3 ms·

conversational agents have huge value, and not just commercial. One of the most trivial examples is how good of a technology it is for visually impaired people.

conversational agents have huge value, and not just commercial. One of the most trivial examples is how good of a technology it is for visually impaired people. I think this is less of an ethics questions and more a question of teaching people, from an early age, to not anthropomorphize everything around them.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago
I hadn't thought of that angle really. I think that's a worthy educational goal. At the same time, systems like LaMDA are being design to deliberately provoke that response. You don't think that's worrisome? That the desire to anthromorphize could be "weaponized"? EDIT: Real-time ad exchanges, retargeting, and tracking pixels combined with a fully conversational "AI" is kind of a terrifying thought.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  I do think that's worrisome to some extent, but I don't think it's novel. All those issues exist already. Those automated systems aren't going to do anything to you that an army of click workers from a call center in India or fishing groups aren't doing already. Whether you're being defrauded, mislead, scammed or your election or attention is stolen by bots or an army of trolls in a basement somewhere really doesn't make much of a difference. The problem is the same, mass communication allows attacks on people at low cost on a large scale. Human or robot, doesn't matter much. In either case skepticism and literacy are the answer.
timeon 4y ago
> I think this is less of an ethics questions and more a question of teaching people, from an early age, to not anthropomorphize everything around them. This one is not easy. This is ancient feature of humanity. It is how animism started. When people anthropomorphize things, events or whatever - they are creating interfaces they can communicate with. It is tool for navigation in unknown.

3 ms·

conversational agents have huge value, and not just commercial. One of the most trivial examples is how good of a technology it is for visually impaired people.

by Barrin92 4y ago

cmrdporcupine 4y ago
I hadn't thought of that angle really. I think that's a worthy educational goal. At the same time, systems like LaMDA are being design to deliberately provoke that response. You don't think that's worrisome? That the desire to anthromorphize could be "weaponized"? EDIT: Real-time ad exchanges, retargeting, and tracking pixels combined with a fully conversational "AI" is kind of a terrifying thought.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  I do think that's worrisome to some extent, but I don't think it's novel. All those issues exist already. Those automated systems aren't going to do anything to you that an army of click workers from a call center in India or fishing groups aren't doing already. Whether you're being defrauded, mislead, scammed or your election or attention is stolen by bots or an army of trolls in a basement somewhere really doesn't make much of a difference. The problem is the same, mass communication allows attacks on people at low cost on a large scale. Human or robot, doesn't matter much. In either case skepticism and literacy are the answer.
timeon 4y ago
> I think this is less of an ethics questions and more a question of teaching people, from an early age, to not anthropomorphize everything around them. This one is not easy. This is ancient feature of humanity. It is how animism started. When people anthropomorphize things, events or whatever - they are creating interfaces they can communicate with. It is tool for navigation in unknown.