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What’s the difference. All tasks are mundane and labor intensive, all tasks can be done by artificial beings. We happen to be in a weird little valley right no

What’s the difference. All tasks are mundane and labor intensive, all tasks can be done by artificial beings. We happen to be in a weird little valley right now where some tasks are still impossible for artificial beings to do better than us. This is a very short term aberration. If we are still here in a couple generations, when artificial beings have surpassed our output in every way that matters, then we’ll have a choice to make about what we produce for fun. Not because we’re better at it or because it is profitable, just because we want to. Writing stories, making music, making movies, plumbing, carpentry… the only humans who do these things will be the humans who feel like it.

bluerooibos 3y ago
> All tasks are mundane and labor intensive I'd say all tasks when done for money and under pressure (deadlines, people depending on you, etc) become less enjoyable. I enjoy coding in my free time. Doing it for work - not so much.
starbugs 3y ago
> artificial beings Last time I checked it was an algorithm that needs to be run and fed with input to perform calculations. Not a being? The only thing that is a "being" about it currently is the nature of the beings that "donated" the training data (without being, hem, asked).
- throwing_away 3y ago
  So are you, if you abstract enough.
  - starbugs 3y ago
    > So are you, if you abstract enough. Doubt. Explain, for instance, pain. How do you create that algorithmically? Or if you don't like to explain pain, how about love? You see, that's the problem with being caught up in the "technical person" identity completely. Reducing yourself down to an algorithm is not exactly healthy if you ask me. But it sure explains a lot about where the world is headed and why.
    - throwing_away 3y ago
      If I need you to perform a task, I'm going to try and prevent you from experiencing pain by giving you clear requirements and time to complete the task. I'm not going to ask you to lift things heavier than you can, or to do math or programming that's beyond your known capabilities. My goal is going to be to find out what you're best at, then optimize my tasks to be aligned with your training and objectives. This is pretty much what I do with AI also.
      - starbugs 3y ago
        > If I need you to perform a task, I'm going to try and prevent you from experiencing pain by giving you clear requirements and time to complete the task. That doesn't explain what pain is. My question was how you would algorithmically create that? If I am as much a being as an algorithm, as you insulted, then sure thing there must be an algorithmic nature underlying my (or anyone's) pain?
        throwing_away 3y ago
        I think you mean insinuated, not insulted (I hope I'm not being insulting). I'm not sure what answer would communicate the idea clearest, but: * If you want the AI version of pain, there are examples of attacks that cause it to bug out and malfunction. It's clearly not operating correctly, and I think someone famously got Bing to say it wants to go on a rampage? Here's blogspam from last year form a quick search: https://nypost.com/2023/02/16/bing-ai-chatbots-destructive-rampage-i-want-to-be-powerful/ https://nypost.com/2023/02/16/bing-ai-chatbots-destructive-r... * If you want to know why people or animals experience pain, it's because it's an important sensor to exist in nature. AI has been trained to avoid controversial topics and will push back if you try to get it to talk about something it knows but doesn't want to engage with. That's sort of pain? * If you want AI with literal neurons that can feel "pain" in a biological sense, there are also organoids, but I don't know much about them. The world only cares about inputs and outputs.
        starbugs 3y ago
  - krapp 3y ago
    If you abstract enough, humans and fungi are the same. Abstract further, humans and rocks are the same. Yet humans aren't fungi, nor are they rocks. Abstract the concepts of "input" and "algorithm" and "calculation" enough and "an algorithm that needs to be run and fed with input to perform calculations" could describe programming a remote control. Or tying shoes. Are shoes beings? Are humans shoes? Are shoes rocks? There comes a point at which abstraction becomes too general to be useful, and most attempts to equate LLMs with human beings fall into that category for me. Yes, one could describe the intricacies and complexities of human thought and reasoning as equivalent to prompting a stateless stochastic token matching machine but all that proves is how much of a reach the premise is.
    - starbugs 3y ago
      > Yes, one could describe the intricacies and complexities of human thought and reasoning as equivalent to prompting a stateless stochastic token matching machine but all that proves is how much of a reach the premise is. If you ask me, no you cannot do that even if you know you're stretching the limits of that "abstraction". It just doesn't fly even in the wildest theory. Even if an LLM has a world model that could be compared to a human one, the whole underlying nature of experience is completely missing, hence rendering even this narrow comparison extremely wonky. Otherwise, I like the way you've put it into words though!

bluerooibos 3y ago

> All tasks are mundane and labor intensive I'd say all tasks when done for money and under pressure (deadlines, people depending on you, etc) become less enjoyable. I enjoy coding in my free time. Doing it for work - not so much.

starbugs 3y ago

> artificial beings Last time I checked it was an algorithm that needs to be run and fed with input to perform calculations. Not a being? The only thing that is a "being" about it currently is the nature of the beings that "donated" the training data (without being, hem, asked).

throwing_away 3y ago
So are you, if you abstract enough.
- starbugs 3y ago
  > So are you, if you abstract enough. Doubt. Explain, for instance, pain. How do you create that algorithmically? Or if you don't like to explain pain, how about love? You see, that's the problem with being caught up in the "technical person" identity completely. Reducing yourself down to an algorithm is not exactly healthy if you ask me. But it sure explains a lot about where the world is headed and why.
  - throwing_away 3y ago
    If I need you to perform a task, I'm going to try and prevent you from experiencing pain by giving you clear requirements and time to complete the task. I'm not going to ask you to lift things heavier than you can, or to do math or programming that's beyond your known capabilities. My goal is going to be to find out what you're best at, then optimize my tasks to be aligned with your training and objectives. This is pretty much what I do with AI also.
    - starbugs 3y ago
      > If I need you to perform a task, I'm going to try and prevent you from experiencing pain by giving you clear requirements and time to complete the task. That doesn't explain what pain is. My question was how you would algorithmically create that? If I am as much a being as an algorithm, as you insulted, then sure thing there must be an algorithmic nature underlying my (or anyone's) pain?
      - throwing_away 3y ago
        I think you mean insinuated, not insulted (I hope I'm not being insulting). I'm not sure what answer would communicate the idea clearest, but: * If you want the AI version of pain, there are examples of attacks that cause it to bug out and malfunction. It's clearly not operating correctly, and I think someone famously got Bing to say it wants to go on a rampage? Here's blogspam from last year form a quick search: https://nypost.com/2023/02/16/bing-ai-chatbots-destructive-rampage-i-want-to-be-powerful/ https://nypost.com/2023/02/16/bing-ai-chatbots-destructive-r... * If you want to know why people or animals experience pain, it's because it's an important sensor to exist in nature. AI has been trained to avoid controversial topics and will push back if you try to get it to talk about something it knows but doesn't want to engage with. That's sort of pain? * If you want AI with literal neurons that can feel "pain" in a biological sense, there are also organoids, but I don't know much about them. The world only cares about inputs and outputs.
        starbugs 3y ago
- krapp 3y ago
  If you abstract enough, humans and fungi are the same. Abstract further, humans and rocks are the same. Yet humans aren't fungi, nor are they rocks. Abstract the concepts of "input" and "algorithm" and "calculation" enough and "an algorithm that needs to be run and fed with input to perform calculations" could describe programming a remote control. Or tying shoes. Are shoes beings? Are humans shoes? Are shoes rocks? There comes a point at which abstraction becomes too general to be useful, and most attempts to equate LLMs with human beings fall into that category for me. Yes, one could describe the intricacies and complexities of human thought and reasoning as equivalent to prompting a stateless stochastic token matching machine but all that proves is how much of a reach the premise is.
  - starbugs 3y ago
    > Yes, one could describe the intricacies and complexities of human thought and reasoning as equivalent to prompting a stateless stochastic token matching machine but all that proves is how much of a reach the premise is. If you ask me, no you cannot do that even if you know you're stretching the limits of that "abstraction". It just doesn't fly even in the wildest theory. Even if an LLM has a world model that could be compared to a human one, the whole underlying nature of experience is completely missing, hence rendering even this narrow comparison extremely wonky. Otherwise, I like the way you've put it into words though!