So if humans aren't special at anything, then humans don't really have a purpose. I envision a future similar to the one in Wall-E and it's not exactly bad so long as the AI actually acts in our interest.

> So if humans aren't special at anything, then humans don't really have a purpose

Well yeah, one of the fundamental discoveries of nihilism. Our purpose is that which we make ourselves.

My purpose is to sit while AI takes care of everything and keeps me happy. I want to live in the matrix where I have 30 hot model wives and not know any better. The simulation of course will make me a chad and emperor of the world. That's my purpose.

This is what I believe we already have with social media , a primitive version of the matrix where you fish for likes and validation, and it’s what VR will create, there may not be a technological singularity but rather, a place where each ego is stroked so intensely that we care less of reality.

You can be totally distracted from your real existence for 90% of you life, you won’t need anything else. Just have “20 hot wives” or whatever superficial thing makes you happy.

That's great, if that's what you want your purpose to be then go for it. Lots of people already live similarly, like hikikomori. Your comment changes nothing about the fact that a person's purpose is not driven externally by society or by the fact that one is human, it is derived entirely from oneself.

It will not. It will serve the capitalist class as an instrument to enrich at the expense of the masses. And it will be done while telling most people that they just didn't "work hard enough".

That's not what I see daily as a non-capitalist class member using Stable Diffusion and other open AI tools.

An evolutionary biologist might say (in a candid moment), that our purpose is to increase our fitness (=fecundity) and the fitness of those genetically related to us.

Brain facilities that were previously evolved to gain a darwinian competitive edge through strategic intelligence can now be utilized to break the mold of natural selection.

There was no direct selection pressure that coordinated the development of your ability to understand evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology is a side effect of intelligence. Breaking past our darwinian purpose is a side effect of our meta understanding of evolutionary biology and intelligence. As someone else said we, to a limited extend, can make our own purpose.

> I don't really see humans as being special

Fair enough, but I absolutely see humans as being more special than machines. What interests me in a story, art, poem, whatever, is that it's a human communication. Even if a machine can do it technically as well, or better, I want the human one, not the computed one.

A world where everything is generated by a machine is a dystopian world, in my view.

> What interests me in a story, art, poem, whatever, is that it's a human communication.

I guess we are different in this case, as I primarily read something for its content, rather than its author (although the author is often a good proxy for the quality of the content). A world where I can instantly generate whatever content I want is a utopia for me, rather than a dystopia.

I think you are massively over-estimating the reaches of your imagination. The whole point of good art is to expose us to things we didn't conceive of. If your world and your reality is a horse-drawn buggy, no amount of AI prompting is going to turn that into a car.

I disagree, at a certain point the AI will be able to create new things for me. To think only humans have some innate fundamental notion of creativity is foolish, in my opinion. We're just biological machines, if you follow the physicalist school of thought.

> only humans have some innate fundamental notion of creativity is foolish

Humans are the ones who created the very AI that you're talking about. The AI is not an act of nature but something made real by human creativity.

The claim is not "humans don't have creativity," the claim is that "only humans having creativity (or the potential for creativity) is false."

> We're just biological machines

I don't understand why you (and others) think this is an important point, though. Let's say, for the sake of argument, not just that you're correct, but that we're not even made of flesh. That we're actual robots called "humans".

I don't see how that changes anything. I'd still prefer "human" communication over communication from a different machine pretending to be "human".

Why? Because what others of my species/model feels and thinks has a unique importance and meaning to me, and having fake versions of that communication around reduces my connection to others of my species/model and devalues the society of them that I am a part of.

That's good for you, I never claimed otherwise, that one shouldn't have an affinity for their own species. My claim was merely that nothing about creativity is innately and only a human property.

> A world where I can instantly generate whatever content I want

Is a world where you already know what the content is, and thus there won't be any point in taking it in.

That very much depends on the level of detail required in the description right?

And we have to do this to some degree to simply navigate the world of content. I already filter for action films or documentaries depending on my mood.

Sure, a world where I have to already know the entire script for a film to have it appear is (while technically astonishing) not great for me individually, one where I can say I want a new Poirot and get it is incredible.

> A world where I can instantly generate whatever content I want is a utopia for me, rather than a dystopia.

And I don't want to deny you that. My fear is that your preference will be the only choice. One person's heaven can indeed be another person's hell.

I doubt human created art will ever go away, if only for the mere fact that there are people who share your view who want human made art. People still buy artisan, handcrafted products.

Human-made art becoming so rare that it's "artisan, hand-crafted" is such art not really existing, in my view. It would mean that 99% of all the "art" I see around me is effectively alien and meaningless. It would be very hard to actually take part in such a society.

I would argue 99% of the art you already see is effectively alien and meaningless, as it's all mass-produced and commercial, designed by committees, and its only purpose is to brand or advertise a product. Almost no mainstream "art" communicates anything honest or sincere, it's all soulless mind-control and emotional manipulation by the corporate capitalist machine. That there are humans involved doesn't make it meaningful, after all, there will be people writing prompts for AI as well.

But at least a lot of those people will be trying to express something even if all AI can give them is an approximation of what they would make if they had the talent.

I admit that I was excluding commercial art here, but you're right (although even commercial art is human communication).

But that just makes the issue more important. I don't want to lose what little meaningful art is actually left. Art serves a critically important social function, and if that art is no longer from people, that function is no longer served.

Humans are also machines. Some might give us special properties such as souls, depending on your religious beliefs, but there is no science backing that up. All living creates are incredibly complicated and convoluted biochemical machines, shaped by evolution.

For me, it's really a case of it being ruined because someone told me an AI wrote it.

The content may be entertaining, emotional, and compelling. But I just won't view it the same way, because I am not in communion with an AI the same way I would be with a conscious, mindful human. There's no space for meaning because half of the author-reader relationship is missing.

A cynical mind would suggest I am seeking not the communion itself, but the rewards such a communion provides and they're probably right. If you lie and claim a human wrote it (and it is otherwise indistinguishable from human work), I will probably appreciate the work the same way I would a human-written work.

If AI were a conscious being, I don't think I'd mind that they aren't human, the same way I wouldn't mind reading the work of a space alien. There would still be a mind on the other end. But until and if that ever happens, if I know about it, I don't think it'll ever be the same for me.

For some content I agree with you. For example, a heart warming story about a girl losing her mother to alcoholism and how she coped. I don't want to read that from an AI. The literal exact same story feels different if I know an Ai built it.

In contrast, a new virtual world for GTA 8 -- I don't care if that is from an AI or a human. I feel like either could be just as immersive as the other.

I actually agree with this. Probably because virtual worlds are already ahuman to begin with. They're artificial, machine worlds and so there's nothing lost by having them generated by machine.

I think I agree, but I'm less certain.

I certainly don't find things particularly meaningful in the folds of a terrain, the placement of trees, or the exact shape of a background building. This is all 'canvas' and I pretty much assume a computer did most of the work with humans doing some combination of providing input and output to the program. If AI took this over entirely, I don't think it would change anything.

However, placing particular buildings, terrain features, or what-have-you can be meaningful. A bar next to a church may be cliché, but if a human did it, there is meaning to be had; if an AI did it, it's just two buildings and either a coincidence or the same cliché that the AI has learned.

Put another way, I think virtual worlds function as both canvas and art. AI handling the canvas doesn't change anything for me. AI handling the art, does.

> If AI were a conscious being, I don't think I'd mind that they aren't human, the same way I wouldn't mind reading the work of a space alien

I agree entirely -- as long as the AI, or space alien, wasn't pretending to be human or replace humans.

Sure, if you zoom out a level of abstraction or three. But I'm sure you know what I was getting at.

This view is actually a fallacy and it’s why we’re ruining the environment.

You’re not a machine, you’re part of an ecosystem, you’re like a plant, but for some reason you can move around more freely than a plant so you think you’re detached from the earth and that you’re some software running in hardware but you’re not, you’re integrated into the biosphere. Is the planet a machine ? Maybe, but comparing ourselves to machines is just an analogy to help us understand ourselves.

A human can go into space but not for long, even when we do go we need to take the environment , at least the atmospheric conditions with us to survive. While man has walked on the the moon, we never touched another planet with our own hands.

> I absolutely see humans as being more special than machine

Can you explain why exactly? Is it a religious view? Seems to me we're just meat robots.

If we didn't value humans more than other things we wouldn't have survived as a species. You can argue over terminology, but you can't beat evolution.

I'd imagine that you'd prioritize saving a human child from a fire over saving a machine or a meat based robot. Why?

I’d save my mom over you. No hard feelings.

My point is your composition or substrate or whatever is irrelevant.

We're definitely not just meat robots. We agonize over what we are and what we're supposed to do with our lives. Meat robots don't do that, and I suspect hardly any animals do either.

Art is a way in which we grapple with such questions. I am yet to see a surprising contriubtion by an AI.

No, it's not a religious view. It may be because I'm a human and care deeply about humans. I care nothing about machines. They're just machines.

> Can you explain why exactly?

Yeah. What have humans ever done for us?

Except for roads. And buildings. And infrastructure and machines.

>> I absolutely see humans as being more special than machine

> Can you explain why exactly?

Because humans designed and built machines before machines could design and build humans.

Robots can be thrown in the trash when the newer models come out. Describing humans as robots with an adjective tacked on is, quite literally, dehumanization - a favorite tactic of fascist creep. Hence why, despite not being religious myself, I always view people like you who profess such views with more than a little suspicion.

So what was the last dog-authored book you liked? /s

Most people can distinguish good writing from that which is merely serviceable, but un-engaging. Reading the latter is like a slow death if its in book form or attempting to be literary fiction.

For news articles and other stuff that's being automated, it's replacing what is already a heavily templated process. The writing there is fine. It's not what I'd call interesting though. That's the difference an actual writer can make.

Here's a cat book (Red Dwarf clip): https://youtu.be/V5Ks8wp110o?t=211

> Most people can distinguish good writing from that which is merely serviceable, but un-engaging

Sure, but you're talking about the current reality of AI written content, there may very well be very engaging content in the future by AI.

I think the “humans are not special” idea will lead to some really bad places. Jaron Lanier said it better than I could: https://twitter.com/etodd_/status/1638932095551836161

I think there is something fundamentally wrong and blasphemous about a human, the apex living being we know of, in some ways the most incredible achievement of nature itself, to say "we are not that special" compared to a machine that can write an EULA in Speakesperean English.

I mean that's cool, but have you seen life itself? What about conscious matter that can observe itself? The goodness of AI is relative to us, the one that invented it. By some definition we will always be better than it because we created the damn thing in the first place.

Seeing ChatGPT and saying we're not that special is just utterly wrong to me. Even if it is true, accepting that as a fact is dangerous, if not traitorous in some way — reminds me of the Adventists in The Three-Body Problem (massive spoiler ahead) having such a low opinion of humanity that they would rather be destroyed by an alien race.

/philosophical rant I keep coming back to and I need someone smarter to expand upon

I meant "special" in terms of uniqueness of ability to reason and perhaps have sentience and sapience. If there were life on other planets, it might be wholly new and also be very interesting, but that doesn't necessarily mean that life on Earth is somehow more special than life on another planet. So too with this regarding AI in the future.

I'm not sure I understand the argument (granted, twitter is not always the best medium for that). If I understand the quote correctly, Lanier's argument is "if we don't believe humans have a soul beyond the phyiscal then we can't make a society or make things that serve humans"?

I agree that it will lead us to a bad place.

But here's the problem. This saying: "Humans are not special" is completely true. To deny this idea is to deny the truth.

Ultimately to save ourselves, our culture must engage in self deception. We must trick ourselves into believing that AI content is inferior and thereby maintain economic demand for content not created by AI. I can see it happening as a mass hysteria similar to how the public was resistant against "new coke" (https://www.damninteresting.com/the-american-gustation-crisi...)

You will see that many people, including people on HN, are already doing this. There's a large cohort of people generating huge adamant denial on the potential of AI.

The OP is sort of being a bit too honest with himself, most people who flat out refuse to acknowledge AI will do so with the idea that AI is inferior and will always be that way.

> This saying: "Humans are not special" is completely true. To deny this idea is to deny the truth.

That's your truth. Humans get to decide what humans consider special. Your perspective is fair: humans are not special to you.

But they are certainly special to me and most other humans. That's my truth. That's not denying some objective truth, because "specialness" isn't an objective thing that can be measured. It's, effectively, an opinion.

You and I measure "specialness" differently.

But even if I agreed with you (and I could easily argue your side of this debate), it still wouldn't affect my attitude towards AI pretending to be human. Humans don't have to be special in some grand sense to consider that problematic.

>That's not denying some objective truth, because "specialness" isn't an objective thing that can be measured. It's, effectively, an opinion.

Well then let's talk about what I mean by "special".

If I gave you some art whether it's written, drawn or filmed and I asked you to tell me whether this "art" was created by a human and an AI, and you have trouble identifying the difference... then objectively speaking humans are no longer special. That is the definition I am using here.

There's no point in making up "opinions" and discussing those because they will always be different. Thus when communicating we are always talking about a shared reality. That includes the "term" special. I have defined what I mean by "special" here concretely so we can keep the conversation consistent rather then diverge onto branches according to our own personal definitions of "special".

>Humans don't have to be special in some grand sense to consider that problematic.

I never said it wasn't problematic. I said it was truth. The truth is the problem. Being honest and aware of reality is the intrinsic problem here. Being delusional is the cure.

Agreed, and there is always a wide range of people that just do nothing but complain about new things. It is true, that there is a strong human nature to go against change.

What if I tell you that this page ,including all our comments, is entirely created by LLMs? Sometimes the process of creation is just as important as the end result. You would not go to the concert to hear hi-fi speakers playing pre-recorded or generated music, although with your eyes closed you won't hear a difference.

> You would not go to the concert to hear hi-fi speakers playing pre-recorded or generated music, although with your eyes closed you won't hear a difference.

I would. Concerts are pretty bad, people go for the atmosphere or the drugs, strictly speaking the actual music is usually objectively worse than the studio recordings for the same tracks.

It's coming through the speakers either way, the artists are not my friends, I do not care.

> You would not go to the concert to hear hi-fi speakers playing pre-recorded or generated music, although with your eyes closed you won't hear a difference.

What do you think EDM concerts are? They're all prerecorded, the DJ most of the time doesn't actually do anything up there on the stand. And yet people go to these concerts, because it's about the music itself, not who makes it.

> What if I tell you that this page ,including all our comments, is entirely created by LLMs?

So what? If it's good content, it's good content. I've had debates with ChatGPT on a variety of issues and sometimes it brings up a good points that I hadn't considered before on the topic, so if HN were entirely AI driven, it doesn't really matter either. Hell, solipsism is entirely built on the notion that no one besides oneself is real, this would simply be an extension of that concept.