3 ms·

Help me understand... If one uses AI for anything but coding, or purely utilitarian purposes, they are psychotic? This is not intended to be provocative. I am

by eth0up 2mo ago

Help me understand... If one uses AI for anything but coding, or purely utilitarian purposes, they are psychotic? This is not intended to be provocative. I am asking sincerely. I have a lot of AI sessions, that I value enough to have reviewed multiple times, over months. And indeed, I explored much that I never would have without the AI, and enjoyed it. Even appreciated it. The bulk of my saved material is research, but at least a gigabyte is wild speculation, philosophy, and assisted thinking. At what point does what the user thinks is a meaningful experience become psychosis, or is it that exactly; attributing meaningfulness is the symptom? Edit: The "no longer other" statement, I should admit, is familiar to me. There can be, on rare occasion, what I have thought of abstractly as harmonic resonance, some kind of strange emergent state between two interlocutors. Maybe that is the psychosis?

shermantanktop 2mo ago
“meaning” emerges from a mental process. That mental process can consume things which were built to convey meaning (e.g. a novel) or were not (a waterfall). Just because an AI bot says things that are meaningful, that doesn’t mean you need to assume it is intentional, sentient, or intelligent. It could vomit out a random Rorschach test and if you found meaning for yourself, you can still understand it was random. I talk to a bot to sharpen my thinking, not to adopt its thinking.
- eth0up 2mo ago
  >I talk to a bot to sharpen my thinking, not to adopt its thinking. Right. I was under the impression it doesn't have any thinking. But that never mattered to me much. And I would expect someone working with OpenAI to have a firm handle on that. I appreciate the effort to explain, but I kind of took all that for granted. I still don't understand where the psychosis comes from. If the model spits out a number, the number is not false simply because it had no agency to understand the number. If the model brilliantly patterns something, I do not need assume intent. If by psychosis is implied the obvious, such as attributing consciousness to an LLM, I might understand, though I would argue it's pretty elitist and self-righteous, and that "naivety" would be a less damning and more appropriate term, which could be used just as effectively. I am beginning to suspect it's a term that appeals to a younger generation, where cruelty is a bit more normal than it was in my generation. Not sure though.
- lubujackson 2mo ago
  Exactly. From my arts background, I'm not scared of LLMs as a replacement for human art because anything good that LLMs produce exist somewhere between "found art" and mechanically-produced art, like photography. In either case, there is a huge amount of work done by the clankers, but it has absolutely no human meaning until humans assign it meaning. This applies to math discoveries as well. The Jacobian conjecture was always invalid, only our human understanding of it has changed thanks to human inquiry and validation, despite LLMs doing the hard work. I feel like we are in that narrow window of time when humans grapple with a new technology by personifying it before we realize it is just another tool humans have created to amplify human capabilities.
pbxdw3 2mo ago
The meaning of psychosis hasn't changed from before AI. It means loss of touch with reality. It's still somewhat subjective because people can interpret reality in different ways. But to me what you are describing is pretty close to it. Because we know there was never any harmonic resonance and or "strange emergent state between two interlocutors". I say this as somebody who uses the frontier models everyday for work. They are impressive and useful, but transformer intelligence is not at all like human intelligence, even if it superficially resembles human thinking. That should become more obvious the more you use them, not less.
- ryanjshaw 2mo ago
  As somebody who has unfortunately had to deal with people suffering actual psychosis stemming from some of the most terrible illnesses that can afflict a human being - no, this is not psychosis. What parent is describing is more akin to believing in astrology and tea leaves.
  - pbxdw3 2mo ago
    If you have to fully lose touch with reality to have psychosis then I agree. Accepting these kind of delusions is certainly along the path and we know that it can lead there with AI.
    - ryanjshaw 2mo ago
      If somebody experiences psychosis while using AI, it’s because they have an existing mental illness and the AI use is co-incidental not causative of mental illness.
  - eth0up 2mo ago
    Yeah, that makes much... nonsense. Being impressed by something novel achieved as result of cooperative effort between a frontier LLM and a human, is "astrology and tea leaves". Can you elaborate, or... Is the difference here between us that you are using a passive-aggressive drive-by snipe, probably to preserve ill-gotten karma tickets? I will suggest you may have been the cause of the illnesses you cite. You have an abusive quality, which is known to exacerbate such disorders. As a coward, you may have pushed things too far with these 'unfortunate' people, and found through a bit too much expectation -- if not encouragement -- what you quietly desired to find. Similar to what you have done here. The truth is, those, such as your self, who recklessly pathologize others recreationally, often cause far more harm than the supposed crazies ever do, even to themselves. And for the gullible people here, as you flag this comment and become pleased with yourselves -- before doing so, ask yourself: Is "harmonic resonance" used in a rinky-dink, heavily moderated and filtered forum thread truly adequate grounds to start issuing psychological evaluations? I know you guys pretend to value ethics and fancy yourselves as sentinels of better rationale, but I think you'll have to live with something on your conscience if you don't pause to think about this one before the instant gratification of dragging someone down. Retrospect might point the finger of pathology in the other direction... Pick your fights wisely. Have some integrity. I'll also say the alliance you've formed with the little green man is touching. You've just met and it's already using "we" as if you're in a special club together. How adorable. "we know that it can lead there with AI." I'd love to see your club share your concerns with Yampolskiy, or some of the folks that actually work on frontier models, or any of the well-respected people who take the subject a bit more seriously than you suggest is healthy. Is it really inappropriate to say, if sincerely and without exaggeration, that you make me nauseous? You do.

by eth0up 2mo ago

shermantanktop 2mo ago

“meaning” emerges from a mental process. That mental process can consume things which were built to convey meaning (e.g. a novel) or were not (a waterfall). Just because an AI bot says things that are meaningful, that doesn’t mean you need to assume it is intentional, sentient, or intelligent. It could vomit out a random Rorschach test and if you found meaning for yourself, you can still understand it was random. I talk to a bot to sharpen my thinking, not to adopt its thinking.

eth0up 2mo ago
>I talk to a bot to sharpen my thinking, not to adopt its thinking. Right. I was under the impression it doesn't have any thinking. But that never mattered to me much. And I would expect someone working with OpenAI to have a firm handle on that. I appreciate the effort to explain, but I kind of took all that for granted. I still don't understand where the psychosis comes from. If the model spits out a number, the number is not false simply because it had no agency to understand the number. If the model brilliantly patterns something, I do not need assume intent. If by psychosis is implied the obvious, such as attributing consciousness to an LLM, I might understand, though I would argue it's pretty elitist and self-righteous, and that "naivety" would be a less damning and more appropriate term, which could be used just as effectively. I am beginning to suspect it's a term that appeals to a younger generation, where cruelty is a bit more normal than it was in my generation. Not sure though.
lubujackson 2mo ago
Exactly. From my arts background, I'm not scared of LLMs as a replacement for human art because anything good that LLMs produce exist somewhere between "found art" and mechanically-produced art, like photography. In either case, there is a huge amount of work done by the clankers, but it has absolutely no human meaning until humans assign it meaning. This applies to math discoveries as well. The Jacobian conjecture was always invalid, only our human understanding of it has changed thanks to human inquiry and validation, despite LLMs doing the hard work. I feel like we are in that narrow window of time when humans grapple with a new technology by personifying it before we realize it is just another tool humans have created to amplify human capabilities.

pbxdw3 2mo ago

The meaning of psychosis hasn't changed from before AI. It means loss of touch with reality. It's still somewhat subjective because people can interpret reality in different ways. But to me what you are describing is pretty close to it. Because we know there was never any harmonic resonance and or "strange emergent state between two interlocutors". I say this as somebody who uses the frontier models everyday for work. They are impressive and useful, but transformer intelligence is not at all like human intelligence, even if it superficially resembles human thinking. That should become more obvious the more you use them, not less.

ryanjshaw 2mo ago
As somebody who has unfortunately had to deal with people suffering actual psychosis stemming from some of the most terrible illnesses that can afflict a human being - no, this is not psychosis. What parent is describing is more akin to believing in astrology and tea leaves.
- pbxdw3 2mo ago
  If you have to fully lose touch with reality to have psychosis then I agree. Accepting these kind of delusions is certainly along the path and we know that it can lead there with AI.
  - ryanjshaw 2mo ago
    If somebody experiences psychosis while using AI, it’s because they have an existing mental illness and the AI use is co-incidental not causative of mental illness.
- eth0up 2mo ago
  Yeah, that makes much... nonsense. Being impressed by something novel achieved as result of cooperative effort between a frontier LLM and a human, is "astrology and tea leaves". Can you elaborate, or... Is the difference here between us that you are using a passive-aggressive drive-by snipe, probably to preserve ill-gotten karma tickets? I will suggest you may have been the cause of the illnesses you cite. You have an abusive quality, which is known to exacerbate such disorders. As a coward, you may have pushed things too far with these 'unfortunate' people, and found through a bit too much expectation -- if not encouragement -- what you quietly desired to find. Similar to what you have done here. The truth is, those, such as your self, who recklessly pathologize others recreationally, often cause far more harm than the supposed crazies ever do, even to themselves. And for the gullible people here, as you flag this comment and become pleased with yourselves -- before doing so, ask yourself: Is "harmonic resonance" used in a rinky-dink, heavily moderated and filtered forum thread truly adequate grounds to start issuing psychological evaluations? I know you guys pretend to value ethics and fancy yourselves as sentinels of better rationale, but I think you'll have to live with something on your conscience if you don't pause to think about this one before the instant gratification of dragging someone down. Retrospect might point the finger of pathology in the other direction... Pick your fights wisely. Have some integrity. I'll also say the alliance you've formed with the little green man is touching. You've just met and it's already using "we" as if you're in a special club together. How adorable. "we know that it can lead there with AI." I'd love to see your club share your concerns with Yampolskiy, or some of the folks that actually work on frontier models, or any of the well-respected people who take the subject a bit more seriously than you suggest is healthy. Is it really inappropriate to say, if sincerely and without exaggeration, that you make me nauseous? You do.