I have been giving some thought as to why Western societies (I cannot speak for others) who put so much store in individuality and self expression and identity are so willing to let an #LLM in the form of an #AI chat bot speak for them.
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I think one reason is that most chat bots are designed to encourage users to believe that they are 'working together'. This is utterly false, but it credits the user with work they aren't doing, which feels good.
Another could be that, despite all the outlets for personal expression, it is very easy to feel like one's voice isn't heard and doesn't matter. In that case, what does it matter if one's voice is being usurped.
Have you got any theories?
My hypothesis - and I don't have training in psychology or sociology so I don't know whether this is a trivial hypothesis or is nonsense or what - is that LLMs exploit an existing loophole in human psychology, which is that people confuse doing a thing and giving an order to do the thing.
"King Offa built a great earthworks to defend his kingdom." Really. Did he wield the spade himself?
The chatbot is built so that its interactions feel like being a manager and giving orders, which then similarly makes people feel that they personally did the thing.
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My hypothesis - and I don't have training in psychology or sociology so I don't know whether this is a trivial hypothesis or is nonsense or what - is that LLMs exploit an existing loophole in human psychology, which is that people confuse doing a thing and giving an order to do the thing.
"King Offa built a great earthworks to defend his kingdom." Really. Did he wield the spade himself?
The chatbot is built so that its interactions feel like being a manager and giving orders, which then similarly makes people feel that they personally did the thing.
@passenger I think this is an excellent hypothesis. It's not nonsense at all. I think you've hit on something very, very insightful.
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@Remittancegirl For some people, expressing their ideas clearly is a real struggle. Learning to write well is a very tall order for them. I feel very comfortable expressing myself and would only use an LLM for the odd alternative suggestion. Meanwhile, if I have to heave some heavy furniture anywhere, I'll want a little help from my more muscular friends. Even better if there were a machine I could ask rather than interrupting their lives. That's the mindset at work here I think.
@mfeir Here's what haunts me about this: there are two issues here.
Some people do have a struggle expressing their ideas clearly because they lack eloquence. And our society used to, at least, reward eloquence over substance often.
But often people's ideas aren't very clear. And they have not been taught how to hone them, or pin them down. In that case, the machine literally puts words in their mouth and they settle for that.
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My hypothesis - and I don't have training in psychology or sociology so I don't know whether this is a trivial hypothesis or is nonsense or what - is that LLMs exploit an existing loophole in human psychology, which is that people confuse doing a thing and giving an order to do the thing.
"King Offa built a great earthworks to defend his kingdom." Really. Did he wield the spade himself?
The chatbot is built so that its interactions feel like being a manager and giving orders, which then similarly makes people feel that they personally did the thing.
@passenger @Remittancegirl I guess the "It's just a tool" framing doesn't help either. You questioned King Offa's claim to have built the earthworks because he actually had hundreds of peasants doing the work for him. But if one of those workers said "I built part of the earthworks," you wouldn't say that it was actually the spade that did the work because a spade is just a tool.
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@passenger @Remittancegirl I guess the "It's just a tool" framing doesn't help either. You questioned King Offa's claim to have built the earthworks because he actually had hundreds of peasants doing the work for him. But if one of those workers said "I built part of the earthworks," you wouldn't say that it was actually the spade that did the work because a spade is just a tool.
Yeah, absolutely. It's the willingness to see other humans as nothing more than tools, and therefore to equate King Offa using the peasants, versus the peasants using spades.
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@passenger I think this is an excellent hypothesis. It's not nonsense at all. I think you've hit on something very, very insightful.
That means a lot coming from you, thank you very much!
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Yeah, absolutely. It's the willingness to see other humans as nothing more than tools, and therefore to equate King Offa using the peasants, versus the peasants using spades.
@passenger Yes. It is so ingrained into language - this mistaking command or demand for concrete action. Wow, I really never thought of that but it's so damn obvious once I consider it.
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That means a lot coming from you, thank you very much!
@passenger I don't know why. But your most welcome. You offered an aspect I really hadn't considered. And the logic of it downright irrefutable.
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My hypothesis - and I don't have training in psychology or sociology so I don't know whether this is a trivial hypothesis or is nonsense or what - is that LLMs exploit an existing loophole in human psychology, which is that people confuse doing a thing and giving an order to do the thing.
"King Offa built a great earthworks to defend his kingdom." Really. Did he wield the spade himself?
The chatbot is built so that its interactions feel like being a manager and giving orders, which then similarly makes people feel that they personally did the thing.
Interesting perspective. At the same time someone who has lost a leg, or was born without one after a while learns to walk with a prosthetic leg to help with their physical deficit.
We would probably see that as morally justified, and we would applaud modern medicine for helping those who are now able to perform physically in ways they couldn't before. But many people don't see an intellectual aid as the same kind of thing, and many find it morally compromised.
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Yeah, absolutely. It's the willingness to see other humans as nothing more than tools, and therefore to equate King Offa using the peasants, versus the peasants using spades.
Thinking further, and a little darker, it also speaks to just how willing we all are to be instrumentalised in one way or another.
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Interesting perspective. At the same time someone who has lost a leg, or was born without one after a while learns to walk with a prosthetic leg to help with their physical deficit.
We would probably see that as morally justified, and we would applaud modern medicine for helping those who are now able to perform physically in ways they couldn't before. But many people don't see an intellectual aid as the same kind of thing, and many find it morally compromised.
@vruz The problem is that I don't buy that they are intellectual aides. I think they masquerade as intellectual aids.
The artificial limb has no agenda. It isn't owned by oligarchs who want you to walk in a certain direction.
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@mfeir Here's what haunts me about this: there are two issues here.
Some people do have a struggle expressing their ideas clearly because they lack eloquence. And our society used to, at least, reward eloquence over substance often.
But often people's ideas aren't very clear. And they have not been taught how to hone them, or pin them down. In that case, the machine literally puts words in their mouth and they settle for that.
@Remittancegirl @mfeir Amusingly and ironically, I'm struggling to express sharply why I don't enjoy using those generative tools. I've got some threads of thought in my head, but I haven't yet pinpointed the central thought to my own satisfaction, it remains a vague emotion. And I sure as hell am not going to settle for some dull LLM output.
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Interesting perspective. At the same time someone who has lost a leg, or was born without one after a while learns to walk with a prosthetic leg to help with their physical deficit.
We would probably see that as morally justified, and we would applaud modern medicine for helping those who are now able to perform physically in ways they couldn't before. But many people don't see an intellectual aid as the same kind of thing, and many find it morally compromised.
Similarly, if someone uses software to read out loud what's on screen, most often nowadays that involves machine learning, and trained models that "learned" to "imitate" the human voice. Also not morally compromised, and also socially perceived as something morally acceptable, and something most of us would probably encourage.
And that's very much a real world application of artificial intelligence, identical technical foundations. -
I have been giving some thought as to why Western societies (I cannot speak for others) who put so much store in individuality and self expression and identity are so willing to let an #LLM in the form of an #AI chat bot speak for them. Because essentially, when you ask AI to write something for you, that is what you're doing.
Why are we so eager to have our own voices usurped? 1/
@Remittancegirl this is such an interesting thread.
My two cents is that its like premade cake mix. When it was just add water people didn't like it because it felt like cheating or deception. Once they switched it to requring the addition of an egg there was a psychological shift that made the process comfortable.
LLMs reqiuire a degree of personal contribution, which much like with the cake mix (or IKEA furnature) enables them to emotionally take ownership of the result without guilt.
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@Remittancegirl @mfeir Amusingly and ironically, I'm struggling to express sharply why I don't enjoy using those generative tools. I've got some threads of thought in my head, but I haven't yet pinpointed the central thought to my own satisfaction, it remains a vague emotion. And I sure as hell am not going to settle for some dull LLM output.
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@Remittancegirl @mfeir I appreciate the encouragement
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@Remittancegirl this is such an interesting thread.
My two cents is that its like premade cake mix. When it was just add water people didn't like it because it felt like cheating or deception. Once they switched it to requring the addition of an egg there was a psychological shift that made the process comfortable.
LLMs reqiuire a degree of personal contribution, which much like with the cake mix (or IKEA furnature) enables them to emotionally take ownership of the result without guilt.
@carbontwelve I think the emotional aspect of this is really quite important to consider. I like the cake mix analogy. Because, baked into it (forgive the pun) are two things: profit and the hegemonic definition of what a cake is.
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@vruz The problem is that I don't buy that they are intellectual aides. I think they masquerade as intellectual aids.
The artificial limb has no agenda. It isn't owned by oligarchs who want you to walk in a certain direction.
The prosthetic-limb corporation does exist. And Chatgpt and Claude are two prominent instances of a million other systems that everyone uses every day. If these things were declared illegal tomorrow, you wouldn't be able to use Netflix, you wouldn't be able to produce aeronautic parts, you wouldn't be able to produce text-to-speech systems, you wouldn't be able to produce instant translation.
I understand the idea that oligarchs put ideas in it, and that's true.
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My hypothesis - and I don't have training in psychology or sociology so I don't know whether this is a trivial hypothesis or is nonsense or what - is that LLMs exploit an existing loophole in human psychology, which is that people confuse doing a thing and giving an order to do the thing.
"King Offa built a great earthworks to defend his kingdom." Really. Did he wield the spade himself?
The chatbot is built so that its interactions feel like being a manager and giving orders, which then similarly makes people feel that they personally did the thing.
@passenger @Remittancegirl i think there's a lot of truth to this. I wonder if in modern times we've gone even further and have started to equate "writing about or describing the thing" as doing the thing.
So much office work now is moving boxes on PowerPoints, writing documents, saying stuff that's demonstrably not related to reality. And now CoPilot can help "execute" a plan. Not because it can do things in the real world, but because it can create the digital simulacrum of work.
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The prosthetic-limb corporation does exist. And Chatgpt and Claude are two prominent instances of a million other systems that everyone uses every day. If these things were declared illegal tomorrow, you wouldn't be able to use Netflix, you wouldn't be able to produce aeronautic parts, you wouldn't be able to produce text-to-speech systems, you wouldn't be able to produce instant translation.
I understand the idea that oligarchs put ideas in it, and that's true.
@vruz @passenger Voice recognition existed long before AI
