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Why are people acting like a simple chatbot is somehow a recreation of a person? It isn't a person, it's a chatbot. There is even a company saying that they w

by drdeca 10y ago

Why are people acting like a simple chatbot is somehow a recreation of a person? It isn't a person, it's a chatbot. There is even a company saying that they will try to revive people with a combination of chatlogs and brain scans or something. Chatlogs aren't going to bridge the gap between what you can get with brain scans and what you need to do a full emulation. Even if humanity does succeed in doing complete mind simulations, humanity will not have thereby solved death. It will have, at best, delayed it for a very very long time. And then what? ;)

js8 10y ago
> Why are people acting like a simple chatbot is somehow a recreation of a person? I hate to state the obvious, but, because they are emotionally heart-broken?
- PakG1 10y ago
  Unfortunately, many people are not good at grieving and healing. I wish there was a way for people to learn how to do that instead of rely on fakes. But not sure what the answer is when they're so emotionally distraught that they default to such lengths. I'm reminded of those who get their old dogs cloned after their original dog dies. It doesn't seem like a good thing for the mind long-term to think an artificial replacement is the same companion. It's better to get a completely new dog, new friends, etc. I'm no psychologist, but this type of option seems like a scary start in potentially breaking from reality.
  - kranner 10y ago
    Sorry but this is a little judgemental. Even a photo is 'fake'. This is somewhere between a photo and a cloned copy. I don't think there is reason to believe (yet) that this will lead most people's minds to break from reality. It may be an effective coping mechanism while they slowly adapt to the passing of their loved one.
    - kuyda 10y ago
      Not sure what you call fake. Sometimes we just need a place to say something that's important, to feel the connection. Pretending that this never happened was the first thing I did, and that didn't help. Sometimes in order to let go you have to come as close as possible.
      - kranner 10y ago
        > Not sure what you call fake. I was responding to parent's > I wish there was a way for people to learn how to do that instead of rely on fakes. where 'fake' is presumably a prop like the chatbot being discussed.
drhodes 10y ago
Then you pay rent to the server farm to keep your ancestors alive in perpetuity. Generations of them, all criticizing you from the ungrave, soon they'll have voting rights .. soon, you'll be them. That's why we at Forever Now are offering insurance against the untimely death of a descendent. Who will be around to make sure your process isn't niced? You'll be as free and fast after life as you where in life, that's our guarantee.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
imh 10y ago
>Why are people acting like a simple chatbot is somehow a recreation of a person? Because AI means whatever people imagine it to mean, and the media loves to take full advantage. Even "machine learning" can mean that to the lay person. The closest thing that would probably evoke an accurate reaction in a lay person would be "When her best friend died, she rebuilt him using statistics."
- sukilot 10y ago
  Modern physics says that statistics is essentially what you need to model a universe. Statistics isn't the weakness, the paucity and the bounded nature of the dataset is.
  - bertiewhykovich 10y ago
    That's not true.
narrator 10y ago
Isn't this Ray Kurzweill's brain uploading? You make a computer that can accurately simulate a person and then, according to Kurzweil, the person is no longer dead and completely equivalent to the previously alive human being. I don't buy it of course, but isn't that the theory?
- feral 10y ago
  In fairness to Kurzweil, he isn't talking about a simple chatbot. That's a pretty big difference. But beyond that, there's an argument that there's no clear distinction between a simulation of a person and the person. If you want to get into this, start out by telling me the difference between A) a new sorting algorithm you wrote vs B) a simulation of the new sorting algorithm. In particular, why B isn't also running the same algorithm. If that's not an objection, there's the question about "completely equivalent to the previously alive human being" - pragmatically, it seems impossible to me to fully recreate a 'completely equivalent' human from their writing/output; but, if you're willing to accept a 'so similar you cant tell', the idea is no longer as clearly ridiculous as it first seemed to me: How big is the space of potential human minds? Lets say you've an incredibly powerful intelligence: its got someone's DNA and their writings/output. And lets say it has a lot of data on humans, and has deduced a pretty good model of how their minds form, given their DNA and experiences. How much can it now deduce about how a deceased person's DNA was expressed, and the person they became, given their experiences? How small is the space of minds it could narrow in to, from that data? Can it find a small enough space that another human can't tell the difference? How hard is it to model a human mind? I can make pretty good predictions about what people I know well will say in response to many situations. But I don't know; I don't think we know enough about minds to say one way or the other.
  - narrator 10y ago
    The problem with the analogy to a sorting algorithm is that a sorting algorithm is obviously computable. What if there's something like protein folding that has O(2^n) complexity involved in being a person that the body does trillions of times a second but is impossible for any size computer to do for large N?
M_Grey 10y ago
The funeral industry in this country should answer that to you: where there are vulnerable populations, there will be people willing to exploit them for money.
noobermin 10y ago
We can take this a step further. If chatbots can replace the dead, then they can replace the living. How long until hot startup in 2040 gives us vchat bots that will be better than your real friends, with a VR set you wouldn't have to spend anymore times with those pesky real people with their real problems? Don't like something about friend #201 ("Bobby"), change parameter y and he'll be just what you want, say their annoying snoring[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Haven_(Star_Trek:_Voyager) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Haven_(Star_Trek:_Voyager...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

by drdeca 10y ago

js8 10y ago

> Why are people acting like a simple chatbot is somehow a recreation of a person? I hate to state the obvious, but, because they are emotionally heart-broken?

PakG1 10y ago
Unfortunately, many people are not good at grieving and healing. I wish there was a way for people to learn how to do that instead of rely on fakes. But not sure what the answer is when they're so emotionally distraught that they default to such lengths. I'm reminded of those who get their old dogs cloned after their original dog dies. It doesn't seem like a good thing for the mind long-term to think an artificial replacement is the same companion. It's better to get a completely new dog, new friends, etc. I'm no psychologist, but this type of option seems like a scary start in potentially breaking from reality.
- kranner 10y ago
  Sorry but this is a little judgemental. Even a photo is 'fake'. This is somewhere between a photo and a cloned copy. I don't think there is reason to believe (yet) that this will lead most people's minds to break from reality. It may be an effective coping mechanism while they slowly adapt to the passing of their loved one.
  - kuyda 10y ago
    Not sure what you call fake. Sometimes we just need a place to say something that's important, to feel the connection. Pretending that this never happened was the first thing I did, and that didn't help. Sometimes in order to let go you have to come as close as possible.
    - kranner 10y ago
      > Not sure what you call fake. I was responding to parent's > I wish there was a way for people to learn how to do that instead of rely on fakes. where 'fake' is presumably a prop like the chatbot being discussed.

drhodes 10y ago

Then you pay rent to the server farm to keep your ancestors alive in perpetuity. Generations of them, all criticizing you from the ungrave, soon they'll have voting rights .. soon, you'll be them. That's why we at Forever Now are offering insurance against the untimely death of a descendent. Who will be around to make sure your process isn't niced? You'll be as free and fast after life as you where in life, that's our guarantee.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

imh 10y ago

>Why are people acting like a simple chatbot is somehow a recreation of a person? Because AI means whatever people imagine it to mean, and the media loves to take full advantage. Even "machine learning" can mean that to the lay person. The closest thing that would probably evoke an accurate reaction in a lay person would be "When her best friend died, she rebuilt him using statistics."

sukilot 10y ago
Modern physics says that statistics is essentially what you need to model a universe. Statistics isn't the weakness, the paucity and the bounded nature of the dataset is.
- bertiewhykovich 10y ago
  That's not true.

narrator 10y ago

Isn't this Ray Kurzweill's brain uploading? You make a computer that can accurately simulate a person and then, according to Kurzweil, the person is no longer dead and completely equivalent to the previously alive human being. I don't buy it of course, but isn't that the theory?

feral 10y ago
In fairness to Kurzweil, he isn't talking about a simple chatbot. That's a pretty big difference. But beyond that, there's an argument that there's no clear distinction between a simulation of a person and the person. If you want to get into this, start out by telling me the difference between A) a new sorting algorithm you wrote vs B) a simulation of the new sorting algorithm. In particular, why B isn't also running the same algorithm. If that's not an objection, there's the question about "completely equivalent to the previously alive human being" - pragmatically, it seems impossible to me to fully recreate a 'completely equivalent' human from their writing/output; but, if you're willing to accept a 'so similar you cant tell', the idea is no longer as clearly ridiculous as it first seemed to me: How big is the space of potential human minds? Lets say you've an incredibly powerful intelligence: its got someone's DNA and their writings/output. And lets say it has a lot of data on humans, and has deduced a pretty good model of how their minds form, given their DNA and experiences. How much can it now deduce about how a deceased person's DNA was expressed, and the person they became, given their experiences? How small is the space of minds it could narrow in to, from that data? Can it find a small enough space that another human can't tell the difference? How hard is it to model a human mind? I can make pretty good predictions about what people I know well will say in response to many situations. But I don't know; I don't think we know enough about minds to say one way or the other.
- narrator 10y ago
  The problem with the analogy to a sorting algorithm is that a sorting algorithm is obviously computable. What if there's something like protein folding that has O(2^n) complexity involved in being a person that the body does trillions of times a second but is impossible for any size computer to do for large N?

M_Grey 10y ago

The funeral industry in this country should answer that to you: where there are vulnerable populations, there will be people willing to exploit them for money.

noobermin 10y ago

We can take this a step further. If chatbots can replace the dead, then they can replace the living. How long until hot startup in 2040 gives us vchat bots that will be better than your real friends, with a VR set you wouldn't have to spend anymore times with those pesky real people with their real problems? Don't like something about friend #201 ("Bobby"), change parameter y and he'll be just what you want, say their annoying snoring[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Haven_(Star_Trek:_Voyager) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Haven_(Star_Trek:_Voyager...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]