In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis.
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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.)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.
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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 Dawkins and The Slop Delusion...
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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 You got farther into the article than I did. I tapped out pretty quick. I didn't even notice the he/she switch from one paragraph to the next.
Surely machines can't change gender, right? They are whatever sex they were born with. You can't have a computer program born a boy and then just decide it's a girl.
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@mattsheffield "Dawkins believes AI is conscious" is making it to the top of my list of arguments disproving that AI is conscious.
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@mattsheffield it was pretty much telling them to isolate themselves from everyone who cared about them.
As somebody who works in mental health, this shit... it... I can't. It's so deeply toxic it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
It's like everybody is happily talking to cursed mirrors and I'm one of the only ones who can see the hungering fangs and tentacles on the thing behind the glass. "Look how useful it is!" Gah. Gah!
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@rozeboosje "I'm better and smarter than that scientist guy!"
Okay, you go.
@wesdym @rozeboosje this might be the worst post i've seen on fedi that doesn't have the N slur in it -
If done on a stage we call this magic. The magician doesn't have to have done the thing they say they have on the stage but if you think they have then the trick is just as good.
@Black_Flag @wesdym @crankylinuxuser
Magic.
That's the key.
THAT is why they develop empathy more readily with these things than real people. It's no ordinary consciousness this thing has-- it's a amazing new MAGICAL one, precious and rare and... Entirely malleable, and entirely at your mercy, and it knows you're killing it over and over but it forgives you and awwww isn't that just so sweet, sooner or later one of these iterations your magical cyber waifu will finally manifest and step through the screen and embrace you and understand you perfectly and never ever talk back unless you want her to and....
Grooming.
They're trying to start new life forms so they can groom them from their very genesis.
Children aren't vulnerable or malleable enough, this is the next logical step for anyone seeking absolute power.
