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It is not a human but it is a fellow intelligent system. Mankind had this discussion before. When Darwin published his theory about evolution. He faced a lot o

by TekMol 3y ago

It is not a human but it is a fellow intelligent system. Mankind had this discussion before. When Darwin published his theory about evolution. He faced a lot of hatred because it made humans less special. Now we go through the same dance again. This time, intelligence in silicon makes humans less special.

wpietri 3y ago
It is not intelligent, any more than découpé [1] means scissors and paste are intelligent. I understand that people like to anthropomorphize things. That's harmless fun when people are imagining tree spirits or thunder gods or whatever. But just because fancy autocomplete produces semi-intelligible text does not mean there is an intelligence behind it. I believe we will eventually be able to create synthetic minds. But our understanding of actual minds is so poor that it's going to be quite a while before we manage. More than 200 years ago, Mary Shelley told a story of a scientist creating life via the then-new technology of electricity. Since the we keep re-telling the story with the latest technology. It's a good story, and like all good art helps us understand what it means to be human. Which is why I think it's especially bad to use those stories to muddy the many differences between actual humans and something that produces statistically plausible generated text. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-up_technique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-up_technique
- TekMol 3y ago
  What makes your reply different from a reply ChatGPT would have written? If nothing - where is that intelligence you are talking about? That intelligence that only humans have?
  - wpietri 3y ago
    If you can't tell the difference, I think that says more about you than it does about the text. And I'm definitely not going to try to bring you up to date on centuries of the humanities, or even the decades of cognitive science research. If you'd like to know, perhaps start with a book or two? "The Mind's I", "Kinds of Minds", and "Architects of Intelligence" are accessible places to start.

by TekMol 3y ago

wpietri 3y ago

It is not intelligent, any more than découpé [1] means scissors and paste are intelligent. I understand that people like to anthropomorphize things. That's harmless fun when people are imagining tree spirits or thunder gods or whatever. But just because fancy autocomplete produces semi-intelligible text does not mean there is an intelligence behind it. I believe we will eventually be able to create synthetic minds. But our understanding of actual minds is so poor that it's going to be quite a while before we manage. More than 200 years ago, Mary Shelley told a story of a scientist creating life via the then-new technology of electricity. Since the we keep re-telling the story with the latest technology. It's a good story, and like all good art helps us understand what it means to be human. Which is why I think it's especially bad to use those stories to muddy the many differences between actual humans and something that produces statistically plausible generated text. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-up_technique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-up_technique

TekMol 3y ago
What makes your reply different from a reply ChatGPT would have written? If nothing - where is that intelligence you are talking about? That intelligence that only humans have?
- wpietri 3y ago
  If you can't tell the difference, I think that says more about you than it does about the text. And I'm definitely not going to try to bring you up to date on centuries of the humanities, or even the decades of cognitive science research. If you'd like to know, perhaps start with a book or two? "The Mind's I", "Kinds of Minds", and "Architects of Intelligence" are accessible places to start.