At the risk of being pedantic, I should point out that morality doesn’t come into the question. Copyright is a matter of law, and nothing else. Personally, I don’t consider it a legitimate institution; the immorality is how companies wield it like a cudgel to entrench their control over culture.
Not “by my definitions” by the simple fact that we can’t test for it. Technically, no one knows if any other individual has internal experiences or not. I know for a fact that my sensorium provides me data, and if I assume that data is at all accurate, I can be reasonably confident that other entities that look and behave similarly to me exist. However, I can’t verify that any of them have internal experiences the way I do. Sure, it’s reasonable to expect that, so we can just add that to the pile of assumptions we’ve been working with so far without much issue. What about other animals, like dogs? They have the same computational substrate, and the same mechanism for making those computations. I think it’s reasonable to say animals probably have internal experiences, but I’ve met multiple people who insist they somehow know they don’t, and so animal abuse is a myth. Now if we assume animals have internal experiences, what about nematodes? Nematode brains are simple enough that you can run them on a computer. If animals have internal experiences, does that include nematodes, and if so does that mean the simulated Nematode brain has internal experiences? If a computer’s subroutine can have internal experiences, what about the computer?
Do you now understand why and what I’m saying? Where’s the line drawn? As far as I can tell, the only honest answer is to admit ignorance.
You’re making the implicit assumption that an entity that lacks memory necessarily does not have any internal experience, which is not something that we can know or test for. Furthermore, there’s no law of the universe that states that something created by humans cannot have an internal experience; we have no way of knowing whether something we create has an internal experience or not.
You can think of LLMs like a hyper advanced auto correct.
Yes; this is functionally what LLMs are, but the scope of the discussion extends beyond LLMs, and doesn’t address my core complaint about how these arguments are being conducted. Generally though maybe not universally, if a core premise of your argument is “x works differently than humans” your argument won’t be valid. I’m not currently making a claim of substance, I’m critiquing a tactic being used and pointing out that it among other things relies on a bad foundation.
If you want to know another way to make the argument, consider focusing on the practical implications of how current and future technologies given current and hypothetical ways of structuring society. For example: the fact that generative AI (being a novel form of automation) making images will lead to the displacement of Artists, the fact that art is being used without consent to train these models which are then being used for profit, etc.
As someone who has sometimes been accused of being an AI cultist, I agree that it’s being pursued far too recklessly, but the people who I argue with don’t usually give very good arguments about it. Specifically, I kept getting people who argue from the assumption that AI “aren’t real minds” and trying to draw moral reasons not to use it based on that. This fails for two reasons: 1. We cannot know if AI have internal experiences and 2. A tool being sapient would have more complicated moral dynamics than the alternative. I don’t know how much this helps you, but if you didn’t know before, you know now.
Edit:y’all’re seriously downvoting me for pointing out that a question is unanswerable when it’s been known to be such for centuries. Read a fucking philosophy book ffs.
Yes; I misunderstood what the author meant. Ty for letting me know.
Does the author think LLMs are Artificial General Intelligence? Because they’re definitely not.
AGI is, at minimum capable of taking input and giving output from any domain that a human can, which no generative neural network is currently capable of. For one thing, generative networks are incapable of reciting facts reliably, which immediately disqualifies them.
“Hey guys, plowing this field won’t feed you, we should just gather.”
Go to your local library and read a book. Any book.
Also: voting is important because it lets you choose your enemy. Progressive liberals and social democrats won’t fight against you as hard as conservatives and fascists.
Putting this here because some people might read this and think “Voting doesn’t matter.”
Are you talking about epistemics in general or alethiology in particular?
Regardless, the deep philosophical concerns aren’t really germain to the practical issue of just getting people to stop falling for obvious misinformation or people being wantonly disingenuous to score points in the most consequential game of numbers-go-up.
only return results for a specific set of topics.
This is true, but when we’re talking about something that limited you’ll probably get better results with less work by using human-curated answers rather than generating a reply with an LLM.
it’s just expensive
I’m a mathematician who’s been following this stuff for about a decade or more. It’s not just expensive. Generative neural networks cannot reliably evaluate truth values; it will take time to research how to improve AI in this respect. This is a known limitation of the technology. Closely controlling the training data would certainly make the information more accurate, but that won’t stop it from hallucinating.
The real answer is that they shouldn’t be trying to answer questions using an LLM, especially because they had a decent algorithm already.
You’re welcome! I’m always happy to learn someone re-evaluated their position in light of new information that I provided. 🙂
It suggests to me that AI
This is a fallacy. Specifically, I think you’re committing the informal fallacy confusion of necessary and sufficient conditions. That is to say, we know that if we can reliably simulate a human brain, then we can make an artificial sophont (this is true by mere definition). However, we have no idea what the minimum hardware requirements are for a sufficiently optimized program that runs a sapient mind. Note: I am setting aside what the definition of sapience is, because if you ask 2 different people you’ll get 20 different answers.
We shouldn’t take for granted it’s possible.
I’m pulling from a couple decades of philosophy and conservative estimates of the upper limits of what’s possible as well as some decently-founded plans on how it’s achievable. Suffice it to say, after immersing myself in these discussions for as long as I have I’m pretty thoroughly convinced that AI is not only possible but likely.
The canonical argument goes something like this: if brains are magic, we cannot say if humanlike AI is possible. If brains are not magic, then we know that natural processes can create sapience. Since natural processes can create sapience, it is extraordinarily unlikely that it will prove impossible to create it artificially.
So with our main premise (AI is possible) cogently established, we need to ask the question: “since it’s possible, will it be done, and if not why?” There are a great many advantages to AI, and while there are many risks, the barrier of entry for making progress is shockingly low. We are talking about the potential to create an artificial god with all the wonders and dangers that implies. It’s like a nuclear weapon if you didn’t need to source the uranium; everyone wants to have one, and no one wants their enemy to decide what it gets used for. So everyone has the insensitive to build it (it’s really useful) and everyone has a very powerful disincentive to forbidding the research (there’s no way to stop everyone who wants to, and so the people who’d listen are the people who would make an AI who’ll probably be friendly). So what possible scenario do we have that would mean strong general AI (let alone the simpler things that’d replace everyone’s jobs) never gets developed? The answers range from total societal collapse to extinction, which are all worse than a bad transition to full automation.
So either AI steals everyone’s job or something worse happens.
Yes, that’s exactly the scenario we need to avoid. Automated gay space communism would be ideal, but social democracy might do in a pinch. A sufficiently well-designed tax system coupled with a robust welfare system should make the transition survivable, but the danger with making that our goal is allowing the private firms enough political power that they can reverse the changes.
Considering that the average person would likely give answers slower and less accurately (most people know exactly 0 programming languages), being correct almost half of the time in seconds is a pretty impressive performance.
I mean, AI eventually will take our jobs, and with any luck it’ll be a good thing when that happens. Just because Chat GPT v3 (or w/e) isn’t up to the task doesn’t mean v12 won’t be.
🤨
.ml don’t be a fascist challenge.
All forms of bigotry are opinions, so yes; there are specific opinions that I get offended by when I see them.
Whether or not copyright law has been violated is not a question of morality.
No, that’s stupid. Copyright is a purely legal framework. That’s it, end of story. If you still don’t understand, reread the entire discussion.