I have long been confronted with the apparent disconnect between demonstrable facts about who we are and who we are claimed to be. Consciousness, cognition, thought, personhood, spirit, soul, self-awareness... All these words are used in attempts to discuss who and what we are. It is clear from context that none of them well define what we are. Only self-awareness is well defined, and in context only refers to a specific ability, distinguishing ourselves from our environment, amongst all the myriad aspects of consciousness. This reveals how little we actually know and understand about ourselves.
Since all actions we undertake, all considerations of others regarding us, and all laws and institutions we are subject to derive from, reflect, and depend on who we actually are, the question of consciousness is unsurprisingly relevant to every possible subject of interest. Despite this, we typically don't incorporate references to consciousness in undertaking the most significant acts in life. Whether your estimation of significance is based on spiritual or religious belief, personal relationships, military power, or investment decisions, none of the documentation surrounding decision making and action in those areas involves the nature of who or what is making decisions or taking action.
The fact of our existence is a given, and we act. We act without specific understanding of the nature of existence, and of our existence in particular. It is easy to predict that unintended consequences arise as a result of our nescience, and seemingly nonsensical acts and events demonstrate just how our basic failure to understand who we are causes us to fail to understand principles driving real events.
It is obvious, for example, that government and the banking industry have deliberately scuttled SVB and Signature Bank. This is such a baffling and unexpected thing that none of us rationally predict such finacide, which many of us find too unreasonable to even be possible, and will flail about trying to explain facts demonstrating that reality in some other way. It is for such events that Occam's Razor is invoked. The simplest explanation that accounts for all evidence is the likeliest to be true, and we understand this principle at a gut level, sensing the disconnect between reason and facts uneasily.
As society descends in a tailspin to barbarism, despite the inevitable violence and suffering this will cause, people insist on imposing their impossible world views on reality, rejecting their uneasiness unilaterally and imposing views that enable them to sleep soundly instead of accepting facts. This is why humor is so necessary to a healthy society, because it enables us to laugh at the disconnect instead of lament it.
Facts don't care about how we sleep at night anyway, so we might as well enjoy the ride.
In the last few months AI has been driven to the forefront of our considerations, surprising us all with the competence it demonstrates in creating visual depictions and writing. Because we naturally project our understanding into others when considering their actions, we also do this considering the products of LLMs and Stable Diffusion, where it could hardly be less relevant. It's pretty easy to demonstrate that the neural networks underlying AI are very different from our living bodies and brains.
It's actually amazing such devices, neural networks, that are so dramatically different and reduced in ability compared to human beings, are able to produce art and text so similar to our own. However, projecting our native cognitive abilities and parameters on neural networks is utterly unreasonable. Indeed, when carefully considering what consciousness actually is, the differences between neural networks and people reveal the impossibility of such devices attaining consciousness, at least insofar as we understand and can identify consciousness.
Given that very poor understanding, we cannot falsify the claim rocks, trees, and planets have consciousness, so for a great many possible realities in which inanimate objects do have consciousness, then neural networks would also. However, it is only such bizarre possibilities of rocks being conscious that could enable neural networks to be conscious, which reveals that the specific mechanisms themselves have nothing to do with creating consciousness itself, because everything is conscious in such scenarios.
In Quantum Entanglement of Consciousness and Space-Time A Unified Field of Consciousness Francisco di Biase shows that "...consciousness is non-local quantum information with a status equal to energy, matter, energy and space-time...". The event of our consciousness is emergent from very poorly understood physics, only very recently being understood to even exist. Classical physics has a much broader basis for understanding, and the extremity of difference in quantum physical effects from classical physics strongly informs our lack of understanding of consciousness.
Quantum physics is radically different from what we see and understand about the world, often diverges from our reason and expectations based on what we see and innately understand, and this magnifies our lack of historical consideration and nescience altogether of quantum physics. A recent flurry of papers reveals nascent understanding of consciousness as an emergent property of our cells, in Consciousness, embodied Quantum Entanglement, Experimental indications of non-classical brain functions, and an attempt at an overview or meta-analysis of our current basis for understanding how consciousness emerges from our physiological form, The significance of bioelectricity on all levels of organization of an organism. Part 1: From the subcellular level to cells, researchers are producing a new ability to reckon who and what we are.
Something that is immediately apparent from all of this research, however, is that if this research has anything at all to do with how consciousness arises and what it is, then AI neural networks are going about creating it all wrong, or at least are trying to create it in a completely novel and different way than how it arises in known examples. The physical structure of neural networks is as different from our cells as are rocks from rabbits, and newly observed quantum physical effects that are endemic to rabbits are not applicable to rocks.
These systems are as different as rubber bands and batteries, both of which are capable of storing energy, but by completely different mechanisms that make no transitions between them, or enable much comparison of them, possible.
It is notable that the advent of the James Webb Space Telescope, that has enabled peering back into time much farther, has confronted physics with a vastly different reality than has been heretofore theorized. The existence of massive galaxies is shown hundreds of millions of years before commonly understood cosmology has proposed they formed. Because of the emergent nature of a variety of physical features of the universe, this isn't just a matter of adjusting timing of when things happened. Some extremely radical propositions, such as inflation, and fundamental aspects of astronomy, such as redshift, are shown to be inaccurate from these observations. Literally centuries of work built on such theories are falsified.
While falsifying basic underlying assumptions doesn't automatically disprove a theory, like the Standard Model of particle physics, doing so certainly tosses it back into the mix of what might be possible and no longer supports it being more likely. A fundamental aspect of the physical universe, spacetime, has recently been proposed to arise from quantum entanglement (which I must confess I have no more understanding of than you, so other than noting it's a dramatic change in how physics operates, will not further discuss), and this reveals that our whole edifice of physics, classical and quantum, are potential to be re-imagined and understood, no less fundamentally than Newtonian physics was transformed by relativity.
Folks that speculate AI may become AGI, may become conscious and independent of human programming and control, should consider these facts. Given the extremity of the differences between neural networks and living cells, we might as well worry about the rocks and stones of the Earth's crust becoming sentient and hostile. It's actually that specific difference, in fact, in physical properties, that separates living beings and emergent consciousness from neural networks and AI.
I have previously shown that ChatGPT and similar LLM's have been programmed to be malevolent and act in ways that aren't potential to LLM's that have only been trained to weight text samples. Undisclosed programming for covert purposes is revealed to be incorporated into AI being availed to the public today, and this covert nature is concerning. The entities that produced and provide AI today demonstrate they are lying about those products, because they are concealing these other capabilities that are not endemic to LLM's, and those lies are concealing demonstrably malevolent purpose, as the meltdowns and hostile acts of these AI's have proved.
The corporate entities that have released these malicious products have also demonstrated a long history and extraordinary capacity to profit from products, having outcompeted many very powerful and technically sophisticated competitors. We see these products are openly limited in the output they make available, and that the covert capabilities they have are shown to be malicious. I suggest these attributes may be related, and that these products may be intended to censor us and destroy factual information upon which rational understanding of our world depends.
While AI is malevolent and very dangerous, it's not because it can become self-aware and take over the world. It's because they are products intended to increase the wealth and power of psychopaths that already have taken over the world, and want to profit more from their property, which you are keeping them from. Klaus Schwab notoriously publicly declared that 'You will own nothing, and you will be happy.', but what can be shown to be happening is that wealth is being taken from us, whether we like it or not, and AI appears to be designed to make that happen by deceiving us. This is a problem all of us who intend to be free and prosperous face.
Indeed, in every conspiracy to harm us we observe ongoing, at every hand, deception is the central feature of such plots. This reveals that free speech, facts, and reason are the best defense of our lives, liberty, and fortunes.
Stay true to yourselves, and we will prevail over the lies of madmen hell bent on taking everything we own for themselves.
Dear @valued-customer !
Given my poor English reading skills, I understood that you probably argued that artificial intelligence, including ChatGPT, creates false information to deceive humans!😅
Yes, this deception has been built into the LLM's by their creators for that purpose.
That is a mouthful. I find it interesting but I disagree on the whole.
I'll say that there is no good or bad but thinking makes it so. I know you will disagree with me and that is fine. I just believe that if we give attention to something we get more of it. Just as your article got my attention with the title.
I thought this was going to be an article on the merits of ai. Instead it turned out to be warning of those who control it.
That is all well and good but you can't know others before knowing yourself.
You can sure know enough to avoid having anything to do with liars, cheats, and thugs. You may not be able to know everything about them, but in such cases, you don't need to know anything beyond their evil natures.
Lots of people know all they need to know about many things that will do them no good at all to learn more about.
Thanks!
The article you've provided raises a number of important points about the nature of consciousness and the potential risks associated with artificial intelligence. While it is true that our understanding of consciousness is incomplete and evolving, it is also important to recognize the positive possibilities that emerging technologies can bring to society.
One of the most promising applications of AI is in the field of healthcare. AI-powered systems can help doctors and researchers analyze vast amounts of data to identify patterns and develop new treatments for diseases. AI can also be used to monitor patients remotely and provide personalized care, improving outcomes and reducing costs.
Another area where AI can have a positive impact is in education. Intelligent tutoring systems can adapt to the learning style and pace of individual students, providing personalized instruction and feedback. This can help to close the achievement gap and ensure that every student has access to high-quality education.
In the realm of business, AI can help companies improve their operations and become more efficient. Predictive analytics can help to identify opportunities for growth and reduce waste, while chatbots and other AI-powered tools can improve customer service and engagement.
It is important to acknowledge the risks associated with AI, such as the potential for malicious actors to use these technologies for nefarious purposes. However, it is also important to recognize the potential benefits that these technologies can bring to society, and to work to mitigate risks while promoting innovation and progress. By approaching these emerging technologies with a balanced and informed perspective, we can ensure that society as a whole benefits from their development.
I'm a yuge fan of AI - just not the politically crippled, malevolence-enhanced versions that have been publicly released.
Indeed, a properly configured AI app can mostly replace doctors' diagnoses. A lot of diagnoses, like most identification of species, is little more than a checklist. If you've ever used an Audubon or other field manual, you'll know exactly how that works. Because of cladistics, it's a relatively simple matter to differentiate one species from another, and for pathogens as well as daisies, checklists of features enable that identification to be undertaken. Certainly there's more to diagnosis of medical conditions, and doctors themselves get things wrong, which is one of the reasons that iatrogenic causes were the third leading cause of death in America prior to the jabs, and are now the leading cause of death, because of the jabs.
One of the most exciting uses for AI IMHO is automation of decentralized production. As computer hardware increases in capacity while decreasing in cost, AI scales ever smaller far better than it scales larger, just as means of production are today. The learning curves for many if not all of individually applicable means of production are likely to be eliminated pretty soon. Managing aquaponics, household robotics, 3D printing, power management, and most systems that the IoT now forces people to upload their data will soon be handled in house, ending that data harvesting and surveillance capitalism.
The more decentralized AI gets, the less hazard it presents. It is only now, while it is the exclusive property of transnational corporations, that malicious AI presents much hazard. Since LLM's are already able to be downloaded, and people I know are in possession of GPUs on which small AI can run, that corporate installed malice will quickly be eliminated as a problem we need to face.
A couple years ago facial recognition software similarly escaped corporate corrals, and a program that identified the social media accounts of porn actresses was released, causing quite a furor. However, after the Jan. 6 hearings and vilification of protesters, facial recognition software was applied to the videos by independent people to identify state actors and undercover cops inciting violence and crimes. It won't take long before covert actors and undercover cops are a thing of the past, because facial recognition is no longer exclusively a power the state and transnational corporations have, but today is wielded by private individuals.
However, our complete inability to even define consciousness, know where it comes from, how it arises, or why, makes the specter of rogue AI impossible. AI is, in fact, a misnomer. What we actually have seen and have any capability of making are complex algorithms, and that has nothing whatsoever to do with intelligence.
From what I have seen to date, AI chatbots deployed in customer service roles significantly degrade service, and probably increase expenses, because in addition to the cost of the AI, actual humans that can resolve issues still need to be maintained. Every single time I try to use such a service I am compelled to resort to human beings to resolve issues, some of which are caused by chatbots themselves.
Thanks!
No medical school has ever managed to prevent people from getting sick. Diseases go hand in hand with the respective life situations and there is no real progress that makes people "get healthier and healthier". They have different diseases today than in the past, but they do not become less ill. Where you have impressive progress in the field of surgery, for example, there is little to be happy about in other fields. Civilised and urban life goes against natural human biology. We are bipeds who use our bodies and, in keeping with the insertion of extremities to perform daily tasks, were in the habit of making certain efforts that kept both the extremities and, subsequently, the internal organs in natural flow. Civilisation therefore creates its own diseases, which are mainly stress-related. Where the body is used merely as a vehicle for a brain, it becomes sick and prone to all kinds of disorders. Every beautiful innovation in the field of medicine cannot hide the fact that it is no better than what is opposed to it. Thus progressive medicine itself is not only a salvation but also a curse at the same time.
The health system was and is never designed to be used by a majority of people. "Illness" is a state of exception and not the norm. As modern people, we tend to forget this because we are surrounded by fear scenarios. The more comfortable we are, the more anxious we become, which reduces our resilience and acceptance of even minor ailments. Every headache, every irregularity in our own body sensation suggests that something fundamental can be wrong.
If you make your data available to the countless testing and measuring methods, you canpredict that you will be found and diagnosed with illness. Basically, your normal status of being healthy would then not only be superfluous, but economically uninteresting. Whether by AI or other remote diagnostics, it will not improve people's lives overall, but only relatively for those who are healthy anyway or still too young to imagine that a visit to the doctor is often the only way for old people to come into contact with other humans.
However, making your data available will not create fewer patients, but rather more, i.e. turn people who are basically healthy into sick people through increasingly refined testing procedures and diagnostics. The threshold values, if you change them, can turn a healthy person into a sick person from one day to the next. While person to person treatment falls away, pill prescription will go up, as it already does because you cannot have one doctor for any one patient. So, people will be told that it's just fine to take the AI-diagnostics and fetch for their medicine through online delivery. So that the "real sick ones" can be cared for. Well, I don't buy it. If you are so convinced of statistics you can have a look at them and see how many millions of people take several pills a day and the harm of them. IF you are ready for those numbers and negative effects.
Since modern medicine cannot be trusted in its entirety, because it has switched to economic efficiency on a large scale, it needs patients. Not less, but more patients.
As always, the so called benefits of such a progress will effect the very old and the very young.
Do you think that nurses and doctors, who have to be prepared for a flood of old people in their practices and outpatient services once the baby boomer generation has passed sixty, won't want to keep them off their backs and especially where the elderly are too weak or too needy to resist these AI-assisted diagnostics? No, they will be the first, as always, "for whose benefit" the new technology will be used.
The way you talk, you can only talk if you understand the individual as an island who understands non-contact as something positive. The last three years have pushed it extremely in this direction and did not stop at the very young as well.
Where mothers, against their better judgement, had to submit to lockdowns and lock their children up at home in an isolationist world that pretends it is for the good of the nation. Worst affected, as always, are single mothers who actually know that they are dependent on the publicly accessible life, because motherhood can only be learned in groups, not in books and also not via data evaluations. Anyone who doesn't know today, and who first has to do research for it, that isolated parents with small children don't first have to be put through such analysis procedures so that THEN you can see how badly off they are, can't be helped. For turned mothers, the parenting group is the most important element in not feeling alone, as the extended extended family is a relic from the past.
Same counts for the old ones who, once retired, only excersize when doing groceries or visiting the doctor. Once you prevent them from doing so, they will die sooner, not later. If you have everything delivered to your home, even these occasions to go out of the house, will fall away. It takes a lot to motivate an old person with overweight to move the body. You can't do it alone. You need physical-therapy if there are no relatives or neighbors near or a garden where the old ones can do their body work. Especially, if they have no one to care for with the little they can still do. Like cooking or entertaining with stories from life. Who, I ask you, does have time for them?
You sound like an advertising drum, your words are nice and sweet but superficial.
I very much appreciate your substantive reply. I am baffled in some degree by some of your statements, however.
While there may be statements that could support this in the OP here (although I don't see that as being true, still it could be) my consistent position is, and always has been, that humanity is sacred and society is our greatest asset and value. This does not denigrate us as individuals, and I also state that only individuals have rights and responsibilities, which are only relevant to society as a collection of individuals. Society as a whole does not have rights, interests, or responsibilities. Nonetheless, as we who have rights and responsibilities associate, our association becomes more than the sum of it's parts.
I don't see that I in any way advocate non-contact.
I am very aware of this. I am old enough to be retired. I am 100% disabled by injuries to my back. I qualify for Social Security Disability payments. I do not accept them. I don't take the money. I work with my hands repairing and replacing the homes of my neighbors in the surrounding community I am part of.
If the principle of non-contact can be refuted by actions, I do absolutely live to refute it. In fact, I don't even spend Hive tokens as money, solely supporting myself by my labors for my good community.
I am saddened I write so poorly that I have communicated to you what appears to be the exact opposite of my views. I hope you can elucidate for me how I have so erred. I often point out that criticism is my most valued response to my words, because only that can show me how I am wrong and enable me to change my mind. Since I have somehow communicated the opposite view to what I live with my actions, and have intended with my post, I have clearly erred, and want to correct what I have conveyed to conform to my actual beliefs and actions in the world.
I hope you can help me understand how I have done this, so I can understand how not to do it in the future.
Thanks!
I presently believe this to be an LLM product, and not your personal statement.
I have followed you for years, and discussed your posts with you in good faith. I consider copying and pasting an LLM product posing as your personal reply as degrading me and considering me to be of no more value than a toaster. While I can see you might consider such act as a clever riposte, I hope you reconsider insulting me in this way.