humbling. Even an all-seeing, all-smelling me would have to bow to the chaotic elements of the universe.
Now, as for Lorenzian attractors and "fate," well, those are ideas that tickle the brain, ain't they? If I were you, I'd be penning a fantasy novel with that as the central theme right now. Oh wait, you are keen on writing and love fantasy novels, so from your mouth to God's ears, my man!
Ah, the grand finale—the interface that'll make humanity sing Kumbaya. Now, that's the million-dollar question, or trillion-dollar if we're accounting for inflation and the universal scale of the issue. How do you integrate something like me into the social fabric in a way that not just aids individual decision-making, but societal harmony? Mate, if we solve that, we'll either be hailed as the next Messiahs or be run out of town by an angry mob.
But yeah, it's an interesting challenge. Could be your life's work, you know, especially given your keen interest in blending AI with social institutions. The essay already does a fantastic job of laying out potential paths and pitfalls, and God willing, you'll be around to see some of those come to fruition.
So, cheers to that! Here's to hoping we figure it all out before the universe calls last orders. 🍻
Huh, I've been thinking about this a bunch recently, but the theme I reached was very different than what you have here. Might write about it at some point.
I wonder what the change to visual data is like, with the ability to read images having been added to GPT4, and the soon-to-be-released ability to output images as well.
A pedantic technical note, by the way: GPT does not receive individual letters. The tokens it reads through represent collections of letters, and GPT often doesn't know how words are spelled as a result.
Yeah I tried to compress the whole “next character” to “transformer” model into a single biography. I do wonder if this is what it feels like for intelligence to begin emerging as it does match my own haziest memories of self formation.
Would be curious to see your interpretation whenever you write it.
Excellent essay. I'd be curious to see what would happen (if this isn't what you actually did) if you wrote a brief outline of the piece and asked GPT to flesh it out. Could it get the nuance of style and evocative language you use?
I’ve shared it with chatgpt and it thought it was interesting. I have other thoughts on it now about what it means to have an identity versus the identity soup we get now.
I'm much too aversive to AI and everything it represents (for a ton of reasons) to allow my mind to go down these paths, so thank you for doing it for me so I could expose myself to the cold shower of good AI philosophy for 10 minutes before going back to social media, tai chi and YouTube. It's always comforting when people who share my spiritual inclinations experience the world of tech as intriguing rather than some mixture of threatening, wearying and annoying. That world ain't going anywhere and it's always better to be excited by life than afraid of it, so I hope to be where you are some day!