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An open message to the American legislature: it is past time to step forward with Constitutional Amendments that will restore, preserve, and enhance honesty, civility
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and rationality in American governance. These qualities are the true measures of any Nation's greatness.
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𝟚𝟛·
In an interview, Hany Farid discusses taking action to reduce some of the most difficult problems created by today's AI systems. It seems to me these systems commit a
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kind of fraud on behalf of their creators when they generate believable images or simulate conversations.
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However limited current AI systems are, they are undeniably useful - training on such vast datasets, some causal correlations are bound to be found. Retrieving them
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is just a matter of winning a text adventure game. It's a disappointment if one hopes to organize data into accessible knowledge, but the results are there.
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They can augment graphical user interfaces with a ‘person user interface’, a virtual assistant sitting on the virtual desktop. The desktop is purely metaphor but, the
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assistants are compelling, and some end up thinking their their conversational partner holds genuine feelings. I imagine trying to put a real mug of coffee on that
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virtual desktop. This seems delusional, like wearing an LSD patch 24 hours a day.
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Machine learning creates ‘inferred software’ and when it's too big to understand, defects are found by users - and they will unpredictable in surprisingly deep ways.
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Trained on vast amounts of text that is meaningful to human beings, the worst of our patterns of communication may be stored away for simulation in hidden corners and
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activated by circumstances that will seem driven by surprisingly human-like motivations.
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To anthropomorphize, your AI assistant may turn out to be a double agent.
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𝟙𝟘·
To better understand why I seemed to be getting so much wrong about AI, I turned to Wikipedia and found my own notions weren't that out of whack with at least one
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standard reference. The entry on Artificial General Intelligence is altogether different.
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My understanding of AGI was a ‘universal problem solving’ ability without reference to human ability, when it really means ‘exceedinmg human ability on all or nearly
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all’ cognitive tasks. Live and learn.
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An the other hand, AGI or "strong AI" implies consciousness for some, which I reject. The concept of mind - the collection of cognition and qualia that the phrase "I
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think therefore I am" refers to - captures what I mean by consciousness (perhaps sentience is a more helpful word, but consciousness is etched in my mind).
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It is useful to keep consciousness distinct from intelligence. To date, there is no evidence or theory as to how consciousness would enhance intelligence, no
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computational model in which consciousness could act as an oracle, allowing the incomputable to be computed. This means there is no, as yet, reason to assume
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consciousness becomes necessary at some level of intelligence. Nor, if we fully reject solipsism, does consciousness provide average human intelligence.
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Passing the ‘Turing Test’ is not evidence of consciousness, it's a proposal to qualify a computer program as "intelligent". Because lesser abilities are often
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described as intelligent, it defines a "general intelligence" in terms of human abilities. Perhaps we might call it a test for "Artificial General Intelligence". But
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we cannot justify conflating it with consciousness.
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𝟘𝟡·
I've posted online in a few forums about AI, and I wish I could just retract it all... I'm worried about two ways the current pursuit of AI could lead to a global
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Depression in the relatively near term; it could fail and, between the bursting investment bubble and changes made on unfulfilled expectations could collapse the
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intertwined economic system; it could succeed, creating a shift that happens faster than we can adapt.
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If AI succeeds in the long term, it will dramatically devalue human labor, both mental and physical - yes, I'm talking about robots. Fully automated assembly lines,
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with large stationary robots. Replacing support personnel with smaller mobile robots for repair resolving malfunctions makes fro a human-free factory. Broader
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defnitions include driverless cars which, operating in an uncontrolled environment, require more ‘intelligence.’ With minimal demands from AI, we can throw in washing
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machines, which have devalued any human effort scrubbing clothes in a nearby stream.
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Protecting jobs is a band-aid to keep capitalism going, but, if we want to keep a decent quality of life for human beings in the long term, we should ensure AI is the
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light at the end of the capitalism tunnel, not a reason to predict a miraculous singularity where we merge our consciousness with machines.
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𝟘𝟝·
Christian Nationalism is the new face of the KKK. Project 2025 is a Christian Nationalist plan to use Trump's narcissism and exploit The Constitution's failure
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against those without a modicum of dignity, or degree of self awareness rising to power in our Democracy. Trump is a child-like puppet of those who would, using the
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tyranny of the majority, ethnically cleanse America.
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𝟚𝟘·
The Trump Adminstration's demands for lists of Jewish Faculty from educational institutions is a not only a potential danger to those faculty members given past and
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recent history, but even a list for ‘special protection’ is unlawful: the use of Congressionally allocated funds to defend or support Jewish Faculty violates the 1st
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Amendment's establishment clause. LDS Members, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus, Spiritualists, Atheists, Wiccans, Scientologists and more have experienced
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persecution on American campuses. Any government protection from religious persecution must defend all belief systems and not be biased by political motivation.
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A person admits their commitment to a principle is, in part, in pursuit of a prize given to recognize those who embody that principle. Does that person, whatever
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their accomplishments, deserve that prize?
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𝟙𝟡·
The title of Robert Wachter's recent article in the NYTimes, “Stop Worrying, and Let A.I. Help Save Your Life” would be less terrible advice if it concluded with “we
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don't use chatbots”. ChatGPT, Grok and others like it are examples of ‘scary AI’. Imagine if my medical record included my Ashkenazi Jewish heritage and I went in for
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an X-Ray on the day Grok was praising Hitler - rather than the minimum radiation required, a little extra would be administered. These systems, trained on the entire
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Internet and tuned to promote their company's or CEO's interests, can have horrific hidden spaces, perhaps derived from social echo chambers, which can turn up
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unpredictably. We can only hope the impact would be limited to a little extra pain medication on the day a particular sports team wins.
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Even narrowing AI to Machine Learning, the field is far broader than the current ‘LLMs will acheive General AI’ craze. Statistical analysis is the basis for
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understanding health outcomes where cause and effect are not immediate. AI built on these methods, pushed to their limits, can capture interdependencies which are far
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too complex or subtle to be labelled with “A causes B” and published in a journal. On-line use of AI in MRI scanners can produce better pictures and shorter scanning
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times - both important while we continue to wring our hands over healthcare consuming an “excessive” amount of our GDP. Of course, the impact of any AI system on
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healthcare outcomes should be measured and analyzed, then reported (publicly) to a regulatory body.
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But anther “AI in Medicine” article from the NY Times by Daniela J Lamas advocates for the worst case - texting ChatGPT in the emergency room. It has abosorbed all
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the medical mythology available on the internet. The risk of an ER doctor stitching healing crystals into my abdomen on the advice of a global scale LLM is small, but
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the ability to correlate consultations with ChatGPT to the time and area I was observed being picked up by an ambulance surely represents a breach of privacy. God
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forbid some phone app sends my records off so her questions can be answered more precisely - by Grok.
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𝟙𝟠·
I was updating my rant about how Unicode is poorly suited for use as a character set in computing when I realized it is a real solid start to an open standard in word
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processing. The addition of emoji makes communication so much clearer: 🇺🇸/🇬🇱=🙀
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𝟙𝟞·
Some online news source or other asked if AI could create anything original. What do you think those Hamlet writing monkeys are doing between Shakespeare plays? If
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the monkeys have already produced Hamlet, fix up the any spelling mistakes and obvious grammatical blunders AI can, and those monkeys will have produced a whole lotta
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plays Shakespeare never wrote. Change the names of a few characters, reorder some events, and one of those gazillion plays is gonna look very much like that play you
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were going to start on next week.
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The problem is you have to find the damn thing in all that monkey stuff, most (like 99.9999999999999999999%) of which looks like the email your cat sent out your ex
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by walking across your keyboard. So use AI to split out the plays from the cat-walks. Now you have a pile of dervitive shlock along with probably quite a few
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variations on that play you've got percolating away.
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But can AI recognize your ‘genuinely original’ play as a play? Or can it only recognize plays it's been trained on, kickin others out screaming “you call this a
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play!? This is nothing like 12th Night!” The textual structure of a play on the page is mostly recognizable using a few rules, and recognizing grammatical structure
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within that is doable by current AI systems. Tuning a ‘play-recognizer’ might reject Oscar Wilde's works as nonsense, but as long as originality isn't exclusively
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comedic, a trained AI can filter out alot of non-plays without excluding everything unless it is copyright-infringingly similar to what it's been trained on. That
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leaves us with alot of play-like things, but preserving originality means most of the plays remaining would be described as “distastefully avant-garde”.
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Go back to generation - instead of untrained monkeys, use an AI system trained to write plays. If it only produces mashups of “The Crucible” and “Othello” throw
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enough monkey stuff in - randomize - and maybe ypu're getting short stories, poems and letters to the editor, but that first AI can filter those in the round
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receptacle. Sooner or later that randomness a play-object close enough to your ‘original’ that you can expect a call from some strangely simian looking laywers when
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you head to Broadway. And your monkeys won't have filled up a few galaxies with pages of cat-walk.
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A back and forth between generation and recognition led to the first AI word-to-image generators, producing all sorts of stuff in the ‘never seen before’ category.
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Can somthing generated randomly be original? It probably will be - hitting on something that already exists is the unlikely case. Is it the result of a creative act?
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Not to me - art (and I assume the original question was about ‘art’) is about the creation, not the created. The object is only the receipt for the what the artist
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thought and did.
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Maybe what we really want to know is whether AI can be creative or not? Are you sure you want to get metaphysical with me? [last edited 2026-01-18]
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𝟙𝟝·
I don't know how to address the political situation here in the US - I think outside human norms in too many ways to contribute positively. From that outside
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posiition, it's clear that people who saw an unjustified execution in publicly available video of Renee Good's killing have fundamental cognitive differences from
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those who saw a justified use of force.
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𝟚𝟜·
I finally got around to watching Jordan Peele's documentary "Get Out" the other night. I have to say, the re-enactments were grisly, but well done.