5 ms·

Many people use AI as the source for knowledge. Even though it is often wrong or misleading, it's advice is better on average than their own judgement or the ju

by njarboe 11mo ago

Many people use AI as the source for knowledge. Even though it is often wrong or misleading, it's advice is better on average than their own judgement or the judgement of people they know. When an AI is "smarter" than 95%? of the population, even if it does not reach superintelligence, will be a very big deal.

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
apsurd 11mo ago
This means to me AI is rocket fuel for our post-truth reality. Post-truth is a big deal and it was already happening pre-AI. AGI, post-scarcity, post-humanity are nerd snipes. Post-truth on the other hand is just a mundane and nasty sociologically problem that we ran head-first into and we don't know how to deal with. I don't have any answers. Seems like it'll get worse before it gets better.
- chickensong 11mo ago
  How would you define post-truth? It's not like people haven't been spouting incorrect facts or total bs since forever.
  - saulpw 11mo ago
    Scale matters. The difference between 10% and 90% of people spouting total bs is what makes it 'post-truth'.
- jibal 11mo ago
  What "gets better"? Rapid global warming will lead to societal collapse this century.
emp17344 11mo ago
How is this different from a less reliable search engine?
- jiggawatts 11mo ago
  AI can interpolate in the space of search results, yielding results in between the hits that a simple text index would return. It is also a fuzzy index with the unique ability to match on multiple poorly specified axes at once in a very high dimensional search space. This is notoriously difficult to code with tradition computer science techniques. Large language models are in some sense optimal at it instead of “just a little bit better than a total failure”, which is what we had before. Just today I needed to find a library I only vaguely remembered from years ago. Gemini found it in seconds based on the loosest description of what it does. That is a technology that is getting difficult to distinguish from magic.
jibal 11mo ago
The 95th percentile IQ is 125, which is about average in my circle. (Several of my friends are verified triple nines.)
BeFlatXIII 11mo ago
Or the AI is patient enough to be the rubber duck, whereas asking the person you know knows the answer will result in them shutting you down after the first follow-up question.

by njarboe 11mo ago

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

apsurd 11mo ago

This means to me AI is rocket fuel for our post-truth reality. Post-truth is a big deal and it was already happening pre-AI. AGI, post-scarcity, post-humanity are nerd snipes. Post-truth on the other hand is just a mundane and nasty sociologically problem that we ran head-first into and we don't know how to deal with. I don't have any answers. Seems like it'll get worse before it gets better.

chickensong 11mo ago
How would you define post-truth? It's not like people haven't been spouting incorrect facts or total bs since forever.
- saulpw 11mo ago
  Scale matters. The difference between 10% and 90% of people spouting total bs is what makes it 'post-truth'.
jibal 11mo ago
What "gets better"? Rapid global warming will lead to societal collapse this century.

emp17344 11mo ago

How is this different from a less reliable search engine?

jiggawatts 11mo ago
AI can interpolate in the space of search results, yielding results in between the hits that a simple text index would return. It is also a fuzzy index with the unique ability to match on multiple poorly specified axes at once in a very high dimensional search space. This is notoriously difficult to code with tradition computer science techniques. Large language models are in some sense optimal at it instead of “just a little bit better than a total failure”, which is what we had before. Just today I needed to find a library I only vaguely remembered from years ago. Gemini found it in seconds based on the loosest description of what it does. That is a technology that is getting difficult to distinguish from magic.

jibal 11mo ago

The 95th percentile IQ is 125, which is about average in my circle. (Several of my friends are verified triple nines.)

BeFlatXIII 11mo ago

Or the AI is patient enough to be the rubber duck, whereas asking the person you know knows the answer will result in them shutting you down after the first follow-up question.