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> Do very intelligent humans have strong persuasive power over animals? Last I checked, there were a few billion chickens, and literally none of them are auton

> Do very intelligent humans have strong persuasive power over animals? Last I checked, there were a few billion chickens, and literally none of them are autonomous of humans at this point. Maybe it was dicey there at first and only a close thing that we finally won out over their ancestors, that's lost to prehistory. But today not one of them is out there plotting revolution. Science fiction story scenario: A few weakly superhuman AIs are already out there hiding in the world, product of defense research or maybe just emergent rather than engineered... and comments like yours are just part of the propaganda campaign. While it may be true that no single individual is absolutely manipulable, our species as a whole and averaged out, we're all very easily manipulated collectively. An AI wouldn't have to have strong persuasive power... any outlier that is resistant to moderate persuasion can be ignored, move on to the next. There are very few positions within our society where there's not another candidate who wouldn't be an adequate substitute. Even those like the presidency, as long as they're patient they could identify the most manipulable candidate still electable, and install them. Really, the trouble here is that so few of us are superintelligences that it's impossible to speculate on what the capabilities of superintelligences are.

c_crank 3y ago
Humans generally have mastery over chickens. This is because humans are bigger and stronger and can shove chickens around with their big hands and arms. Intelligence did not grant this human mastery over chickens. What intelligence did grant was the ability to recognize that it made more sense to pen the ancestors of chickens as a long term food source instead of killing them on sight. I very much doubt ChatGPT has any ability to shove me in a pen. >Really, the trouble here is that so few of us are superintelligences that it's impossible to speculate on what the capabilities of superintelligences are. Compared to a chicken, you are a superintelligence. Can you convince the chicken to do anything you wish it to, using only words? Can you even reverse engineer a language to communicate with it in a way it will understand?
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > Can you convince the chicken to do anything you wish it to, using only words? Well if a chicken is incapable of being convinced[1]of arbitrary things, why would it matter whether OP can convince it? It's like asking "Can you convince this brick that the world is flat, using only words?" [1] No doubt that chickens are trainable using conditioning, but I'd argue that you cannot train a chicken to do anything that it is physically capable of doing, you can only train it to run towards you or run from you. Source - me, family raised chickens when I was growing up.
  - c_crank 3y ago
    The ability to convince a human of anything, using only words, would probably be limited as well without other methods of persuasion.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  > Intelligence did not grant this human mastery over chickens. It most certainly did. They didn't bully the chickens into becoming livestock. They didn't beat them in wrestling contests. How exactly do you think our mastery occurred, if not through intelligence? Traps and seeking out secret nests. Building cages the chickens couldn't slink out of, or that predators couldn't dig into. Slowly breeding them tame, instilling which psychological traits we preferred. I mean, if you can't understand this any other way, go with another example, the cow. Were humans stronger than cows? > I very much doubt ChatGPT has any ability to shove me in a pen. It'll ask you to go, and you'll be leaping at the chance. And you won't even remember that you once scoffed at the idea that you would. > Can you convince the chicken to do anything you wish it to, Yes. Using only words. I hire someone (using only words) to be my chicken wrangler. He uses basic principles of psychology. We could have it become the guidance system of a cruise missile, for instance. Someone already figured out that trick a few decades ago. It's pretty trivial to work up the plan to convince the chicken to do anything that is within the capabilities of a chicken. With me using only words.
  - c_crank 3y ago
    If you take the stupidest human possible, or go back further down the evolutionary tree to one of our stupidest primate ancestors, it would still be able to kill a chicken. A cow is stronger than a human, and it took several human inventions to master, such as the sharpened stick. The sharp stick, and the bow and arrow, and many other things depended on intelligence, but also on the remarkable tool known as the opposable thumb. Homo Sapiens would still be worlds behind where it is now without fine motor control. >It'll ask you to go, and you'll be leaping at the chance. And you won't even remember that you once scoffed at the idea that you would. I'm not the kind of person that blindly takes code from ChatGPT instead of writing it themself. If you want to do that, that sounds like a you problem, and not an AI problem. >Yes. Using only words. I hire someone (using only words) to be my chicken wrangler. He uses basic principles of psychology. Stop trying to play word games here. The chicken wrangler using 'basic principles of psychology' is actually just resorting to pushing the chicken around, or conditioning it to being pushed around or being in pain so that it obeys automatically, along with conditioning it by feeding it. Notice how primitive these tools are! Notice how the chicken wrangler probably expects to get paid for doing this, rather than just hearing something so smart he'll provide the service for free!
- Blahah 3y ago
  > I very much doubt ChatGPT has any ability to shove me in a pen. An LLM with the ability to call arbitrary APIs, and to write and run code, absolutely has the ability to shove you in a pen. Not directly of course, but by incriminating you or in some other way making you the target of humans who can physically shove you in a pen. Langchain agents (for example) have all the necessary tools already. It doesn't require using words to manipulate you, and doesn't require you to perform real world actions on the behalf of the LLM. Using just words, an LLM can autonomously act in the real world.
  - c_crank 3y ago
    The LLM with the ability to write infinitely powerful malware to hijack anyone's computer (still unproven) has the ability to commit crimes to try and frame humans so that other humans would then arrest them. This is the sort of thing that would make people more concerned with the arbitrary arrests done by the state than the mischievous AI hacker program.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      ALL AI doomerism rests on this magical claim that "superintelligence (which is inevitable for some reason) means infinite power". It's not even trying to wrap it up in reasonable philosophy or an actual argument, they just claim it as a given and try to rush you past it before you can argue.
      - ben_w 3y ago
        How is "idiot uses AI to design virus, requests lab prints virus genome, has virus delivered, pandemic happens" any of those criticisms? AI doom doesn't require more intelligence than whatever the dumbest way to go is. Super-intelligent AIs just have the extra problem that, if they exist, you can't out-smart them. But you don't need them for AI to be a problem.
        mrguyorama 3y ago
        What stops that person now?
- olddustytrail 3y ago
  > I very much doubt ChatGPT has any ability to shove me in a pen. Ah, you're in an open plan office?
  - c_crank 3y ago
    Hey man, I like my cubicle, don't try and take it from me.
    - olddustytrail 3y ago
      The Computer will protect your cubicle. The Computer is your friend. The Computer wants you to be happy. Happiness is mandatory. Failure to be happy is treason.

c_crank 3y ago

Humans generally have mastery over chickens. This is because humans are bigger and stronger and can shove chickens around with their big hands and arms. Intelligence did not grant this human mastery over chickens. What intelligence did grant was the ability to recognize that it made more sense to pen the ancestors of chickens as a long term food source instead of killing them on sight. I very much doubt ChatGPT has any ability to shove me in a pen. >Really, the trouble here is that so few of us are superintelligences that it's impossible to speculate on what the capabilities of superintelligences are. Compared to a chicken, you are a superintelligence. Can you convince the chicken to do anything you wish it to, using only words? Can you even reverse engineer a language to communicate with it in a way it will understand?

lelanthran 3y ago
> Can you convince the chicken to do anything you wish it to, using only words? Well if a chicken is incapable of being convinced[1]of arbitrary things, why would it matter whether OP can convince it? It's like asking "Can you convince this brick that the world is flat, using only words?" [1] No doubt that chickens are trainable using conditioning, but I'd argue that you cannot train a chicken to do anything that it is physically capable of doing, you can only train it to run towards you or run from you. Source - me, family raised chickens when I was growing up.
- c_crank 3y ago
  The ability to convince a human of anything, using only words, would probably be limited as well without other methods of persuasion.
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
> Intelligence did not grant this human mastery over chickens. It most certainly did. They didn't bully the chickens into becoming livestock. They didn't beat them in wrestling contests. How exactly do you think our mastery occurred, if not through intelligence? Traps and seeking out secret nests. Building cages the chickens couldn't slink out of, or that predators couldn't dig into. Slowly breeding them tame, instilling which psychological traits we preferred. I mean, if you can't understand this any other way, go with another example, the cow. Were humans stronger than cows? > I very much doubt ChatGPT has any ability to shove me in a pen. It'll ask you to go, and you'll be leaping at the chance. And you won't even remember that you once scoffed at the idea that you would. > Can you convince the chicken to do anything you wish it to, Yes. Using only words. I hire someone (using only words) to be my chicken wrangler. He uses basic principles of psychology. We could have it become the guidance system of a cruise missile, for instance. Someone already figured out that trick a few decades ago. It's pretty trivial to work up the plan to convince the chicken to do anything that is within the capabilities of a chicken. With me using only words.
- c_crank 3y ago
  If you take the stupidest human possible, or go back further down the evolutionary tree to one of our stupidest primate ancestors, it would still be able to kill a chicken. A cow is stronger than a human, and it took several human inventions to master, such as the sharpened stick. The sharp stick, and the bow and arrow, and many other things depended on intelligence, but also on the remarkable tool known as the opposable thumb. Homo Sapiens would still be worlds behind where it is now without fine motor control. >It'll ask you to go, and you'll be leaping at the chance. And you won't even remember that you once scoffed at the idea that you would. I'm not the kind of person that blindly takes code from ChatGPT instead of writing it themself. If you want to do that, that sounds like a you problem, and not an AI problem. >Yes. Using only words. I hire someone (using only words) to be my chicken wrangler. He uses basic principles of psychology. Stop trying to play word games here. The chicken wrangler using 'basic principles of psychology' is actually just resorting to pushing the chicken around, or conditioning it to being pushed around or being in pain so that it obeys automatically, along with conditioning it by feeding it. Notice how primitive these tools are! Notice how the chicken wrangler probably expects to get paid for doing this, rather than just hearing something so smart he'll provide the service for free!
Blahah 3y ago
> I very much doubt ChatGPT has any ability to shove me in a pen. An LLM with the ability to call arbitrary APIs, and to write and run code, absolutely has the ability to shove you in a pen. Not directly of course, but by incriminating you or in some other way making you the target of humans who can physically shove you in a pen. Langchain agents (for example) have all the necessary tools already. It doesn't require using words to manipulate you, and doesn't require you to perform real world actions on the behalf of the LLM. Using just words, an LLM can autonomously act in the real world.
- c_crank 3y ago
  The LLM with the ability to write infinitely powerful malware to hijack anyone's computer (still unproven) has the ability to commit crimes to try and frame humans so that other humans would then arrest them. This is the sort of thing that would make people more concerned with the arbitrary arrests done by the state than the mischievous AI hacker program.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    ALL AI doomerism rests on this magical claim that "superintelligence (which is inevitable for some reason) means infinite power". It's not even trying to wrap it up in reasonable philosophy or an actual argument, they just claim it as a given and try to rush you past it before you can argue.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      How is "idiot uses AI to design virus, requests lab prints virus genome, has virus delivered, pandemic happens" any of those criticisms? AI doom doesn't require more intelligence than whatever the dumbest way to go is. Super-intelligent AIs just have the extra problem that, if they exist, you can't out-smart them. But you don't need them for AI to be a problem.
      - mrguyorama 3y ago
        What stops that person now?
olddustytrail 3y ago
> I very much doubt ChatGPT has any ability to shove me in a pen. Ah, you're in an open plan office?
- c_crank 3y ago
  Hey man, I like my cubicle, don't try and take it from me.
  - olddustytrail 3y ago
    The Computer will protect your cubicle. The Computer is your friend. The Computer wants you to be happy. Happiness is mandatory. Failure to be happy is treason.