5 ms·
I understand what you're saying, but isn't there value in the notion of being able to chat with a historical figure that one would otherwise never be able to do
by bwanab 4y ago
I understand what you're saying, but isn't there value in the notion of being able to chat with a historical figure that one would otherwise never be able to do? Stepping away from the obvious like Socrates, I'd love to be able to chat economics with David Hume. What I'd really like to do is chat with friends all of whom are familiar with Hume, but the problem is that I don't have any friends who have any knowledge at all about him, that's if they've ever heard of him at all.
- blowski 4y agoWhat is it about David Hume specifically that you’d want to talk with him? His intelligence?
- soneca 4y agoI don’t know if there is value for others, but, for me, there is probably negative value in doing what you described. I’d much rather not talk with anyone about Hume or equivalent, than talk to an AI mimicking them.
- wpietri 4y agoI'm sorry to break it to you, but you can't chat with a historical figure. They are dead. The best you can get is a simulation. In this case, a pretty bad one. Is it possible that we'll eventually develop AGI such that we can make a really good simulation of Hume? My Magic 8 Ball says, "ASK AGAIN LATER". The Magic 8 Ball being somewhat better, in that everybody can easily tell that nobody's home, and so they won't mistake it for something they can have a real conversation with.
- kibwen 4y agoThis is a Black Mirror episode, if anyone's wondering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Right_Back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Right_Back
- Nevermark 4y agoBut the dead "speak" to us with productive effect all the time. Through books, adoption of their methods, their original perspectives applied to many problems they faced, and other means. When a friend uses the Socratic method to talk to you, they are channelling an approach for examining thinking inspired by Socrates. It doesn't matter that Socrates is dead. There is still utility in using his, or a similar, approach. Likewise for the conversational, or analytical, styles of other living or dead people, famous for having a distinct and useful approach to ideas or problems. I can't wait to put Richard Feynman in my pocket! And no, I am surely not joking!
- wpietri 4y agoI think using "speak" as a metaphor is fine. I think it is bad to confuse it with a synthetic pseudo-conversation along the way to confusing it with an actual conversation. Ouija boards are neat, but let's please keep straight what's going on when somebody uses them.
- Nevermark 4y agoWell, of course it is a metaphor. > Through books, [...] methods, [...] perspectives [...], and other means. People are used to metaphors, and this is an extremely common one! People also pervasively use the synecdoche of talking about the creative output of human beings as if it were the person themselves. Refer to "Bach", when we mean his music. Say "Einstein tells us" to refer to an implication of one of his equations that Einstein himself might never have addressed directly, etc. Common figures of speech are unlikely to put us on the precipice of a mass delusion regarding literal communication with the dead or resurrection.
- wpietri 4y agoThanks, yes, I understand what a metaphor is. Did I give some indication I don't? Mass delusion is not my concern here. It's confusing an important conversation about potential benefits and harms of a new technology. A process I think requires more patience and care most discussions here.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- O1111OOO 4y agoAll the replies, so far, seem to be negative and remind me of how one would react to Star Trek's holo-addiction (https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Holo-addiction https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Holo-addiction): "a psychological disorder in which a person preferred the fictional world of the holodeck to the real world." On the other hand, there's the therapeutic benefit of talking to yourself, which I think has been well established (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=therapeutic+value+of+talking+to+yourself https://duckduckgo.com/?q=therapeutic+value+of+talking+to+yo...). We also tend to have conflict resolving inner monologues all the time, in addition to conflict resolving dreams that sometimes create entire worlds for us. So... with those two things in play - I like the idea of an AI creating a neural net mimicking (or approximating) the knowledge and (public) personality of past/current people. It could be fun in the same way an immersive film is fun and sometimes insightful. As long as we never lose sight of the fictional nature of the interaction. ---------------- sidenote: Our minds, are in a sense, original materials and assets. It can be argued that they are our intellectual property. It does beg the question if mimicking a person can be protected from any and all pursuits - commercial or otherwise.
- wpietri 4y ago> It could be fun in the same way an immersive film is fun and sometimes insightful. As long as we never lose sight of the fictional nature of the interaction. A good example, but perhaps not in the way you think. Historical films have people who make at least attempt to hew to the historical truth. But despite that, historians have a raft of complaints about movies being fonts of enduring myths. GPT models, at least, don't have any idea about truth at all, and the individual, on-the-fly nature of the content makes it very difficult to catch errors as one would for film.
- giraffe_lady 4y agoPeople are making the technical argument about it not really being them, and I think that's important. But more important to me is the moral one: it is wrong to put the words of the living in the mouths of the dead. We should not distance ourselves from the reality of death, or construct for ourselves any illusions about its finality or completeness. The dead are dead, we cannot change that, we should not even try. And so it will be for us, and any true engagement with life is in contrast to that inevitable truth.
- wpietri 4y agoOoh, that's very interesting. Our culture has such a problem with acknowledging death anyhow. We don't need to dig the hole deeper.