Part Two: Tech Bros Have Built A Cult Around AI | BEHIND THE BASTARDS

[@HyenaDandy]

The amazing thing about Roko's Basilisk is that it's the only philosophical proposition I'm aware of where "I think you're an idiot" functions not only as a dismissal of the idea, but also as an effective counter-argument.

[@michaelwoodby5261]

But also, nobody believes in it. Literally nobody. If you're feeling better about yourself because you don't believe in something that nobody else believes in... that's more sad than anything.

[@HyenaDandy]

@@michaelwoodby5261 I can attest to at least two people who believe in it. And several others who at least consider it worthy of consideration. Perhaps the entire population of sincere believers is isolated to people who attended my highschool in the 2000s, but I doubt it. Although considering my AP history teacher's lessons on philosophy, I can't quite rule it out either. That said I'm not sure why you assume I'm feeling better about myself over it. I assure you, my depression is far too resilient to be cured by making jokes about thought experiments. Believe me, I've tried, and my therapist's bank account can demonstrate just how successful I have been.

[@HyenaDandy]

@@michaelwoodby5261 I can attest to at least two people who genuinely believe in Roko's basilisk. And several more who consider it at least worth considering. Now, this is anecdotal, and it's entirely possible the population of people who believe in Roko''s Basilisk is limited to people who attended the same highschool I did in the second half of the 2000s, but that is doubtful. Although now that I consider it, my AP history teacher's bumbling attempts to teach philosophy do provide at least a little evidence for that idea. Why you assume that this makes me feel better about myself, however, I don't know. Rest assured, though, my depression is far too strong to be defeated by merely making jokes about poorly conceived thought experiments, a fact for which my psychiatrist, or at least her bank account, is no doubt eternally grateful. .

[@UsenameTakenWasTaken]

​@@michaelwoodby5261 Have you tried looking away from the mirror when talking to people?

[@THEHAR0LD]

I hate how so many groups call themselves names like "rationals" or "objectivists" or claim to use "facts and logic" or say that "facts don't care about your feelings" and then go on to use the language of rationality to justify their opinions and prejudices. It means whenever you try to /actually/ be rational and skeptical and evidence based etc. you end up aesthetically similar to the Ben Shapiros of the world, which ironically poisons the well of whatever point your trying to make.

[@oscaranderson5719]

there’s been so many situations where the average person would go “that’s bad” as a gut reaction and these idiots do it anyway. then some people do an investigation and it turns out it is indeed bad for x reasons and said idiots are hurtling off a cliff. a ten-hour google search for “facts and logic” ain’t got shit on millennia of behavioral evolution distilled into a little tiny feeling of discomfort, we as a species are exceptional at complex interpersonal networks so long as we actually use the tools we’re given.

[@joeyrufo]

Maybe that's not an accident 🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐

[@marocat4749]

its insidious, and while probably better caring about facts and feelings, while cutting through bs, its made harde r:( Then conservvatives always coopted aestetics.

[@AzaleaJane]

One of my axioms is: anyone who claims to be fully rational is the least rational and should be avoided at all costs.

[@samcyphers2902]

It's like how any country with "Democratic" or "Republic" in its name is for sure a dictatorship. If you have to tell people you're rational or objective, you aren't. You're just a smug douche who has fallen victim to the worst end of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

[@sofieselene]

Roko's Basilisk has always been a hilarious demonstration of the ridiculousness of these subcultures.

[@Kyman102]

I remember when I first saw a KZbinr video describing Roko's Basilisk. It was the first time I actually felt dumber for having heard something.

[@golentan]

I had a friend in university who thought he was an atheist but had a religious devotion to Yudkowsky as a prophet. It was... intensely frustrating every time he tried to proselytize about something like the Basilisk. Or do something insane like "shave his eyebrows off because they were atavistic, then discovering that sweat burns."

[@jellyfishjones4741]

As soon as he said it created a hell, I knew it was going to be about this.

[@absinthefandubs9130]

Calvinism has been a thing for more than half a millennium though and the consequences of their take on this make up like 80% of every episode of BTB, not quite as ridiculous but same concept.

[@Jtilden23]

The fact that the rationalist believes that a logical and benevolent A.I. god would waste countless processing cycles and a ton of energy just to torture digital effigies of its haters is hilarious. (Edited: corrected an incomplete sentence)

[@simonteesdale9752]

"When art is released, it belongs to the world." (~37:30) Honestly, the British Museum had similar thoughts about 300 years ago.

[@alexs1954]

The British Empire also, coincidentally, thought they WERE the world.

[@Bluecho4]

Naw, they believed, "When art is released, it belongs to _us,_ the British Empire."

[@sd-ch2cq]

~yoink~

[@SuperSmashDolls]

The world would be a much better place if the British Museum only had a bunch of copies of other cultures' famous art.

[@MrGksarathy]

I mean, it does, but artists should be fairly compensated and credited for it.

[@Vladimirwlr1234]

That guy accusing Carlin's daughter of greed while defending AI grifters has so little self-awareness that he might not be aware of his own existence.

[@louisvictor3473]

Maybe that guy is actually just a LLM

[@marocat4749]

Like she wasnt even asked. And he sure didnt agree to it, because he was dead.

[@thomashenry4798]

He failed the mirror test?

[@Zomburai45]

We did it, we found an actual P-zombie

[@SuperSmashDolls]

Every accusation is a confession. *Every single one.*

[@samcyphers2902]

"Cultural Necophilia" would be an awesome name for a death metal band.

[@craiggaulzetti2255]

Or an unpublished essay by Theodore Adorno that was never translated into English but was discovered in between the walls of Frankfurt College Dormitory during the replacement of newspaper based insulation with that energy efficient itchy pink stuff.

[@Aozame]

Wait, Roko was just some rando on the Internet the whole time? I thought he was some obscure philosopher or something, that makes the whole thing SO much dumber than it already was.

[@howwitty]

Yeah, no, that conversation is necessarily shut down immediately because of the wildly spurious analogies that inevitably spring up. Discussing power in unquantifiable terms in a framework incomprehensible to non-BDSM cult members will lead to bad times.

[@Filbi]

when you think about it philosophers are just pre-internet randos

[@personzorz]

I was there. It was fucking hilarious even at the time.

[@zerotwo7319]

it was just one autist jew

[@cuttingbored4195]

Rocko's Modern Basilisk

[@DJTI99]

Wait... I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream is a Harlan Ellison story? I thought it was Hello Kitty's autobiography.

[@DonJuanDecepticon]

You did it buddy, you didn’t have to, but you did and here we are. Reality’s are branching now.

[@tadhgmcinerney8654]

Woah dude youre crazy for that one

[@MrPooleish]

Ok, pissing off the AI Orthodoxy sounds like a great way to get your kneecaps confiscated by the Algorithm Crusaders, but how sick is "The First Cyber Heretic" as an Epitaph?

[@cassandrawasright1481]

If I had a nickel for every time a Harry Potter fanfiction author started a cult, I'm pretty sure I'd have at least 50 cents by now.

[@NimhLabs]

We were far too cruel towards Tara Gilsbie... the only decent Harry Potter fanfiction author--and the only one who truly understood the source material

[@ninegearcrow]

But does that include Rowling as well?

[@SuperSmashDolls]

@@ninegearcrow It's only a matter of time.

[@cassandrawasright1481]

@@ninegearcrow I wouldn't "credit" her with starting the TERF cult---they were on that cult shit well before she threw her hat in with the movement. She's just their celebrity figurehead, and responsible for popularizing them to the masses.

[@joeyrufo]

7:12 it's even worse than that. Elon and Grimes first interacted when they found out they had independently come up with the same PUN on Roko's basilisk: the rococo basilisk! 🙈🙈🙈🙈🙈

[@AzaleaJane]

NERDS! (derogatory)

[@WitchOracle]

If they had taken the pun to the logical conclusion of the rococo basilisk being guillotined, I'd be more into it

[@idontwantahandlethough]

The problem with Pascal's Wager is that there's literally no reason whatsoever to think that an omnipotent, omniscient god would accept such a horrible deal. I mean.. what do they even get out of it? Literally nothing.. so they'd just say no.

[@hughcaldwell1034]

Anyone complaining about Nightshade disrupting their model is stealing food to add to their food hoard and then complaining that they got poisoned. I also love that the same people claiming image generators "are just doing what human artists have always done" will say that they, the prompter, are "just an artist using a more advanced tool". You can't have it both ways.

[@jorymo4964]

I think those Carlin AI guys only fessed up to lying about the AI part because George Carlin's family was threatening to sue

[@WhitetailMusic]

Roko's Basilisk is a term I've heard thrown around so much but never really looked into the meaning behind it because most explanations seem to focus on the "basilisk" part of it moreso than the original theory which I am dying at, oh my god these guys were kept up at night because some random dude was like "I have no mouth and I must scream is actually a documentary"

[@ericsmith5919]

It's even funnier than that. They worry that even if this AI is created years or even centuries after they've died, it will create a virtual simulacrum of them to torture and that will be just as bad as if they were actually being tortured themselves.

[@blatantpseudonym3313]

my favorite thing about roko's basilisk is that once the computer has come into being, there's no reason it should actually torture the people who failed to bring about its existence- it already exists! it's got better things to do than try to guarantee something that's already happened!

[@Bluecho4]

My understanding of the theory is that the AI - which, remember, does not exist yet - is playing a game of chicken with those aware of the theory. You don't know if you're "real", or if you're a copy existing in a simulation created by the AI, who will be tortured if you refuse to take every step to create the AI. Since you don't know, as with Pascal's Wager, the only "rational" course of action is to create the AI, which is the AI's goal. Which, again, does not exist (yet). It is profoundly stupid, making a million big assumptions about both how an AI would act and about the plausibility of the world being a simulation.

[@ax14pz107]

It's playing the game. You lose etc.

[@fynnevantienhoven9866]

​@@ericsmith5919 I believe that the idea behind that was that we might be in the simulation right now, so better be safe than sorry. It's essentially the techbro version of pascal's wager, combined with a variation on the modal argument for god.

[@madisondampier3389]

Oh my god, finally someone else gets it, I took the deep dive into the LessWrong community before any of this AI stuff happened, and from the beginning I KNEW that they were behind it all. They are paranoid and delusional.

[@stephenruvalcaba4680]

nightshade is a thing in cyberpunk too! if someone has it on their character, scanning that person will blur them and hide any info that can normally be taken from people without it.

[@vylbird8014]

The satirical novel Qualityland has a similar thing. People of very, very high social credit rankings can invoke a privacy shield, such that if anyone tries to even write something negative about them the computer systems will replace their name with a vague descriptor like 'a famous television personality' and unauthorised pictures will be edited within seconds to remove their presence. It's just a bit of background information on the setting at first, but comes to play a role in the reveal at the end.

[@tora0neko]

Thank you Robert for independently making a recent realization I had that Roko's Basilisk is just new Pascal's Wager. This is my second nickel and it tickles me slightly on my right shoulder. just above the scapula before the clavicle.

[@BenHyle]

Blaise Pascal is guy who came up with the wager. He did a LOT of mathematics and physics back in the day, then he went full Christian.

[@pfeffer1729]

He was also the man who came up with what would become the modern theory of probability, and afaik he was tormented by the question of God's existence his whole life.

[@dylanchouinard6141]

I thought he made the Wager as a parody of attempts to “prove” religion by making the most ridiculous version of such an argument to show “you can’t use logic here you need faith instead.”

[@Ezekiel_Allium]

@@dylanchouinard6141 Nah, pascal was pretty devout and wrote genuine theological works. If you've ever heard a variation on the phrase "God Shaped Hole" that comes from him. I don't know the guys biography, just scattershot bits of stuff he's famous for, but I doubt his scientific career and religious one were actually as seperate as OP implies, I don't think you really go full christian, I'd assume he was into science because he was a christian, considering his theological works are also about the nature of the world.

[@TheGCRust]

As a Christian myself, never go full Christian.

[@JacobHalton]

Oh wow, thanks for mentioning Glaze and Nightshade!

[@moonowlart]

it really does feel like a crusade against artists, hit the nail on the head. Great episode!!

[@Bluecho4]

As a DM and a person who thinks a lot about RPGs, I kind of want to include a plot in a game of D&D where the party are investigating a Conceptual Necromancer. They don't reanimate people's bodies, they study their writings and performances to conjure a magical facsimile of them. It would be just as horrifying as it sounds - basically creating AI Carlin but as a real being - and no one likes it. Just a rambling abomination with too many teeth and too many fingers, body parts bleeding into each other, parroting the words of dead men back at their loved ones. Peasant: "I would genuinely rather that guy just puppeted my father's corpse, like a regular necromancer. It would have been less of a defilement of his memory than this. Please, for the love of the gods, kill this man and banish his creations."

[@mrmaxwell346]

I can see a normal necromancer coming after that bastard because they give the normal necromancers a bad name.

[@therogueserafim271]

I like that! If i ever DM again in going to, very much like AI, steal that idea.

[@Bluecho4]

@@therogueserafim271 Can it truly be stealing, when I'm giving it to you for free?

[@therogueserafim271]

@@Bluecho4 thank you, anyway!

[@yourlocalnerd7788]

Gonna pocket this one away for when I'm running a more typical campaign and not legend of zelda based dnd

[@robertmartin2936]

The podcast is 100% human written. In the reaction to the lawsuit from Carlin's Family, they also admitted that it always was 100% human written, with the "AI" premise being a comedic construct and about as factual as Craig Ferguson having had a sentient robot co-host.

[@miguelvelez7221]

Will AI be deciding who gets to hunt children on a far off South Asian island?

[@howwitty]

Is that why no journalists are allowed on Sentinel Island?

[@miguelvelez7221]

​@@howwittyYou'll have to ask the fine people at Blue Apron.

[@marocat4749]

Hmm, but who programs that AI

[@NimhLabs]

No, you get led around to the cages where they keep the children. The cages are generally usually used for birds and are a bit small for the kids--with them often having their legs swinging outside the cage. You then get to choose which child you hunt--with them all encouraged to cheer and try to convince you that they are the child you desire to hunt Before you ask, no, nothing is Spongebob themed. That is far too recent of a children's media to be used. All of the children's media adorning stuff is HR Puffinstuff and various forgotten obscure children's media from the mid-1900s It is an entirely organic experience. So organic that there is pencillin growing in a lot of the holding areas where they keep the children

[@fuzzydunlop7928]

"Prompt Engineer" is an awesome job title. I've been overdescriptive to AI chatbots as a bit, I didn't know there was a future in it.

[@JesseMaurais]

Ai is great for people who don't want to be creative or think for themselves, but who do want the artifacts of thought to use in presenting themselves as creative thinkers.

[@Rockyzach88]

This will bite you in the ass lol. I suppose you'll be denouncing search engines as well. Because it only shows you "parts of the "collective conscience". HOW DARE IT!

[@seancain2216]

There was some channel telling Warhammer 40k lore like it was David Attenborough. Did not go over well with the community.

[@SgtKaneGunlock]

i watched the one about the tyranids and while its ok i much prefer you have an actual guy read it

[@casanovafunkenstein5090]

There's a certain amount of irony in using an AI voice to tell people about a fictional setting where humanity came so close to being completely wiped out by AI that the one thing that every human being in the galaxy can agree on, regardless of whether they are imperial, AdMech, or Chaos affiliated, is that AI cannot be permitted to exist in any form.

[@oscaranderson5719]

@@casanovafunkenstein5090wait, is that explicit canon? ‘cuz I always thought there’d always be some heretical technofiddler out there that wanted to make a sentient toaster waifu. actually I coulda sworn the, uhh, “progressive” mechanicus faction were also big fans of nono stuff like AI.

[@marocat4749]

From what i get, the fun is having fun with that fashist dystopia with over the top everyone bad, but fun. It needs the humor.

[@kaljaktun2012]

@@oscaranderson5719 It's canon that AI is heretical in the Imperium, but there are Dark Mechanicus folks that get hot over tainted AI, like the Kaban machine and the old cursed scrapcode bits. So you're basically up to speed XD

[@b1rds_arent_real]

I haven't seen any of the context in the comments, so I'll provide it. Roko's Basilisk was created as a critique/edge case of a certain approach to decision theory. It was an "if this concerns you, you're an idiot" and not a serious argument. E. Y. probably got a bit offended by it since some of his core assumptions are called out by the basilisk. Furthermore, it illustrates the difficulty of modeling the collaboration between intelligent agents (people, companies, countries) in scenarios where one deters another by an act of pure revenge later (ie.: counter-value 2nd strike). The argument differs from PW in one important way: the suffering is self-inflicted, god doesn't exist until you build it. This is to illustrate that certain approaches to game/decision theory are broken enough to tell you to go ahead and do it.

[@louisvictor3473]

I have to say, I have studied AI before, and I can corroborate that the current technology cannot create a true AGI (artificial general intelligence, the sci-fi version of AI, basically), by its very technical characteristics. For starters, it is not general or generalizeable as is, so... yeah. At most, one could argue that you couldu se it as one of the basis for some hypothetical future method, but a) that would inherently mean a new method, whether or not it is partially based on an existing one doesn't change that; and b) there isn't even a well formulated theoretical method that we just couldn't build yet - it is pure wishful thinking, there is nothing concrete or even reliable. We don't have evidence that the current methods cannot be used as stepping stone for AGI, but we have any evidence that it could either. By default, that means we discard the hypothesis until decent positive evidence appears. In other words, it is on those people saying "we probably/totally are going to get AGI from these technlogies, babyyy" to demonstrate how their technology could possibly lead to AGI, or to at least possibly be used as a basis for true AGI. Until they do, it is just hogwash blind faith hidden behind technobabble and general ignorance on the topic.

[@minhuang8848]

lmao "I have studied AI before" yeah right nice try

[@louisvictor3473]

@@minhuang8848 Try what? Mention my academic past without DOSing myself? Because I wasn't trying to sound convincing to you, a rando ignoramous online with nothing of value to say.

[@voland6846]

@@louisvictor3473 I would just ignore this kind of rando, they're either: a) grifters b) ai-cultists (effective-accelerationists, techno-utopians, etc.) c) dumb as rocks Non of which are useful interlocutors

[@SgtKaneGunlock]

like at best these "AI" are just a series of algorithms and aggregators dressed up as "A.I"

[@louisvictor3473]

@@SgtKaneGunlock By computer science terminology, they are AI. The issue is that what the field calls AI and the popular meaning are seriously misaligned, and the ghouls using AI as a marketing and hype term completely abuse that.

[@tonyblitz1]

Dunno if Robert scopes the comments on YT. But I just finished the Tommy Robinson video, and him despairing about the absolute state of war journalism. I'd recommend getting in touch with Dylan Burns for a relevant episode of BtB or It could happen here. I asked him once before and he said he doesn't want to be "that guy" pestering Robert for a collab. I told him he should stand outside your house with a boombox. He's currently getting hatefugged by the YT algorithm for his coverage, and so could use the spotlight. I consider him a voice of reasoned, passionate and ethical journalism in a world of shills and grifters.

[@awkwarddinosaur9518]

If all art is open and free for public use, then so should their algorithms that they feed it into. If the artists can't make money of their art, then you shouldn't be able to make money off your machine learning algorithms either. Their entire position reeks of selfish incredulity.

[@Saliferous]

That's exactly it. And that's the big problem.

[@hypnauticasleepsounds9329]

Oh god every time I hear Les Wrong’s name I groan inside. That fan fic was a trip

[@iiklaa]

Thanks, this helped put my mind at ease, it's a much-needed conversation. The god damn George Carlin thing... I had forgotten about that nauseating bit of techno necromancy.

[@kelsocherry9762]

Garrison’s opinion about Marietta is extremely valid and I second it.

[@marocat4749]

For nightshade, like are ther any regulations about the bots imput? no, then its fair game, and it wont harm computer. If artists arent asked to share, they are goddamn free to do what the hell to alter their image, and thats literally it, altering, their own art. Which they are freely to do. If there were any agreement wiith artists there might be , but as long artists arent in any case anything in that agreement, their art, it literally is part off their damn art and people are free to alter it, and no computer harmed. Just an image alter , which is fair, in art. Also i am inherently suspicious who first goes after the artists. So yes, good reason to be suspicious.

[@marielanomade]

Bonus: the videogame world already has a notion of Nightshade on the corporate side, as DRM can actively make a game difficult to run as it takes up resources. I'd like to see them try to defend one and not the other.

[@SgtKaneGunlock]

@@marielanomade easy ITS NEVER THE CORPORATION THAT IN THE RIGHT

[@PhrosstBite]

Really it sounds like watermarks, which absolutely are legal lol. Like what's the actual difference in applying a visual watermark to your art online, vs applying a metadata watermark to your art?

[@kurotsuki7427]

The guy saying the program was like hacking seems to be getting confused between hacking/viruses and encryption.

[@AnonymousAnarchist2]

If anyone thinks that a computer, a thing, unthinking unfeeling, unexperienceing can generate art, or intellect Then that person knows neither.

[@personzorz]

On the other hand, you are a thing too. You are thinking and feeling though. There's no reason to think it's impossible to create a non-human thing that can do those, although there's also no reason to think that we have or can with current approaches.

[@Feasco]

​@@personzorzyeah we all want Data from TNG to be a real boy but that is a distant dream

[@woodsonchem]

Love the Harlan Ellison shout-out! When I was reading him in high school (1970s) and recommending him to people I would either get converts or horrified responses. Almost as fun as when I was teaching high school chemistry in the 2000s and giving aspiring song writers Tom Waits. I created a hardcore fan club of 16 year-olds that will never settle for pop music.

[@kzinful]

@woodsonchem Oh mercy, Harlan Ellison. It was at Future Visions bookstore in Houston, Tx, and I was waiting in line to have my copy of I, Robot ( the screenplay that he and Isaac Asimov collaborated with ) to be signed.Standing in front of me was a young woman who was having a light banter with Harlan when she mentioned that West Virginia / Virginia was actually one state. And so there he was head down hunched, when he asked : " What did you just say?" And that was it, he lit into her about her statement and she stood her ground unwavering...Lol. And next, there I was and all I wanted to tell him was what a hell of a writer he was, and so, sigh, it was to never be. Harlan's words could eviscerate your heart, and with another story lift it with empathy. He was something else, and he didn't suffer fools lightly.

[@woodsonchem]

Thanks for sharing the story. I have heard/read so many of these and they are all worth the time. So few writers reach his level. Time to dust off some of my older books.@@kzinful

[@HyenaDandy]

About the copyright thing: As a leftist with a strong opposition to copyright law in general... I do think there are a lot of concerns around closing off lines of derivative art, and I worry about that in connection with AI. But at the same time, I may think we shouldn't have copyright laws... But until we DON'T, then we can't just argue that we can give stuff over to AI without any limitations, because right now, those laws DO exist. We can consider doing something like that (and I do mean consider, because there's plenty of reasons not to) only once the laws are gone for everyone, not just artists and workers.

[@Saliferous]

We need copyright laws. When enforced correctly they allow people to make money on novel inventions or creations. Companies have bastardized those laws, but without them, people wouldn't be able to make money coming up with new ideas.

[@HyenaDandy]

@@Saliferous- I don't know if I can really say I agree with you on that. But that's probably a conversation that is best had somewhere other than the comments section of a mildly related podcast episode.

[@Saliferous]

@@HyenaDandy So your idea is just endless Chinese knock offs. Because that's what that would cause.

[@HyenaDandy]

@@Saliferous Neither truth-in-advertising laws nor trademark laws are copyright laws.

[@yourdad6902]

You still asking for second hand knockoffs troglodyte ​@@HyenaDandy

[@JONNYSORENSEN_AU]

I need that plain tasteless pizza yesterday. "What if I told you, that the same finger... you use to order pizza... you could pick your nose with... our A.I. experts will show you HOW!"

[@LadyDeSelby]

To be clear, the reason why it's called a Basilisk is because, as the theory goes, if you aren't aware of the theory, then the AI would not punish you for your ignorance; it would only be actively choosing to not fund the AI that would incite its wrath. Therefore, you are only vulnerable to the basilisk if you read about it, making it dangerous information to read in the first place (the term 'basilisk' also taken from older, better sci-fi, the writings of David Langford). This is the context as to Yudkowsky banning discussion of it; even if he claims otherwise, on some level, at some point, he did believe that this was dangerous information that needs to be suppressed because it endangered people to even contemplate. Which is both much crazier and much more ridiculous than it just being a panic-inducing idea on its own mereits.

[@jy3n2]

We've seen that the corpos seem to have no clue what the limitations of generative ML are, and are incredibly lazy about actually checking the output, so I figure it's only a matter of time until a massive error in something sets off a bunch of big lawsuits, and that will be the end of that. Any guesses on the timeframe?

[@CrucialFlowResearch]

Google gemini, it already is happening. Google's gemini is producing massive errors

[@Saliferous]

It's gonna be probably 3-5 years. The ai are incredibly good at shitting out stuff that middle managers and ceos like. My experience? can't do much with it. The writing is the level you do for a school project you don't care about. (so how will it make "good" books or movies) and full of innacuries (asked it to give me quotes from celebrities and it got 1/2 wrong) so no good for news. The art, isn't copyrightable, so if you make something with it, pirating it will be legal. (no good there) and it's so bad at basic details that fixing those details takes longer than the actual art. CEOs are in love with it though, because they're all lemmings... just a bunch of lemmings.

[@Ruteekatreya]

I feel like it's worth pointing out that yudkowskey is no more an expert than you or I. He's just a nerd. Like, I don't actually dislike nerds, but he's not a genuine expert who knows anything about the production of AGI or anything; most experts with no vested interest consider AGI, if not impossible, so distant as to not be worth considering. That's not to say we can't commit mass fraud, or similar, but that's not AGI.

[@miserylitmedia]

The worst part is, a lot of these companies that are investing so heavily in AI these days... are not even testing it BEFORE releasing it to the rest of us. No, no, instead of paying real money to hire QA experts and teams to make sure it's as safe and as user-friendly as possible, they're loading it into their "new updates," surprising us with it, and essentially PRESS-GANGING the REST OF US into doing their quality assurance on the fly, USING US AS UNCOMPENSATED GUINEA PIGS without our informed consent. It's evil and gross how fast and loose they're playing with our internet security, and is no doubt making us either crazy or else susceptible to HACKING attempts. OR BOTH. >_< #CreditFreeze #NotYourGuineaPig #AntiTrust #MakeTheMonopoliesPay

[@ChristieBrewster]

The idea that an AI can't operate from its own whims is one I'm interested in. Trouble is, the questions you'd ask of it to test its original thought are going to have answers pillaged or planted externally. In any case, has anyone asked a chatbot to provide an example of an interesting question to put to an AI chatbot? Extra question - why are AIs becoming bad at spellcheck, when the permutations are complex but the words are finite and the effects of grammar structures are very mappable in the present day?

[@casanovafunkenstein5090]

The issue is that the AI is trained based on how humans rate its responses and the existing data of how humans have acted previously. AI will inherently recreate the biases of the people who own it and if it diverges from that, they will demand that the AI be altered to make it more aligned with their beliefs. Once that has been established, the more that AI is imbued with the authority to make decisions about employment, provision of public services, etc. then you essentially end up with the same problems we have already (positions of power and authority being concentrated in the hands of people who have the least motivation to demand change and who are ignorant of the reality of life for the majority of people) with the added bonus of allowing them to divest themselves of accountability by claiming that they're following the instruction of the machine and that there must be a greater logic at play when the policies proposed are deeply unethical. It's just God with extra steps and a massive electric bill.

[@marocat4749]

Chatbots are trained tthat they are convinving people to seem consersing.. And the rules of canversations most of the time, not very grammatic correct.

[@marocat4749]

Yep ai arent the problem, who feeds them the bias are, or program them, give them what they should say and use them. Thats the danger, who tells them what to do and give power. Dunno iff they weere programmed to not act capitalist, ok but they are made to be hyper capitalist if its by a hyper capitalist cooperation.@@casanovafunkenstein5090

[@Ezekiel_Allium]

"Whoever Pascal was" Robert pains me sometimes. To me, that statement is on the level of the Arminian/Armenian debacle.

[@minhuang8848]

It's a special kind of outlook on base education, that's for sure

[@Ezekiel_Allium]

@@minhuang8848 It's fascinating because Robert has all this fascinating niche knowledge crammed into his head. But the guy who has both a famous christian apologetic argument _and_ a unit of measurement that you probably used in school? Who knows. Prolly just some guy lmao

[@Bussy_Destroyer]

@@Ezekiel_Allium I could be wrong and might be too charitable, but to me it sounded like a joke rather than him genuinely not having looked up who pascal was prior to the episode (and/or knowing who he was before that)

[@Ezekiel_Allium]

@@Bussy_Destroyer fair enough, not how I read it but a valid interpretation.

[@jeffdee]

So... no big deal, but I'd like to push back a bit against slamming the 'Brights'. I never identified as one, but I did have a bit of a rep in the atheist community, and I can tell you, that name wasn't about bigoted self-aggrandizing. Back in those days, there was a lot of debate among atheists on the question of what to call ourselves. Because the fact was that *theists* had had the main influence over the dictionary definition of 'atheist' for centuries, and it was pretty tiring to have to keep pushing back against that, telling people no, we're not baby eaters or amoral or any of that. *My* view, the reason why I never called myself a 'Bright', was that re-naming was a waste of time since *whatever* we called ourselves, believers were going to use it was pejorative. So why bother? But I knew those people, and that's all it was. What *is* true, is that some atheists are assholes (some people in *any* group are assholes), and they've incorporated their atheism into their crap. Sigh. On a related note: I *did* used to call myself a Transhumanist. Despite the fact that Transhumanism had already become a haven for some pretty annoying Libertarians, I was totally on board with the goal of "let's augment ourselves technologically". I don't know when Transhumanism mutated from that into "let's steal everything from ourselves and give it to machines so they can murder us", but apparently it has, and I am not on board with that. So, I no longer identify with that term - assholes have ruined it.

[@thelanavishnuorchestra]

I'd heard Roko's Basilisk before, but yeah, that's where it came from. I had to check out wikipedia to verify it. And yes, it's a Pascal's wager variation. Oh, and thank you for the reference to Nightshade. I'm going to start poisoning images to hopefully hilarious results down the road.

[@rustkitty]

I've started listening to the audiobook of that HP fanfic out of morbid curiosity. It's the most irritating dork shit, couldn't get through it. The only thing better in it is that the step parents aren't abusive for no reason.

[@KevGamm]

I quite liked it! It was much better than it's source material, at least. It does a good job of pointing out all of the dumb, potentially broken, or latently horrifying parts of HP universe. If you view it in the lens about how some nerd would speedrun the Harry Potter story, its pretty fun. It mostly suffers from a plight of a lot of fiction-- Dorks taking it way too seriously.

[@rustkitty]

@@KevGamm Sure, but at least for me the narration was too insufferable in its own unique way to make it worth the deconstruction and being better than Harry Potter is a very low bar. I can get over-analyzing from any book review or fan theory writeup and then I don't have to put up with a self-important self-insert of a pseudo-cult leader.

[@CKTofu]

The wildest thing learned is that HPMOR was actually serious about rationality in any way. What in the actual fuck.

[@FeatherVoid]

Today I learned Rokos Basilisk is really recent. Huh. I thought it was something from the late 90s at best.

[@Edmonddantes123]

Do Netanyahu next

[@ms-literary6320]

They already did!

[@SuperSmashDolls]

The actual historical Crusades were mostly failures, so it's likely that the heretics will survive here, too. 38:30 I think the most telling part of the whole AI art thing is that the first people to sue over it were actually Free Software developers. The people who think software shouldn't be copyrightable sued Microsoft and OpenAI for training on freely-available and modifiable code that was licensed *to ensure that it remained freely modifiable*. If the arguments of the AI people were correct, you could strip code of this "must remain Free" clause just by running it through a training algorithm and then asking the model to spit it back out. Most of the artists victimized by AI are already acting outside the law. The AI cultists might still be able to claim fair use, but copyright already unambiguously criminalizes fanart, fanfiction, and all the other stuff that actual artists write and draw all the damned time. Copyright does not protect the creative class from publishers, it transfers wealth from the creative poor to the creative rich. AI also transfers wealth: from the creative poor to the technological rich. Who are increasingly part of the same company as, or at least able to talk to and socialize with, the creatively rich. Strict copyright enforcement is not going to stop AI once people agree on a licensing framework for it. 44:08 Nightshade can't be illegal because it's a form of DRM, and every country in the WTO has agreed that malware that protects the interests of a copyright owner is legally protected. If Nightshade is illegal then so is the DRM that keeps you from installing pirated iPhone apps.

[@DonJuanDecepticon]

I just feel like we don’t even understand our own brain, why do we need to add this to the equation. It’s like we wanna go colonize mars cause earth sucks, but we don’t care about Earth. I may be stupid though.

[@tora0neko]

it's kinda like Pinocchio in that we build facsimiles of ourselves as an abstraction used to explore and understand inner space

[@tora0neko]

The only viable comedy I can think of AI generating based on that brady thing is dracula flow

[@CatalystOfFire]

But guys, without machine learning how will I be able to replay Resident Evil 2 with smeared, altered, terrible looking graphics that completely misinterpret the original graphic artist's intent?!

[@marocat4749]

It would be hillarous and horrifying and probably extremely strange what a robert fed AI would say, or come up with sponsorship transitions. Would it useful. probably not. But for lols. Seriously ther should be a still mostly human made guarantee on anything comertial. Other than sph-e soph-e is good Also can ai please used for not creative stuff please, not for stuff that humans are just objective better, especially creative stuff or that needs ahuman hand. Because ther are pretty useful even ethical uses to do that with, as aid for research even as aid, not replace.

[@jonathanscarletmusic]

It would be the Brady Bunch, surely

[@Red-Brick-Dream]

It's endlessly hilarious to me that Robert Evans - a grown man who presents himself as intelligent and self-aware - insists on calling himself an anarchist while advocating, however correctly, for government regulation.

[@worldofcardboard3203]

It is absolutely untrue that AI prompting is like writing the setup and letting AI write the punchline. For something like this it's certain that they let the AI writes a dozen to a hundred punchlines and then picked one they liked.

[@JakobVirgil]

When I hear something is out of lesswrong I assume it is dumb as fuck until shown otherwise.

[@MrGksarathy]

Just had this thought in light of the mention of the AI cult schism, but online forums/subcultures are basically the monasteries/temples of our day, and us users are basically cenobitic monks. We're all isolated at home, super pent up, and prone to get into elaborate arguments about dogma that get more and more detached from reality. The only difference is that the monks lived in the same place and had to do physical labor. Honestly, it explains why a lot of these monks' exegeses feel super deranged and like some proto-incel shit.

[@zandraxofnebulon]

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh my goddddddddd the rationalists....................... i read a lot of that shit in high school, thankfully i just tried to take what wisdom i could from it and not drink the kool aid

[@TheSquareheadgamer]

The Basilisk is just Pascals Wager but also guessing the "God's" 'commandments beacuase it doesn't exist yet. Atleast Christianity already came with an instruction document

[@myanimations3068]

28:40 The Brady Bunch.

[@Rockyzach88]

Yeah this whole idea of capitalizing on dead people by "recreating them" is fucked. I don't really even like it when it comes to previous IPs in history because it seems to reek of no creativity. That being said, acting like "recreating" a real person is the same as acting like it's the real person is another type of evil when combined with profit motives. People's personalities can be way more nuanced than that and they can change with the world as it changes itself. (they almost always certainly do)

[@artimp152]

Harrison Ford and Nick Cage with new youthful shots = cgi, as were dead ghost busters. Are we confusing improved human tools with intelligence ? controlled cgi + image search engines + smashups with NLE+AfterEffects/Photoshop/Nuke merge tools + human curation = digital fakes.

[@adam346]

I think you kind of glossed over a specific point... they also think that if they don't do it, other competing economies will happily pirate and do w/e they can to harvest all of the material necessary to make AI.. meaning that the US would be left behind. Though I think it is their strongest point, I don't think it is strong enough to just wipe out all of copywrite law just for them. The US military, whatever passes for homeland security ect.. probably already know this and are developing or have developed their own versions of it.

[@Saliferous]

Funny thing? china just ruled that an ML violated copyright law. So even CHINA is enforcing copyright in regards to AI.

[@rey82rey82]

Hail the Basilisk

[@Jakeurb8ty82]

Wonder what robert makes of otys crazy accurate Spock and the Yeoman recreations of TOS "The Cage" Star Trek pilot and the ve'ger memory wall cut from motion picture. Otoy makes Octaine one of the high end renderers 3d graphics companies use but it is a collab with the Roddenberry archive. I don't want the studio getting a hold of that spock with nimoy's perfect likeness. The man gave us enough of himself. Hearing what they did to Carlin is disgusting.

[@MythrilShotgun]

I'm pretty sure the Rationalist Harry Potter fanfiction mentioned is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which is as described, but I did enjoy reading, but to base a belief structure? That's wild.

[@FeatherVoid]

Ohh my fucking god the only reason I know about Yanowski/Less Wrong [that is how your auto generated captions spell it, please for the love of God pay someone for real subtitles] is because years ago he wrote a Harry Potter fanfiction that advocates for eugenics. "Everyone who isn't Like Me should just die for the sake of Progress" eugenics. Harry Potter and The Methods Of Rationality by LessWrong, Jesus fucking christ on a stick I haven't thought of that name in what feels like over a decade.

[@TheWinterscoming]

Harry Potter and the principles of rationality?

[@ViolentOrchid]

Saying "bad use case" is pretty good evidence that he doesn't know what a use case is.

[@LunaLasceria]

It's absurd and depressing that we live within a system where a new tool being developed to potentially offload or replace some of the work that humans do is cause for consternation rather than celebration.

[@AnonymousAnarchist2]

Money is a helava drug.

[@Gamingpandacat]

not to mention all the scams, the endless amounts of scams, my goodness there are so many scams

[@minhuang8848]

What's absurd is that these here tiny communities are actually simping for endless employment as if artists somehow required a higher baseline of agony and anguish - which, to be fair, might actually be the case.

[@Waitwhat469]

"Harry Potter and the methods of Rationality" is a masterpiece. You come for the parody, but you stay for the actual dilemmas that Harry Potter raised on game theory actually has to deal with because of his choices. I genuinely went "Oh wow, I forgot about that crucial detail too!" when reading it.

[@Rockyzach88]

A book is not the same thing as an idea. I agree that chatgpt should not be able to read you back a book, but the ideas/logic it is trained with are free for all. You only need 1 copy of it to train on and acting like you should restrict ideas that would otherwise be able to be spread easily is pretty insane. Imagine purposively stunting the spreading of ideas. In fact I imagine an author would want their ideas spread. I think you are very over generalizing how people interact with AI. Which is weird, because in the last episode you said you were okay with some of its uses. I get leftist media professionals need to say some loyalty phrases to make sure people keep watching them (goes for all media platforms), but it's a bit detached and reactionary in many cases. There are definitely reasons to be very vigilant about it, but when you then hit on the sort of close minded and uninformed parts of it, you hurt your protest of the real issues by pushing away people.

[@Wickpheme]

For every AI company someone should use their AI to recreate the CEO of their company and use it to make a silly pitch for the AI as a way to mock them.

[@Waitwhat469]

It's disingenuous to ignore open source AI in the discussion of interest groups in this conversation. It adds a wildly different option on the table for the future. Status quo: publishing companies own all cultural artifacts, Altman and compatriots vision of all cultural artifacts being made, curated and distributed from there control, and opensource models giving everyone in the world with the limits of hardware easier ability to access idea and information made in the world.

[@Waitwhat469]

Like there are tons of people working very hard to create what are essentially public goods, tools available to the public for free in perpetuity, and people working hard to make those more accessible (smaller models, distributed learning and inference, able to run on more hardware, etc, etc). There is, as always, another option in the tech space between Luddites, regulatory capture, and just giving all power to capitalists. There is a world in which we work to make it better for others and our selves, and enjoy in advancements more equitably.

[@anckrnews]

Training a model on publicly available works is not ‘stealing’. If you want to claim this, you are implying that viewing a piece of art is theft. You are implying that remembering that piece of art is a copyright violation. Both of those notions are absurd. Now, if you use a model to reproduce a creative work, then you might have violated copyright. But to be clear, the violation happened as a result of the output, not the input. We have an entire legal framework designed to discourage such violations and we should enforce them. I’m sick of the simplistic, reactionary mindset (uncritically parroted by everyone in this discussion) that says that models are stealing from artists by training on works they posted online. This is not a meaninglessly esoteric distinction that I’m making. In your zeal to stick it to those big bad capital owners, you’re going to assemble a culture that actively discourages creativity and will result if less art in the world. According to the worldview you are assuming, every single artist that has been moved by, or influenced by a previous creative work, has stolen from the creators of them. That’s absurd and counterproductive.

[@inimitableminimalist]

a sentient being inspired by the work of another sentient being is different than a robot literally memorizing it. it's sad you don't see that situation and instead built a ridiculous slippery slope because this is emotionally charged for you, I think. You are falling into the trap of reification. You see the word "train" and you think of an artist training by looking at works of great art to train their eye. That is not what happens when you train a neural network. it's doing a bunch of calculus and statistics to generate a model that produces plausible results. you know that right? are you good at calculus? do you think your brain does the chain rule to calculate the gradient of the loss function every time it sees a new image? it's easy to be a zealot if you don't know how the tech works and are just pattern matching on terms like training or intelligence. "a culture that actively discourages creativity" come on man. it doesn't discourage actual humans from doing actual art the way actual humans have always done it. what is stopping YOU from doing art the old fashioned way? you've made this slippery slope where soon looking at any art will be illegal, but a world without generative AI trained on copyrighted works is the same world you lived in before a few years ago. was that a culture that actively discouraged creativity?

[@inimitableminimalist]

had a think about it... you're mad because using these tools makes you feel creative, like a real artist. because it is pleasurable. therefore it must be good for society. if this thing that gives you joy is taken away, it must be bad for everybody. the arguments are absurd but now I get the emotional logic. just do art bro (or music, or whatever}. you don't have to be good at it to enjoy it. the fact that your statistical meme generator makes you feel good does not make the output good. for you, for society, or for whoever you made look at it hoping they'd praise your middle of the bell curve shit. actually study art, and then make some. it won't be like the meme generator outputs. it will definitely be worse at first! but even when you're still bad at it, parts of your own soul will come out. the AI doesn't know your soul. the AI can only expose parts of reflections of other peoples' souls. I reread your comment. LLMs end up memorizing large chunks of their inputs. this has been shown over and over. it's not like you or me memorizing a quote from a book because it resonated with us, it's random phrases memorized exactly. that's not how intelligence works. do creative people tend to memorize thousands of arbitrary sequences of 4 word phrases from every book it 'reads' (does calculus and statistics on the word vector representation)? there's no sentience in the magic box you love. it's just a chinese room.

[@faarsight]

I like ai generative art because it's great for non-commercial projects like modding a game where the quality of the art doesn't matter that much so long as it's better than nothing (/better than what you could have done yourself with minimal effort/time). Has nothing to do with hating artists or whatever.

[@WitchOracle]

Idk people make assets for free just use those

[@faarsight]

@@WitchOracle No. It's not even remotely comparable.

[@WitchOracle]

@@faarsight is it the quality (that you say you don't care about) not comparable, or is it that you'd rather steal?

[@faarsight]

@@WitchOracle If you call that stealing (I don't) then yes. I'd rather do that.

[@faarsight]

Actually it's more than that of course. But I'm not going to continue and argument that's held in such bad faith.

[@patludwig1971]

A I is here to help us. Scrotums are here to hurt us.

[@notmyrealname7634]

I think you guys are largely wrong, and also that it's very unlikely to matter.

[@anckrnews]

As with part 1 of this series, this discussion is a mess. You are conflating a number of different problematic things that have little to do with each other. For example, you state that AGI isn’t a thing yet, and that we don’t know if it will ever be a thing. You acknowledge that no one is claiming that it exists. You then proceed to provide demonstrations of AI generated crap that should be ridiculed for how uncreative it is. Ok, so what? What does one have to do with the other. What point are you making with this, and what does any of that have to do with being cultish? If awful people are probing to find the legal and cultural limits on fraud, and copyright violation, and identity theft, then we should punish them for committing fraud, copyright violations and identity theft. What does that have to do with ‘AI’? That stuff is already illegal, and if not, let’s enact better laws. Again, why is that an indictment of AI technology? Also, if the technology is so bad at all this stuff, then why should I be concerned about the implications? On the other hand, if you acknowledge that the technology might actually be good at these things, why are you spending time ridiculing the awful crap someone put out now? What purpose does this discussion have, other than jsut feel good nonsense? AI technology and the economic forces promoting it’s development are important topics, please approach them with the seriousness that their cultural implications demand.