4 ms·

From 'do robots dream' to 'how do we make them stop'

clnq 3y ago
“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” is a must-read for fans of Blade Runner and the cyberpunk genre. Also, it’s interesting that in 2023, we can reasonably definitively answer that question for any definition of “dream”.
- romwell 3y ago
  "Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Gaslight You into Thinking They Are Totally Real Even Though They Have a Dozen of Eyes" doesn't have the same ring to it though.
  - clnq 3y ago
    We can conclude that the question posited by the book is too abstract to answer. Until a book with a better question is written, the case is closed. :)
- nindalf 3y ago
  I might be one of the few people who didn’t like this book. Philip K Dick (the author) manages to come up with some of the most incredible premises. And then somehow the plot meanders into some boring, meaningless corner that left me mystified. How could the person who thought of this premise also have written this plot? It’s not just Androids. In another book he comes up with this fascinating idea of an alternate history where Japan and Germany won WWII. And then it turns out astrology is real and everyone is obsessing over it. Just why? I’m sure everyone will say actually astrology is fascinating, or you need to look past that to get the real meaning of the book. But I prefer the books that don’t meander into meaningless dead ends. There are plenty of them out there. Yet others may say Dick was enormously influential and inspired many other brilliant authors. Ok, I’ll read those authors then. Overall I’d rate the books I’ve read by Dick as 2 stars. And only because the premises are so fantastic.
  - Pamar 3y ago
    I do not know if this will make you change your opinion, but at least it will "inform" it a bit better: "The Man in the High Castle" (i.e. the one with the alternate WWII ending) was allegedly "plotted" by using the I-Ching. Basically before every chapter/scene Dick would cast the I-Ching[1] and use the response to decide "what happens now?". Dick was always obsessed with a few core themes ("what is real?", "what is human?") plus a ton of personal and psychological issues. It was always erratic in his production, and while I like his works, I would generally agree that the way he developed his own premises could often be "disappointing" at least in the case of novels. Short stories are usually much better, IMHO. --- [1] here is my take on it, if you want to know a bit more about I-Ching: https://pa-mar.net/Lifestyle/I-Ching.html https://pa-mar.net/Lifestyle/I-Ching.html
    - nindalf 3y ago
      That makes a lot of sense. The characters following astrology would explain why all their decisions felt so disconnected and weird.
  - r721 3y ago
    Did you read something about him as a person? He was a profoundly weird person (one example from wiki: "Dick alleged that Stanisław Lem was probably a false name used by a composite committee operating on orders of the Communist party to gain control over public opinion, and wrote a letter to the FBI to that effect"), and that weirdness seeped into his novels. I think you could try one of his semi-autobiographical novels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scanner_Darkly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scanner_Darkly or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Albemuth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Albemuth) to see where this weirdness in the more known novels comes from.
    - ddalex 3y ago
      You say weirdness, I say best drugs available to man in impressive quantities. A Scanner Darkly and Ubik are mind bending
    - 3y ago
mdp2021 3y ago
> how do we make them stop The same way we do with humans: reflection, critical thinking. (Although, disrobing the "Cato the censor" robes, yes I loved this image.) (Although II, the original concept of "androids dreaming of electric sheep" is more related to the PKD theme of the human problem in terms of emotion, the deontic call for empathy, the human property of the inner trouble within a mechanistic perspective. So, as if it could be rephrased as "is angst inherent in humanity [as a quality]" and "is empathy the solution". Edit: or "Is humanity a goal, does it imply care, and do you reach it with empathy". ...In tentative terms: it has been a long time I do not read the book.)
- mdp2021 3y ago
  ...And I must add, back as the Censor: the very fact that we quote Philip K. Dick with relevance to this context could suggest that: hallucination is not the problem, the problem is further processing it to the desired state.
mschuster91 3y ago
I think the breakthrough development from GPT to a general-purpose AI will be the introduction of at least some form of self-awareness. Basically, at the moment, GPT models don't have the concept of "knowledge", or at least not in a way accessible from the inside of the model. Ask a human something they don't know and they'll tell you they don't know - GPT models will pull something out of thin air as they aren't aware they don't "know" the answer or that the input is insufficient.
- pishpash 3y ago
  ChatGPT already does this after alignment, it barely "knows" anything these days.
- bdhcuidbebe 3y ago
  > general-purpose AI will be the introduction of at least some form of self-awareness. Since this is obvious for all here, cant we for once agree there is no AI in GPT?
RobotToaster 3y ago
Great, we already need robot neuroleptics to stop them hallucinating.
- ben_w 3y ago
  When people dismiss the alignment problem by anthropomorphising AI, my go-to meme is: Owing to the fact we have no idea what we're doing, the first human-like AI is likely to have literally every mental illness, mixing Alzheimer's paranoid schizophrenia, grandiose narcissism, manic depression, and unconstrained hallucinations. So yes, we'll need digital neuroleptics, amongst other things.
spyder 3y ago
We have to wake them up, but probably not a good idea. :-O

clnq 3y ago

“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” is a must-read for fans of Blade Runner and the cyberpunk genre. Also, it’s interesting that in 2023, we can reasonably definitively answer that question for any definition of “dream”.

romwell 3y ago
"Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Gaslight You into Thinking They Are Totally Real Even Though They Have a Dozen of Eyes" doesn't have the same ring to it though.
- clnq 3y ago
  We can conclude that the question posited by the book is too abstract to answer. Until a book with a better question is written, the case is closed. :)
nindalf 3y ago
I might be one of the few people who didn’t like this book. Philip K Dick (the author) manages to come up with some of the most incredible premises. And then somehow the plot meanders into some boring, meaningless corner that left me mystified. How could the person who thought of this premise also have written this plot? It’s not just Androids. In another book he comes up with this fascinating idea of an alternate history where Japan and Germany won WWII. And then it turns out astrology is real and everyone is obsessing over it. Just why? I’m sure everyone will say actually astrology is fascinating, or you need to look past that to get the real meaning of the book. But I prefer the books that don’t meander into meaningless dead ends. There are plenty of them out there. Yet others may say Dick was enormously influential and inspired many other brilliant authors. Ok, I’ll read those authors then. Overall I’d rate the books I’ve read by Dick as 2 stars. And only because the premises are so fantastic.
- Pamar 3y ago
  I do not know if this will make you change your opinion, but at least it will "inform" it a bit better: "The Man in the High Castle" (i.e. the one with the alternate WWII ending) was allegedly "plotted" by using the I-Ching. Basically before every chapter/scene Dick would cast the I-Ching[1] and use the response to decide "what happens now?". Dick was always obsessed with a few core themes ("what is real?", "what is human?") plus a ton of personal and psychological issues. It was always erratic in his production, and while I like his works, I would generally agree that the way he developed his own premises could often be "disappointing" at least in the case of novels. Short stories are usually much better, IMHO. --- [1] here is my take on it, if you want to know a bit more about I-Ching: https://pa-mar.net/Lifestyle/I-Ching.html https://pa-mar.net/Lifestyle/I-Ching.html
  - nindalf 3y ago
    That makes a lot of sense. The characters following astrology would explain why all their decisions felt so disconnected and weird.
- r721 3y ago
  Did you read something about him as a person? He was a profoundly weird person (one example from wiki: "Dick alleged that Stanisław Lem was probably a false name used by a composite committee operating on orders of the Communist party to gain control over public opinion, and wrote a letter to the FBI to that effect"), and that weirdness seeped into his novels. I think you could try one of his semi-autobiographical novels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scanner_Darkly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scanner_Darkly or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Albemuth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Albemuth) to see where this weirdness in the more known novels comes from.
  - ddalex 3y ago
    You say weirdness, I say best drugs available to man in impressive quantities. A Scanner Darkly and Ubik are mind bending
  - 3y ago

mdp2021 3y ago

> how do we make them stop The same way we do with humans: reflection, critical thinking. (Although, disrobing the "Cato the censor" robes, yes I loved this image.) (Although II, the original concept of "androids dreaming of electric sheep" is more related to the PKD theme of the human problem in terms of emotion, the deontic call for empathy, the human property of the inner trouble within a mechanistic perspective. So, as if it could be rephrased as "is angst inherent in humanity [as a quality]" and "is empathy the solution". Edit: or "Is humanity a goal, does it imply care, and do you reach it with empathy". ...In tentative terms: it has been a long time I do not read the book.)

mdp2021 3y ago
...And I must add, back as the Censor: the very fact that we quote Philip K. Dick with relevance to this context could suggest that: hallucination is not the problem, the problem is further processing it to the desired state.

mschuster91 3y ago

I think the breakthrough development from GPT to a general-purpose AI will be the introduction of at least some form of self-awareness. Basically, at the moment, GPT models don't have the concept of "knowledge", or at least not in a way accessible from the inside of the model. Ask a human something they don't know and they'll tell you they don't know - GPT models will pull something out of thin air as they aren't aware they don't "know" the answer or that the input is insufficient.

pishpash 3y ago
ChatGPT already does this after alignment, it barely "knows" anything these days.
bdhcuidbebe 3y ago
> general-purpose AI will be the introduction of at least some form of self-awareness. Since this is obvious for all here, cant we for once agree there is no AI in GPT?

RobotToaster 3y ago

Great, we already need robot neuroleptics to stop them hallucinating.

ben_w 3y ago
When people dismiss the alignment problem by anthropomorphising AI, my go-to meme is: Owing to the fact we have no idea what we're doing, the first human-like AI is likely to have literally every mental illness, mixing Alzheimer's paranoid schizophrenia, grandiose narcissism, manic depression, and unconstrained hallucinations. So yes, we'll need digital neuroleptics, amongst other things.

spyder 3y ago

We have to wake them up, but probably not a good idea. :-O