geekwithsoul

Yeah, these are popping up all over the place - all from different users with newly created accounts and no other post/comment history. Most definitively sus.

In addition to the point about Western mythologies dominating because of cultural exports, I think there is also the undercurrent of England's original mythologies having been "lost" and so the English were always fascinated by the mythologies of the Norse (due to being invaded) and by the Greeks and Romans (as previous "great" civilizations they aspired to be).

Combine that with America's obvious English influences and the influence of England as a colonizer around the world, and those mythologies gained a huge outsized influence.

I probably didn't explain well enough. Consuming media (books, TV, film, online content, and video games) is predominantly a passive experience. Obviously video games less so, but all in all, they only "adapt" within the guardrails of gameplay. These AI chatbots however are different in their very formlessness - they're only programmed to maintain engagement and rely on the LLM training to maintain an illusion of "realness". And because they were trained on all sorts of human interactions, they're very good at that.

Humans are unique in how we continually anthropomorphize tons of not only inert, lifeless things (think of someone alternating between swearing at and pleading to a car that won't start) but abstract ideals (even scientists often speak of evolution "choosing" specific traits). Given all of that, I don't think it's unreasonable to be worried about a teen with a still developing prefrontal cortex and who is in the midst of working on understanding social dynamics and peer relationships to embue an AI chatbot with far more "humanity" than is warranted. Humans seem to have an anthropomorphic bias in how we relate to the world - we are the primary yardstick we use to measure and relate everything around us, and things like AI chatbots exploit that to maximum effect. Hell, the whole reason the site mentioned in the article exists is that this approach is extraordinarily effective.

So while I understand that on a cursory look, someone objecting to it comes across as a sad example of yet another moral panic, I truly believe this is different. For one, we've never had access to such a lively psychological mirror before and it's untested waters; and two, this isn't some objection on some imagined slight against a "moral authority" but based in the scientific understanding of specifically teen brains and their demonstrated fragility in certain areas while still under development.

Same! And if anyone disagrees, feel free to get in the comments! 😉

I understand what you mean about the comparison between AI chatbots and video games (or whatever the moral panic du jour is), but I think they're very much not the same. To a young teen, no matter how "immersive" the game is, it's still just a game. They may rage against other players, they may become obsessed with playing, but as I said they're still going to see it as a game.

An AI chatbot who is a troubled teen's "best friend" is different and no matter how many warnings are slapped on the interface, it's going to feel much more "real" to that kid than any game. They're going to unload every ounce of angst into that thing, and by defaulting to "keep them engaged", that chatbot is either going to ignore stuff it shouldn't or encourage them in ways that it shouldn't. It's obvious there's no real guardrails in this instance, as if he was talking about being suicidal, some red flags should've popped up.

Yes the parents shouldn't have allowed him such unfettered access, yes they shouldn't have had a loaded gun that he had access to, but a simple "This is all for funsies" warning on the interface isn't enough to stop this from happening again. Some really troubled adults are using these things as defacto therapists and that's bad too. But I'd be happier if lawmakers were much more worried about kids having access to this stuff than accessing "adult sites".

That's certainly where the term originated, but usage has expanded. I'm actually fine with it, as the original idea was about the pattern recognition we use when looking at faces, and I think there's similar mechanisms for matching other "known" patterns we see. Probably with some sliding scale of emotional response on how well known the pattern is.

The problem is the laymen expect it to do reasoning, so the sales & marketing team says that it can do reasoning, and then the CEO will have consumed the Kool-Aid and restructure the company because he believes it can do reasoning.

Always frustrates me how underutilized @media print is. Always liked crafting some good CSS for it on sites, especially ones that I worked on that were document heavy.

Maybe? But in the article he was talking about his priority being that he wanted to disconnect from his phone but still wanted news. Just seems there’s been a solution for that for a few centuries now. His solution seemed to me at least to be a lemon that wasn’t worth the squeeze as it were.

So, a newspaper with a lot of extra steps? I understand the gee whizness of getting this all to work but not really sure there’s a solid “why” to this.

It’s more the fact they were running a mole in the CIA. If you want an example of more direct action, how does this one work for you (from just this week):

https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2024/09/25/chinas_salt_typhoon_cyber_spies/

In a related security advisory, government agencies accused the Flax Typhoon crew of amassing a SQL database containing details of 1.2 million records on compromised and hijacked devices that they had either previously used or were currently using for the botnet

Back in February, the US government confirmed that this same Chinese crew comprised"multiple" US critical infrastructure orgs' IT networks in America in preparation for "disruptive or destructive cyberattacks" against those targets.

I mean, the subject of “Chinese Espionage in the United States” has a fairly lengthy page all of its own on Wikipedia with examples and concerns. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_espionage_in_the_United_States

Probably one of the most notable examples:

Between 2010 and 2012, intelligence breaches led to Chinese authorities dismantling CIA intelligence networks in the country, killing and arresting a large number of CIA assets within China.[43] A joint CIA/FBI counterintelligence operation, codenamed "Honey Bear", was unable to definitively determine the source of the compromises, though theories include the existence of a mole, cyber-espionage, compromise of Hillary Clinton's illicit classified email server as noted by the intelligence community inspector general,[44] or poor tradecraft.[43]Mark Kelton, then the deputy director of the National Clandestine Service for Counterintelligence, was initially skeptical that a mole was to blame.[43]

In January 2018, a former CIA officer named Jerry Chun Shing Lee[note 1] was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport, on suspicion of helping dismantle the CIA's network of informants in China.[47][48]

And that’s just one we all know about. Not to mention a rich history of Chinese state-sponsored corporate espionage and a history of let’s say playing fast and loose with international norms, human rights, etc.