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It matters in the context of Darwinian evolution. Crows do not design other crows, new crows are born with some mutated traits. And so on for everything else do

It matters in the context of Darwinian evolution. Crows do not design other crows, new crows are born with some mutated traits. And so on for everything else down the food chain. AIs do not mutate and grow, their coders do that for them. Even simple malware has not become independent of coders needing to write new viruses.

ben_w 3y ago
Why do you think this? Darwinian evolution is the process of selection of the fittest over multiple generations where there is some process inducing variations. The idea and terminology may have originated in biology, but that specific mechanism is one of the standard ways to train the weights and biases in an AI. They're called, conveniently, evolutionary algorithms. Dead easy to write, I did one in 30 minutes a decade an a half ago after being annoyed by a young-Earth Baptist creationist preacher in Cambridge city center. And of course, this is trivially something which ChatGPT can spit out the code for — try it out, see how it works. :) > Even simple malware has not become independent of coders needing to write new viruses. They've been doing that for at least long enough for humans born at the same time to be allowed to drink in Texas.
- c_crank 3y ago
  Evolutionary algorithms are 'like' evolution because they have some form of selection pressure. The incremental improvements of the Wright Brothers airplane was 'like' evolution. The design 'evolved' in response to selection for something that would remain airborne in a wind tunnel, and control well without crashing. The Wright Brothers flying machine evolved in a manner similar to life, so presto: it must be exactly like life in all other aspects! We should fear the day when these airplanes take over the puny humans, because they can travel in the sky at hundreds of miles an hour! You see how stupid that sounds? >They've been doing that for at least long enough for humans born at the same time to be allowed to drink in Texas. There exists self modifying malware. This has not reached the level of malware that can reinvent itself to target new machines and new operating systems versions without prompting and design work from the hacker. If it did, that would be far more impressive than what LLMs are doing.

ben_w 3y ago

Why do you think this? Darwinian evolution is the process of selection of the fittest over multiple generations where there is some process inducing variations. The idea and terminology may have originated in biology, but that specific mechanism is one of the standard ways to train the weights and biases in an AI. They're called, conveniently, evolutionary algorithms. Dead easy to write, I did one in 30 minutes a decade an a half ago after being annoyed by a young-Earth Baptist creationist preacher in Cambridge city center. And of course, this is trivially something which ChatGPT can spit out the code for — try it out, see how it works. :) > Even simple malware has not become independent of coders needing to write new viruses. They've been doing that for at least long enough for humans born at the same time to be allowed to drink in Texas.

c_crank 3y ago
Evolutionary algorithms are 'like' evolution because they have some form of selection pressure. The incremental improvements of the Wright Brothers airplane was 'like' evolution. The design 'evolved' in response to selection for something that would remain airborne in a wind tunnel, and control well without crashing. The Wright Brothers flying machine evolved in a manner similar to life, so presto: it must be exactly like life in all other aspects! We should fear the day when these airplanes take over the puny humans, because they can travel in the sky at hundreds of miles an hour! You see how stupid that sounds? >They've been doing that for at least long enough for humans born at the same time to be allowed to drink in Texas. There exists self modifying malware. This has not reached the level of malware that can reinvent itself to target new machines and new operating systems versions without prompting and design work from the hacker. If it did, that would be far more impressive than what LLMs are doing.