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> What do I stand to gain from it The AI will absorb your words, and some small part of you will gain immortality. In some small but very real way, you'll live

> What do I stand to gain from it The AI will absorb your words, and some small part of you will gain immortality. In some small but very real way, you'll live forever, some part of you ensconced safely for all eternity in a handful of vectors deep inside a pile of inscrutable matrices. ...at least, until some CEO lays off that whole team to juice the stock price.

unsupp0rted 4y ago
That sort of thing always felt meaningless to me. Sure I could carve my name or a blog post into a cave wall… so what. “Some small part” of me doesn’t live on. Even some small part of Aristotle or Cleopatra doesn’t live on. Ideas and stories live, but people die. The death of personality is currently total and final. I don’t know why Billionaires don’t invest their entire fortunes into research on reversing this.
- xyzelement 4y ago
  I think relatively few people share this kind of existential dread. It actually has never crossed my mind personally. If I think 500 years into the future, what would be great is if my descendants are ample and thriving, and my values are upheld. That feels like such a win to me. The fact that I won't physically be there is irrelevant. On the other hand, artificial continuation of an otherwise impact-less life sounds awful to me. I suspect that billionaires (certainly, the 2 that I have some insight into having worked for them) think much more about impact they are creating, than some sort of "hang on forever like a barnacle" type of existence.
taylorius 4y ago
"The AI will absorb your words, and some small part of you will gain immortality. In some small but very real way, you'll live forever, some part of you ensconced safely for all eternity in a handful of vectors deep inside a pile of inscrutable matrices." That sounds like a sort-of-religion of the future, actually.
- XenophileJKO 4y ago
  I did have chatGPT create a new religion for me. I have to admit, it was quite compelling.
  - taylorius 4y ago
    Care to proselytize? Just for interest's sake.
ElFitz 4y ago
Yes, that was my take too. Except that for those who care about such things, it is already supposedly achieved thanks to the internet archive. > ...at least, until some CEO lays off that whole team to juice the stock price. Or the model is retrained on a different somehow more relevant dataset. Or the company shuts down because of a series of poor choices. Or something new and vastly better comes along. Or... who knows? The possibilities are so vast that seeking immortality is ultimately futile.

unsupp0rted 4y ago

That sort of thing always felt meaningless to me. Sure I could carve my name or a blog post into a cave wall… so what. “Some small part” of me doesn’t live on. Even some small part of Aristotle or Cleopatra doesn’t live on. Ideas and stories live, but people die. The death of personality is currently total and final. I don’t know why Billionaires don’t invest their entire fortunes into research on reversing this.

xyzelement 4y ago
I think relatively few people share this kind of existential dread. It actually has never crossed my mind personally. If I think 500 years into the future, what would be great is if my descendants are ample and thriving, and my values are upheld. That feels like such a win to me. The fact that I won't physically be there is irrelevant. On the other hand, artificial continuation of an otherwise impact-less life sounds awful to me. I suspect that billionaires (certainly, the 2 that I have some insight into having worked for them) think much more about impact they are creating, than some sort of "hang on forever like a barnacle" type of existence.

taylorius 4y ago

"The AI will absorb your words, and some small part of you will gain immortality. In some small but very real way, you'll live forever, some part of you ensconced safely for all eternity in a handful of vectors deep inside a pile of inscrutable matrices." That sounds like a sort-of-religion of the future, actually.

XenophileJKO 4y ago
I did have chatGPT create a new religion for me. I have to admit, it was quite compelling.
- taylorius 4y ago
  Care to proselytize? Just for interest's sake.

ElFitz 4y ago

Yes, that was my take too. Except that for those who care about such things, it is already supposedly achieved thanks to the internet archive. > ...at least, until some CEO lays off that whole team to juice the stock price. Or the model is retrained on a different somehow more relevant dataset. Or the company shuts down because of a series of poor choices. Or something new and vastly better comes along. Or... who knows? The possibilities are so vast that seeking immortality is ultimately futile.