The AI thread. Utopia, or extinction.

Started by Ubercat, October 16, 2022, 07:01:19 PM

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Ubercat

Lots of interesting info about the latest AI developments is out there now. I thought it might be interesting to discuss and I've decided to start with this.



"If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labelled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago, and a racist today."

- Thomas Sowell

GDS_Starfury

I think the Google ai experiment is still where its at.
and for thats not remotely a good thing.
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Martok - I don't know if it's possible to have an "anti-boner"...but I now have one.

Gus - Celery is vile and has no reason to exist. Like underwear on Star.


al_infierno

Great thread idea, I'll be interested to check in on the stuff people post.
A War of a Madman's Making - a text-based war planning and political survival RPG

It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge.  War endures.  As well ask men what they think of stone.  War was always here.  Before man was, war waited for him.  The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.  That is the way it was and will be.  That way and not some other way.
- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian


If they made nothing but WWII games, I'd be perfectly content.  Hypothetical matchups from alternate history 1980s, asymmetrical US-bashes-some-3rd world guerillas, or minor wars between Upper Bumblescum and outer Kaboomistan hold no appeal for me.
- Silent Disapproval Robot


I guess it's sort of nice that the word "tactical" seems to refer to some kind of seriousness during your moments of mental clarity.
- MengJiao

SirAndrewD

"These men do not want a happy ship. They are deeply sick and try to compensate by making me feel miserable. Last week was my birthday. Nobody even said "happy birthday" to me. Someday this tape will be played and then they'll feel sorry."  - Sgt. Pinback

JasonPratt

Even if it somehow results in a utopia for humans, it at least would involve the surrender of the Enlightenment ideal of attaining ever-more-rational control over natural behaviors: we'd be handing off ever-increasing control, not only of non-rational but also of rational behaviors, to non-rational behaviors (even though of ever-increasing complexity).

The end-result of that process can only be the enslavement of all rational behaviors to non-rational behaviors, or to a very few rational persons -- perhaps only one person -- of naturally limited morality, perception, and intelligence, who would (supposedly or ostensibly, if not actually) control all the controlling non-rational behaviors.

Not coincidentally, utopias in fiction and in ideology tend to reduce down to the same thing. Whatever the utopia would be, it would not be a kingdom of kings! And any people who felt in control, however many or few they would be, would all be wearing paper crowns, easily crushed or set on fire by the non-rational processes they have become ever-more dependent upon -- or by the limited rationality upon whom they have become ever-more dependent.

Computers (as I occasionally tell people whose computers are not doing what the people want, and who hope I can help fix the problem ;) ) are basically fancy screwdrivers; in some ways they are even more simple than screwdrivers because they're 'only' a bunch of on-off buttons. But even if we someday develop computers with the complexity of the bio-mechanical factory cities packed into each of our bodily cells, however complex those behaviors may be, they will still only be bunches and bunches and bunches of bits of energy (some of them moving slow enough to have 'material' properties) ping-ponging around on their own non-rational non-business.

Of course, that's happening all around us all day every day anyway, including in-and-as our own bodies. And even though we've been getting more and more effective, both collectively and individually, at making those reactions go about our rational businesses (so to speak), creating effects we intentionally intend; admittedly we still only control a microscopic percentage of all those reactions and counter-reactions. And, naturally, as we get more and more control over creating our intended effects, we're having more and more trouble keeping track of relevant portions of those reactions. Which is why, logically, we've been working (for three or four generations, at least as far back as calculating bomb trajectories in a world war) on designing reactions which will keep better track than we can, over detecting and manipulating those other reactions.

Somewhere along that path, however, is a fuzzy limit beyond which we're no longer increasing or even maintaining our control over (and even our mere knowledge of) natural reactions: we'll be handing off an increasing amount of our control and knowledge over to system behaviors which are themselves only non-rational reactions and counter-reactions, mimicking the shadows of our intentions. And somewhere beyond that fuzzy limit is another fuzzy limit where we'll never be able to get that control or even knowledge back -- not without a catastrophe (not within our control!) which happens to be more catastrophic to those systems than to us!

Personally -- quite literally 'personally', as a rational agent -- I have an interest in all people gaining more knowledge and control over natural processes. Not less.
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Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
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RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Gusington



слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd

Sir Slash

Every time I try to deal with the IRS on-line,  :pullhair:   I wonder if the machines are dumb, or are they just playing dumb?
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JasonPratt

Short version: we depend on our tools for our quality of life, so we had better maintain control over our tools or we become simply dependent on our tools. And it isn't necessarily easy to see where that line gets crossed -- and where the irrevocable line gets crossed.

Science-fiction stories have a lot of that concern.

The same concern can be done with stories about magical systems, too; I was aiming to develop such a story, among other things, in my fantasy series. Indeed, at the basic point where we're talking about manipulating natural reactions by intentional actions, technology/applied science and magic are essentially the same! The only difference is what methods happen to be effective at the larger scale: what systems of magic 'work' and which don't. We're communicating to each other by magical apparatus right this very moment! -- and any communication between persons at all is also magical, in the sense of actions introducing intentional effects into the natural system.

(This of course gets into the philosophical dispute over whether actions, as such, really exist or not, qualitatively distinct from merely automatic responses. I can kind-of leave that dispute aside in the preceding analysis, as long as 'actions' per se are acknowledged to refer to personal behaviors compared to impersonal behaviors -- which all persons always acknowledge, at least tacitly, even when denying there's any such difference. ;) But that dispute does end up factoring into artificial-intelligence debates in various ways.)
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

ArizonaTank

I get the part of the story where AI starts to rise - Book One: Morally ambiguous scientists and businessmen develop AI enabled weapons that become sentient and decide they no longer need humans.

I get Book Three: An ex-barista gathers a bunch of likeable plucky heroes to fight a desperate rebellion against the machine overlords.

But I don't get Book Two. What happens when a sentient AI warlord developed in the US meets a sentient AI warlord from China or Europe? Do they bond like the Borg? Or do they get into some weird esoteric war over data interface standards? Maybe the humans get lucky and they destroy each other...but then again that would make Book Three rather dull.
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SirAndrewD

Thou shalt not create a machine in the likeness of a human mind.
"These men do not want a happy ship. They are deeply sick and try to compensate by making me feel miserable. Last week was my birthday. Nobody even said "happy birthday" to me. Someday this tape will be played and then they'll feel sorry."  - Sgt. Pinback

SirAndrewD

Speaking of the darkest timeline, with a computer gaming connection.

Have I ever mentioned I met Harlan Ellison...

"These men do not want a happy ship. They are deeply sick and try to compensate by making me feel miserable. Last week was my birthday. Nobody even said "happy birthday" to me. Someday this tape will be played and then they'll feel sorry."  - Sgt. Pinback

al_infierno

Quote from: SirAndrewD on October 17, 2022, 12:07:30 PM
Speaking of the darkest timeline, with a computer gaming connection.

Have I ever mentioned I met Harlan Ellison...



Heh.  What was that like?  I understand Ellison was quite a colorful character.

HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.
A War of a Madman's Making - a text-based war planning and political survival RPG

It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge.  War endures.  As well ask men what they think of stone.  War was always here.  Before man was, war waited for him.  The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.  That is the way it was and will be.  That way and not some other way.
- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian


If they made nothing but WWII games, I'd be perfectly content.  Hypothetical matchups from alternate history 1980s, asymmetrical US-bashes-some-3rd world guerillas, or minor wars between Upper Bumblescum and outer Kaboomistan hold no appeal for me.
- Silent Disapproval Robot


I guess it's sort of nice that the word "tactical" seems to refer to some kind of seriousness during your moments of mental clarity.
- MengJiao

Gusington



слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd

solops

Extinction! Extinction! I vote for extinction! It's what all the cool races do....umm....did.
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SirAndrewD

Quote from: al_infierno on October 17, 2022, 01:20:23 PM


Heh.  What was that like?  I understand Ellison was quite a colorful character.



He was pretty even keeled.

He was at a speaking event with Peter S. Beagle and Pat Rothfuss and they were all hanging out before the talk with everyone, just sitting around.

My ex-wife was super into meeting Beagle, but I was awestruck by Ellison.  I finally had a chance to talk to him and said "I apologize but I'm a bit intimidated by you".  He grabbed me around the shoulder and said "I'm a teddy bear!"

I got a pic taken with him my ex-wife sadly only has and it was a fun time overall. 
"These men do not want a happy ship. They are deeply sick and try to compensate by making me feel miserable. Last week was my birthday. Nobody even said "happy birthday" to me. Someday this tape will be played and then they'll feel sorry."  - Sgt. Pinback