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If nobody knows exactly how, then "at random" sounds about right and the results should be treated as such. That is, in this case, it should not be used to inf

If nobody knows exactly how, then "at random" sounds about right and the results should be treated as such. That is, in this case, it should not be used to influence decisions that can start a war.

krapp 8d ago
People will just roll their eyes at you and say "the human mind is nothing but a dice roll too" and call you a slope-headed neanderthal before continuing apace.
semiquaver 8d ago
I agree wholeheartedly about your second sentence, but “we made this artifact and don’t know why the thing it does looks spookily like cognition” and “this artifact makes decisions at random” are obviously distinct categories and pretending otherwise is silly.
- watwut 8d ago
  We know why it looks like cognition. Because OpenAI and Antropic put a lot of effort and training to humanize the output and make it sound like a person. Regardless of negative consequences it brings. They have that project of creating tech god which will save the unborn people thousands years in the future ... so people living now dont matter. That is why.
  - semiquaver 7d ago
    “Putting a lot of effort and training” into a dog or an inanimate carbon rod would never result in something that can plausibly substitute for human mental labor and looks likely to eventually surpass us at many tasks, no matter how much you put in. So I don’t think “labs worked hard” is the same thing is “we know scientifically how these things work in any real level of detail”. The ability to build a thing, even if building it is hard, is not the same thing as understanding of what the thing is or how it works, not even a little bit.
theptip 7d ago
This is a false dichotomy. We can make statements about the distribution, and we have fuzzy models about certain sets of inputs and outputs. We can steer the outputs. It’s not completely random. We just don’t understand why the tricks we learned work. (Fully agree with the second point FWIW)

If nobody knows exactly how, then "at random" sounds about right and the results should be treated as such. That is, in this case, it should not be used to influence decisions that can start a war.

krapp 8d ago

People will just roll their eyes at you and say "the human mind is nothing but a dice roll too" and call you a slope-headed neanderthal before continuing apace.

semiquaver 8d ago

I agree wholeheartedly about your second sentence, but “we made this artifact and don’t know why the thing it does looks spookily like cognition” and “this artifact makes decisions at random” are obviously distinct categories and pretending otherwise is silly.

watwut 8d ago
We know why it looks like cognition. Because OpenAI and Antropic put a lot of effort and training to humanize the output and make it sound like a person. Regardless of negative consequences it brings. They have that project of creating tech god which will save the unborn people thousands years in the future ... so people living now dont matter. That is why.
- semiquaver 7d ago
  “Putting a lot of effort and training” into a dog or an inanimate carbon rod would never result in something that can plausibly substitute for human mental labor and looks likely to eventually surpass us at many tasks, no matter how much you put in. So I don’t think “labs worked hard” is the same thing is “we know scientifically how these things work in any real level of detail”. The ability to build a thing, even if building it is hard, is not the same thing as understanding of what the thing is or how it works, not even a little bit.

theptip 7d ago

This is a false dichotomy. We can make statements about the distribution, and we have fuzzy models about certain sets of inputs and outputs. We can steer the outputs. It’s not completely random. We just don’t understand why the tricks we learned work. (Fully agree with the second point FWIW)