Yes, because we don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
Your perception IS your reality man!
> Perhaps the true lesson to be learnt here isn’t about helplessness and giving up. It’s about getting up, trying again and again, and staying with the story till the end.
I find the possibility of contrasting interpretations absurd. The problem with using any dead matter for our meaning making needs is it is ultimately a self-referential justification for how we think we should feel, while being equally or even more prone to self deception traps.
AI being the object is irrelevant here, this is nothing different than astrology or divination from tea leaves etc. It is 2000 BC level religious thinking with new toys.
The ONLY reason this was written was because the researches hired a programmer to make a specific thing, then is was too expensive for them to make more changes so they published the mistake.
I think that one thing it points to is how technology can discover novel iterations on a system. Imagine if this was a system modeled around a network and the agent was trying to figure out how to get from the outside to read a specific system asset. With the right (read: very detailed) modeling you could create a pentesting agent.
They have a word for it over there: involution i.e. no matter how much effort you put in, you get the same result.
This is a excellent analogy for this sort of behaviour, thank you.
Yes, yes, woe is the individual in modern capitalist society but the only reason people are reacting to this are that they don't understand it and they've been told it's something much more emotionally impactful than it actually is.
I think it's much more likely that they're reacting like this because they see their own plight in the wolf. It doesn't matter why the wolf killed itself, it became a meme that allowed many Chinese to reflect together on a common plight.
This seems like a common refrain when we see radicalized engineering students from less-developed countries, who are notably common in extremist groups. They're people on a very difficult path (an engineering program!) with no real path to success (living in a society where unemployment for people with degrees is very high). Cost for continuing on the path is high, and there's no obvious path to get the good outcomes.
It's interesting, though, how strong of a reaction general public had to this. The story must have strongly resonated with what some folks were already feeling. When you squint (pretend to understand the technology not at all) it's a tragic story. The situation of the wolf seems similar to the situation of some people. Chasing their careers in a highly structured, sort of dehumanized, environment of constant pursuit. "Supreme Intelligence" (that's what a layperson may think of AI) looks at a situation of the wolf and decides that it makes no sense to continue the pursuit. Moreover, what is "optimal" is the most tragic result - suicide.