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> Is AI less deterministic than an airline dealing with weather? Yes, obviously? The responses of an airline to inclemement weather fit in a reasonably small s

by fwip 11d ago

> Is AI less deterministic than an airline dealing with weather? Yes, obviously? The responses of an airline to inclemement weather fit in a reasonably small set of responses, mostly involving rescheduling and/or rerouting flights. The current AI predictability would be like if some airlines decided to do 9/11 when it was raining.

CPLX 11d ago
No, it's not. The current so-called scandals about AI hacking into other companies were because a bunch of human beings intentionally configured the software to go and do exactly that thing. There's nothing deterministic about weather, so hopefully you're not just being disingenuous. It's obvious that the global transportation system, or financial markets, or any number of other things are complex adaptive dynamic systems that are on par with AI in terms of their emergent properties. Check my username. It's a concept I spent a lot of my life paying attention to. Just because something has elements of autonomy or is adaptive doesn't make it particularly novel. We've dealt with those kinds of systems for centuries. The solution is to make rules and enforce those rules by whatever means are needed to meet the specifics of the case. The rules, of course, are enforced against human beings.
- deleted 11d ago
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- imtringued 11d ago
  >There's nothing deterministic about weather, so hopefully you're not just being disingenuous. You're the one being disingenuous. Look at what you wrote. > Is AI less deterministic than an airline dealing with weather? You didn't talk about how deterministic the weather is. You talked about how an airline responds to a weather event in comparison to AI, which means that it's about responding to presented information by making a decision. The state of the weather does affect your micro decisions, but the rules you follow are the same every time and the rules are as deterministic as possible even if they rely on pilot intuition.
  - CPLX 11d ago
    > rules are as deterministic as possible even if they rely on pilot intuition I think you are profoundly confused. An airplane, and an AI algorithm encoded into silicon, are inert physical objects. Every evaluation we are doing here is of a complex system that involves the interaction of people and machines and physical connections and so on. An aviation system connected to every country and region with millions of people and machines involved is no less complex than what’s under discussion here and no more deterministic. We don’t regulate airplanes because they aren’t people. We regulate pilots and mechanics and leaders of the companies that make and own them. The task at hand is to regulate the people involved in AI to get the outcomes we want.
    - deleted 11d ago
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- fwip 11d ago
  I see - I think I overfixated on your specific point, and thought you meant that the current predictability of LLMs was on-par with the current predictability of airlines. The range of LLMs with current harnesses is "anything somebody with access to a computer can do," probably precisely because we aren't enforcing rules against the humans building these systems. Whereas in comparison, an airline has a range of reasonable outcomes despite unpredictable weather input.
  - CPLX 11d ago
    > an airline has a range of reasonable outcomes despite unpredictable weather input I mean one of the outcomes of an airline was 9/11. That's sort of my point. Complex systems have emergent behavior. That's always been true. The combination of AI and humans and packet switched networks is a complex system and we've seen most of the issues created by this already and have tools for dealing with them. Obviously with some genuine novel issues likely to come, much in the way that 9/11 would have been less possible using ocean liners. I'll stick to my original point though. AI absolutely IS deterministic. If you run an AI algorithm on a microchip, literally nothing of note will happen in the human world. Some transistors will change state. It's ONLY when it is integrated into a complex human system that it gets interesting. Just like lots of other things.

by fwip 11d ago

CPLX 11d ago

No, it's not. The current so-called scandals about AI hacking into other companies were because a bunch of human beings intentionally configured the software to go and do exactly that thing. There's nothing deterministic about weather, so hopefully you're not just being disingenuous. It's obvious that the global transportation system, or financial markets, or any number of other things are complex adaptive dynamic systems that are on par with AI in terms of their emergent properties. Check my username. It's a concept I spent a lot of my life paying attention to. Just because something has elements of autonomy or is adaptive doesn't make it particularly novel. We've dealt with those kinds of systems for centuries. The solution is to make rules and enforce those rules by whatever means are needed to meet the specifics of the case. The rules, of course, are enforced against human beings.

deleted 11d ago
[deleted]
imtringued 11d ago
>There's nothing deterministic about weather, so hopefully you're not just being disingenuous. You're the one being disingenuous. Look at what you wrote. > Is AI less deterministic than an airline dealing with weather? You didn't talk about how deterministic the weather is. You talked about how an airline responds to a weather event in comparison to AI, which means that it's about responding to presented information by making a decision. The state of the weather does affect your micro decisions, but the rules you follow are the same every time and the rules are as deterministic as possible even if they rely on pilot intuition.
- CPLX 11d ago
  > rules are as deterministic as possible even if they rely on pilot intuition I think you are profoundly confused. An airplane, and an AI algorithm encoded into silicon, are inert physical objects. Every evaluation we are doing here is of a complex system that involves the interaction of people and machines and physical connections and so on. An aviation system connected to every country and region with millions of people and machines involved is no less complex than what’s under discussion here and no more deterministic. We don’t regulate airplanes because they aren’t people. We regulate pilots and mechanics and leaders of the companies that make and own them. The task at hand is to regulate the people involved in AI to get the outcomes we want.
  - deleted 11d ago
    [deleted]
fwip 11d ago
I see - I think I overfixated on your specific point, and thought you meant that the current predictability of LLMs was on-par with the current predictability of airlines. The range of LLMs with current harnesses is "anything somebody with access to a computer can do," probably precisely because we aren't enforcing rules against the humans building these systems. Whereas in comparison, an airline has a range of reasonable outcomes despite unpredictable weather input.
- CPLX 11d ago
  > an airline has a range of reasonable outcomes despite unpredictable weather input I mean one of the outcomes of an airline was 9/11. That's sort of my point. Complex systems have emergent behavior. That's always been true. The combination of AI and humans and packet switched networks is a complex system and we've seen most of the issues created by this already and have tools for dealing with them. Obviously with some genuine novel issues likely to come, much in the way that 9/11 would have been less possible using ocean liners. I'll stick to my original point though. AI absolutely IS deterministic. If you run an AI algorithm on a microchip, literally nothing of note will happen in the human world. Some transistors will change state. It's ONLY when it is integrated into a complex human system that it gets interesting. Just like lots of other things.