Artificial intelligence officially gets scary

[Clinamenic]

I will say, we are so so so much worse at this right now than people think

For all the talk of social media manipulation and nudges, behavioral economics and gamification theories are so crude, there are major replication crises of studies, most of the touted "outsized" effects (where minor interventions yield large behavioral effects) are basically bullshit.

ML systems that learn through experimentation will probably become pretty good though, and likely are already outperforming our academic theories.

What I think we'll end up with is a place where we know, given a certain context, based on ML training, what works. But we won't know why. We won't have grand theories, just a set of super contextually specific interventions that are effective.

Yeah it could be interesting to have an academic paradigm that is less purely about propounding novel, pure theory and experimental probing, and more about exegesis of machine learning analytic results.

 

[Clinamenic]

Think how crude advertising still is—how many products have you purchased that you've come across online? A handful at most, I'd wager. Out of tens or hundreds of thousands. Incredibly crude stuff.

And this I think is part of a more general trend of a given technical status quo becoming precise. Precision medicine, precision advertising, etc.

More data-thirsty and infringing upon privacy, but also bound to deliver more useful, bespoke, even life-saving products/services.

 

[Clinamenic]

Maybe eventually a precision UX

 

[craner]

Somebody needs to take out Gus before it’s too late.

 

[Leo]

I dread to think what would happen if HR department liberals managed to demystify consciousness.

but if their own consciousness was also demystified...

 

[craner]

Stan too. Leo, you’re closest.

 

[sus]

True, but it's still an input you're forced to engage with, even if it's only to reject it.

I eagerly await the golden era of targeted advertisements, where every single ad you get shown, you end up buying the product... Complete informational efficiency... It means less ads online (hitrate is so much higher) and each ad you get shown is a useful product that you're so glad to own now

 

[sus]

Craner's a wino mom, nobody listen to him, this is the future, he was always a nostalgic character pining for the 70s natural beauties he saw in Playboys coming up, but now it's really accelerated, nobody pay attention

 

[sus]

I eagerly await the golden of era of no advertising whatsoever.

Fusion is around the corner, and a post-fusion world, energy will be too cheap to meter.

Somebody's still gotta pay the software developers though. Are you gonna shell out for subscriptions to all your sites? Or get into microtransactions? Money's gotta come from somewhere; people don't work for free

 

[sus]

We're living in the best era of mankind, an incredible time to be alive, & it's just so sad to me everyone's so busy living in these nostalgic fantasies they can't see it, can't appreciate it, can't feel boundless gratitude like I do to have been born when I was, missing out

 

[sus]

@Clinamenic Can you feel this boundless gratitude, with me? That we getta sit in our comfy homes chatting with our friends, the Library of Alexandria^10 at our fingertips for free, that we aren't sitting rotting with pestilence or getting murdered by apes smashing stones into our head

 

[Clinamenic]

@Clinamenic Can you feel this boundless gratitude, with me? That we getta sit in our comfy homes chatting with our friends, the Library of Alexandria^10 at our fingertips for free, that we aren't sitting rotting with pestilence or getting murdered by apes smashing stones into our head

Yeah I pointed this out earlier, not sure if you saw it, but yes I think this is a miraculous time to be alive in many respects and for many people, not just the wealthy.

 

[Clinamenic]

Gratitude I think gets a bit theistic in cases like this, but anyway I consider our history and would say this is the time, and place, I would most prefer to be alive.

 

[Clinamenic]

I think this may be the most exciting time and place to be alive in human history. 21st century USA.

 

[vimothy]

Even in light of all this, blockchain is an existential beacon of hope.

hmm

 

[Clinamenic]

You can appreciate things about the time you're in whilst resenting the bastards sat at the top trying to take it away from you.

It makes more sense to me to scrutinize them in situations where they appear to be denying comfortable lifestyles to those whose work their wealth is largely derived from. In my case, I don’t feel like the best parts of my life are under attack.

I watch the data harvesting practices of Amazon, and I can understand it from a business perspective, and I often suspect these practices can get carried away and that the data can and does end up in the wrong hands, but my lifestyle personally does not feel under attack, or like the elite are trying to take the things I value most away from me.

So long as I have access to information, and ultimately so long as I can practice free thought, I’m quite willing to negotiate with the wealthy, insofar as they can restrain themselves from directly or indirectly exploiting desperate people.

 

[Clinamenic]

I also think there are things an individual can do legally, such as browse the internet under an alias, to mitigate data collection to an extent.

 

[Clinamenic]

I think this may be the most exciting time and place to be alive in human history. 21st century USA.

But really the westernized world most broadly. The fact that we get to watch the internet blossom, and artificial consciousness arise. Beautiful, overwhelming, frightening, all at once.

 

[Clinamenic]

hmm

Yeah a bit dramatic and maximalist I admit, but I do mean it, if even in less colorful terms.

 

[vimothy]

I think this is most poignantly where I differ from the board. This excites me endlessly, whereas I suspect it may be among the most dreadful possible news some of you could imagine.

We are getting closer and closer to demystifying consciousness. May happen sooner than I thought, as I was unaware of the research covered by this article.

nothing in that quote implies a demystification of consciousness, just a mapping of mental states to database rows