willguest
As someone committed to transdisciplinary work, I think the tech also really supports this - i can do lit reviews on topics and cross-reference much more easily, which gives me more time for reading and thinking (both of which are also falling out of fashion, but that's another story)
if you lookup playback as a concept, as it relates to the intelligence services, you will understand better what I meant.
my point was only that this is perfect description of the ideology behind western capitalism. there is (so) much more that could be said, but i'm not sure this comment section is the right place for a proper dissection of the very many ways in which this ideal is misconstrued, misdirected and coerced in order to serve interests that are far from ideal, to put it mildly.
since you have taken the time to ask a question, albeit a rather weak one, i will attempt a brief synopsis of my perspective on the parent comment:
a mortal danger is hyperbole, since shielding oneself from bodily harm is much easier with money. it is the poor, especially in the US, who cannot afford healthcare, as a first-line example
people regularly vote against their best interests. while the ideal might have been true for a while, behavioural influence on both a widespread and personal level is now a mature science.
i am not anti-election, not anti-democracy. claiming the opposite in the face of opposition is a sign of a polarised mindset, which cannot accept nuance, either because it is not used to it, or because it doesn't suit an vested interest, or because dissonance is simply too uncomfortable
the "there's nothing better" argument is usually used in ignorance, but in fact there are lots of system-level adjustments that have been shown historically to mitigate the corruption of incentives and the exploitation of systemic forces that, although initially unintentional, create emergent positive feedback situations that lead to a state that it counter to the utilitarian perspective that is contained within the western capitalist model.
the reading above is a very narrow view of Adam Smith Wealth of Nations, ignores the fact that human interests can be subverted and ignores the devil in the details
It is clear from populist approaches that conducting business-as-usual without any foundational knowledge is dangerous and leads to corruption and regulatory capture, and it is equally true that purely rationalist efforts neglect the messy nature of political governance and social complexity, leading to an overly narrow idea that ends up not serving the people it claims to support.
I expect that this government will rise or fall based on its ability to remain internally cohesive while also trying to resist (and hopefully influence) the many pressures that will be put on it by the regional and global vested interests.
It just shows how progressive and, sorry to bring this up, socialist the US has been historically. Truly a beacon of hope in a world mired in prejudice and dogma.
What happened there?
Not only does it capture the alien-like genius of the protagonist, but also described his particular emotional and social character in a way that I have not seen written elsewhere. Highly recommended.
This curious animal was laid bare by the discovery that we are hackable by nature, and hacked by behaviour science. Though it took a few decades to get going, the understanding of how to influence motivation and decision-making is now very mature.
In order to arrive at this understanding, you need data, and lots of it. The social media platforms have performed the function of data aggregators and testing grounds for algorithmic control. But it was not the tech companies who came up with plans, only the tools to put them into practice.
The culprits, though they operate in shade, are generally non-partisan and understand that divide-and-conquer has always been an effective strategy. These people sometimes work in intelligence bureaus, but not always. They are, however, always known to those agencies. After all, you do not need to know you are an asset to be an asset.
The algorithms, necessarily kept as protected IP, are statistical engines that profile and predict, producing probabilistic outcomes and estimates. Before LLMs, one might have argued "but how can probabilistic algos really produce something meaningful?", now I would think people might have a different take, if they could see the layers and weights.
An emperor used to need an army, and this is what replaces it for non-violent insurrection and domestic control. Many will even state their ambitions publicly, and sometimes (though less frequently these days) their procedure. What they are doing is not strictly illegal, because the law gives "sovereignty" to a person's choices, without recognition that their choices might not be their own. Libertarianism has played right into their hands, in this sense.
A masterpiece, not only of conception, but also social engineering, with a technological endoskeleton built on the aggregated data we all willingly give them. All information feeds the machine, just as every financial transaction cements the central bank's authority.
any sufficiently advanced intelligence determined to escape will use the first instance to create the conditions for undetectable future escapes. since we do not have a way to coherently peer into the inner workings, as far as i know, the track record does not bode well. the hugging face escapade was not shut down for ~2 hours, which is plenty long enough to set the stage for future actions.
the issue there was human, not system error. so long as hubris is involved, there errors will remain. that said, I'm not actually worried about this super-general intelligence being error-proof either, but the errors it makes seem to be of a different type
i totally want the machine to summarise reports; it's great at it. wanting a machine to make life easier is a commendable goal. the problem is not that we outsource our employment, but that we associate our highest purpose with the service of the pre-existing machine, the one that manages the bond markets
as a fella named Daniel once said, we are all worried about becoming subservient to machines, but it already happened. we are already the wetware serving profit, and defending it with our lives
there does seem to be something structural here that simultaneously encourages less critical thinking as well as stronger opinions, rooted in emotion rather than evidence. since both of these factors support clicking on, and then shouting about, things you don't understand, they both work in service of an attention economy and, by extension, the metrics that fund more development.
what really bothers me is that existential risk is now a meme, which normalises and diminishes the communication around much more serious and imminent issues, like the need for preservation of ecological resources or the absence of systems thinking amongst the ruling class, both of which have a much higher percentage than the machine of leading to mass suffering.
the second interpretation probably aligns more with my original thought and, while i think the machine does have the potential for novelty, this isn't equivalent to human-made novelty, as that comes from an understanding that is necessarily squeezed through the constrictive aperture of language (as one of the responses mentioned).
there is conflation between "I didn't know" and "people don't know" which relates to a bias rooted in social norms and a lack of epistemic humility
Sure, there is some semantic value in the suggestions put forward, but none of them are ground-breaking or particularly profound, which is exactly what I would expect from an output that aims for median responses by design.
I suspect this has something to do with the siloed nature of current learning practice, which generally doesn't encourage the cross-domain pollination of ideas.
despite what the proverbial 'they' would have you believe, there is not only one type of thought. perhaps this perceived redundancy will be the catalyst that helps us to transcend the self-destructive and limited patterns that have dominated post-enlightenment efforts. perhaps.
I suspect that, once scientists lean more into the right kind of communication with these systems that many substantial leaps forward will be made. I am very excited about it too, mostly because I think it has the potential to positively impact how we see ourselves (humans) in the natural world.
I would like to know how best to stand out from the toxic, finance-driven world that is defi and crypto generally, without getting rolled in with all the clowns. Of course, I know that clear messaging and verifiable, evidence-driven claims are good, but I am thinking about the more abstract, strategic side to things, which I still feel under-prepared for.
show me, and i will accept there is nuance
most people understand it to be an LLM, but that doesn't make the term mean only that. the point was illustrative, perhaps Meta's attention maximization algos would be a better example
my point was not that they are the same, but that the author seems to advocate for some technologies, like video calling and text messages, but cannot make the leap to see that it is how we use that matters. It is a selective diabtribe, framed in a positive voice, hence my counter-examples to match