3 ms·

Is it the AI that's the trouble or the hostile new information environment we're expected to navigate and survive? Expecting us to remain sane amidst these torr

Is it the AI that's the trouble or the hostile new information environment we're expected to navigate and survive? Expecting us to remain sane amidst these torrents of information without new tools for querying and filtering it is cruel.

epgui 3y ago
It can be (and is) both at the same time.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
the_af 3y ago
I only skimmed the paper, but judging by the abstract/intro and the definitions at the end, it's not concerned with "hostile" anything, but rather, with AI mediating access to knowledge. Specifically, they mention that "knowledge collapse" is the narrowing of the "human working knowledge" and the universe of things "worth knowing" or "epistemic limit", which may result in obscuring/hiding what they call "the long tail of knowledge" (they define all these terms). They explain this better than me, but I think it's all about constraining the human relation to knowledge by these new "recursive AI" processes, without any malice involved. I don't know if the paper mentions this, but I've thought about this (in less smart terms). It's probably not that AI is a radically new process in this sense but, like a lot of tech, it makes it faster. We often say "well, things were like this with [written language|printing press|the internet]" but isn't it possible that a relatively harmless process could be accelerated to a harmful level by technology, even if it's not "fundamentally" something new? Can we always fall back to the belief that "people from previous generations complained of $THING and it turned out ok, therefore $NEW_THING is probably OK too"?
- OgsyedIE 3y ago
  The baseline will always shift to accommodate the conditions, it's how the hedonic treadmill evolved. The perspective we have, stuck inside the system, doesn't make the people of Denmark and the people of Burundi equally happy.
- wslh 3y ago
  > but rather, with AI mediating access to knowledge. Rephrasing McLuhan "The medium is the m[ea]ssage" we can say that "The AI is the medium and the m[ea]ssage".
- apantel 3y ago
  Anyone who needs to know more than the narrow middle of knowledge will seek it out. The real issue as I see it is people who have that kind of knowledge need to share it and have it be seen by those who are interested in it. There’s a huge problem with search engines serving junk ‘narrow middle’ SEO-optimized content to the endless horde, as opposed to real, quality knowledge. This issue predated generative AI.
  - the_af 3y ago
    > Anyone who needs to know more than the narrow middle of knowledge will seek it out. This is what happens now, but do we know it will remain so? If AI is carelessly integrated into the teaching loop, I suppose it may narrow the knowledge even there. And then, how will people know there's more to be known? And even outside formal teaching, how will regular people know there's more to be known beyond what AI tells them? How will you even know you "need to know more"? Who will tell you? Already we see a lot of what people "know" (about anything: biology, WW2, ancient history, politics, art) is mostly informed by Hollywood and internet-spread "pop knowledge" (directly or indirectly, as in watching a documentary or reading a newspaper article that were themselves informed by regurgitated "pop knowledge"). (In case anybody is wondering, I don't consider myself outside of this. I know I'm impacted!) So this phenomenon isn't new... but will AI make it worse?
    - kjkjadksj 3y ago
      The problem is that people assume others are too stupid for technical information. So its siloed. People in the field have learned to abrogate a search engine to return technical results (e.g. looking for direct links to documentation or using a search tool like google scholar to read scientific literature). However, most people aren’t taught these skills in the general sense. All they might know is that narrow scope written to a 6th grade reading level. On the other hand, if we are able to get more people ready access to the ground truth technical information on different topics to people instead of narrow scope information that often leaves you misinformed, I’d imagine that would kick start an untold era of innovation and progress for our species. Too bad using our computer networks to distribute advertising and propaganda is seen as more profitable than future advancements, that I guess must be liable to disrupt the profitable status quo.
woopsn 3y ago
The information age is nothing new (for us), neither is media culture generally, or even silicon valley. AI will now be some new part of the complex. It seems obvious to me that a significant step to combat this effect would be not calling the thing "artificial intelligence". I like the term gpt because it is descriptive and accurate. Gpt doesn't suggest in any sense that we can rely on the thing or are comparable, in the same way "cell phone" doesn't. Imagine if we really bought into the idea that phones are truth receivers, or called them the closest friend. But that seems to be the idea with AI. Keep speaking up too. Just calling bullshit on the thing implicitly gives people permission to turn it off. The tech will not cause knowledge collapse among a population that doesn't need it. I do use it by the way, eg GitHub Copilot which is nice.
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  > The tech will not cause knowledge collapse among a population that doesn't need it. Every google search now returns loads of AI generated websites fill of low quality information. You could call the things "bullshit generators" and the people who really want to make websites full of bullshit will still use them to flood the internet with that bullshit. We all suffer the degradation of the internet when that happens.
  - thomquaid 3y ago
    > Every google search now returns loads of AI generated website That is a google problem, not an AI problem.
    - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
      It’s society’s problem, enabled by changes in technology around AI and LLMs. We have the potential to build the world’s greatest repository of knowledge and what little progress we had made has been eroded in recent years by Ai technologies. It seems reasonable that chatbot style LLMs can help, but they currently do this by replacing a sea of web pages with a single corporate interface. I think it’s worth asking questions about how our data is being used to fuel corporate interfaces to that data, who owns the rights to that data and those systems, and consider how we might maintain independent creators on such a system. Will iFixit still have the resources and means to take high quality documentary photos and write ups for new devices if everyone consumes that information via an Apple, Google, or OpenAI interface? How will you post a structured, expandable, localizable repository of your own data to share, aka how will you publish web pages and how will people find them? I believe society will solve these problems via the actions of many individuals and organizations, but with certain organizations holding so much power it’s important to consider and inquire on how that power is being used.

epgui 3y ago

It can be (and is) both at the same time.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

the_af 3y ago

I only skimmed the paper, but judging by the abstract/intro and the definitions at the end, it's not concerned with "hostile" anything, but rather, with AI mediating access to knowledge. Specifically, they mention that "knowledge collapse" is the narrowing of the "human working knowledge" and the universe of things "worth knowing" or "epistemic limit", which may result in obscuring/hiding what they call "the long tail of knowledge" (they define all these terms). They explain this better than me, but I think it's all about constraining the human relation to knowledge by these new "recursive AI" processes, without any malice involved. I don't know if the paper mentions this, but I've thought about this (in less smart terms). It's probably not that AI is a radically new process in this sense but, like a lot of tech, it makes it faster. We often say "well, things were like this with [written language|printing press|the internet]" but isn't it possible that a relatively harmless process could be accelerated to a harmful level by technology, even if it's not "fundamentally" something new? Can we always fall back to the belief that "people from previous generations complained of $THING and it turned out ok, therefore $NEW_THING is probably OK too"?

OgsyedIE 3y ago
The baseline will always shift to accommodate the conditions, it's how the hedonic treadmill evolved. The perspective we have, stuck inside the system, doesn't make the people of Denmark and the people of Burundi equally happy.
wslh 3y ago
> but rather, with AI mediating access to knowledge. Rephrasing McLuhan "The medium is the m[ea]ssage" we can say that "The AI is the medium and the m[ea]ssage".
apantel 3y ago
Anyone who needs to know more than the narrow middle of knowledge will seek it out. The real issue as I see it is people who have that kind of knowledge need to share it and have it be seen by those who are interested in it. There’s a huge problem with search engines serving junk ‘narrow middle’ SEO-optimized content to the endless horde, as opposed to real, quality knowledge. This issue predated generative AI.
- the_af 3y ago
  > Anyone who needs to know more than the narrow middle of knowledge will seek it out. This is what happens now, but do we know it will remain so? If AI is carelessly integrated into the teaching loop, I suppose it may narrow the knowledge even there. And then, how will people know there's more to be known? And even outside formal teaching, how will regular people know there's more to be known beyond what AI tells them? How will you even know you "need to know more"? Who will tell you? Already we see a lot of what people "know" (about anything: biology, WW2, ancient history, politics, art) is mostly informed by Hollywood and internet-spread "pop knowledge" (directly or indirectly, as in watching a documentary or reading a newspaper article that were themselves informed by regurgitated "pop knowledge"). (In case anybody is wondering, I don't consider myself outside of this. I know I'm impacted!) So this phenomenon isn't new... but will AI make it worse?
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    The problem is that people assume others are too stupid for technical information. So its siloed. People in the field have learned to abrogate a search engine to return technical results (e.g. looking for direct links to documentation or using a search tool like google scholar to read scientific literature). However, most people aren’t taught these skills in the general sense. All they might know is that narrow scope written to a 6th grade reading level. On the other hand, if we are able to get more people ready access to the ground truth technical information on different topics to people instead of narrow scope information that often leaves you misinformed, I’d imagine that would kick start an untold era of innovation and progress for our species. Too bad using our computer networks to distribute advertising and propaganda is seen as more profitable than future advancements, that I guess must be liable to disrupt the profitable status quo.

woopsn 3y ago

The information age is nothing new (for us), neither is media culture generally, or even silicon valley. AI will now be some new part of the complex. It seems obvious to me that a significant step to combat this effect would be not calling the thing "artificial intelligence". I like the term gpt because it is descriptive and accurate. Gpt doesn't suggest in any sense that we can rely on the thing or are comparable, in the same way "cell phone" doesn't. Imagine if we really bought into the idea that phones are truth receivers, or called them the closest friend. But that seems to be the idea with AI. Keep speaking up too. Just calling bullshit on the thing implicitly gives people permission to turn it off. The tech will not cause knowledge collapse among a population that doesn't need it. I do use it by the way, eg GitHub Copilot which is nice.

TaylorAlexander 3y ago
> The tech will not cause knowledge collapse among a population that doesn't need it. Every google search now returns loads of AI generated websites fill of low quality information. You could call the things "bullshit generators" and the people who really want to make websites full of bullshit will still use them to flood the internet with that bullshit. We all suffer the degradation of the internet when that happens.
- thomquaid 3y ago
  > Every google search now returns loads of AI generated website That is a google problem, not an AI problem.
  - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
    It’s society’s problem, enabled by changes in technology around AI and LLMs. We have the potential to build the world’s greatest repository of knowledge and what little progress we had made has been eroded in recent years by Ai technologies. It seems reasonable that chatbot style LLMs can help, but they currently do this by replacing a sea of web pages with a single corporate interface. I think it’s worth asking questions about how our data is being used to fuel corporate interfaces to that data, who owns the rights to that data and those systems, and consider how we might maintain independent creators on such a system. Will iFixit still have the resources and means to take high quality documentary photos and write ups for new devices if everyone consumes that information via an Apple, Google, or OpenAI interface? How will you post a structured, expandable, localizable repository of your own data to share, aka how will you publish web pages and how will people find them? I believe society will solve these problems via the actions of many individuals and organizations, but with certain organizations holding so much power it’s important to consider and inquire on how that power is being used.