S&P rejection getting you down? No problem! Just call your favourite clown in the White House and he'll help you force feed your IPO to the American public like foie gras. Doesn't look like the goose has much longer to go...
100% with you, it degenerates to proof by authority if someone popular / with clout just gets to declare "nuh uh".
I furthermore think it's ridiculous for humans to declare that our brains have a monopoly on certain patterns of electrical signals (if we reject supernaturalism).
> The result is a sentence-continuation machine that is likelier to emit sentences resembling those that a thoughtful, moral person could utter.
And we're 100% certain that humans aren't just as equally reduced to "stochastic parrots", if we're going to be infinitely reductive?
I don't believe that current AIs are conscious, but I think it's incredibly naive to take a strong stance on any future AI; it's much like the difference between atheism and agnosticism.
You are referring to an Onion article in the lead up the Iraq War This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism vs. No It Won’t[1] and you are painting Ted Chiang’s point in This Fine Article as Bob Sheffer’s counterpoint in the Onion’s piece.
However, I see a problem with that comparison. The debate here is on a philosophical matter in field in which Chiang is an extremely influential figure and his opinion are taken seriously. Second Chiang’s reasoning is extremely well argued, defining each term, explaining each nuance, citing other experts, etc. And finally, and most importantly, in The Fine Article, and unlike Bob Sheffer in the Onion Piece, Chiang entertains the possibility that he is wrong and his critics are right, explores the implications and reaches conclusions based on them:
> Being open to the possibility that LLMs are conscious is the same as being open to the possibility that Microsoft Word is conscious, or, more precisely, that multiple distinct consciousnesses are dormant in every Word document containing a conversational transcript, and that they are awakened every time the document is loaded.
I think you are wrong in painting Chiang’s argument as a belief in human exceptionalism. The thing to know about our brains (and the brains of other animals) is that they are not digital computers, and they are not even statistical inference machines. And as such they can be extremely optimized in doing the computations (or any state manipulations) required for the quality of life of the individual and the species as a whole (and their companion species).
That's fascinating; I'm half South African, speak Afrikaans and have never heard of it before. I can hardly imagine a more lame place to live, growing up in stuffy Pretoria in the 90s was bad enough.
My family emigrated to New Zealand because of the crime, corruption, constant blackouts etc. There are quite a few saffers there, especially in Brown's Bay (which is sometimes called Boereworsbaai).
I agree, it's shockingly good these days; we can argue about morality etc, fine, but burying one's head in the sand and claiming it's bad puts you at odds with reality, which isn't a good place to be.
It's pretty silly that so many people take as an axiom that the human brain basically has a monopoly on certain patterns of electrical signals, and have semi-religious beliefs that this will always be the case.
It's not that AI can't convince a novice that what comes out is passible.
It's that experts in a field generally agree that what comes out is insidiously hollow garbage.
This isn't a "semi-religious" belief. It's linear token soup and diffusion bakes running headfirst into actual expertise, second and third order effects, refined skill and taste, and so on.
If you actually want to see civilization advance, you cannot rely on machines that merely mash up existing intellectual output while pretending to have expertise.
We already had that in the form of art school avant-gardism. AI is just style transfer of that, with corporate sycophancy and valley hyperbole as a veneer.
But you really believe it will stay that way? What do you think models will be 10 years from now? (not only models, we must include processes and tools in it) - developers were thinking this until recently there is some sort of sudden switch where "shit, it's good enough" and then pass this in a 50x loop and suddenly it becomes "shit, it's actually great" which proves it's a matter of time imo before it's not hollow garbage but actually innovative and expert in its field.
I still think you are missing entirely the point about music or any art in general.
It doesn't matter how technically innovative, or how much expertise, a model has, while an AI is not a consciousness that can express itself it will be hollow. There's no way around that.
If some form of AI becomes conscious, and can express itself through whatever art form it conjures for that, why would it even use music? Music is human, it's tuned to how our brains work and perceive sounds, I'd be much more interested to discover what art forms another form of consciousness that we can commuicate with can come up on its own.
I can't fully agree with the hollow part, when AI resonate with me about real-life issues (I understand it's just a machine without thoughts) it's pretty expressive and spot-on, and genuinely useful. I don't really see why it couldn't be the same with music, it can already write completely unique pieces that are very entertaining and full of emotions (even tho they are "fake")...
The brain perceiving sounds a certain way in the end is just data, that can be mapped as well, an AI can make us laugh right because it understands speech really well (and will be a thousand time better someday), what's the actual difference with music?
Let me give you another example, there is some Meme about older folks getting bamboozled by AI images right (especially doomsday stuff) which proves that it does trigger them genuine emotions, what's the difference if that image does actually exist or not (or let say a human photographed it).
What if that does not matter to someone? I know my opinion can't be common, but I cannot stand live music. I dislike the sound quality, the differences from the recording, the crowds, the cost, and more.
I know not everyone enjoys concerts, but it’s fundamental to my listening experience. That aside, I have no interest in music or art of any kind generated by AI. Other folks might, but I’ll have nothing to do with it.
The difference is the indelitable reality behind it.
You are confusing the topography of it with the substance, what's the point of something that is without substance? Without meaning? It's just fake, whenever you point to someone that an image that brought them joy is fake, generated by AI, it immediately changes the feeling they had. It doesn't bring the same awe anymore, awe is reserved to what is real. It might bring awe in the sense of "woah, a computer can do that" but that's a different feeling than being in awe of the story the image created.
How can it be full of emotion if it's created by something without emotion? It's just a mimicry of emotion, I really cannot understand how you cannot feel that knowing it's not created by another being; being real is the whole point, an emotion triggered by something not real, not experienced, transformed, and communicated by someone else is inevitably hollow.
Like: how can AI know what is to feel in love? Or to feel the loss of a loved one? Or to feel despair about something? Or to feel depressed? Or to feel extreme joy? Why would you listen to a song telling you a story to evoke an emotion on something that simply does not exist? There is no experience being transmitted, it's purely a hollow amalgamated mimicry of the experiences that were ingested but the output has absolutely no emotion, just a synthetic mimesis of it.
You are enjoying the mimicry, it's entertaining, but I really would like for you to ask yourself deeper questions about this rather than be impressed by the surface of it.
> The brain perceiving sounds a certain way in the end is just data, that can be mapped as well
I completely understand your point of view, but I can't genuinely agree with:
> How can it be full of emotion if it's created by something without emotion?
A nice crystal, a nice rock (something devoid of emotion or feeling) is used as art, it's also triggering emotions in individuals, this thing doesn't have a consciousness, nor understand anything, but still, it's able to change humans brain chemistry. AI that acts as a therapist, let say saying the EXACT same thing as a real therapist would, let even bring it further where the therapist is on vidcall to have a proper representation, and let say now it's 1:1 AI generated as in zero flaws (exact same, you'd think it's a human with exact same speech as that therapist), why would the experience not be transmitted? Ton of people say things that they don't really mean as well right, and those thoughts are transmitted successfully, felt or not.
AI can incur pain, emotion, distress, happiness and so-on. I genuinely try to think about what's behind, but what I feel is that in the end, humans aren't so magical, it's like watching a beautiful woman being all "fake" with heavy make-up, most humans can still appreciate it, despite knowing it's all BS. People lie as well, this is very deceptive, let say someone is saying he is so happy but in reality, he just isn't, you just felt something for him that were just false (a mimick), and this is kinda our normal.
What if you never knew, let say you are so fond of an artist/person but in the end, you discover it's 100% AI without human supervision, then what, those were real emotions you felt, not entertainment, you RELATED with that "person", you felt his pain.
And one more thing, why couldn't I teach an AI to transmit my own knowledge, speak to it for decades, write to it for decades, then just mimick everything, mimicking the "truth" about my innerself, why would that not be valid? Isn't exactly what the bible is doing (I'm not religious), people seem to find it valid.
reply