5 ms·

It feels to me like everyone responding to that comment is irrationally pessimistic. However I keep noticing little mistakes in my own wording that alter the me

by FloorEgg 11mo ago

It feels to me like everyone responding to that comment is irrationally pessimistic. However I keep noticing little mistakes in my own wording that alter the meaning away from my intention, and I can't help but think it's my own fault for not making my point more clear. > I really hope that AI business models don't fall into relying on getting and keeping attention. What I really meant is that I hope that the economic pressures on media don't naturally also apply to AI. I do think it's naive to hope that AI won't be used in media to compete for attention, I just don't think it's naive to hope that's not the only economic incentive for its development. I also hope that it becomes a commodity, like electricity, and spills far and wide outside of the control of any monopoly or oligopoly (beyond the "tech giants"), so that hoping tech giants do anything against their incentive structures is moot. I hope that the pressures that motivate AIs development are overwhelmingly demand for truth, so that it evolves overwhelmingly towards providing it. If this hope is naive, that would imply the universe favors deception over truth, death over life, and ultimately doesn't want us to understand it. To me, that implication seems naive. The Bloomberg terminal is an interesting example and I see your point. I guess the question is what information is there a stronger incentive to keep scarce. The thing about Bloomberg terminals are that people are paying for immediate access to brand new information to compete in a near-zero-sum game. Most truth is everlasting insight into how to get work done. A counter example are textbooks.

intended 11mo ago
Well, here’s an example of the blind spots we posses. You, and most people, by default privilege “information”. However, in our current reality, everything is “content”. Information is simply content with a flag. The commodification is towards the production of content, not information. Mostly, producers of Information, are producing expensive “luxury goods”, but selling them in a market for disposable, commodified goods. This is why you need to subsidize fact checkers, and news papers. I believe this is a legacy of our history, where content production was hard and the ratio of information to content was higher. Consumers of content are solving for not just informational and cognitive needs, they are also solving for emotional needs, with emotional needs being the more fundamental. Consumers will struggle with so many sources of content, and will eventually look towards bundling or focus only on certain nodes. Do note - the universe does not need to favor anything for this situation to occur. Deception is a fundamental part of our universe, because it’s part of the predator prey dynamic. This in turn arises out of the inability of any system to perfectly process all signals available to them. There is always place for predators or prey to hide.
- FloorEgg 11mo ago
  I agree. I thought of the predator prey frame shortly after posting my last comment. Maybe it boils down to game theory and cooperation vs competition, and the free energy principle. Competition (favoring deception) puts pressure on cooperation (favoring truth). Simultaneously life gets better at deceiving and at communicating the truth. They are not mutually exclusive. When entities are locked into long term cooperation, they have a strong bias to communicate truth with each other. When entities are locked into long term competition, they have a strong bias to deceive each other. Evolution seems to be this dance of cooperation and competition. When a person is born, overwhelmingly what's going on between cells inside their body is cooperation. When they die, overwhelmingly what happens between cells is competition. So one way that AI could increase access to truth, is if most relationships between people and AI are locked into long term cooperation. Not like today where it's lots of people using one model from a tech co, but something more like most people running their own on their own hardware. I've heard people say we are in the "post truth era" and something in my gut just won't accept that. I think what's going on is the power structures we exist in are dying, which is biasing people and institutions to compete more than cooperate, and therefore deceive more than tell the truth. This is temporary, and eventually the system (and power structures) will reconfigure and bias back to cooperation, because this oscillation back and forth is just what happens over history, with a long term trend of favoring cooperation. So to summarize... Complexity arises from oscillations between competition and cooperation, competition favors deception and cooperation favors telling the truth. Over the long-term cooperation increases. Therefore, over the long-term truth communication increases more than deception.
  - intended 11mo ago
    We are in a post truth era, and discomfort is a side effect of ideology and lack of information. I’ve been there too, is what I am saying. But, reality is reality, and feeling bad or good about it is pointless beyond a point. AI cannot increase access to truth. This is also part of the hangover of our older views on content, truth and information. In your mental mode, I think you should recognize that we had an “information commons” previously, even to an extent during the cable news era. Now we have a content commons. The production of Information is expensive. People are used to getting it for free. People are also now offered choices of more emotionally salient content than boring information. People will choose the more emotionally salient content. People producing information, will always incur higher costs of production than people producing content. Content producers do not have to take the step of verifying their product. So content producers will enjoy better margins, and eventually either crowd out information producers, or buy out information producers. Information producers must raise prices, which will reduce the market available for them. Further - once information is made, it can always just be copied and shared, so their product does not come with some inherent moat. Not to mention that raising prices results in fewer customers, and goes against the now anachronous techie ethos of “Information should be free”. I am sure someone will find some way to build a more durable firm in this environment, but it’s not going to work in the way you hoped initially. It will either need to be subsidized, or perhaps via reputation effects, or some other form of protection. Cooperation is favored if cooperation can be achieved. People will find ways to work together, however the equilibrium point may well be less efficient than alternatives we have seen, imagined or hoped for. More dark forest, cyberpunk dystopia, than Star Trek utopia. There’s an assumption of positive drift in your thinking. As I said, this is my neck of the woods, and things are grim. But - so what? If things are grim, only through figuring it out can it actually be made better. This is the way the pieces on the board are set up as I see it. If you wish to agency in shaping the future, and not a piece that is moved, then hopefully this explanation will help build new insights and potential moves.

intended 11mo ago

Well, here’s an example of the blind spots we posses. You, and most people, by default privilege “information”. However, in our current reality, everything is “content”. Information is simply content with a flag. The commodification is towards the production of content, not information. Mostly, producers of Information, are producing expensive “luxury goods”, but selling them in a market for disposable, commodified goods. This is why you need to subsidize fact checkers, and news papers. I believe this is a legacy of our history, where content production was hard and the ratio of information to content was higher. Consumers of content are solving for not just informational and cognitive needs, they are also solving for emotional needs, with emotional needs being the more fundamental. Consumers will struggle with so many sources of content, and will eventually look towards bundling or focus only on certain nodes. Do note - the universe does not need to favor anything for this situation to occur. Deception is a fundamental part of our universe, because it’s part of the predator prey dynamic. This in turn arises out of the inability of any system to perfectly process all signals available to them. There is always place for predators or prey to hide.

FloorEgg 11mo ago
I agree. I thought of the predator prey frame shortly after posting my last comment. Maybe it boils down to game theory and cooperation vs competition, and the free energy principle. Competition (favoring deception) puts pressure on cooperation (favoring truth). Simultaneously life gets better at deceiving and at communicating the truth. They are not mutually exclusive. When entities are locked into long term cooperation, they have a strong bias to communicate truth with each other. When entities are locked into long term competition, they have a strong bias to deceive each other. Evolution seems to be this dance of cooperation and competition. When a person is born, overwhelmingly what's going on between cells inside their body is cooperation. When they die, overwhelmingly what happens between cells is competition. So one way that AI could increase access to truth, is if most relationships between people and AI are locked into long term cooperation. Not like today where it's lots of people using one model from a tech co, but something more like most people running their own on their own hardware. I've heard people say we are in the "post truth era" and something in my gut just won't accept that. I think what's going on is the power structures we exist in are dying, which is biasing people and institutions to compete more than cooperate, and therefore deceive more than tell the truth. This is temporary, and eventually the system (and power structures) will reconfigure and bias back to cooperation, because this oscillation back and forth is just what happens over history, with a long term trend of favoring cooperation. So to summarize... Complexity arises from oscillations between competition and cooperation, competition favors deception and cooperation favors telling the truth. Over the long-term cooperation increases. Therefore, over the long-term truth communication increases more than deception.
- intended 11mo ago
  We are in a post truth era, and discomfort is a side effect of ideology and lack of information. I’ve been there too, is what I am saying. But, reality is reality, and feeling bad or good about it is pointless beyond a point. AI cannot increase access to truth. This is also part of the hangover of our older views on content, truth and information. In your mental mode, I think you should recognize that we had an “information commons” previously, even to an extent during the cable news era. Now we have a content commons. The production of Information is expensive. People are used to getting it for free. People are also now offered choices of more emotionally salient content than boring information. People will choose the more emotionally salient content. People producing information, will always incur higher costs of production than people producing content. Content producers do not have to take the step of verifying their product. So content producers will enjoy better margins, and eventually either crowd out information producers, or buy out information producers. Information producers must raise prices, which will reduce the market available for them. Further - once information is made, it can always just be copied and shared, so their product does not come with some inherent moat. Not to mention that raising prices results in fewer customers, and goes against the now anachronous techie ethos of “Information should be free”. I am sure someone will find some way to build a more durable firm in this environment, but it’s not going to work in the way you hoped initially. It will either need to be subsidized, or perhaps via reputation effects, or some other form of protection. Cooperation is favored if cooperation can be achieved. People will find ways to work together, however the equilibrium point may well be less efficient than alternatives we have seen, imagined or hoped for. More dark forest, cyberpunk dystopia, than Star Trek utopia. There’s an assumption of positive drift in your thinking. As I said, this is my neck of the woods, and things are grim. But - so what? If things are grim, only through figuring it out can it actually be made better. This is the way the pieces on the board are set up as I see it. If you wish to agency in shaping the future, and not a piece that is moved, then hopefully this explanation will help build new insights and potential moves.