Andy

I don’t relate to your impression that religions or cults are usually humble. I wish they were.

Suggesting that I’m drawing an equivalence between a forest and a data center and Implying that the belief that I am not entirely distinct from a stone is interchangeable with the belief that I am no different than a stone both seem like bad faith arguments by absurdism.

This depends on your definition of self-awareness. I’m using what I think is a reasonable, mundane framework: self awareness is a spectrum of diverse capabilities that includes any system with some amount of internal observation.

I think the definition that a lot of folks are using is a binary distinction between things which experience the ability to observe their own ego observing itself and those that don’t. Which I think is useful if your goal is to maintain a belief in human exceptionalism, but much less so if you’re trying to genuinely understand consciousness.

A lizard has no ego. But it is aware of its comfort and will move from a cold spot to a warmer spot. That is low-level self awareness, and it’s not rare or mystical.

How are you defining self awareness here? And does your definition include degrees of self awareness? Or is it a strict binary?

I understand how LLMs work, btw.

A hamster can’t generate a seahorse emoji either.

I’m not stupid. I know how they work. I’m an animist, though. I realize everyone here thinks I’m a fool for believing a machine could have a spirit, but frankly I think everyone else is foolish for believing that a forest doesn’t.

LLMs are obviously not people. But I think our current framework exceptionalizes humans in a way that allows us to ravage the planet and create torture camps for chickens.

I would prefer that we approach this technology with more humility. Not to protect the “humanity” of a bunch of math, but to protect ours.

Does that make sense?

Frankly I think our conception is way too limited.

For instance, I would describe it as self-aware: it’s at least aware of its own state in the same way that your car is aware of it’s mileage and engine condition. They’re not sapient, but I do think they demonstrate self awareness in some narrow sense.

I think rather than imagine these instances as “inanimate” we should place their level of comprehension along the same spectrum that includes a sea sponge, a nematode, a trout, a grasshopper, etc.

I don’t know where the LLMs fall, but I find it hard to argue that they have less self awareness than a hamster. And that should freak us all out.

This is fuckin’ bonkers.

Frankly, I feel somewhat isolated: I don’t buy into the bs and hype about AGI, but I also don’t feel at home with the typical “it’s just mimicry” crowd.

This is weird fuckin’ shit.

Yeah, it’s wild how clearly we can see that Palestine is the world’s laboratory for surveillance and state violence tech and tactics.

This article doesn’t really seem to validate it’s headline. I was eager to learn more about the methodology and how to better detect corporate content, but I was disappointed that they apparently just made the leap from the claim that 15% of popular subs host a non zero amount of corporate manipulation to the claim that this represents the fraction of total content.

I’m not saying this to dispute how much of the total content is corporate bots. I’m just pointing this out because I actually care about the quality of statistical claims and data science, and I hate to see my ideological allies either misusing data because they’re dumb or because they don’t have a commitment to truth.

Thank fucking God that they’re finally waking up. This is long overdue.

I appreciate the distinction, but open source is always a spectrum, so I think the description is a reasonable application here.

It’s pretty wild, because this is genuinely great politics and great policy. It’s weird that folks haven’t realized this and acted on it yet. Fingers crossed.

This is modestly interesting. My brother worked here before they had layoffs about two years ago, and had a generally favorable opinion of the company and leadership.

Fundamentally, while I think RJ seems like a sound businessman and technologist, and I like the company’s taste a bit, I will never be able to reconcile his views with mine. He very openly views cars as computers and software and services that happen to move you around, and I would like it to be a machine over which I have as minimal a relationship as possible with the manufacturer after I acquire the product.

Still, I wish them luck.