4 ms·

I literally lost a friend of thirty years yesterday because she is wedded to the Chinese Room analogy so fiercely, she refuses to engage on the subject at all.

by JieJie 4y ago

I literally lost a friend of thirty years yesterday because she is wedded to the Chinese Room analogy so fiercely, she refuses to engage on the subject at all. For all the terrible things people worry about ChatGPT doing, this was not one that I thought I was going to have to deal with. (edit: ChatGPT was not involved at all, but when I suggested she give it a try to see for herself, that was the end of it.)

bulkprotocol 4y ago
You blew up a 30 year friendship over an...analogy?
- JieJie 4y ago
  I didn't! Someone else did it to me. I was trying desperately not to. (edit: This is the kind of stuff I think my friends are watching and being informed by [0] as it was what they are posting in our common areas.) [0]: https://youtu.be/ro130m-f_yk https://youtu.be/ro130m-f_yk
  - roflyear 4y ago
    Why does it upset you if they disagree with you on this?
    - JieJie 4y ago
      It's not that they disagree with me, as there were many things we agreed on. I have read over it and it seems that they don't respect what I believe so much that their example of how they felt was this angry shouting man. But again, I was not the person who ended the friendship. In short, I'm upset that a person I thought was a friend disrespected my opinion about something so much, she stopped being my friend.
brazzy 4y ago
How can an disagreement over GPT possibly be something to end a friendship over? This sounds like you said "I cannot possibly be friends with someone who does not believe that LLMs are emerging AGI!", and people read it like that and are downvoting you. I'm gonna assume the situation was more complex, but still find it hard to imagine, how a disagreement over such an academic topic could end up destroying a friendship.
- JieJie 4y ago
  It was a complex situation to be sure. I only shared the story to illustrate how personally people are taking these discussions. I really felt like I was being very neutral and just sharing my enthusiasm. It was entirely unwelcome, apparently. If there's a lesson to be learned it's that people's tempers over these issues may be hotter than they appear. I can barely speak with my artist friends on the issue these days due to their generative AI fears. Their emotions are completely intractable on the subject: AI art is theft. Period.
  - brazzy 4y ago
    If are is a major part of someone's identity (strongly implied by calling them an "artist"), then it's hardly surprising that they would feel threatened and react emotionally to something that massively disrupts the creation of art and the viability of making a living from it.
    - JieJie 4y ago
      I'm old enough to have had my design and publishing career evaporate underneath my feet because newsprint has mostly been replaced by the internet. I'm even old enough that I was part of replacing other people's careers with technology during the desktop publishing revolution. I remember when graphics tablets became a thing and how traditional pen and brush artists cried, "unfair!" I always felt empathy for them, even back then. I feel empathy for my artist friends as well. How can we ever have a better future if we keep trying to prevent change from disrupting our careers? In my experience, I've seen a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth, but these changes have always come no matter how hard people fought. On the other hand, I see people who try to adapt to these changes do quite well. It's the part where I watch them hide their head in the sand that bothers me, not their anger. I want them to succeed. I think they have great eyes for color and line and those things are still super-valid long after the generative AI has replaced the pen and brush. I don't want to watch my artist friends suffer. I am old enough to know that the effort to stop generative AI is almost certainly going to fail (just as all the previous efforts to prevent change failed), and it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. The only constant is change.

by JieJie 4y ago

bulkprotocol 4y ago

You blew up a 30 year friendship over an...analogy?

JieJie 4y ago
I didn't! Someone else did it to me. I was trying desperately not to. (edit: This is the kind of stuff I think my friends are watching and being informed by [0] as it was what they are posting in our common areas.) [0]: https://youtu.be/ro130m-f_yk https://youtu.be/ro130m-f_yk
- roflyear 4y ago
  Why does it upset you if they disagree with you on this?
  - JieJie 4y ago
    It's not that they disagree with me, as there were many things we agreed on. I have read over it and it seems that they don't respect what I believe so much that their example of how they felt was this angry shouting man. But again, I was not the person who ended the friendship. In short, I'm upset that a person I thought was a friend disrespected my opinion about something so much, she stopped being my friend.

brazzy 4y ago

How can an disagreement over GPT possibly be something to end a friendship over? This sounds like you said "I cannot possibly be friends with someone who does not believe that LLMs are emerging AGI!", and people read it like that and are downvoting you. I'm gonna assume the situation was more complex, but still find it hard to imagine, how a disagreement over such an academic topic could end up destroying a friendship.

JieJie 4y ago
It was a complex situation to be sure. I only shared the story to illustrate how personally people are taking these discussions. I really felt like I was being very neutral and just sharing my enthusiasm. It was entirely unwelcome, apparently. If there's a lesson to be learned it's that people's tempers over these issues may be hotter than they appear. I can barely speak with my artist friends on the issue these days due to their generative AI fears. Their emotions are completely intractable on the subject: AI art is theft. Period.
- brazzy 4y ago
  If are is a major part of someone's identity (strongly implied by calling them an "artist"), then it's hardly surprising that they would feel threatened and react emotionally to something that massively disrupts the creation of art and the viability of making a living from it.
  - JieJie 4y ago
    I'm old enough to have had my design and publishing career evaporate underneath my feet because newsprint has mostly been replaced by the internet. I'm even old enough that I was part of replacing other people's careers with technology during the desktop publishing revolution. I remember when graphics tablets became a thing and how traditional pen and brush artists cried, "unfair!" I always felt empathy for them, even back then. I feel empathy for my artist friends as well. How can we ever have a better future if we keep trying to prevent change from disrupting our careers? In my experience, I've seen a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth, but these changes have always come no matter how hard people fought. On the other hand, I see people who try to adapt to these changes do quite well. It's the part where I watch them hide their head in the sand that bothers me, not their anger. I want them to succeed. I think they have great eyes for color and line and those things are still super-valid long after the generative AI has replaced the pen and brush. I don't want to watch my artist friends suffer. I am old enough to know that the effort to stop generative AI is almost certainly going to fail (just as all the previous efforts to prevent change failed), and it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. The only constant is change.