I know lemmy has a big hard on for anti-AI but a few things here:
AI is over 60 years old and includes things like machine learning. Not all AI is generative or large language models.
There is nothing fascist about running open AI (not “openAI”) models on your own hardware and that’s the future Cory Doctorow (mr “enshittification”) makes in his latest book The Reverse-Centaurs Guide to Life After AI. Basically he theorizes when the AI bubble collapasses it will be terrible but it will shift AI into the hands of consumers and allow people to use AI to do work for them, rather than their bosses using AI to replace workers.
Does using facial recognition against ICE count as fascism?
There are many legitimate criticisms against AI, especially generative models, but this ain’t one
The problem is that the general public has adopted “AI” to mean the current popular machine learning thing, the general category of “generative AI”, and if you want a message about it to be received broadly, you need to use terms people will understand.
In my case, I’m not aware of any GenAI models that produce useful output that I’d consider to be ethical, so I support this message.
The problem is that the general public has adopted “AI” to mean the current popular machine learning thing,
Yes, that is the problem, because people don’t understand that it’s a short-hand, and don’t understand the difference between harmful uses, and non-harmful uses. The concept itself becomes a meaningless tribal indicator of hate. “This person is acting unethically and unlawfully,” has quickly become “I don’t understand what this technology is, but when I see ‘AI’ I automatically hate whatever it’s associated with.” That is counter-productive to humanity as a whole.
So stop saying that any given technology or method is intrinsically bad, and start focusing on WHO is doing the harm and HOW.
If I’m having a direct discussion with somebody, then I’ll make it clear what I’m talking about, and if they engage in a conversation about ethics, I’ll explain why those things are unethical.
But if I wanted to post a public message to voice my sentiment, I don’t think trying to post a long explanation every time would do any good, most people would probably just skip it when they saw it’s longer than a couple lines of text. So for those cases, I’d say you have to go down to the level of current discourse to engage with the masses on their terms if you want to be heard.
But if I wanted to post a public message to voice my sentiment, I don’t think trying to post a long explanation every time would do any good
That’s a non sequitur. The initial point was “Stop using this term incorrectly, because it spreads misunderstanding and misinformation.”
Nobody said you should write a thesis per reply, and my entire point was to focus on the harms, and the actors, not the tech.
Saying “AI is unethical,” is a truly nonsensical statement. Even if we grant that AI is shorthand for LLM, is still isn’t justified as all I need to do is find an instance of an open source model being trained on public data to refute it, and there are MANY.
Unless you think that using public data to make public software is inherently unethical, which is a hard stance to justify.
If you’re upset with Sam Altman and ChatGPT, then you can simply say “Sam Altman is a thief, and ChatGPT uses stolen data.” Which is infinitely more defendable than “AI is trained on stolen data and is unethical.”
one of my specific issues is use of the word intelligence. exactly 0 of the “AI” built over the previous 60 years is “endowed with the faculty of understanding or reason”… it is false advertising at best and a scam if we’re being honest.
if they called it “bag of words” processing or “computer that is pretty good at guessing what your taking about” i’d be less irritated when people laud it’s accomplishments.
at the core, all of these technologies are signal processing and pattern recognition, nothing more… no matter what musk, altman and the rest say there is no intelligence in there.
This is an issue of science in general, and MANY people take issue with naming conventions, even scientists themselves.
Black holes aren’t black and they aren’t holes. The big bang didn’t explode and there probably wasn’t sound. The primordial soup didn’t have chicken broth.
Unfortunately, that is exceedingly unlikely to change.
You are just using a very narrow definition of intelligence to mean exactly human-like intelligence. All intelligence is signal processing and pattern recognition. You can give LLM a novel task and it might complete it. Sometimes even well. Sure, you may argue it doesn’t “understand” what’s it’s doing the way humans do (seemingly), but it’s still intelligence of some kind.
I’m using the definition of intelligence from a dictionary. language should be accurate. if AI folks called it “intellectual mimicry” I would have no issues.
they are attempting to bequeath an endowment based on specious reasoning and the hope to make money; not on the actual abilities of the machine.
People focus on the “intelligence” part but ignore artificial, and I think that makes a big difference. The name is pretty apt honestly. It appears to be intelligent. It outwardly simulates intelligence. But it’s all man made to present that illusion - like an artificial reef.
Artificial: made, produced, or done by humans especially to seem like something natural.
Sure, you may argue it doesn’t “understand” what’s it’s doing the way humans do (seemingly)
I think one could argue that “It doesn’t actually understand what it’s saying, it’s just parroting its training data” also applies to a depressingly large portion of the human population.
As an autist, this is pretty much how I communicated with neurotypicals for most of my life. Person says something, I pull something out of my database of premade scripts and with any luck, it made sense in context. 😅😅
I’ve literally been accused of being anti-human for trying to differentiate AI from the genuine harms it is being used for. There was one post where scientists had used a specialized LLM to create novel bacteriophages, and the comments were freaking out, claiming it was super-bugs and a new bioweapon…
I know lemmy has a big hard on for anti-AI but a few things here:
There are many legitimate criticisms against AI, especially generative models, but this ain’t one
The problem is that the general public has adopted “AI” to mean the current popular machine learning thing, the general category of “generative AI”, and if you want a message about it to be received broadly, you need to use terms people will understand.
In my case, I’m not aware of any GenAI models that produce useful output that I’d consider to be ethical, so I support this message.
Yes, that is the problem, because people don’t understand that it’s a short-hand, and don’t understand the difference between harmful uses, and non-harmful uses. The concept itself becomes a meaningless tribal indicator of hate. “This person is acting unethically and unlawfully,” has quickly become “I don’t understand what this technology is, but when I see ‘AI’ I automatically hate whatever it’s associated with.” That is counter-productive to humanity as a whole.
So stop saying that any given technology or method is intrinsically bad, and start focusing on WHO is doing the harm and HOW.
If I’m having a direct discussion with somebody, then I’ll make it clear what I’m talking about, and if they engage in a conversation about ethics, I’ll explain why those things are unethical.
But if I wanted to post a public message to voice my sentiment, I don’t think trying to post a long explanation every time would do any good, most people would probably just skip it when they saw it’s longer than a couple lines of text. So for those cases, I’d say you have to go down to the level of current discourse to engage with the masses on their terms if you want to be heard.
That’s a non sequitur. The initial point was “Stop using this term incorrectly, because it spreads misunderstanding and misinformation.”
Nobody said you should write a thesis per reply, and my entire point was to focus on the harms, and the actors, not the tech.
Saying “AI is unethical,” is a truly nonsensical statement. Even if we grant that AI is shorthand for LLM, is still isn’t justified as all I need to do is find an instance of an open source model being trained on public data to refute it, and there are MANY.
Unless you think that using public data to make public software is inherently unethical, which is a hard stance to justify.
If you’re upset with Sam Altman and ChatGPT, then you can simply say “Sam Altman is a thief, and ChatGPT uses stolen data.” Which is infinitely more defendable than “AI is trained on stolen data and is unethical.”
one of my specific issues is use of the word intelligence. exactly 0 of the “AI” built over the previous 60 years is “endowed with the faculty of understanding or reason”… it is false advertising at best and a scam if we’re being honest.
if they called it “bag of words” processing or “computer that is pretty good at guessing what your taking about” i’d be less irritated when people laud it’s accomplishments.
at the core, all of these technologies are signal processing and pattern recognition, nothing more… no matter what musk, altman and the rest say there is no intelligence in there.
This is an issue of science in general, and MANY people take issue with naming conventions, even scientists themselves. Black holes aren’t black and they aren’t holes. The big bang didn’t explode and there probably wasn’t sound. The primordial soup didn’t have chicken broth.
Unfortunately, that is exceedingly unlikely to change.
You are just using a very narrow definition of intelligence to mean exactly human-like intelligence. All intelligence is signal processing and pattern recognition. You can give LLM a novel task and it might complete it. Sometimes even well. Sure, you may argue it doesn’t “understand” what’s it’s doing the way humans do (seemingly), but it’s still intelligence of some kind.
I’m using the definition of intelligence from a dictionary. language should be accurate. if AI folks called it “intellectual mimicry” I would have no issues.
they are attempting to bequeath an endowment based on specious reasoning and the hope to make money; not on the actual abilities of the machine.
People focus on the “intelligence” part but ignore artificial, and I think that makes a big difference. The name is pretty apt honestly. It appears to be intelligent. It outwardly simulates intelligence. But it’s all man made to present that illusion - like an artificial reef.
Artificial: made, produced, or done by humans especially to seem like something natural.
hmmm… good one.
I think one could argue that “It doesn’t actually understand what it’s saying, it’s just parroting its training data” also applies to a depressingly large portion of the human population.
you just gave me some new slang! Instead of using AI to describe these technologies, I will use PP, for parrot processing. 🤣
“Stochastic parrot” is the term I see most often
As an autist, this is pretty much how I communicated with neurotypicals for most of my life. Person says something, I pull something out of my database of premade scripts and with any luck, it made sense in context. 😅😅
Largely agree. AI isn’t going away; the left needs to take a page out of Sanders and advocate instead for nationalizing and regulating instead.
Please stop “the left need to…” it makes no sense, everyone i know, even conservatives hate AI
The right is too ignorant to fix anything, let alone advocate for regulation and nationalization as I stated.
Let’s not confuse “the left” with whatever the current blind AI hate is.
I’ve literally been accused of being anti-human for trying to differentiate AI from the genuine harms it is being used for. There was one post where scientists had used a specialized LLM to create novel bacteriophages, and the comments were freaking out, claiming it was super-bugs and a new bioweapon…
Using logical arguments is fascist, ableist and probably racist.
That’s an ad hominem!