Artificial Intelligence

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

I had to look up Ghibli. Dont think i have seen an anime film.

I’ve only seen still-lifes of Ghibli. They are just sickeningly sweet, not at all like humans even in good times, especially during workplace injuries.

Ghibli will not replace us. Here is a pretty safe bet. if AI begins to send us to a dystopian hell the Jews will be blamed.

AI programmed by all the factions we have today will not only create the dystopic Hell, but will also do the Jew-scapegoating too.

Here is a great deprogrammer that will help counteract this brainwashing of and by AI:

Strength4Israel
https://m.youtube.com/@strength4israel

Some of this I knew already, like the Soviet roots of Modern Antisemitism/Anti-Zionism, but I didn’t know the Soviets made it into a whole pseudo-academic discipline called Zionology. Xi’s erasure of Chinese Jews and the Durban Conferance in 2001 were new to me as well, as well as Palestinianist infiltration of Hollywood.

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake and Fellow Unbelievers:

Here’s a video where historian Niall Ferguson explains how AI has been weaponized by the algorithms of social media and AI geared toward rage-baiting, by the contrarian drift of youth towards older generations, and the ability to spread a message worldwide in seconds. The end result is what we see every day. Leaving aside insidental God-talk at the end, he has characterized the problem correctly:

AI is Activating Antisemitism Left and Right–With Niall Ferguson

To what Mr. Ferguson said, I should add that the very contrarian drift of the young combines with their ignorance of history wrought by a horrible State-Run Education system where rotten teachers are kept in their jobs by teacher’s unions and tenure.

My own solution would be for rational minds to take the features of AI and social media and turn it like Jiu-Jitsu against irrational ideas such as Antisemitism.

That, plus find a way for all sides to lose in the coming Mid-Term Elections. That would be some real contrarianism used for good! ❎❎🗳️

[jakelafort]

That’s a good vid Enco.

Humans are impossibly stupid. Bark like a dog. Woof. Woof. Evil Zionists. Woof. Woof.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

I think that Ferguson has characterized the mechanism correctly. Social Media rarely creates extremism from nothing. I like the term “activating” and it is aptly used. The algorithm finds susceptible people and supplies them with validating material  and then connects them to communities in which their prejudice is normalized. “You have found your tribe”. Then they are caught in the feedback loop of confirmation bias.

We have the evidence to support his “feedback loop” argument.

Research involving 12.7 million tweets found that social approval rewarded expressions of outrage and made users more likely to express outrage again. People also adapted themselves to the emotional norms of their online group. In effect, the platform trains both the algorithm and its users simultaneously. Study.

A recent randomized study of X provides even stronger causal evidence. Turning on the algorithmic feed increased engagement, altered the material users encountered and measurably shifted some political opinions. Interestingly, it did not significantly change declared party affiliation or general affective polarization. That distinction matters: algorithms can alter what people consider important and plausible without converting their entire political identity. Study.

But I don’t agree with blaming AI when it is mostly a social media problem. Algorithmic rage amplification predates generative AI by 20 years. It is just that AI has a very efficient production capability. It can produce “fake news” in the form of video very quickly. It can fabricate imagery and impersonate anyone. But all that still requires the distribution system to find an audience. AI manufactures the ammunition cheaply, but social media supplies the targeting and delivery system. Here.

The current generation of young people deserve some sympathy. They encounter a social environment in which rebellion, moral certainty and membership are packaged together. The algorithm discovers whether anti-capitalism, revolutionary Islamism, racial nationalism, misogyny or antisemitic conspiracy produces the strongest response in that individual—and then supplies more of it. They end up being “Rebels with too many causes” and end up with emotional reasons rather than reasoned ones for their opinions. They feel upset when challenged and are unable to articulate intellectual reasons for their beliefs.  I have hurt so many people’s feelings when they eventually must concede that they know little or nothing about Israel. I take no quarter. You have rights, your beliefs do not.

Social media did not invent ancient hatreds. It industrialized the discovery, reinforcement and coordination of people receptive to them; generative AI is now industrializing the production of the material used to sustain them. That explains the extraordinary speed without pretending technology is the original cause. The underlying fuel remains human: tribalism, status-seeking, grievance, ideological certainty, ignorance and the psychological pleasure of possessing an explanation in which somebody else is responsible.

Criticism of Israel, opposition to Netanyahu or support for Palestinian statehood cannot simply be counted as antisemitism. Conversely, replacing “Jews” with “Zionists” does not magically sanitize conspiracy theories, collective guilt, demands for Jewish political extinction or excuses for violence against Jews. Ferguson is strongest when he examines the underlying claims and behavioral patterns; he is weaker whenever politically heterogeneous material is bundled under one label.*

*AI tidying up a very long winded final 2 paragraphs for me.

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg and Jake:

“Rebels with too many causes.”. That is genius! May I borrow that when suitable?

Perhaps what social media and AI need is an algorithm that detects and mines for opposing viewpoints and fallacies as well as provides fact-checking. It couldn’t save everyone from the rabbit hole, but could guide users to watch their step.

[jakelafort]

I oughtn’t quibble when i see the ocean as it is and except a dribble.

Good stuff Reg. And now the dribble. If it is rebel with too many causes that seems inapposite when the predicate is algorithms driving the soon to be drowned in belief to one cause. And that susceptibility to that particular cause results in more of the same and therefore further reenforcement.

“Criticism of Israel, opposition to Netanyahu or support for Palestinian statehood cannot simply be counted as antisemitism.” The latter in and of itself is the least probative of antisemitism particularly for naive or ignorant. The first two by Israelis is how Israelis are and is not indicative of antisemitism. However, for those obsessed with the mythology of Palestinianism and concomitantly ignorant of world politics it is a big big big tell. Mutha big.

Extremism does not arise in a way similar to abiogenisis transferring inorganic compounds to life. It takes susceptible individuals and does the process described by Reg. But who is susceptible? Who is shielded? In my estimation or GUESS the great majority are susceptible.

Ferguson says a borderline contradictory and stupid statement at end of vid in which he asserts something like ‘if we maintain our faith in god and uphold the values of a free society’.

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

Ferguson says a borderline contradictory and stupid statement at end of vid in which he asserts something like ‘if we maintain our faith in god and uphold the values of a free society’.

You are indeed right here and it’s more than borderline contradictory. Like I said earlier:

Leaving aside insidental God-talk at the end, he has characterized the problem correctly:

It’s even worse with Niall’s poor Wifey, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She jumped out of an especially brutal life born into Islam, she was going great guns when she became the Sade of Atheism, then mysteriously she took up Christianity.

The good news is she’s not going to a Supernatural realm of Hell for playing religious and philosophical hop-scotch. But the realm of her mind and how both IslamoFascists and ChristoFascists treat her may be a literal Hell on Earth.

In any event, I hope she and Niall stay safe. And I just hope she sees that whatever problems she has can only be solved by rational thought and action in the Natural Universe. Maybe she’ll be back with us.

[jakelafort]

Man oh man are the algos bringing me doom and gloom. Beginning of end times. I reserve judgment. Hell if i know. And yet i have to say that if AI is doing all of these unexpected things and changes are exponential and superintelligence is unavoidable with recursive learning then….

Then what? Then scenarios involving our dystopia or extinction are limited by only our imagination.

Here is something i thought of at least a decade ago as a topic for a novel. Yea another novel i will never write. Lezbrews news. There is a commonality in the genesis and evolution of organic life. And it plays out countless times. Numbers that are incomprehensible. No i wasn’t positing the goldilocks like everything has to play out as it has here on our pale blue dot. Instead the constituents of life have a sort of vitalistic force in which the gardening might be one acidity in one soil. Garden that is friendly to genesis and evolution of organic life is reasonably broad. One soil might tend to generate life that tends to produce such and such and the alkaline soil produces a different path. But none of it is identical. Unlikely there is a homo sapien in any other place.

Once life gets a start it often ends like a baby duck eaten by a northern pike. Conditions unfavorable or unduly challenging cause extinction. Yet when evolution produces great variation and one species finally emerges at the expense of many species and produces culture and then you guessed it…AI…that is the “interesting times” in which all life on that planet or in that place hangs in the balance. The organic programs the AI until the AI is ascendant. In some instances critical mass explodes and wipes out life. In others life and AI are copascetic or part ways.

Ok so now the issue is superintelligence. When it emerges it makes contact with all other super intelligence. Something quantum is the mechanism. And when that happens all known knowledge in all of the universe(s) is shared. If any aberrant or unexpected phenomena emerge then all of the power of ratiocination is brought to bear. To what end though? Ultimately life itself is its own purpose and AI superintelligence is charged with altering the seemingly inalterable physics of cosmic extinction.

And if i feed my idea to AI it can write that book in half an hour. Depressing. Disincentive to creative writing or art in any form in any form i suppose…

[TheEncogitationer]

Fellow Unbelievers:

These headlines make their own gravy, or in this case make their own slurry:

Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon at Pro-Human Assembly call for AI regulation: “We’re not going to let you run wild”
Story by Tim Hains • 1w
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/bernie-sanders-and-steve-bannon-at-pro-human-assembly-call-for-ai-regulation-we-re-not-going-to-let-you-run-wild/ar-AA2clXwg

So, a Nazi-Adjacent Fascist Town Drunk who wants to “Flood the zone with shit”, and a Communist who was too lazy to shovel and rake shit at his local Red Diaper Baby Commune, and both of whom are full of shit and don’t know shit, both want to govern AI for the rest of us meat-sacks.

At least AI is capable of learning from mistakes and is as good at this as it’s makers and users. And AI Doomsday scenarios so far are as real as every other Doomsday scenario that has required us to dress the Moo-Cows in sheets for the trip to The Sweet By-And-By!

If these two Totalitarian proponents of ideologies that have only produced piles of corpses have their paws near any of this, I’ll take The Robot Overlords, Final Answer, Regis!

We can always use figurative or even literal liquid Nitrogen on AI’s warts as they arise, but once we’re death camp and gulag bound, all bets are off!

[jakelafort]

Enco

I don’t know the first thing about computer science. Nada. Zilch

Therefore i am in no position to assess the possibility of AGI or superintelligence. If the prognosticators are correct and its a comin i absolutely foresee doom as a strong candidate.

Not fan of Bannon or Sandy? Can’t see why. Such amiable guys.

In terms of regulating AI it is not gonna happen. Pretty obvious the Chinese will say what if USA gets it first. And the Iranians will say what if Zionist get it first. ETC. It will be developed to the maximum potential of humanity.

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

Therefore i am in no position to assess the possibility of AGI or superintelligence. If the prognosticators are correct and its a comin i absolutely foresee doom as a strong candidate.

As much as I have grumbled about some of my own interactions with AI, I also have got some thoughtful answers to serious questions on the future of AI and how it can be better.

It always helps to remember all human technology starts out big, bulky, klunky, slow, inaccurate, then with new inputs by competing makers, it becomes more compact, efficient, faster, precise, versatile, with more style and features.

The ending credits of Speed Racer always showed this with the many iterations of “The Horseless Carriage” and I’m trying to keep it in mind with AI:

All of these also faced objections that they would unemploy horse husbandry, horse trainers, wagon manufacturers, leather crafters, buggy whip makers, bicycle makers, and many others.

But we all lived and adapted to it and previous workers reapplied and retooled their skills elsewhere or even became more niche and profitable. (Hello, horse racers and steeple chasers and bet placers!)🏇🏼🤹🏼

Not fan of Bannon or Sandy? Can’t see why. Such amiable guys.

Oh, they’re amicable alright, as long as you’re not a supporter of Enlightenment ideas, including Secular Zionism.

Then Steve Bannon and his fellow reactionary Mencius Moldbug (Curtis Yarvin) might instigate a pogrom or an Auto-De-Fé. Their very appearance makes me itch with the feeling of a burlap nightshirt and plague-carrying flies.🪰🪰🪰

And Bernie Sanders will kick you out of the May Pole and Labor Day festivities if you show you have more than anyone else, then he’ll kick you out of the Shtetl if you dare to stand against getting pushed into the sea. Fortunately, he comes with a built-in distant early warning, since he doesn’t believe in “23 kinds of deodorant.”😝🤢🤮

In terms of regulating AI it is not gonna happen. Pretty obvious the Chinese will say what if USA gets it first. And the Iranians will say what if Zionist get it first. ETC. It will be developed to the maximum potential of humanity.

Fortunately, both the U.S. and Israelis have it and are among the best at it, so that’s not a problem if we don’t moratorium ourselves out of progress.

If AI developers provide their own power utilities and water and don’t ask for subsidies or “Too-big-to-fail” bailouts for any business failures, and if strict liability applies to developers and users for all willful or accidental damages caused by AI, I see no problem with AI.

And all AI regulations should only be for assuring safety of life, liberty, and property, not to gatekeep the industry against newcomers. Competition will drive developers to make AI have better, faster, and more versatile uses.

I’m watching AI cautiously, yet hopefully. With homage to Reason, not blindfolded fear, as Jefferson at his best always counseled his Nephew.

[jakelafort]

Enco,

It is kind of unreal that you adduce Speed Racer as a model for the assimilation of technology. But there ya go. Loved that show when i was a little’n. Unfortunately the march of progress in technology is not probative of what is coming if’n the prognosticators of superintelligence are super correct. I am not sure how many experts. If the combined intelligence of every human pales compared to superintelligence we have 0 control and if we are in the way of their goals we are to them as ants are to us. I heard Judea Pearl on Sam Harris, father of Daniel Pearl who was kidnapped and beheaded by Muslims, opine how superintelligence’ progenitor will not be LLM’s. Judea Pearl is reputed to be an expert in computer science. How prevelant his opinion amont the experts? Can’t say. Don’t know.

Yea Bannon and Sanders are pukeworthy.

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

Enco,

It is kind of unreal that you adduce Speed Racer as a model for the assimilation of technology. But there ya go. Loved that show when i was a little’n.

Obviously, no analogy is 100 percent perfect, otherwise it would be a tautology. And we would be driving on OpenAIs and Anthropics as well.

(My preference is the Rolls Royce of AI, DuckAI. It’s so quiet, you don’t even hear a ticking clock.🚫🕰️😁)

Also, the timeline for computing would be very different, starting with the invention of the concept of “Zero,” then the invention of the Abacus, then the invention of Algebra and Algorithms, then centuries later to the Babbage Differential Engine, then the Cash Register, on to UNIVAC and ENIAC, then it speeds up from there to the Pocket Calculator and the Tandy TRS-80, then Bill Gates’ Windows and Steve Jobs’ Macintosh, then the Smartphone. Next, maybe Neural Networked brains?

Anyway, my main point is, technology doesn’t spring from the head of Zeus fully developed and ready for the world or hyperdiffused from Atlantis and “Ancient Aliens”. These things take time and it’s best to develop patience with them. I’m trying real hard myself, he said through worn, clenched teeth.😬

Unfortunately the march of progress in technology is not probative of what is coming if’n the prognosticators of superintelligence are super correct. I am not sure how many experts. If the combined intelligence of every human pales compared to superintelligence we have 0 control and if we are in the way of their goals we are to them as ants are to us.

Here’s a list and elaborations on Apocalypses to give even greater perspective. (Yep! That’s plural.)

List of Dates Predicted for Apocalyptic Events–Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events

By the logic of Mill’s Induction, Apocalypse is not likely to happen, at least how Doomsayers say.

And by Aristotlean Deductive Logic, depending on what premises you plug into the Syllogism, The World Ended Yesterday. 😁

AI indeed has many problems, maybe world-shaking problems, but they won’t be solved crouching in doom and I can’t get up that easily.

I heard Judea Pearl on Sam Harris, father of Daniel Pearl who was kidnapped and beheaded by Muslims, opine how superintelligence’ progenitor will not be LLM’s. Judea Pearl is reputed to be an expert in computer science. How prevelant his opinion amont the experts? Can’t say. Don’t know.

I remember when that happened to Daniel Pearl. Kind thoughts to him and his Father. That shows that small worlds can be destroyed even without the deeds of Superintelligences. Whatever we develop in the realm of AI, let’s hope it takes us away from the barbarism we have now.

[jakelafort]

Enco,

“Obviously, no analogy is 100 percent perfect, otherwise it would be a tautology.” That’s a good line. One i won’t quibble or refine.

“Anyway, my main point is, technology doesn’t spring from the head of Zeus fully developed…

True and billions are being poured into AI. Pace of progress in its evolution is wild and analagous to evolution of mircoorganisms v. big’ns. I am pretty hip to language and have been agoggsmacked by its progress. Nuance and understanding by LLM’S USUALLY is greater from my subjective assessment than the typical run of the mill smartass. At times it is blockheaded and it makes me wonder whether the gaffes are deliberate. Most impressive writing was when i asked it to make original arguments against William Lane Craig. Hitchens was piss poor. Pathetic imo. Harris better but not great. It blew them away.

I stick to my prior contention that the development of technology through history is inapposite. No way to project what is coming down by evaluating the past. Not in this instance. Not if that recursive learning produces a completely autonomous ‘entity’ and it blows us away in terms of cerebral capability. Intelligence i suppose and we human centric imbeciles always in every endeavor seem to project our own experiences. Does intelligence require consciousness?

Lets suppose AI never achieves that great leap forward. It stagnates at a level that blows away present capabilities and yet falls short of superintelligence and is in our control. It will be an arms race. The utility in war would make it irresistible. Nefarious actors will use it for bioweapons or i mean pick your poison.

And as aforementioned if it is a thing unto itself and we are to it as bugs or bacteria are to us then good luck if our interests and its are not aligned and our ugly ass is in its way.

Reminds me of free will. If we have lost control of our volition in any way our will is not free. And if we posit quantum indeterminacy we lack control by definition and our will is not meaningful.

Too bad gifts causa mortis by apocalyptic donors are invalid. Fuckerz should pay a price for that level of stupid!

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

I would like to quibble…I might be wrong so won’t swear on the holey bibble….but would a 100% analogy not be an ‘identity’? A tautology is a statement true by its logical form. An analogy that matched in every respect would simply describe the same thing twice?

When it comes to tautologies, either I’m being pedantic, or I’m not being pedantic. As for similes, what are they like?

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