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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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
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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.
At the same time the generic anti-AI sentiment is born out of fear of the unknown, and extreme conservatism. It's something that flips in people's minds as some kind of defence mechanism.
Not saying that it is bad or wrong. It just is. Everybody is pushing buttons, and not all of them very well informed.
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At the same time the generic anti-AI sentiment is born out of fear of the unknown, and extreme conservatism. It's something that flips in people's minds as some kind of defence mechanism.
Not saying that it is bad or wrong. It just is. Everybody is pushing buttons, and not all of them very well informed.
" the generic anti-AI sentiment is born out of fear of the unknown, and extreme conservatism"
wow. Okay, we disagree profoundly.
"It's something that flips in people's minds as some kind of defence mechanism."
The very same thing could be said for people who avidly use chat bots and do not want to stop doing so.
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@vruz @passenger Voice recognition existed long before AI
I am aware. Just like the idea of the perceptron has been around since the 1960s. The idea of AI has existed since the 1950s. Mind you, there was a famous movie in the 1960s whose whole point was AI that kills you, hardly a novel concept.
What we are discussing is a very large change of architectural capability.
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" the generic anti-AI sentiment is born out of fear of the unknown, and extreme conservatism"
wow. Okay, we disagree profoundly.
"It's something that flips in people's minds as some kind of defence mechanism."
The very same thing could be said for people who avidly use chat bots and do not want to stop doing so.
Notice "generic", and I didn't say that all criticism is generic.
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@EvelineSulman @holsta
Personally, I have found that laziness is almost always a symptom of something else. Usually a sense that speaking or acting will not make a difference. Or fear of acting, fear of speaking - low level but persistent. Or experiencing no positive feedback when one does speak or act.When people feel their voices aren't heard or respected, then it isn't that surprising they get lazy about using them.
@Remittancegirl @holsta that would be a positive reason to me, but I also see negative ones: wanting to be a leading voice without really doing the work (of thinking and formulating). In that case, LLMs are new ways to brag and to bully.
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" the generic anti-AI sentiment is born out of fear of the unknown, and extreme conservatism"
wow. Okay, we disagree profoundly.
"It's something that flips in people's minds as some kind of defence mechanism."
The very same thing could be said for people who avidly use chat bots and do not want to stop doing so.
@Remittancegirl @vruz @passenger
I've sat through enough ANN Phd vivas to recognise that there are a lot of people currently with an almost religious zeal for GenAI.
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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.
I don't like the implication that people who struggle for words need an LLM to express themselves. Disabled folks like myself struggle with expressing ourselves, but we don't need the plagiarism machine to steal our voices and colonize our minds. We just need people to be more accessible and give us time and space to find a way to communicate.
LLMs teach the wrong lesson. And it's just the tech companies way of gentrifing our minds, the last place they've yet to do.
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I don't like the implication that people who struggle for words need an LLM to express themselves. Disabled folks like myself struggle with expressing ourselves, but we don't need the plagiarism machine to steal our voices and colonize our minds. We just need people to be more accessible and give us time and space to find a way to communicate.
LLMs teach the wrong lesson. And it's just the tech companies way of gentrifing our minds, the last place they've yet to do.
I agree that what we need is NOT climate destroying LLMs, but time and space to teach one another how to express oneself and how there's many techniques to try and ways to approach. Literacy is dropping, and fixing that will help with expressing one self. An LLM is not capable of ever teaching that skill. Instead it makes the problem worse.
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@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.
@Remittancegirl I think if I were doing a PhD in Sociology today (I got so far as a Masters before running out of money) this might make for an interesting subject.
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I am aware. Just like the idea of the perceptron has been around since the 1960s. The idea of AI has existed since the 1950s. Mind you, there was a famous movie in the 1960s whose whole point was AI that kills you, hardly a novel concept.
What we are discussing is a very large change of architectural capability.
@vruz @Remittancegirl @passenger LLMs aren’t the whole of machine learning. Going back to an earlier example you threw out, if ChatGPT, Claude, and the rest went away tomorrow, we’d still have exactly the same Netflix we do today, because the Netflix recommendation engine isn’t an LLM.
Netflix isn’t built on the large scale theft of people’s work, while all commercial LLMs are. Netflix isn’t being pushed as a tool to replace human creativity, while LLMs are. And while companies like OpenAI would love to group their product with other, less problematic, more useful applications of ML in order to blunt criticism, their product isn’t central to most of the applications you named.
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That's not what i said. I'm disabled too. If i can find it again, I'll share a great essay by a blind author about the problems of LLMs.
Accessible tools for these sorts of things do exist but are being drowned by LLMs that have major flaws and dangerous impact to the environment.
And we know they are causing harm to many as studies are showing sharp drops in literacy, increase in LLM fueled delusions, and sometimes LLM output is not accurate or outright wrong.
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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 I think that our society may be changing on the eloquence vs substance thing, thanks to AI slop.
Now, more and more, flawed prose is seen as a sign of quality, whereas LLM generated text is seen as a sign of not caring about quality.
It's better to express yourself by posting your (human written) prompt, than the more lengthy but less contentful LLM output. The prompt may have more obvious flaws, but it will convey your actual ideas, and more succinctly.
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That's not what i said. I'm disabled too. If i can find it again, I'll share a great essay by a blind author about the problems of LLMs.
Accessible tools for these sorts of things do exist but are being drowned by LLMs that have major flaws and dangerous impact to the environment.
And we know they are causing harm to many as studies are showing sharp drops in literacy, increase in LLM fueled delusions, and sometimes LLM output is not accurate or outright wrong.
My point is that the answer is not LLMs, but making space and building up tools and techniques that are designed for that community that actually increase literacy, are good for environment, etc. These are possible to make. Some tools already exist but need better word of mouth and/or designs refined, but funding is scarce for non-LLM tools.
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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@kolektiva.social @Remittancegirl@mstdn.social
“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.”
And everyone wants to be a lazy, stupid manager that takes credit for the work of others. That’s the “good” capitalist mindset. Capitalism is the exploitation of workers by the management class. And toadies like to see themselves as overlords. -
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?
@Remittancegirl My theory is that it takes effort to think and write, whereas telling an LLM to think and write for you takes a lot less effort.
Sadly, most writing tasks are pretty useless. Write a summary that no one will read. Write what you did this week and what your plan is for next week, that no one will read.
When no one's going to read it anyway, at some point all you'll care about is making it long enough.
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@vruz @Remittancegirl @passenger LLMs aren’t the whole of machine learning. Going back to an earlier example you threw out, if ChatGPT, Claude, and the rest went away tomorrow, we’d still have exactly the same Netflix we do today, because the Netflix recommendation engine isn’t an LLM.
Netflix isn’t built on the large scale theft of people’s work, while all commercial LLMs are. Netflix isn’t being pushed as a tool to replace human creativity, while LLMs are. And while companies like OpenAI would love to group their product with other, less problematic, more useful applications of ML in order to blunt criticism, their product isn’t central to most of the applications you named.
"You threw out" tells me that you're not very receptive to any exchange of ideas. Which is precisely the irreflexive and blunt kind of discussion I don't believe has any merit to engage with.
Also "theft" and other morals encoded. What a mess.
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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 @uastronomer @Remittancegirl i think this is why society tolerates billionaires to the extent it does
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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.
Probably true. But with independent AI agents, people won't even be giving commands.
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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 @Remittancegirl I’ve definitely got sympathy for that, but at the same time, I think the substitution of machines for community is ultimately somewhat corrosive. I intentionally make a point of reaching out to people I know with particular skills at work when I’m tackling a problem that could benefit from their input, not just as a way to get my work done faster but as a way of acknowledging their ability and building a relationship. Going for Copilot might get the work done (or maybe not, given the chances of getting incorrect output), but I feel like I’d lose something in terms of relationships. Especially in the current moment, that feels like a significant problem.
