this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2024
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It's one of the terrible hype trains again... However, I wonder what makes him think that humans are something clearly more than a model that gathers data through the senses and reacts to external stimuli based on the current model. I think that's special pleading.
I've seen a lot of reaction to AI that smacks of some kind of species-level narcissism, IMO. Lots of people have grown up being told how special humans were and how there were certain classes of things that were "uniquely human" that no machine could ever do, and now they're being confronted with the notion that that's just not the case. The psychological impact of AI could be just as distressing as the economic impact, it's going to be some interesting times ahead.
None of the AI technology we have now even comes close to human intelligence
And yet it's writing poetry and painting pictures. That makes it worse, doesn't it? Turns out you don't have to be very intelligent to do those things.
Yeah, shitty poetry and entirely unoriginal artwork. I don't know what your deal is but there's a hell of a lot more to consciousness and the human brain than that and current AI tech doesn't even come close to it.
Better art and poetry than most humans can produce.
It's been a wild ride of people thinking things can't be the case which then turn out to be the case.
For example, this neat work just out of NYU: https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2024/february/ai-learns-through-the-eyes-and-ears-of-a-child.html
I’m not sure how you get this from the article, though. Evans has no doubt it’s possible; like anyone with any knowledge of the state of AI he also knows that’s really fucking far away and just science fiction today. On the other hand, if you’re going to reduce things to the absurd level comment chain OP did, I suppose the future is now because judicial AI is just as racist as cops.
I'm not talking about the article specifically, just a general class of reaction I've seen.
"What we call AI lacks agency, the ability to make dynamic decisions of its own accord, choices that are “not purely reactive, not entirely determined by environmental conditions.” "
That's from the article and I referred to that.
So are you suggesting that humans “[lack] agency [and] the ability to make dynamic decisions?” Your point is that humans are just AI and, if we’re going from this quote, we can’t have agency if we are the same.
I'm not saying that humans are just AI, I'm just saying that there's no fundamental difference in the sense that we also respond to stimuli.. we don't have free will.
That’s fair. With that line of logic, the author had to say what he said so there’s no value behind criticizing him. Granted you had to criticize him because you have no free will either. The conversation is completely meaningless because all of this is just preprogrammed action.
Depends on how you define meaning. I find meaning in experiencing the life. It may be predetermined or have random elements in it but the experience is unique to me.
Anyway, given all we know about us and the universe I haven't heard a coherent proposal of how free will could work. So, until there's good evidence to convince me otherwise .. I can't help but believe it doesn't exist.
Right! Without free will the only meaning you have is whatever you were preordained to have. Even your sense of meaning is just a predefined firing of neurons set into motion when it all began. This conversation, my response to you, your response to me, it’s all just something we have no control over unless our brains were wired back when to believe that infinitely small sub(infinite)atomic particles colliding is any form of meaning.
Is it other people’s jobs to bring this evidence to you?
Personally, I think that's oversimplification to the level of absurdity, for both AI and humans.
That description can easily be applied to insects and animals as well.
Humans are animals, so that seems fine to me.