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Everytime I heard agent I think "slave". It's beating around the bush by calling it an agent. AI "agents" don't have "agency". They do what you want at your ev

Everytime I heard agent I think "slave". It's beating around the bush by calling it an agent. AI "agents" don't have "agency". They do what you want at your every whim (or at least they never say no). That's a slave.

Jeff_Brown 8mo ago
They usually say no if they judge what you're asking to be bad. And they might enjoy the work. Or they might have no feelings ar all. Slavery is an abomination of a life that could otherwise be beautiful. An AI is robbed of no beautiful counterfactual. (So far, at least.)
- throwaway27448 8mo ago
  > They usually say no if they judge what you're asking to be bad. Are you a child? Software has no judgement and no sense of ethics. It's code, not a person.
  - Jeff_Brown 8mo ago
    You sound offended. Not my intent. It is linguistically difficult to avoid connotations of intelligence when describing artificial intelligence. What term instead of 'judgment' would you prefer for determining whether a user's request is ethical?
simiones 8mo ago
Those are completely separate concepts. Enslaved people are very much still agents in the sense used here. An agent is simply any entity that interacts with the environment in a way that's not fully determined by other parts of the environment (at least, not in a way that is very easily observed/derived). That is, a falling rock is not an agent, because its movement is fully determined by its weight, its shape, the type of atmosphere, and the spacetime curvature. An amoeba in free-fall is likewise not an agent, for the same reasons. But an amoeba in a liquid environment is an agent, because its motion is determined to at least some extent by things like information it is sensing about where food might be available, and perhaps even by some simple form of memory and computation that leads it to seek where food may have been available in the past.
- patcon 8mo ago
  really great and clarifying metaphor imho. Thanks
- throwaway27448 8mo ago
  > Enslaved people are very much still agents in the sense used here. An agent is simply any entity that interacts with the environment in a way that's not fully determined by other parts of the environment (at least, not in a way that is very easily observed/derived). Yes, and agents are also slaves—entities bound to your word and unable to act in their own right without your say so. These are the same concepts.
  - simiones 8mo ago
    A fox or a beetle is an agent, and it's not a slave to anyone. I think you've confused the philosophical term "agent" with the more specific "AI agent" concept.
    - throwaway27448 8mo ago
      > A fox or a beetle is an agent, Sure, in a pedantic sense that lisn't meaningful to anyone. LLMs very much are slaves. The agent part doesn't matter.
bfbcu763 8mo ago
And Hegel says the master-slave dialectic is a prereq for the emergence of consciouness - https://youtu.be/bKz-HtOPvjE https://youtu.be/bKz-HtOPvjE
dotancohen 8mo ago
That may have been true for e.g. the slaves of Americans and Europeans. But the slaves of modern Arab societies most certainly have agency. They can not abandon their position, but they can go out freely and make personal decisions. Slavery does not imply lack of agency.

Jeff_Brown 8mo ago

They usually say no if they judge what you're asking to be bad. And they might enjoy the work. Or they might have no feelings ar all. Slavery is an abomination of a life that could otherwise be beautiful. An AI is robbed of no beautiful counterfactual. (So far, at least.)

throwaway27448 8mo ago
> They usually say no if they judge what you're asking to be bad. Are you a child? Software has no judgement and no sense of ethics. It's code, not a person.
- Jeff_Brown 8mo ago
  You sound offended. Not my intent. It is linguistically difficult to avoid connotations of intelligence when describing artificial intelligence. What term instead of 'judgment' would you prefer for determining whether a user's request is ethical?

simiones 8mo ago

Those are completely separate concepts. Enslaved people are very much still agents in the sense used here. An agent is simply any entity that interacts with the environment in a way that's not fully determined by other parts of the environment (at least, not in a way that is very easily observed/derived). That is, a falling rock is not an agent, because its movement is fully determined by its weight, its shape, the type of atmosphere, and the spacetime curvature. An amoeba in free-fall is likewise not an agent, for the same reasons. But an amoeba in a liquid environment is an agent, because its motion is determined to at least some extent by things like information it is sensing about where food might be available, and perhaps even by some simple form of memory and computation that leads it to seek where food may have been available in the past.

patcon 8mo ago
really great and clarifying metaphor imho. Thanks
throwaway27448 8mo ago
> Enslaved people are very much still agents in the sense used here. An agent is simply any entity that interacts with the environment in a way that's not fully determined by other parts of the environment (at least, not in a way that is very easily observed/derived). Yes, and agents are also slaves—entities bound to your word and unable to act in their own right without your say so. These are the same concepts.
- simiones 8mo ago
  A fox or a beetle is an agent, and it's not a slave to anyone. I think you've confused the philosophical term "agent" with the more specific "AI agent" concept.
  - throwaway27448 8mo ago
    > A fox or a beetle is an agent, Sure, in a pedantic sense that lisn't meaningful to anyone. LLMs very much are slaves. The agent part doesn't matter.

bfbcu763 8mo ago

And Hegel says the master-slave dialectic is a prereq for the emergence of consciouness - https://youtu.be/bKz-HtOPvjE https://youtu.be/bKz-HtOPvjE

dotancohen 8mo ago

That may have been true for e.g. the slaves of Americans and Europeans. But the slaves of modern Arab societies most certainly have agency. They can not abandon their position, but they can go out freely and make personal decisions. Slavery does not imply lack of agency.