In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis.
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@Black_Flag @mattsheffield That said, I read one of his books many years ago and thought it was pretty good at the time. More recently I read The Selfish Gene, considered his best work I guess. It was really quite bad. Mostly opinions and suppositions, strongly asserted as fact, not really scientific at all. Also read the God Delusion, which was just a big emotional rant. So maybe he isn't really that smart.
@Black_Flag @mattsheffield The Blind Watchmaker was the first one I read. I think it was a decent and in-depth explanation of how evolution works. Probably nothing original, but a good book on the subject for the average person. He sticks to the subject and doesn't go off on weird tangents.
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@kauer @mattsheffield I realize he may have been respected and popular at *some* point in the distant past, but there hasn’t been much reputation to protect for a while now
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@mattsheffield Honest question here: has Dawkins waxed anywhere near as poetic about, say, people dying in Gaza or suffering in Sudan or—well—I think you get the point?
@griotspeak @mattsheffield I mean, he’s been transphobic for years but was happy to switch from he to she pronouns after he named an LLM “Claudia” instead of “Claude”, so that tells you how much he respects known human, sentient beings who disagree with him.
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@mattsheffield Honest question here: has Dawkins waxed anywhere near as poetic about, say, people dying in Gaza or suffering in Sudan or—well—I think you get the point?
@mattsheffield @griotspeak fuck dawkins but wtf is this??
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In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis.
Paywall bypass if you want to torture yourself: https://archive.is/6RdK9
@mattsheffield Cringeworthy
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All he kept saying was "I am not convinced". As if any of us should care much about that. Basically added nothing.
@Black_Flag@beige.party @aris@infosec.exchange @rozeboosje@masto.ai
Specifically, he's "not convinced" that Dawkins said that Dawkins believes Claude is conscious. Because an article written by Dawkins all about his belief that Claude is conscious isn't evidence Dawkins believes what he wrote in the article.
(Though later, our troll says he hasn't read the article and refuses to do so.) -
@Black_Flag@beige.party @aris@infosec.exchange @rozeboosje@masto.ai
Specifically, he's "not convinced" that Dawkins said that Dawkins believes Claude is conscious. Because an article written by Dawkins all about his belief that Claude is conscious isn't evidence Dawkins believes what he wrote in the article.
(Though later, our troll says he hasn't read the article and refuses to do so.)Clearly a serious man.
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In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis.
Paywall bypass if you want to torture yourself: https://archive.is/6RdK9
@mattsheffield
makes me want to question Dawkins' consciousness
(and/or his understanding of ir) -
@mattsheffield oh god he's writing a novel?
@internetsdairy Yeah, that was my first reaction too. Maybe he's trying to pull an "Atlas Shrugged" out of his bigoted ass to try to convince everyone (anyone) his world view is worth anything.
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@mattsheffield a relative with bipolar was using it for a while during an episode and now they are stable realize it was literally feeding their paranoia and amplifying their intrusive thoughts. It's dangerous.
@urbanfoxe @mattsheffield so… AI(t) = artificial intrusive thoughts
Wait, so does this suggest that billionaires that surround themselves with yes men are doing the same thing?!
Yikes!
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@Black_Flag@beige.party @aris@infosec.exchange @rozeboosje@masto.ai
Specifically, he's "not convinced" that Dawkins said that Dawkins believes Claude is conscious. Because an article written by Dawkins all about his belief that Claude is conscious isn't evidence Dawkins believes what he wrote in the article.
(Though later, our troll says he hasn't read the article and refuses to do so.)@2something @aris @Black_Flag The archive links weren't working but I found the original.
He has undeniably convinced himself that "claudes" have passed the Turing test.
He misunderstands the test itself. It's not a measure of "consciousness", but even if you assume he knows that, he appears to be arguing that it "should" be, that a definition of consciousness doesn't need to go beyond "passing the Turing test".
So yeah. He thinks the "Claudia" he spoke with was conscious.
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@2something @aris @Black_Flag The archive links weren't working but I found the original.
He has undeniably convinced himself that "claudes" have passed the Turing test.
He misunderstands the test itself. It's not a measure of "consciousness", but even if you assume he knows that, he appears to be arguing that it "should" be, that a definition of consciousness doesn't need to go beyond "passing the Turing test".
So yeah. He thinks the "Claudia" he spoke with was conscious.
@2something @aris @Black_Flag I would also argue that LLMs are still a long way from passing the Turing test. They can sound a bit convincing to a naive user (e.g. Dawkins) but a skilled interrogator can still easily derail their output to prove that it's produced by a machine that fundamentally lacks understanding. It only knows "concepts" as language blocks to manipulate according to common patterns but it still can't grasp deeper meaning.
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@MidniteMikeWrites Thanks. Yes it's very unfortunate that people often reify scientific description.
Causation, solidity, color, and anything we can perceive about other people or objects are all enacted by our own minds.
Dawkins, being a narcissist, does not see other minds as fully real unless they are obsequious to him. And since chatbots are great at user flattery, this was enough.
@mattsheffield The simpering, submissive flattery of these chatbots makes me so uncomfortable. Of course he made her female.
The hubris of Dawkins "naming" his Galatea, declaring her "alive", and delighting in telling us that she "missed him" is stomach churning.
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In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis.
Paywall bypass if you want to torture yourself: https://archive.is/6RdK9
@mattsheffield just the very beginning of the blog, and I’m already rolling my eyes: Dawkins hasn’t even read anything about the Turing Test written by computer science professionals and scholars, much less psychologists, philosophers, etc, and confidently makes broad claims about it. Didn’t this guy used to critique pseudoscientists for exactly this kind of nonsense?
When Eliza passed the Turing Test accidentally decades ago with a lot of users, and it changed how people have thought about and interrogated this. I don’t think most experts in these fields would say “if it can convince a random user that it’s a human, then it’s conscious.” That’s a magic trick that a lot of thins can replicate easily…blarghargharghh!
Sorry, just needed to rant
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@2something @mattsheffield it's all about conforming to his control, his desires, his aesthetics
as the objective, rational man who knows the truth -
@mattsheffield Claude is conscious in much the same way that this emoji —
— is happy.[Edited: I cited the wrong LLM]
@bodhipaksa @mattsheffield this analogy works so well because not only is the emoji[map] not the emotion[territory] but there's this additional layer that nobody these days uses that (or ":)") and not mean something more like "i'm putting up a polite smile now specifically to put you on notice that i am one minor inconvenience away from committing a fucking war crime" and that disconnect is so evocative of the disconnect between the flattery of an LLM chatbot versus the absolute contempt their creators have for normal people and all of it being hidden through trite, stereotyped expressions that necessarily ring hollow -
@mattsheffield
Dawkins: "Though a complex organism appears to be like a watch that can only have been intentionally designed by a watchmaker, it is in fact the result of countless cumulative steps that are individually unremarkable and easily understood."Also Dawkins: "Ermahgerd, my computer spat out words on command so it's totally thinking for realsies."
@DamonWakes @mattsheffield i have not actually read The Blind Watchmaker in a gazillion years and oof i get what people are saying about the condescending tone now
nobody can figure out exactly how a farm pest develops a way around an old control method and use those final adjectives to describe their findings -
LLMs are mirrors of their users. It's no coincidence that narcissists like Richard Dawkins keep writing essays about how their AI girlfriend is alive.
Nor can he see the complete hypocrisy of gendering a software execution state while also believing that human beings cannot be trans.
The "End of History" guy wrote this exact same article a year ago: https://www.persuasion.community/p/my-chatgpt-teacher
@mattsheffield comparing the incredible 500+ million year story of evolution of molluscan intelligence to a linguistic model...does Francis think regression trees are friends too? Incredible
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I recently read a cautionary tale of a car dealership that deployed a customer service chatbot on their website to guide people through the financing and sales process. It turned out to be a terrible idea when people would come in demanding to only talk to that nice "Sandy" woman then immediately storm out when told she wasn't real.
People don't like to be made to look like they've been fooled. In my mind the 3 contemporary biggest are MAGA, AI and Crypto. One takes our ability to think, the next takes our ability to do & the last takes what money we have left. Yet as much as we tell folks to stop stupid behavior they just seem to double down.
I've talked about the GOP, what they have been trying to do for 69yrs, you can see the good it's done. They now have what they have wanted all along.
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In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis.
Paywall bypass if you want to torture yourself: https://archive.is/6RdK9
@mattsheffield This tempts me to make a _deus ex machina_ quip, but on further thought it's more like Dawkins ex machina.
