Harari leaps from trope to trope, taking correlation (fascism & the internet are both present today) to launch into #MoralPanic about conversational computers & democracy.
-
Harari leaps from trope to trope, taking correlation (fascism & the internet are both present today) to launch into #MoralPanic about conversational computers & democracy.
People buy books filled with this?
What Happens When the Bots Start Competing for Your Love? https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/04/opinion/yuval-harari-ai-democracy.html?smid=tw-share -
Harari's nonsense tour continues today on Morning Joe. He wants to "ban fake people." Uh, fiction?
Harari: "Never underestimate human stupidity. If we are so smart, why are we so stupid?"
Projection.
Oh, no, he's coming back tomorrow morning.
Instead, try reading actual scholars like @_FelixSimon_ on AI and democracy:
https://archive.ph/JskvC -
Harari's idiocy tour continues: "What everybody needs to understand about AI is that AI is not a tool. It is an agent. It is the first technology in history that can make decisions by itself, that can create new ideas by itself and therefore can take power away from us."
-
@jeffjarvis this is the most inane part. Someone should ask him to explain the difference to thermostats deciding to turn off air conditioning.
-
@ehud @jeffjarvis thermostats have been a popular topic here these last few days…. https://zirk.us/@qruyant/113074303538544387
-
@ehud thermostats have been a surprisingly popular discussion item here this week. Some ways genAI is different: self-formed multi-modal representations that support a (seemingly) open ended response repertoire in as much as it is capable of combinatorial output generation - none of that applies to thermostats I’m familiar with.
-
@UlrikeHahn thermostats are very different, sure. But I was referring to his claim that AI is the first time machines make decisions. What exactly is it “to make a decision”?
-
@ehud we are agreed that thermostats don’t make decisions,but what is it you think a system like ChatGPT4o is missing, given that you think it clearly doesn’t make decisions either?
-
@UlrikeHahn I think this is a really hard question. And while I have thoughts I wouldn’t presume I know the answer. Representation of alternatives? Planning? At the very least.
-
@ehud so your initial point was that it is inane to think that genAI systems make decisions because the question is so hard, not because it’s obvious that they don’t?
-
@UlrikeHahn it’s obvious they don’t. What precisely more is needed is a hard question.
-
@ehud I’m still not clear by virtue of what it is obvious that they don’t, could you just say?
-
Dimitri Coelho Molloreplied to Ulrike Hahn last edited by
@UlrikeHahn @ehud I think once again the issue is partly semantic. 'Decision-making' can be understood in thinner or thicker senses, where the thinner senses include thermostats, while the thickest sense involves systems with beliefs, desires, intentions, planning capacities, sensitivity to reasons, etc., which for now at least seem to apply only to humans and some non-human animals.
-
Ulrike Hahnreplied to Dimitri Coelho Mollo last edited by
@dcm @ehud Dimitri, so as not to completely hijack this thread, I’ve just moved the discussion to a new one here: https://fediscience.org/@UlrikeHahn/113096758804297443