In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis.

[cm@chaos.social]

@mattsheffield My guess: there's a lot of his writing out there, therefore in the training material of any LLM. So he hears what he wants to hear because he wrote it... it really is a machine that works because people hear something familiar and inject meaning.

[mattsheffield@mastodon.social]

@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@mastodon.social]

@urbanfoxe Used without understanding and awareness of what they are, they can create and magnify delusions.

[mattsheffield@mastodon.social]

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

[griotspeak@soc.mod-12.com]

@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?

[datarama@hachyderm.io]

@MisuseCase @mattsheffield I mean, the Claude Delusion sort of rhymes.

[m@martinh.net]

@mattsheffield Just wait until he discovers SOUL.md

[internetsdairy@mastodon.art]

@mattsheffield oh god he's writing a novel?

[catch56@kolektiva.social]

@mattsheffield did he ask 'Claudia' about his little pot of honey?

[mattsheffield@mastodon.social]

@internetsdairy I'm sure it's going to be about a brilliant and yet misunderstood scientist.

[fishidwardrobe@mastodon.me.uk]

@mattsheffield if the mirror is not conscious, then what is consciousness for?

[abucci@buc.ci]

@datarama@hachyderm.io @MisuseCase@twit.social @mattsheffield@mastodon.social Outgrowing Claude

[corvidcrone@kolektiva.social]

@mattsheffield

Fundamental misunderstanding of reincarnation.

[urbanfoxe@mastodon.ie]

@mattsheffield it was pretty much telling them to isolate themselves from everyone who cared about them.

[bodhipaksa@mastodon.scot]

@mattsheffield Claude is conscious in much the same way that this emoji — — is happy.

[Edited: I cited the wrong LLM]

[orb2069@mastodon.online]

@mattsheffield

Boy it sure is good we're just letting anybody use them, like firearms! That surely won't end in tragedy, like firearms!

@urbanfoxe

[orb2069@mastodon.online]

@FediThing

He's no James Randi...

@mattsheffield

[mike805@noc.social]

@mattsheffield Sounds like he finally found a god he can believe in.

[mxchara@seattle.pink]

@mattsheffield "I proved that human beings live but one life and die alone and afraid." "How did you prove this astonishing thesis, Sir Richard?" "I got sentimental over my disposable chatbot conversation. Surely this proves something!"

[datarama@hachyderm.io]

@MisuseCase @mattsheffield I'm going to have to admit that something like 25 years ago, I had some admiration for Dawkins. This was while George W. Bush was in power over in the US, and the power of weird reactionary Christians seemed to be on the ascendant. But, well, I think both he and I and the world changed. He changed in the sense that he started going after (locally) powerless minorities and leaving the most powerful religious reactionaries alone. I changed in that I figured that in the scheme of things I both had any kind of influence over and that actually affected the world materially, religion was pretty low on the list*. And the world changed in that the threat to human flourishing that religion used to represent largely got supplanted by threats from secular actors - prominently including the tech sector and the populist right, both of whom Dawkins readily allies himself with. So, well, I stopped admiring him. And also, at some point I realized that quite a lot of what he said that *wasn't* about biology was pretty dumb - even his criticism of religion was pretty much on the "baby's first atheist screed" level.

(I'm not really sure that I agree he's a narcissist - I don't know enough about his personality to feel comfortable armchair diagnosing him with a personality disorder. I do feel comfortable declaring that I think he's an ass, though.)

*) I never personally had a "deconversion" or a phase of being angry with a past deity. I am at least a third-generation atheist, and I live in a country that simultaneously has a state church and is one of the most irreligious countries in the world. Anti-abortionism, for example, is so unpopular here that even the far right desperately tries to avoid bringing the topic up because it's absolute political suicide even for them.