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> Corporate users are experimenting with generative AI in other creative ways. Mr Sanchez of John Deere says his firm is looking into AI-generated “synthetic” d

by mdp2021 4y ago

> Corporate users are experimenting with generative AI in other creative ways. Mr Sanchez of John Deere says his firm is looking into AI-generated “synthetic” data, which would help train other AI models... I see danger (but ok - they should know what they are doing). > ...Since last month Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant, has been able to invent stories to tell children Double down n-times, facepalm. Edit: express yourself in words, sniper. What is it, the too laconic remark on "invent[ing] stories to tell children"? Does one need to make it explicit that: children are sponge-like learners; children are delicate; children should be fed properly; stories are not innocuous time-wasters; a "story" is supposed to be an intelligent system of archetypes, lessons, projections, stimula for processing etc.: you do not leave that to an unintelligent entity!!!

luckylion 4y ago
Can children be told stories that are better than what Amazon does? Most likely. Can children be told things that are worse than what Amazon does? Absolutely. Should we replace all parent-child-interaction with the child talking to Alexa? Probably not. Should we replace some parents with Alexa? Absolutely.
- idlehand 4y ago
  AI-generated stories also do not necessarily displace parent-child storytelling, but probably other activities with similar (non-)levels of parental involvement, such as iPad or TV time.
- mdp2021 4y ago
  > Should we replace some parents with Alexa In that case, we'd be better off societally with a "standardized configurable children educator appliance", "result from teamwork of the Great Intellectuals, Pedagogues etc". A nice, open, verifiable, verified project under the responsibility and scrutiny of good authorities. Or you would just rely on "try the new Amzn module"?
  - luckylion 4y ago
    Between a society-wide, probably state-organized committee-controlled standardized configurable children educator appliance and Amazon, yeah, I'll pick Amazon. Not only will they delivery decades earlier, I don't want to have to open issues on some repo reporting a problem where their project told my daughter to kill herself and have some guy tell me "works for me, I don't have any children, I just use it to entertain my dog, but PR welcome". Thanks, but I'll take the Amazon product for my nonexistant children.
    - mdp2021 4y ago
      What about you elect to see that it may be a good idea to feed your nonexistant children with actual culture, produced by people that critics have called geniuses, and that it will take some creative fiddling to make a cost/risk/benefit analysis prefer the automated creation of texts for pedagogic purpose by a dumb thing, as opposed to the material already available? Because that was the point of the post just above: "The Amzn thing is not a product of prestigious vetting" - to all appearance, it is extremely far from it. Edit: if your point is, "yes in theory but the ANN thing is realistic, in potentially playing the proxy parent in the real world" - that calls for raising the ranking of concern for the situation, with a big "wait a moment there this cannot be good". If part of the population is not fed properly, intellectually, especially in its development, it is a big global concern. Individuals in society pay all the damages that come from inadequate education and development of peers.
      - luckylion 4y ago
        Oh, you meant just doing whatever it is parents have done since forever, and deliver culture to their children? Sure, I guess, if you're a good parent, and your culture isn't shit, then yes, that's certainly preferable. If you're not a good parent or your culture isn't something your child should grow up in, I'd still prefer Amazon. Better to have mindless consumer drones (though I don't believe Amazon is good enough to make any actual programming) than another generation of ISIS. > If part of the population is not fed properly, intellectually, especially in its development, it is a big global concern. Let's make it simpler: if people are starving, and Amazon offers to ship them Amazon Crackers™, Amazon Water™, and Amazon VitaMix™ and what not, would you say "no, we shouldn't. If we can't provide home-cooked meals to them, then we should just consider it a global concern, but not use Amazon's mass-produced, middle-of-the-road not-really-tastes-like-anything nutrient slime"? Because that's the alternative I see. You can get Alexa to read something to a child, or you can let that same child watch The Dancing Primary Colors And Squeaky Sounds show on the TV. Alexa is far superior to what plenty of children are currently getting with regards to parenting.
djur 4y ago
Without the clarification I would have assumed you were objecting to the idea of an AI "inventing" something, which I would agree with. I would have had no idea you were suggesting that children consuming AI-generated stories is obviously harmful, which I disagree with. So I appreciate the clarification. Children are delicate in some senses but incredibly resilient in many others. Hearing a robot read a generic barnyard animal story wouldn't crack the top 50 most harmful experiences most kids have in a week.
- Jensson 4y ago
  I think they are afraid of indoctrination from Amazon based stories, not that children can't handle strange animal stories.
  - mdp2021 4y ago
    Also. About the «strange animal stories», more in detail (apart from my other comments): a story transmits a number of mental tracks and developmental inputs - from quality inherent in activities to structures inherent in the world, with parallel meta-justifications for its form ("telling this to suggest that"). Speaking of strange, let us remember the dall-e images that mix credible features and completely hallucinated unstructured blobs (e.g. "top shelf: soap, mirror, towel, alien excrescence"). Questions: why is that specifically, why is that complexively; what justifies that specifically, what that complexively... Intelligence. That model, translated into stories, would be "teaching oniric randomness" - plausible at low attention level but recognizable through detail and global scope.
- mdp2021 4y ago
  And just because children are resilient you would feed them sh*te? You are what you eat. If something deserves quality, it's children. Already "normal" stories are not trivial. Already the Märchen compiled by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm do leave their specific track, which is not at all solar. Fortunately, the child may have many more books and sources to balance. But in the case of the hallucinated inventions of current ANNs, what would be the purpose - to distract the child, to waste its time, at that stage?! Surely, "not critically harmful" should not equate to "advisable".
neilv 4y ago
Amazon doesn't appear on the list of entities I'd want to have teaching children. Nevermind some half-baked AI experiments and parlor tricks.
turtleyacht 4y ago
It would be neat if the AI does ad-lib, fill -in-the-blank story setups, and then live actors do the other stuff, including revising the story, customizing it, for the child. One step closer to the Primer.
wmwmwm 4y ago
As someone who’s been prompted every other night over the last couple of years for a fresh made-up story with an ever-changing cast of dinosaurs, superheroes and aliens by my five year old (who complains if the story arc isn’t to his liking) I’ve been very grateful for a few ChatGPT synopses recently! On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to just leave him to it without me editing/steering the story as I tell it. Something like “give me 3 different story ideas with these characters suitable for a five year old” followed by “i like number 3, please expand but make the dragon good instead of bad” has been pretty impressive, and is a relief when I’m out of ideas. Coming up with 180 meaningful improvised stories each year is a tall order!
- mdp2021 4y ago
  That which you are practicing is supervised use of non-deterministic AI, where the latter is a tool - not the suggested "self-driving storyteller, you can now sleep at the wheel".

luckylion 4y ago

Can children be told stories that are better than what Amazon does? Most likely. Can children be told things that are worse than what Amazon does? Absolutely. Should we replace all parent-child-interaction with the child talking to Alexa? Probably not. Should we replace some parents with Alexa? Absolutely.

idlehand 4y ago
AI-generated stories also do not necessarily displace parent-child storytelling, but probably other activities with similar (non-)levels of parental involvement, such as iPad or TV time.
mdp2021 4y ago
> Should we replace some parents with Alexa In that case, we'd be better off societally with a "standardized configurable children educator appliance", "result from teamwork of the Great Intellectuals, Pedagogues etc". A nice, open, verifiable, verified project under the responsibility and scrutiny of good authorities. Or you would just rely on "try the new Amzn module"?
- luckylion 4y ago
  Between a society-wide, probably state-organized committee-controlled standardized configurable children educator appliance and Amazon, yeah, I'll pick Amazon. Not only will they delivery decades earlier, I don't want to have to open issues on some repo reporting a problem where their project told my daughter to kill herself and have some guy tell me "works for me, I don't have any children, I just use it to entertain my dog, but PR welcome". Thanks, but I'll take the Amazon product for my nonexistant children.
  - mdp2021 4y ago
    What about you elect to see that it may be a good idea to feed your nonexistant children with actual culture, produced by people that critics have called geniuses, and that it will take some creative fiddling to make a cost/risk/benefit analysis prefer the automated creation of texts for pedagogic purpose by a dumb thing, as opposed to the material already available? Because that was the point of the post just above: "The Amzn thing is not a product of prestigious vetting" - to all appearance, it is extremely far from it. Edit: if your point is, "yes in theory but the ANN thing is realistic, in potentially playing the proxy parent in the real world" - that calls for raising the ranking of concern for the situation, with a big "wait a moment there this cannot be good". If part of the population is not fed properly, intellectually, especially in its development, it is a big global concern. Individuals in society pay all the damages that come from inadequate education and development of peers.
    - luckylion 4y ago
      Oh, you meant just doing whatever it is parents have done since forever, and deliver culture to their children? Sure, I guess, if you're a good parent, and your culture isn't shit, then yes, that's certainly preferable. If you're not a good parent or your culture isn't something your child should grow up in, I'd still prefer Amazon. Better to have mindless consumer drones (though I don't believe Amazon is good enough to make any actual programming) than another generation of ISIS. > If part of the population is not fed properly, intellectually, especially in its development, it is a big global concern. Let's make it simpler: if people are starving, and Amazon offers to ship them Amazon Crackers™, Amazon Water™, and Amazon VitaMix™ and what not, would you say "no, we shouldn't. If we can't provide home-cooked meals to them, then we should just consider it a global concern, but not use Amazon's mass-produced, middle-of-the-road not-really-tastes-like-anything nutrient slime"? Because that's the alternative I see. You can get Alexa to read something to a child, or you can let that same child watch The Dancing Primary Colors And Squeaky Sounds show on the TV. Alexa is far superior to what plenty of children are currently getting with regards to parenting.

djur 4y ago

Without the clarification I would have assumed you were objecting to the idea of an AI "inventing" something, which I would agree with. I would have had no idea you were suggesting that children consuming AI-generated stories is obviously harmful, which I disagree with. So I appreciate the clarification. Children are delicate in some senses but incredibly resilient in many others. Hearing a robot read a generic barnyard animal story wouldn't crack the top 50 most harmful experiences most kids have in a week.

Jensson 4y ago
I think they are afraid of indoctrination from Amazon based stories, not that children can't handle strange animal stories.
- mdp2021 4y ago
  Also. About the «strange animal stories», more in detail (apart from my other comments): a story transmits a number of mental tracks and developmental inputs - from quality inherent in activities to structures inherent in the world, with parallel meta-justifications for its form ("telling this to suggest that"). Speaking of strange, let us remember the dall-e images that mix credible features and completely hallucinated unstructured blobs (e.g. "top shelf: soap, mirror, towel, alien excrescence"). Questions: why is that specifically, why is that complexively; what justifies that specifically, what that complexively... Intelligence. That model, translated into stories, would be "teaching oniric randomness" - plausible at low attention level but recognizable through detail and global scope.
mdp2021 4y ago
And just because children are resilient you would feed them sh*te? You are what you eat. If something deserves quality, it's children. Already "normal" stories are not trivial. Already the Märchen compiled by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm do leave their specific track, which is not at all solar. Fortunately, the child may have many more books and sources to balance. But in the case of the hallucinated inventions of current ANNs, what would be the purpose - to distract the child, to waste its time, at that stage?! Surely, "not critically harmful" should not equate to "advisable".

neilv 4y ago

Amazon doesn't appear on the list of entities I'd want to have teaching children. Nevermind some half-baked AI experiments and parlor tricks.

turtleyacht 4y ago

It would be neat if the AI does ad-lib, fill -in-the-blank story setups, and then live actors do the other stuff, including revising the story, customizing it, for the child. One step closer to the Primer.

wmwmwm 4y ago

As someone who’s been prompted every other night over the last couple of years for a fresh made-up story with an ever-changing cast of dinosaurs, superheroes and aliens by my five year old (who complains if the story arc isn’t to his liking) I’ve been very grateful for a few ChatGPT synopses recently! On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to just leave him to it without me editing/steering the story as I tell it. Something like “give me 3 different story ideas with these characters suitable for a five year old” followed by “i like number 3, please expand but make the dragon good instead of bad” has been pretty impressive, and is a relief when I’m out of ideas. Coming up with 180 meaningful improvised stories each year is a tall order!

mdp2021 4y ago
That which you are practicing is supervised use of non-deterministic AI, where the latter is a tool - not the suggested "self-driving storyteller, you can now sleep at the wheel".