rotting bones wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2023 11:05 pm1. Law codes are famously obscure and non-transparent in intent....
4. Science is already difficult for a lot of people to understand.
But the creators of law codes and scientific theory understand them quite well. The average person could in principle learn to understand them as well.
2. The AI could recommend actions, and it could be up to humans to act of them. This is already weaker than the binding force of laws.
3. There's a subfield called Interpretable Machine Learning whose purpose is to make the decisions of ML algorithms understandable to humans.
But what prevents AI from becoming so complicated that it becomes impossible to interpret? Imagine trying to explain human thought processes to an ant without even the neurological capacity for things that seem obvious to us.
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rotting bones wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2023 11:05 pm1. Law codes are famously obscure and non-transparent in intent....
4. Science is already difficult for a lot of people to understand.
But the creators of law codes and scientific theory understand them quite well. The average person could in principle learn to understand them as well.
2. The AI could recommend actions, and it could be up to humans to act of them. This is already weaker than the binding force of laws.
3. There's a subfield called Interpretable Machine Learning whose purpose is to make the decisions of ML algorithms understandable to humans.
But what prevents AI from becoming so complicated that it becomes impossible to interpret? Imagine trying to explain human thought processes to an ant without even the neurological capacity for things that seem obvious to us.
I think you're confusing two different senses of "understand". A scientist can understand what a scientific law says in general without having worked out the implications in every possible case. An engineer understands the AI's architecture in the same way without knowing its output in every case.
rotting bones wrote: ↑Sun Aug 06, 2023 12:09 amI think you're confusing two different senses of "understand". A scientist can understand what a scientific law says in general without having worked out the implications in every possible case. An engineer understands the AI's architecture in the same way without knowing its output in every case.
But the nice thing about other forms of technology is that we can always predict their output and never have to worry about them developing a mind of their own. When you enter an arithmetic expression into a calculator, you always get the same answer and you can work out that answer without a calculator if necessary. It seems to me that AI differs from all other forms of technology in functioning as a black box. What advantages does that really have over something more transparent?
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malloc wrote: ↑Sun Aug 06, 2023 5:26 am
But the nice thing about other forms of technology is that we can always predict their output and never have to worry about them developing a mind of their own.
I'd say that doesn't even necessarily apply to something as simple as drawers, or, for that matter, old-time pre-microprocessor electronics.
malloc wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2023 10:52 pm
But encyclopedias and law codes have no ability to make decisions on their own and their construction is entirely transparent to their creators. Artificial intelligence can act autonomously and according to principles that even its creators cannot necessarily explain. What should we do when the AI recommends things that make no sense to us because we simply lack the computational capacity to understand its decisions?
1. Law codes are famously obscure and non-transparent in intent.
2. The AI could recommend actions, and it could be up to humans to act of them. This is already weaker than the binding force of laws.
Ideally, AI shouldn't be given the power to act without human supervision (though with incentives to cut costs, some might be tempted to do away with that). Humans can ignore or heed AI recommendations. But when AI makes recommendations beyond human understanding, placing the decision in human hands can give an illusion of safety. It simply changes who has the final say in the decision to someone who does not understand their own choices.
Still, I find AI useful in such scenarios, for pointing out potential gaps in our knowledge.
Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Aug 06, 2023 5:41 amI'd say that doesn't even necessarily apply to something as simple as drawers, or, for that matter, old-time pre-microprocessor electronics.
That makes no sense whatsoever. What can drawers or lightbulbs possibly do without direct human control or anticipation, apart from jamming or burning out? Let us compare the current wave of AI with printing presses for instance. When printing presses appeared, they revolutionized society by allowing us to create far more books with far less labor. Undoubtedly they ruined the livelihood of numerous scribes and greatly reduced the importance of handwriting as a craft. They seem the closest historical analogy to LLMs that I can imagine. Despite all that, they differed from chatGPT in one critical aspect: their human operators retained complete control over the text they printed. Uniquely among technologies, AI does not grant its supposed users total control over its output but rather chooses its own output without us knowing what to expect.
rotting bones wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2023 8:09 pmHumans don't use art to find meaning. They use it to forget the ego for a while. People who go too deep into it lose touch with their rational self-interest and become mystical fascists. Take the guy reputed to be Japan's best writer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uAMOZvsmGg (Edit: I guess the classic example would be Wagner's association with Nazism. I vaguely remember reading about people watching Wagner's Parsifal and becoming antisemites. It was like a toxic fandom.)
While granting that there have been plenty of problematic and even reprehensible artists, I really don't understand the connection between art and mystical fascism. One could certainly call Mishima and Wagner fascist mystics, but not every artist is Mishima or Wagner and it seems weird to cast them as representative of art. The notion of art as inclined toward political reaction seems utterly contrary to everything I have ever heard. The left wingers I know and read overwhelmingly align themselves with the humanities rather than STEM in terms of careers and interests. If anything, I usually hear it suggested that STEM trends right while the humanities trend left. It really surprises and baffles me to hear anyone claim otherwise.
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malloc wrote: ↑Mon Aug 07, 2023 8:28 pm
Despite all that, they differed from chatGPT in one critical aspect: their human operators retained complete control over the text they printed. Uniquely among technologies, AI does not grant its supposed users total control over its output but rather chooses its own output without us knowing what to expect.
That's not an AI thing. Randomness and chaos make things hard or even impossible to control/predict, and neither is a sign of intelligence.
malloc wrote: ↑Mon Aug 07, 2023 8:28 pm
That makes no sense whatsoever. What can drawers or lightbulbs possibly do without direct human control or anticipation, apart from jamming or burning out? Let us compare the current wave of AI with printing presses for instance. When printing presses appeared, they revolutionized society by allowing us to create far more books with far less labor. Undoubtedly they ruined the livelihood of numerous scribes and greatly reduced the importance of handwriting as a craft. They seem the closest historical analogy to LLMs that I can imagine. Despite all that, they differed from chatGPT in one critical aspect: their human operators retained complete control over the text they printed. Uniquely among technologies, AI does not grant its supposed users total control over its output but rather chooses its own output without us knowing what to expect.
*shrug* You had claimed that older technologies at least didn't have minds of their own; I pointed to examples of technologies that sometimes at least seemed to have minds of their own to some of the people working, or trying to work, with them.
If you're worried that the LLMs developed by the major tech corporations might not be evil enough, well, worry no longer - there are now even more evil alternatives:
Imagine if all the resources wasted on AI had gone to stopping global warming or curing cancer. In my opinion, it really lays bare the true nature of capitalism that they chose to destroy art rather than save the world from catastrophe or heal the sick. The oligarchs of the world place no value on the Humanities and even less on humanity itself. Marx once opened that it was our capacity for creative work that defined our species being. Bees build amazing structures but only according to pure instinct. By contrast, he observed, even the worst architect imbues the structures they build with creative intent. With the appropriation of art and design from humans, the bourgeoisie are attacking the very heart and soul of humanity. We have no place in the they are trying to build, except perhaps as mindless consumers of whatever rubbish their machines spew.
For all the TESCREAL apologia I hear, nobody has ever convincingly explained how giving the intellectual and creative dimension of humanity over to machines is supposed to benefit us. I hardly want to toil in a warehouse while machines get to dream and create and less still do I want to become an ant helpless before godlike superintelligences. It really astonishes me that artists in a hobby founded by Tolkien are not more alarmed by this war on art.
Mureta ikan topaasenni. Koomát terratomít juneeratu!
Shame on America | He/him
malloc wrote: ↑Wed Aug 09, 2023 9:58 am
Imagine if all the resources wasted on AI had gone to stopping global warming or curing cancer. In my opinion, it really lays bare the true nature of capitalism that they chose to destroy art rather than save the world from catastrophe or heal the sick. The oligarchs of the world place no value on the Humanities and even less on humanity itself. Marx once opened that it was our capacity for creative work that defined our species being. Bees build amazing structures but only according to pure instinct. By contrast, he observed, even the worst architect imbues the structures they build with creative intent. With the appropriation of art and design from humans, the bourgeoisie are attacking the very heart and soul of humanity. We have no place in the they are trying to build, except perhaps as mindless consumers of whatever rubbish their machines spew.
For all the TESCREAL apologia I hear, nobody has ever convincingly explained how giving the intellectual and creative dimension of humanity over to machines is supposed to benefit us. I hardly want to toil in a warehouse while machines get to dream and create and less still do I want to become an ant helpless before godlike superintelligences. It really astonishes me that artists in a hobby founded by Tolkien are not more alarmed by this war on art.
Perhaps it's because some of us also recognize two things: 1) Humans are going to create art regardless of if machines are making "art" or not. It may not be done professionally, but making art is part of what humans are. I'm not meaning that if you force humans to stop making art they stop being humans, but rather that humans WILL make art even if that art will be different in the future than it is now. And 2) the "AI" that we have are not nearly as intelligent as most people assume, and that "intelligence" is extremely narrow. I'm not saying that AI won't in the future become more intelligent more broadly. And maybe, as you fear, it'll happen sooner than I would assume. But I also honestly think that the focus on AI is similar to the focus on the blockchain and crypto currency previously. It's a fad among tech bros and will be dropped in favor of something else soon enough.
linguistcat wrote: ↑Wed Aug 09, 2023 10:32 amI'm not meaning that if you force humans to stop making art they stop being humans, but rather that humans WILL make art even if that art will be different in the future than it is now.
Exactly. You don't have to worry about art - it'll happen anyway. Some human beings have created art while they were imprisoned in the internment camps of brutal dictatorships. So I don't think that people who are passionate about art will stop making art for some comparatively mundane reason like difficulties with getting funding. Arguably, some of the best art of the 21st century so far was neither commercial nor publicly or privately subsidized art; it was created by amateurs in their spare time and posted on fan art forums on the internet.
Torco wrote: ↑Wed Aug 09, 2023 5:03 pm
where is all of this excellent, world-class art being made for free by amateurs?
nono, i don't mean it doesn't exist: it *has* to exist.. there has to be something other than fucking
c o n t e n t
in the 21st century... where is it? WHERE IS IT AAAAA HELP MEEEE I'M SURROUNDED BY CONTENT
Well, if you dismiss everything on the internet as "content", and therefore not Really Art, of course you won't find any good art there. I'm not sure about your logic, there, though. Are the things contained in an art museum also not Really Art, because they're the content of the art museum?
Torco wrote: ↑Wed Aug 09, 2023 5:03 pm
where is all of this excellent, world-class art being made for free by amateurs?
nono, i don't mean it doesn't exist: it *has* to exist.. there has to be something other than fucking
c o n t e n t
in the 21st century... where is it? WHERE IS IT AAAAA HELP MEEEE I'M SURROUNDED BY CONTENT
Well, if you dismiss everything on the internet as "content", and therefore not Really Art, of course you won't find any good art there. I'm not sure about your logic, there, though. Are the things contained in an art museum also not Really Art, because they're the content of the art museum?
One must remember that people saw Andy Warhol's works as not being Really Art, and this was before teh Interwebs became a thing.
art is a notoriously difficult thing to define, and probably so is content, but I think i'm pointing at a comprehensible category here, even if content and art are not mutually exclusively concepts: one could even say that content is a kind of art (though i'm not sure all content is art, point is art can be content). but I think the genealogy of the terminology can be helpful here, as content is originally a concept that comes from advertising: what you care about is eyes on your ads, but for that what you need is to fill up a channel (like TV or whatever) with *something* people will watch in order so that they also watch your ads, so that *something* has like one relevant feature: how much people are willing to watch it. okay, no, actually it has a few more properties: what ads are best sold alongside it (sewing tutorials and BUY PREMIUM THREAD NOW or whatever), and how controversial it is in the sense of how likely it is a company will object to their ad being placed alongside it.
Thing that are not content in this particular sense are like movies, books, virtual verduria (I don't think zomp runs ads alongside it, and i'm pretty sure it wasn't made for ads anyway), wikipedia, coursera, audible, etcetera.
