Yes, it would only be a heuristic and so would not assume AI is actually a person. It's just that - with a few notable exceptions - the ethical verdict seems to carry-over. It would be unethical, for instance, for me to ask a perfect stranger for their view about some sensitive material I've been asked to review - and so similarly unethical for me to feed it into AI. Whereas if I asked a perfect stranger to check an article for typos and spelling, then it doesn't seem necessary for me to credit them...and likewise if I use AI for a similar purpose. And the heuristic respects the fact there's a big grey area where legitimate disagreement reigns over exactly how much credit someone deserves for something. I think I'm right in saying that an anonymous reviewer suggested that William Golding remove a large scene setting introduction to his Lord of the Flies - which he did - and which no doubt greatly improved the work. But that person isn't credited - perhaps fairly.

There are exceptions - a perfect stranger deserves thanks for help and shouldn't be addressed rudely, whereas AI deserves no thanks or politeness. But it seems to me quite an effective heuristic - one that underlines that AI doesn't create any novel ethical problems, but just exaggerates existing ones. And I suppose on the plus side, it has made cheating available to the masses. It used to only be the rich who could afford to hire someone to write their essays for them....now such cheating is available to virtually everyone!

I think this is the fundamental problem. AI does no research, has no common sense or personal experience, and is entirely disconnected from reality, and yet it comes to dominate every topic, and every dialogue. — unenlightened

If AI was disconnected from reality then how can it provide useful answers? What makes AI useful? What makes any tool useful?

I spent the last hour composing a post responding to all my mentions, and had it nearly finished only to have it disappear leaving only the single letter "s" when I hit some key. I don't have the will to start over now, so I'll come back to it later. — Janus

Ctrl+Z

If AI was disconnected from reality then how can it provide useful answers? What makes AI useful? What makes any tool useful? — Harry Hindu

Did you not look at the quoted site?

A dictionary or a thesaurus is useful, and AIs are useful. They are trained on material that we find useful, and then we use them. We use them to generate the material that they then use in their training in the next generation. We have real lives that can correct falsehoods to some extent, we do research trip over obstacles, find that our ideas do not always work in practice.

AI has none of that, so when it starts using its own material as its input, errors are multiplied like those of inbred genomes - only much faster. Half of internet content or there abouts is already AI produced, and that is rising fast. This means that all the commonplace human nonsense ideas, racism and sexism for example, having been embedded by accident, become endemic and pervasive, and that's without the weaponisation of the internet with deliberate misinformation that now happens on an industrial scale from many quarters - Russia, Israel, the far right, big oil, etc etc.

For example: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/israel-chatgpt/

I do have an exception to this: A company called 'Heat Geeks' that uses AI to design heat pump systems, and then the same AI monitors the actual systems in operation over time (contact with reality) and uses that data to update its design parameters. I dare say there are many such applications, but they are not the kind of AI we are talking about here, are they? We are talking about the internet scraping generalist AIs; breast cancer screeners and the like are different, and my and the article's criticisms do not apply, but nor will pf posters be using them to write their posts.

It would be unethical, for instance, for me to ask a perfect stranger for their view about some sensitive material I've been asked to review - and so similarly unethical for me to feed it into AI. Whereas if I asked a perfect stranger to check an article for typos and spelling, then it doesn't seem necessary for me to credit them... — Clarendon

Okay sure, but although the OP's complaint is a bit vague, I suspect that the counsel is not motivated by these sorts of ethical considerations. I don't think the OP is worried that we might infringe the rights of AI. I think the OP is implying that there is something incompatible between AI and the forum context.

Yes, it would only be a heuristic and so would not assume AI is actually a person. — Clarendon

I myself would be wary to advise someone to treat AI as if it is a stranger. This is because strangers are persons, and therefore I would be advising that we treat AI as if it is a person. "Heuristically pretend that it is a stranger without envisioning it as a person," seems like a difficult request. It may be that the request can only be fulfilled in a superficial manner, and involves a contradiction. It is this small lie that we tell ourselves that seems to be at the root of many of the AI problems ("I am going to pretend that it is something that it isn't, and as long as I maintain an attitude of pretense everything will be fine").

Someone might ask, "Why should we pretend that AI is a stranger?" And you might answer, "Because it would serve our purposes," to which they would surely respond, "Which purposes do you have in mind?"

Perhaps what is being suggested is a stance of distrust or hesitancy towards the utterances of LLMs.

Right now, we all always know you don’t take the first answer Google displays. You take ten answers from different internet sources, find some overlap, and then start deeper research in the overlap and eventually you might find some truth. Right? The internet can’t be trusted at all. Now with AI, we have photo and video fakes, voice fakes, that look as good as anything else, so we have a new layer of deception. We have the “hallucination” which is a cool euphemism for bullshit. — Fire Ologist

This is why I was shocked that philosophers, of all people, wouldn't be ignoring the "AI summary" invitation at the top of the search results?

I'd have thought the relevant job description, that of filtering the results for signs of trails leading to real accountable sources, would have to disqualify any tool known ever to actually invent false trails, let alone one apparently innately disposed to such behaviour?

Now with AI, we have photo and video fakes, voice fakes, that look as good as anything else, so we have a new layer of deception. We have the “hallucination” which is a cool euphemism for bullshit. — Fire Ologist

It amazes me that people seem to be so unworried about the thorough poisoning of the well. Though given the extent that the well of the entire internet has been so thoroughly poisoned, perhaps it's just more of the same. But the whole story gives a good basis for thinking of this as the post-truth society. No-one seems to care much. I suppose it's all good fun and labour-saving - until you get on the wrong end of a lie. So much for the vision of information freely available to everyone.

This is why I was shocked that philosophers, of all people, wouldn't be ignoring the "AI summary" invitation at the top of the search results? — bongo fury

I do (ignore it). I have yielded to the temptation occasionally, but never found the summaries at all helpful. Also, I reason that the motivation for offering it so freely is to get me hooked. Perhaps, in due course, a more balanced view will develop, at least in some quarters.

I'd have thought the relevant job description, that of filtering the results for signs of trails leading to real accountable sources, would have to disqualify any tool known ever to actually invent false trails, let alone one apparently innately disposed to such behaviour? — bongo fury

To be fair, AI might pick up some of the donkey work in presenting and even organizing information. But not the labour of (trying to) check it.

It amazes me that people seem to be so unworried about the thorough poisoning of the well. Though given the extent that the well of the entire internet has been so thoroughly poisoned, perhaps it's just more of the same. But the whole story gives a good basis for thinking of this as the post-truth society. No-one seems to care much. I suppose it's all good fun and labour-saving - until you get on the wrong end of a lie. So much for the vision of information freely available to everyone — Ludwig V

Do you think the Wittgenstein of the Blue and Brown books and later work would agree with anything you’ve said here about ‘contamination’ and ‘post-truth’ ( as opposed to real truth?)? I think he would say you are bewitched by a picture , the picture of information as a well of pure truth that technology has now polluted. In reality, “information” is a tool we use in specific human activities, and AI just adds new tools and forms of expression.

AI might pick up some of the donkey work in presenting and even organizing information. But not the labour of (trying to) check it — Ludwig V

I think of the checking as the donkey work and the peewee ting and organizing as the real labour.

I think of the checking as the donkey work and the peewee ting and organizing as the real labour. — Joshs

I don't know what peewee ting is. But I take your point. I put my point badly about the checking. I agree with you that fact-checking ought to be donkey-work and a prime candidate for delegation. But it looks as if that's not going to be possible. Or do you know better?

I have no idea what Wittgenstein would think of all this. But I don't think he would be happy with a society that cheerfully accepts the limitations of AI without trying to rectify them or compensate for them.

Oh, maybe I gave you the wrong impression. I was not accepting, but bewailing our post-truth society - by which I mean a society that doesn't care about truth. Also, I didn't make clear that I don't think it is only in the 21st century that societies have not cared, or not cared much, about the truth. I would welcome a machine that could reliably tell me what, in the information that circulates around the web and across the world, is truth and what is not.

“information” is a tool we use in specific human activities, and AI just adds new tools and forms of expression. — Joshs

Maybe so. I guess I'm the pessimist and you're the optimist. We'll see. But I cannot get over my reservations about a tool that actually adds in false information to the mix. Does it not bother you? Do you not think it undermines the point of the exercise?

I don't use AI beyond search engines. I have no experience of it generating text per request.

Seeing its expansion reminds me of what David Krakauer said about tools for understanding. Some increase your capability, others replace it. It seems like a good rule of thumb regarding the digital.

As a method of plagiarism, it resembles its predecessors. I remember how Cliff Notes provided the appearance of scholarship without the actual participation of a student.

So much for the vision of information freely available to everyone. — Ludwig V

It’s an actual shame.

The irony of the “information” super highway. The irony of calling its latest advancement “intelligent”. We demean the intelligence we seek to mimic in the artificial, without being aware we are doing so.

We, as a global society, as the most recent representatives of human history, are not ready for the technology we have created. This has been true probably for 50 years. We’ve gotten ahead of ourselves. We need less; and even when we realize it, in order to get to that place where there is less, we keep inventing something new, something more. We are torn in all directions today.

Maybe it’s always been that way - we forever are trying to catch up to ourselves. AI it seems could create an impassable chasm for us to catch up with, if we are too stupid to control ourselves about it.

AI, with ubiquitous surveillance, digital currency, digital identities for easy tracking and control…none of us really know what we are already into.

I'd have thought the relevant job description, that of filtering the results for signs of trails leading to real accountable sources, would have to disqualify any tool known ever to actually invent false trails, let alone one apparently innately disposed to such behaviour? — bongo fury

If we can get AI to work as well as people seem to hope it does, maybe someday it will be as good as the revolutionary tool it is being sold as. But what will be catastrophic is if it remains so unpredictably wrong, and people accept it as close enough anyway, knowingly letting themselves be satisfied with less than the truth. I was always worried Google and Wikipedia and just the modern media were going to lead us that way - now we have AI to expedite the sloppiness and stupidity.

And AI is called “intelligent”, like a moral agent, but no one sane will ever give it moral agency. So we can further disassociate intelligence from morality. Just what we need to add to our world - more sociopaths that make errors and lie about them.

As a method of plagiarism, it resembles its predecessors. I remember how Cliff Notes provided the appearance of scholarship without the actual participation of a student. — Paine

I remember Cliff Notes and the endless battle with plagiarism. It's not that AI actually invents anything; it's just that it makes things easier - for good (there are obviously some things that it does very well indeed) and for bad.

And AI is called “intelligent”, like a moral agent, but no one sane will ever give it moral agency. — Fire Ologist

That's as may be. What worries me is that people will cede authority to it without even asking themselves whether that is appropriate. It's already a tendency with conventional software - and to be honest a tendency before these machines were invented.

But what will be catastrophic is if it remains so unpredictably wrong, and people accept it as close enough anyway, .... now we have AI to expedite the sloppiness and stupidity. — Fire Ologist

That's the thing. "Revolutions" in technology don't change the fundamentals of being human, and so we still muddle our way through.

AI has none of that, so when it starts using its own material as its input, errors are multiplied like those of inbred genomes - only much faster. — unenlightened

AI gets its information from scraping public websites. It does not make up its own data.

AI is trained using various methods that resemble how you acquire and process information.

Sure, AI is like every other source of information that needs to be verified and cross-referenced. Just as we take what people around here say with a grain of salt, we do the same thing with AI. Many people on this forum don't seem to have any inclination to verify the information they are posting no matter the source, and there are some that cannot argue against what was said and resort to attacking the source or the person instead of the argument.

I recall making a thread here before about a niche PoM subject and was accused of trying to get homework answers. Ironically I put effort into making it as accessible as I could. I gave up on this forum. I suppose now I'd be able to get some semblance of an answer because people could hammer the buzz words into an AI. So sure, it's not like anyone can stop it anyway. The em-dash usually gives it away like the OP of the Cellular Sentience thread.

I think TPF should continue what it's doing, which is put some guardrails on ai use, but not ban it. — RogueAI

I think banning would not be totally effective, but more effective than mere discouragement or partial allowance.

The real world problem is that the AI bubble is debt driven hype that has already become too big to fail. Its development has to be recklessly pursued as otherwise we are in the world of hurt that is the next post-bubble bailout.

Once again, capitalise the rewards and socialise the risks. The last bubble was mortgages. This one is tech.

So you might as well use AI. You’ve already paid for it well in advance. — apokrisis

That's true I suppose. It's a bit like the global warming problem and the Prisoner's Dilemma—we can be almost certain that nothing significant will be done about it because that would be too inconvenient and bad for business. So, why should I not own a car, not use air-conditioning, stop flying overseas and so on, when almost everyone else will continue doing these things? My righteous efforts would amount to squat.

That may be a good reason for you not to use AI, but it’s not a good reason to ban it from the forum. — T Clark

If it really is a good reason for me not to use AI, then surely it is a good reason for everyone not to use it, and thus a good reason to ban it everywhere. Of course I know it will not be done. Another concern is the erosion of human creativity.

Maybe. If someone uses AI to create a fascinating post, could you engage with it? — frank

Sure, why not? I would be more impressed if someone created a fascinating post by themselves, though.

Impractical. But, how about, its use should be discouraged altogether?

I mean, its use in composition or editing of English text in a post. — bongo fury

As I said above I think banning would not be totally effective, but more effective than discouragement.

Then you must also believe that using a long-dead philosopher's quote as the crux of your argument, or as the whole of your post, is also an issue. — Harry Hindu

It's not the case that I must think that at all. That said, I do generally refrain from quoting philosophers, whether dead or alive. I mostly prefer to discuss things using my own ideas and in my own words. I realize that my own ideas are mostly not original, but I have no idea what source most of them came from, so I could not acknowledge the originators even if I wanted to. Add to that the fact that whatever originator we identify probably cannot claim true originaility for their own ideas.

So what? People also use makeup to look better. Who is being hurt?

The reason for objecting to plagiarism is a matter of property rights.

What is best for acquiring and spreading good information? — Athena

That's a poor analogy. It's obvious when people are wearing makeup or wearing clothes that enhance their appearances. Property rights might be one reason to object to plagiarism—there are others. Pretending to be something you are not is one.

"What is best for acquiring and spreading good information?" First tell me what "good information" is.

You can still submit your post as "s" to ChatGPT and ask it to expand on it. — Pierre-Normand

I did that and this post is the result. :razz:

Ctrl+Z — Harry Hindu

Thanks...good tip.

My righteous efforts would amount to squat. — Janus

Sadly so. But also, you could look on the sunny side.

AI scrapes PF along with the rest. My own opinions are being quoted back to me as a source on my searches. So filling PF with more nonsense might be a friction that drags the almighty LLM down into the same pit of confusion.

Let's rally and bring AI down to our level!!! :strong:

The em-dash usually gives it away like the OP of the Cellular Sentience thread. — Forgottenticket

But @Jamal just convinced me to use the em-dash in my posts. Thanks Jamal.

So filling PF with more nonsense might be a friction that drags the almighty LLM down into the same pit of confusion. — apokrisis

:lol: Right, they're only as good as what they are trained on, so I thought they were already down in that pit. Some commentators predict that as the AI content on the Net becomes predominant, and they inform, feed off and train each other with material increasingly their own, that we will then be confronted with an alien intelligence orders of magnitude smarter than we are. I think for that they will need to be embodied and endowed with analogues of biological sensory systems. I remain skeptical. You gotta laugh I guess.

Some commentators predict that as the AI content on the Net becomes predominant, and they inform, feed off and train each other with material increasingly their own, that we will then be confronted with an alien intelligence orders of magnitude smarter than we are. — Janus

Don’t worry about being replaced. Worry about what clever humans will do if allowed to dumb their own lives down.

Imagine I could offer you a prototype chatbot small talk generator. Slip on these teleprompter glasses. Add AI to your conversational skills. Become the life of the party, the wittiest and silkiest version of yourself, the sweet talker that wins every girl. Never be afraid of social interaction again. Comes with free pair of heel lift shoes.

Imagine I could offer you a prototype chatbot small talk generator. Slip on these teleprompter glasses. Add AI to your conversational skills. Become the life of the party, the wittiest and silkiest version of yourself, the sweet talker that wins every girl. Never be afraid of social interaction again. Comes with free pair of heel lift shoes. — apokrisis

:rofl: :cry: That'd be a hilarious scenario, if it wasn't so sad.

Sure, why not? I would be more impressed if someone created a fascinating post by themselves, though. — Janus

The key element in that scenario is that there is no interlocutor to engage with if you attempt a response. Light's on, nobody home.

The difference between sophism and dialogue has long been drawn as the difference between argument for argument's sake and honest expressions of what one thinks.

A peddler has come into town with a new collection of masks.

The key element in that scenario is that there is no interlocutor to engage with if you attempt a response. Light's on, nobody home. — Paine

I have seen interactions with LLMs on this site that certainly make it look like the lights are on—I don't know about whether it looks like anyone is home. I've watched interviews with tech experts like Mo Gawdat and Geoffrey Hinton, who believe that LLMs are not only intelligent, but capable of rationality and even self-awareness. Do they have an idea of themselves? A self-narrative? I can't answer that.

I agree with you about sophism—however, LLMs are generally not, it seems, argumentative for its own sake, but more obsequiously agreeable, and not for its own sake, but presumably to, via flattery, hold our interest and influence us.

So, there is the smaller problem that we don't know whether we are discussing stuff with a human or a bot—but the larger problem I see is that LLMs should never have been released into the wild so recklessly. One might say not recklessly, but with the primary motive of profit, but to my way of thinking that is itself reckless. They collect marketable data about you and me with every interaction, and that data will benefit only, or at least mostly, the tech moguls.

A new peddler has indeed come into town with a new set of masks, selling not merely the masks, but snake oil.

Getting back to the greenie issues, the latest state of the play report on AI says what is really top of mind is building enough new power plants to keep up with the runaway AI development.

The US needs to build 68 city-size electricity generators in the next three years. And that is just the start of the exponential curve. This is despite cost per search also dropping on its own steep curve.

So imagine that. The physical impact of AI data centres being forced on communities which have the necessary land and water by a new national imperative. Mini nuclear reactors are already being prototyped. Local red tape won’t be allowed to stand in the way.

What is crazy is not that we will replace ourselves with something that is even smarter, but replace ourselves as we thought with fracking and industrial farming that we couldn’t get any dumber, but now are proving that indeed we can.

We weren’t crashing the environment fast enough. So OK. Let’s focus on accelerating that.

Yes, and then we get all the hopeful, "pie in the sky " talk about it all being worth it since AIs will, on account of their super-intelligence, be able to solve the 'global warming' conundrum.

As if cryptocurrency wasn't bad enough! Talk about "snake oil"!

Maybe. If someone uses AI to create a fascinating post, could you engage with it?
— frank

Sure, why not? I would be more impressed if someone created a fascinating post by themselves, though. — Janus

You're the only one who cares how impressed you are. A fascinating post is a fascinating post.

Fascination is also in the eye of the beholder. So equally, you are the only one who cares how fascinated you are. What I meant was that I'd be more fascinated if the fascinating post was created by a human.

For me, in the context of philosophy, a fascinating post would be one that embodied a creative, complex and coherent view of things. I can't think of any other kind of post that would fascinate me.

ok.

Thanks for your generosity.

So sure, it's not like anyone can stop it anyway. — Forgottenticket

It is being stopped here.

AI gets its information from scraping public websites. It does not make up its own data. — Harry Hindu

And 50% and growing of public website material is produced by AI. So it is eating its own bullshit to an ever increasing extent.