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> Nor does our tendency to personify and get theatrically mad at things like malfunctioning devices (“the printer hates me”). Those are all flavors of ironic p

> Nor does our tendency to personify and get theatrically mad at things like malfunctioning devices (“the printer hates me”). Those are all flavors of ironic personhood attribution. At some level, we know we’re operating in the context of an I-it relationship. Just because it’s satisfying to pretend there’s an I-you process going on doesn’t mean we entirely believe our own pretense. We can stop believing, and switch to I-it mode if necessary. The I-you element, even if satisfying, is a voluntary act we can choose to not do. > These chatbots are different. Strong disagree, it's very easy to step back and say this is a program, input, output, the end. All the people claiming this is some exhibition of personhood or whatever just don't want to spoil the illusion.

forevergreenyon 4y ago
but at some point you must think more deeply about what illusions are in a grander sense... this is a jumping off point into considering your own mind as an illusion. your own self with its sense of personhood: i.e. yourself as the it-element in a I-it interaction. But if we leave it at that, it's essentially a very nihilistic (deterministically reduced), so either turn back, or keep going: the fact that your own personhood is itself very much an illusion is OK. such illusion, however illusory, has real and potentially useful effects when you interact with your computer, do you do it terms of the logical gates you know are there? of course not, we use higher level constructs (essentially "illusory" conceptual constructions) like processes and things provided by the operating system; we use languages, functions, classes: farther and farther away from the 'real' hardware-made logic gates with more and more mathematical-grade illusions in between. so the illusions have real effects, in MOST contexts, it's better to deal with the illusions than with the underlying implementations. dunno, what if we tried to think of a HTTP search request into some API in terms of the voltage levels in the ethernet wires so that we truly 'spoil the illusion'??
- kthejoker2 4y ago
  I mean, I agree willful suspension of disbelief is a thing, but as someone who actually build APIs and worries about network latency and packing messages to be efficient blocks of data and that the method itself is a useful affordance for the product, I can walk and chew gum at the same time. Just because people don't actively think all the time in terms of low level contexts doesn't mean that only simulating the high level contexts is a sufficient substitute for the whole process. I think this whole concept is conflating "illusion" (i.e. allowing oneself to be fooled) and "delusion" (being involuntarily fooled, or unwilling to admit to being fooled.) I personally don't enjoy magic shows, but people do, and it's not because they think there's real magic there.
  - imbnwa 4y ago
    >Just because people don't actively think all the time in terms of low level contexts doesn't mean that only simulating the high level contexts is a sufficient substitute for the whole process. See also Aristole's description of a 'soul' (Lat. anima/Gk. ψυχή), which is embodied above all, unlike the abstract description of the soul that the West would go on to inherit from Neo-Platonism via Christianity. Even though today we know full well we are indissolubly embodied entities, the tendency to frame identity around an abstraction of that persists, but it seems thinking around this hasn't completely succumb to this historical artifact, see 'Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human'
kthejoker2 4y ago
Other nonsense in this post: > In fact, it is hard to argue in 2023, knowing what we know of online life, that online text-personas are somehow more impoverished than in-person presence of persons It is in fact very easy to argue. No one on the Internet knows you're a dog, there is no stable identity anywhere, anonymization clearly creates a Ring of Gyges scenario, trolling, catfishing, brigading, attention economy, and above all, the constant chase for influence (and ultimately revenue) - what passes for "persona" online is a thin gruel compared to in-person personas. When you bump into a stranger at the DMV, you aren't instantly suspicious of their motives, what they're trying to sell you, are they a Russian influence farmer, etc. Night and day. Extremely impoverished.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  I may be an outlier, but if a random stranger tries to strike up a conversation with me in public I am actually suspicious of their motives. I don't know whether to attribute that to a defense mechanism that marketing has forced me to construct, or if indeed it is due to 9/10 they are actually trying to sell me something.
  - Baeocystin 4y ago
    People just like talking to each other. Random conversations can be a great joy in life, not joking.
jvanderbot 4y ago
I think what the author is pointing at (with the wrong end of the stick, admittedly) is that there is nothing magical about human personhood. It's not that these are magical machines, and TFA shouldn't have gone that direction, it's that "what if we are also just a repeated, recursive, story that endlessly drolls in our own minds" > Seeing and being seen is apparently just neurotic streams of interleaved text flowing across a screen. ... Sounds to me a clunky analogy of how our own minds work.
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  It only takes a little bit of introspection (and perhaps reading a few case studies) to realize that the thing that is you is not the same as the thing that generates thoughts and uses/is made of language.
  - jvanderbot 4y ago
    I think that's a useful meme that the network learned, to create coherent stories that alleviate suffering, and it's effective, but it's not real. But it's useful because beliefs and perceptions are all we really have. It's why CBT works. Without the language to express "thoughts" and not-self in that level of abstraction, one cannot form the thought at all that it might not be those thoughts.
    - throwaway4aday 4y ago
      That's an interesting thought but language comprehension and language production are physically separate in the human brain and damage to one does not cause damage to the other. People with damage to Broca's area may not be able to speak or write or even gesture comprehensibly but they can still understand what others say to them or what they read. With Wernicke’s Aphasia a person may not be able to understand words said to them but they can still speak although the words they speak are largely gibberish but they still maintain correct intonation, rhythm and even grammar. Importantly, they also maintain the ability to function normally in their lives. They can still make decisions about what to do, they can plan, they can understand events that don't involve language, in all other aspects besides language they are normal. That should be all you need to know to see that a human being doesn't solely consist of language. If you do a deeper dive into this you'll also find other cases such as Genie[0] where people with intact brains didn't initially acquire language and yet were still able to develop cognitively. We are fully capable of functioning without having a language, which makes sense if you think about it. The ability to understand language must necessarily precede the invention of a language in the same way that the ability to grasp a tool must precede the invention of the tool. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_development_of_Genie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_development_of_Geni...
truetraveller 4y ago
This. A computer is good is regurgitating the input it's given...and the sky is blue. But, seemingly intelligent people think this will be some global event. I'm underwhelmed by AI and ChatGPT in general. Just a bunch of fluff. Basic programming / scripting / automation crafted by a human for a specific task will always trump "fluffy" AI.
- valine 4y ago
  In their current iteration the models are very neutered. It’s been demonstrated that GPT models are fairly good at choosing when to perform a task. Obviously lots of APIs and machinery is needed to actually perform tasks, but the heavy lifting “intelligence” portion can be almost entirely performed by our existing models. Some basic text based APIs that would quickly improve LLM utility: Calculators Database storage and retrieval Web access (already kind of done by bing) Shell scripting Thinking further into the future of multimodal models, it’s not hard to imagine this sort of thing could be extended to include image based APIs. Imagine a LLM looking at your gui and clicking on things. The sky’s the limit at that point. Checkout toolformer, they’ve got this mostly working with a much smaller model than gpt3.5. https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.04761 https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.04761
layer8 4y ago
> Strong disagree, it's very easy to step back and say this is a program, input, output, the end. That argument relies on presumptions of what a program can and cannot be. It’s very easy for me to step back and say my brain is a (self-modifying) program with input and output, the end.
pwdisswordfishc 4y ago
It's very easy to step back and say this human is a p-zombie, input, output, the end.

forevergreenyon 4y ago

but at some point you must think more deeply about what illusions are in a grander sense... this is a jumping off point into considering your own mind as an illusion. your own self with its sense of personhood: i.e. yourself as the it-element in a I-it interaction. But if we leave it at that, it's essentially a very nihilistic (deterministically reduced), so either turn back, or keep going: the fact that your own personhood is itself very much an illusion is OK. such illusion, however illusory, has real and potentially useful effects when you interact with your computer, do you do it terms of the logical gates you know are there? of course not, we use higher level constructs (essentially "illusory" conceptual constructions) like processes and things provided by the operating system; we use languages, functions, classes: farther and farther away from the 'real' hardware-made logic gates with more and more mathematical-grade illusions in between. so the illusions have real effects, in MOST contexts, it's better to deal with the illusions than with the underlying implementations. dunno, what if we tried to think of a HTTP search request into some API in terms of the voltage levels in the ethernet wires so that we truly 'spoil the illusion'??

kthejoker2 4y ago
I mean, I agree willful suspension of disbelief is a thing, but as someone who actually build APIs and worries about network latency and packing messages to be efficient blocks of data and that the method itself is a useful affordance for the product, I can walk and chew gum at the same time. Just because people don't actively think all the time in terms of low level contexts doesn't mean that only simulating the high level contexts is a sufficient substitute for the whole process. I think this whole concept is conflating "illusion" (i.e. allowing oneself to be fooled) and "delusion" (being involuntarily fooled, or unwilling to admit to being fooled.) I personally don't enjoy magic shows, but people do, and it's not because they think there's real magic there.
- imbnwa 4y ago
  >Just because people don't actively think all the time in terms of low level contexts doesn't mean that only simulating the high level contexts is a sufficient substitute for the whole process. See also Aristole's description of a 'soul' (Lat. anima/Gk. ψυχή), which is embodied above all, unlike the abstract description of the soul that the West would go on to inherit from Neo-Platonism via Christianity. Even though today we know full well we are indissolubly embodied entities, the tendency to frame identity around an abstraction of that persists, but it seems thinking around this hasn't completely succumb to this historical artifact, see 'Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human'

kthejoker2 4y ago

Other nonsense in this post: > In fact, it is hard to argue in 2023, knowing what we know of online life, that online text-personas are somehow more impoverished than in-person presence of persons It is in fact very easy to argue. No one on the Internet knows you're a dog, there is no stable identity anywhere, anonymization clearly creates a Ring of Gyges scenario, trolling, catfishing, brigading, attention economy, and above all, the constant chase for influence (and ultimately revenue) - what passes for "persona" online is a thin gruel compared to in-person personas. When you bump into a stranger at the DMV, you aren't instantly suspicious of their motives, what they're trying to sell you, are they a Russian influence farmer, etc. Night and day. Extremely impoverished.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
I may be an outlier, but if a random stranger tries to strike up a conversation with me in public I am actually suspicious of their motives. I don't know whether to attribute that to a defense mechanism that marketing has forced me to construct, or if indeed it is due to 9/10 they are actually trying to sell me something.
- Baeocystin 4y ago
  People just like talking to each other. Random conversations can be a great joy in life, not joking.

jvanderbot 4y ago

I think what the author is pointing at (with the wrong end of the stick, admittedly) is that there is nothing magical about human personhood. It's not that these are magical machines, and TFA shouldn't have gone that direction, it's that "what if we are also just a repeated, recursive, story that endlessly drolls in our own minds" > Seeing and being seen is apparently just neurotic streams of interleaved text flowing across a screen. ... Sounds to me a clunky analogy of how our own minds work.

throwaway4aday 4y ago
It only takes a little bit of introspection (and perhaps reading a few case studies) to realize that the thing that is you is not the same as the thing that generates thoughts and uses/is made of language.
- jvanderbot 4y ago
  I think that's a useful meme that the network learned, to create coherent stories that alleviate suffering, and it's effective, but it's not real. But it's useful because beliefs and perceptions are all we really have. It's why CBT works. Without the language to express "thoughts" and not-self in that level of abstraction, one cannot form the thought at all that it might not be those thoughts.
  - throwaway4aday 4y ago
    That's an interesting thought but language comprehension and language production are physically separate in the human brain and damage to one does not cause damage to the other. People with damage to Broca's area may not be able to speak or write or even gesture comprehensibly but they can still understand what others say to them or what they read. With Wernicke’s Aphasia a person may not be able to understand words said to them but they can still speak although the words they speak are largely gibberish but they still maintain correct intonation, rhythm and even grammar. Importantly, they also maintain the ability to function normally in their lives. They can still make decisions about what to do, they can plan, they can understand events that don't involve language, in all other aspects besides language they are normal. That should be all you need to know to see that a human being doesn't solely consist of language. If you do a deeper dive into this you'll also find other cases such as Genie[0] where people with intact brains didn't initially acquire language and yet were still able to develop cognitively. We are fully capable of functioning without having a language, which makes sense if you think about it. The ability to understand language must necessarily precede the invention of a language in the same way that the ability to grasp a tool must precede the invention of the tool. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_development_of_Genie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_development_of_Geni...

truetraveller 4y ago

This. A computer is good is regurgitating the input it's given...and the sky is blue. But, seemingly intelligent people think this will be some global event. I'm underwhelmed by AI and ChatGPT in general. Just a bunch of fluff. Basic programming / scripting / automation crafted by a human for a specific task will always trump "fluffy" AI.

valine 4y ago
In their current iteration the models are very neutered. It’s been demonstrated that GPT models are fairly good at choosing when to perform a task. Obviously lots of APIs and machinery is needed to actually perform tasks, but the heavy lifting “intelligence” portion can be almost entirely performed by our existing models. Some basic text based APIs that would quickly improve LLM utility: Calculators Database storage and retrieval Web access (already kind of done by bing) Shell scripting Thinking further into the future of multimodal models, it’s not hard to imagine this sort of thing could be extended to include image based APIs. Imagine a LLM looking at your gui and clicking on things. The sky’s the limit at that point. Checkout toolformer, they’ve got this mostly working with a much smaller model than gpt3.5. https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.04761 https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.04761

layer8 4y ago

> Strong disagree, it's very easy to step back and say this is a program, input, output, the end. That argument relies on presumptions of what a program can and cannot be. It’s very easy for me to step back and say my brain is a (self-modifying) program with input and output, the end.

pwdisswordfishc 4y ago

It's very easy to step back and say this human is a p-zombie, input, output, the end.