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ChatGPT currently (and maybe always will) automate the production of convincing lies at an unprecedented scale. The technology is fascinating to play with, but

by smt88 4y ago

ChatGPT currently (and maybe always will) automate the production of convincing lies at an unprecedented scale. The technology is fascinating to play with, but I have no idea who would be excited about the future it will create where everything is polluted by it.

nadermx 4y ago
This sounds alarmist. If anything, this tool is mutable in more than the one way. For every bad use there are plethora of things, even just technically, where its miraclous
- howaboutnope 4y ago
  This does not exist in a vacuum. > Other people say, and I think this is a widely used rationalization, that fundamentally the tools we work on are "mere" tools; This means that whether they get use for good or evil depends on the person who ultimately buys them and so on. > There's nothing bad about working in computer vision, for example. Computer vision may very well some day be used to heal people who would otherwise die. Of course, it could also be used to guide missiles, cruise missiles for example, to their destination, and all that. You see, the technology itself is neutral and value-free and it just depends how one uses it. And besides -- consistent with that -- we can't know, we scientists cannot know how it is going to be used. So therefore we have no responsibility. > Well, that is false. It is true that a computer, for example, can be used for good or evil. It is true that a helicopter can be used as a gunship and it can also be used to rescue people from a mountain pass. And if the question arises of how a specific device is going to be used, in what I call an abstract ideal society, then one might very well say one cannot know. > But we live in a concrete society, [and] with concrete social and historical circumstances and political realities in this society, it is perfectly obvious that when something like a computer is invented, then it is going to be adopted will be for military purposes. It follows from the concrete realities in which we live, it does not follow from pure logic. But we're not living in an abstract society, we're living in the society in which we in fact live. -- Joseph Weizenbaum, http://tech.mit.edu/V105/N16/weisen.16n.html http://tech.mit.edu/V105/N16/weisen.16n.html
- smt88 4y ago
  > For every bad use there are plethora of things, even just technically, where its miraclous What's one example? A bullshit generator is only valuable to people who want to scale bullshit. Maybe it could replace TV writers one day, but why would I want them? I don't want a bunch of creative people to be unemployed so that the owners of ChatGPT can make a profit. For non-users of the tool, there is no conceivable upside to any of this. All we get is: - less believable digital/social media - far, far more SEO spam - more companies trying to push their customer service to bots instead of humans
morpheos137 4y ago
The web is already broken. Try searching for something if you know the exact part number. We are witnessing the incipient stages of civilization collapse.
- Madmallard 4y ago
  And we thought the post above was alarmist
- rom-antics 4y ago
  So you have to get your datasheets directly from the manufacturer instead of from Google (an unrelated tech company). Nothing wrong with that. Civilization doesn't hinge on the effectiveness of search engines.
- mountainb 4y ago
  The web has more or less always been shitty, but it has always been cheap, and for a while it was also lightning fast. Now, it's still cheap, the quality is probably a bit worse than before, and because of bloat it is also kind of slow, but not as slow as it was in the ancient times.
ianbutler 4y ago
Personally watching people interact with it on Bing I think there is a bright future with this technology. As always there are negatives, but I find the hyperbolic pessimism by a lot of people sad. I'm glad humanity usually ignores naysayers with things like this.
jsemrau 4y ago
With great power comes great responsibility. Sounds corny, but based on my experiments with Generative-AI these tools are really powerful. Will we as a humanity use them for good? If we look back at the last twenty years of social media we can argue that we could have built space stations, underwater cities, and autonomous mobility while our brightest minds were occupied with improving efficiency in sharing cat pictures.
krona 4y ago
Almost everything I know about Chernobyl came from a TV series I watched. How much of that series is a faithful representation of reality? I've not done any research myself. Could I trust what is on Wikipedia when half of the references are in books I'll never read? I could go to Ukraine but the reactor is sealed off, and I don't speak Russian. My point is, ChatGPT is just another step in a process which has been going on for decades. The simulation of reality it creates is just another step removed from what we're used to, but what we've become accustomed to wasn't reality anyway, even if it seems like a faithful copy of it. "The map is not the territory."
- user_named 4y ago
  A tv series is storytelling it is not a simulation of reality
  - castrodd 4y ago
    Ah, but isn’t it? All storytelling is a simulation of reality. This is something all great artists have explored. Where does art end and reality begin? It is not a solid line.
  - krona 4y ago
    I can give you hundreds of TikTok videos of young adults struggling to tell the difference.
    - smt88 4y ago
      Please share three. It must be clear that they're unable to differentiate between a TV show and reality, and also that they're not joking.
- vlunkr 4y ago
  You may not read the books or travel to Russia, but someone else already has. ChatGPT will just generate lies, there’s quite a significant difference.
smegger001 4y ago
>I have no idea who would be excited about the future it will create SEO spammers and Taboola I assume it will fully automate their workflow
libraryatnight 4y ago
This is not going to be a fun ride. People who should know better keep giving gen pop johnny switch blades and bags-o-glass to play with and are totally fine watching societies burn if it pays.
dukeofdoom 4y ago
I wonder to what extent people that get depressed see the world for what it really is. Perhaps living a carefully constructed lie about one self is beneficial on many levels. On the other hand, I can envision a scenario where AI scares the masses into inject themselves with poison. Which has become all too a real of a concern, outside the mainstream sources on twitter or 4chan. If AI will become the "Master Persuader" Scott Adams babbles about. An "all knowing" AI can be a spawn of a new religion. In Jonestown, a fringe 70s cult, had its devotes drink poison Kool aid. 900 people died. No reason that an AI religion can't beat those numbers. Human's respond to Authority figures. They just want someone else to figure it out, and tell them what to do. Think how many ideologies humanity fell for, puffed up by pseudo intellectuals and fantastical promises of Utopias on Earth. Not even tested theories, or things easily countered with world experience of human behaviour. Yet people went along. All they needed is just a little stick and carrot and an authority figure in uniform to tell them what to do.

by smt88 4y ago

nadermx 4y ago

This sounds alarmist. If anything, this tool is mutable in more than the one way. For every bad use there are plethora of things, even just technically, where its miraclous

howaboutnope 4y ago
This does not exist in a vacuum. > Other people say, and I think this is a widely used rationalization, that fundamentally the tools we work on are "mere" tools; This means that whether they get use for good or evil depends on the person who ultimately buys them and so on. > There's nothing bad about working in computer vision, for example. Computer vision may very well some day be used to heal people who would otherwise die. Of course, it could also be used to guide missiles, cruise missiles for example, to their destination, and all that. You see, the technology itself is neutral and value-free and it just depends how one uses it. And besides -- consistent with that -- we can't know, we scientists cannot know how it is going to be used. So therefore we have no responsibility. > Well, that is false. It is true that a computer, for example, can be used for good or evil. It is true that a helicopter can be used as a gunship and it can also be used to rescue people from a mountain pass. And if the question arises of how a specific device is going to be used, in what I call an abstract ideal society, then one might very well say one cannot know. > But we live in a concrete society, [and] with concrete social and historical circumstances and political realities in this society, it is perfectly obvious that when something like a computer is invented, then it is going to be adopted will be for military purposes. It follows from the concrete realities in which we live, it does not follow from pure logic. But we're not living in an abstract society, we're living in the society in which we in fact live. -- Joseph Weizenbaum, http://tech.mit.edu/V105/N16/weisen.16n.html http://tech.mit.edu/V105/N16/weisen.16n.html
smt88 4y ago
> For every bad use there are plethora of things, even just technically, where its miraclous What's one example? A bullshit generator is only valuable to people who want to scale bullshit. Maybe it could replace TV writers one day, but why would I want them? I don't want a bunch of creative people to be unemployed so that the owners of ChatGPT can make a profit. For non-users of the tool, there is no conceivable upside to any of this. All we get is: - less believable digital/social media - far, far more SEO spam - more companies trying to push their customer service to bots instead of humans

morpheos137 4y ago

The web is already broken. Try searching for something if you know the exact part number. We are witnessing the incipient stages of civilization collapse.

Madmallard 4y ago
And we thought the post above was alarmist
rom-antics 4y ago
So you have to get your datasheets directly from the manufacturer instead of from Google (an unrelated tech company). Nothing wrong with that. Civilization doesn't hinge on the effectiveness of search engines.
mountainb 4y ago
The web has more or less always been shitty, but it has always been cheap, and for a while it was also lightning fast. Now, it's still cheap, the quality is probably a bit worse than before, and because of bloat it is also kind of slow, but not as slow as it was in the ancient times.

ianbutler 4y ago

Personally watching people interact with it on Bing I think there is a bright future with this technology. As always there are negatives, but I find the hyperbolic pessimism by a lot of people sad. I'm glad humanity usually ignores naysayers with things like this.

jsemrau 4y ago

With great power comes great responsibility. Sounds corny, but based on my experiments with Generative-AI these tools are really powerful. Will we as a humanity use them for good? If we look back at the last twenty years of social media we can argue that we could have built space stations, underwater cities, and autonomous mobility while our brightest minds were occupied with improving efficiency in sharing cat pictures.

krona 4y ago

Almost everything I know about Chernobyl came from a TV series I watched. How much of that series is a faithful representation of reality? I've not done any research myself. Could I trust what is on Wikipedia when half of the references are in books I'll never read? I could go to Ukraine but the reactor is sealed off, and I don't speak Russian. My point is, ChatGPT is just another step in a process which has been going on for decades. The simulation of reality it creates is just another step removed from what we're used to, but what we've become accustomed to wasn't reality anyway, even if it seems like a faithful copy of it. "The map is not the territory."

user_named 4y ago
A tv series is storytelling it is not a simulation of reality
- castrodd 4y ago
  Ah, but isn’t it? All storytelling is a simulation of reality. This is something all great artists have explored. Where does art end and reality begin? It is not a solid line.
- krona 4y ago
  I can give you hundreds of TikTok videos of young adults struggling to tell the difference.
  - smt88 4y ago
    Please share three. It must be clear that they're unable to differentiate between a TV show and reality, and also that they're not joking.
vlunkr 4y ago
You may not read the books or travel to Russia, but someone else already has. ChatGPT will just generate lies, there’s quite a significant difference.

smegger001 4y ago

>I have no idea who would be excited about the future it will create SEO spammers and Taboola I assume it will fully automate their workflow

libraryatnight 4y ago

This is not going to be a fun ride. People who should know better keep giving gen pop johnny switch blades and bags-o-glass to play with and are totally fine watching societies burn if it pays.

dukeofdoom 4y ago

I wonder to what extent people that get depressed see the world for what it really is. Perhaps living a carefully constructed lie about one self is beneficial on many levels. On the other hand, I can envision a scenario where AI scares the masses into inject themselves with poison. Which has become all too a real of a concern, outside the mainstream sources on twitter or 4chan. If AI will become the "Master Persuader" Scott Adams babbles about. An "all knowing" AI can be a spawn of a new religion. In Jonestown, a fringe 70s cult, had its devotes drink poison Kool aid. 900 people died. No reason that an AI religion can't beat those numbers. Human's respond to Authority figures. They just want someone else to figure it out, and tell them what to do. Think how many ideologies humanity fell for, puffed up by pseudo intellectuals and fantastical promises of Utopias on Earth. Not even tested theories, or things easily countered with world experience of human behaviour. Yet people went along. All they needed is just a little stick and carrot and an authority figure in uniform to tell them what to do.