4 ms·

People anthropomorphizing AI and me not having any control over the sense making madness that these advancements could grow into scares me almost as much if not

by natly 4y ago

People anthropomorphizing AI and me not having any control over the sense making madness that these advancements could grow into scares me almost as much if not more than any real AGI invention.

bordercases 4y ago
There's a sense in which I agree and sense in which I disagree. I think we can coherently attribute intention to self-organizing and self-controlling systems as long as we expand the notion of "agent-hood" to be unnaturally broad, and then consider anthropomorphising as a subclass. But then we'd also have to consider "plantapomorphising", "canidpomorphising" as analogous effects of projecting the properties of what it means to be one kind of agent onto another. I don't find this repugnant. We don't fully understand or control the conditions of plant growth or dog raising. But in both cases we have developed deep enough understandings of the self-organizing properties of either system (to be clinical), to both allow for their lives to be lived, yet at least within the guidelines we set for their evolution; both in breeding and in facilitation and stewardship. The difference with AI is the depth of legibility that we assume is feasible due to its formal and symbolic nature, yet the paradox of its unpredictability and adaptability that we want (to a degree), were it to solve useful problems for us. And due to the sheer efficiency and power a scaled up deep learning system has, the kind of intentionality it can produce (were it be able to be said to have any intentionality at all) would be so foreign as to be naively inconceivable and strange. Limiting ourselves to formal and systemic descriptions will help sustain our sanity for sure. But if we do pass the threshold of AGI (even of subhuman intelligence) we will need to consider the magisterial debates of whether or not machines of silico nature are distinguishable in meaningful ways from those of flesh, and whether a Butlerian Jihad is the answer to keep the supremacy of flesh in play. These choices of stewardship and scale integration are unique to our species.

by natly 4y ago

People anthropomorphizing AI and me not having any control over the sense making madness that these advancements could grow into scares me almost as much if not more than any real AGI invention.

bordercases 4y ago

There's a sense in which I agree and sense in which I disagree. I think we can coherently attribute intention to self-organizing and self-controlling systems as long as we expand the notion of "agent-hood" to be unnaturally broad, and then consider anthropomorphising as a subclass. But then we'd also have to consider "plantapomorphising", "canidpomorphising" as analogous effects of projecting the properties of what it means to be one kind of agent onto another. I don't find this repugnant. We don't fully understand or control the conditions of plant growth or dog raising. But in both cases we have developed deep enough understandings of the self-organizing properties of either system (to be clinical), to both allow for their lives to be lived, yet at least within the guidelines we set for their evolution; both in breeding and in facilitation and stewardship. The difference with AI is the depth of legibility that we assume is feasible due to its formal and symbolic nature, yet the paradox of its unpredictability and adaptability that we want (to a degree), were it to solve useful problems for us. And due to the sheer efficiency and power a scaled up deep learning system has, the kind of intentionality it can produce (were it be able to be said to have any intentionality at all) would be so foreign as to be naively inconceivable and strange. Limiting ourselves to formal and systemic descriptions will help sustain our sanity for sure. But if we do pass the threshold of AGI (even of subhuman intelligence) we will need to consider the magisterial debates of whether or not machines of silico nature are distinguishable in meaningful ways from those of flesh, and whether a Butlerian Jihad is the answer to keep the supremacy of flesh in play. These choices of stewardship and scale integration are unique to our species.