Artificial Intelligence

[T4920]

Noticed a few conversations regarding AI in recent months, and figured it could use a dedicated thread.

I'll kick it off by sharing an image I recently re-discovered.

This was created by one of the early AI image generators (forget which one) purely based off a picture of my face.

I find it oddly disconcerting that it somehow managed to fill in the blanks, and almost perfectly replicate my fashion sense too...

[Matt]

How can we even be sure it was really ‘you” that started this thread?

[AdamJ]

[T4920]

@Matt

Don't worry, I'm as genuine as a well-worn pair of jean! You can trust it's me who kicked off this thread.

[T4920]

Don't listen to him, he's a fraud!

[WhiskeySandwich]

This post probably belongs in "this blew my mind" or "random rants", but....Yesterday, as a result of a recent interview with Ray Kurzweil, a couple buddies and I got up to our eyeballs in talk about Ai. As Ray would put it (at risk of spoiling the entirety of the interview): It's developing at an exponential rate. LOL
It reminded me, that ever since the movie with Haley Joel Osment, I thought "Artificial" Intelligence was a bit of a misnomer. Do we call it artificial because we created it? My kids aren't artificial..... nor is the music I make, or the bikes I build. We aren't creating intelligence, more like giving it to the technology. So maybe "technological intelligence" would be more accurate.

Kurzweil also predicts that Ai will provide cures for aging and even death, allowing us to live forever and it got me thinking philosophically. If Ai is omniscient and can make people live forever, but also discovers that there IS, in fact an afterlife, whatsabout the dilemma where you have people either living forever or offing themselves to go straight to the afterlife?

Anyway, he says the Ai singularity will be in 2029. So we'll probably get to find out. lol

[WhiskeySandwich]

@T4920 btw, your Marcus quote is one of my favorites. dont recall saying that to you before. I'm a bit of a stoicism nerd

[T4920]

@WhiskeySandwich I listened to that Rogan episode too. I've gotta say, he didn't seem as sharp as in previous interviews I've heard him in, and was unable to provide any credible evidence or sources for his 2029 hypothesis, other than repeating the term 'exponential growth' ad nauseam...

Still enjoyed the conversation though, I always tune in when these types of guests are on, but generally prefer someone like Lex Friedman hosting such technologically dense conversation than Rogan.

[WhiskeySandwich]

@T4920 It was a bit frustrating to listen to but I still got a lot from it. Although Rogan may not have the technical expertise he does often surprise me with his knowledge and ability to effectively verbalize his thoughts. You can tell he has done more than his fair share of research on anything he chooses to talk about. It did seem like he was grilling Ray a bit, but given his responses, I don't blame Joe for leaning on him a bit more as the conversation went on. Joe seems like the layman's interviewer, imo, in that he wants things to be explained in the simplest terms possible. There are few people in the public eye who have his ability to remain neutral, objective, and pragmatic about almost any given topic. When he's not though, I do catch myself yelling at the radio.

[sabergirl]

Oof. I hope y’all are finding other sources to help parse what is presented to you by Rogan and his guests.

As for AI, I don’t really have much experience with it so far, but I’d say we’re all just along for the ride at this point. The genie is out of the bottle, and doesn’t seem to have a master.

[WhiskeySandwich]

Not sure if you mean to discredit him, but of course there are other sources. having said that, I'm not a fanboy, Joe does talk a lot about political stuff, and i dont care who it is.....this is why i live under a rock. I can only stomach podcasts for maybe an hour or two per week and I sure as hell don't watch Big News. I frankly cant stand political stuff, especially as divided as 'sides' are these days. Not to turn this into a political rant. Back to Ai, of course there are sides when it comes to this as well, but I am sorta on the fence (like i am with many things) about whether its a good or bad thing.

[T4920]

@sabergirl of course. When I hear strong opinions on one side of a debate, I'll actively seek out contradictory viewpoints and try a come to my own conclusions. More often, than not, though, this leads to me sitting on the fence, as I'm very aware of my own intellectually limitations, and don't think it's right to have a fixed opinion you don't have a comprehensive understanding of.

As a result of hearing many negative arguements for the risks AI poses upon humanity, I discovered some amazing conversations with Dr Yann Lecun, who is a huge advocate for AGI (artificial general intelligence), recontexualised it as AMI (advanced machine intelligence), and speaking at length on the positive effects it could have on society. He also pointed out the 'ami' is French for 'friend', which I thought was cute

[WhiskeySandwich]

Maybe Ai will help us curate information and sources more effectively and objectively without bias. Because as it is now, we're all dumpster-diving through the garbage as our sources, looking for good information to make our decisions and base our perspectives on. The question will always remain about curated information though as to the intention or agenda behind it's methods. This would almost certainly be built into Ai. If you have a 'favorite source', you're naturally going to adopt their leanings, and this is how things (like US politics) become so divided. Therefore, I've learned to pretty much question everything. All sources are second-hand anyway unless you are the direct observer, so it's all just a big game of Telephone. In my line of work, there is really only one way to have ultimate confidence in information and even still, often the best we can do is take everything into consideration, and make choices based on the totality of the circumstances.

and @T4920 back to my first post, i do prefer the "AMI" moniker, i like that

[goosehd]

@WhiskeySandwich ...I miss that line of work

[popvulture]

@WhiskeySandwich Marcus is such a G. The relevancy of that guy’s writing blows my mind regularly.

[popvulture]

FWIW after doing a quick search, looks like there are at least a couple other recent podcasts with Kurzweil on these topics, for anybody like myself who can’t deal with Rogan. I’m super interested in hearing this guy’s ideas.

I work as a motion graphics designer (currently unemployed, yay - maybe they’ve already taken my job ), and a lot of people in advertising are pretty terrified of AI. I do think there are of course some jobs that are in danger in the field and elsewhere, but I’ve been subscribing to the mindset that it’ll be less of a job replacer and more of a job augmenter/assistant in the future. There are all kinds of things that stuff like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, etc already do to make my life a shitload easier.

I realize that’s just a tiny dab of a comment for something as enormous as AI, but my point is I think it’s got a ton of potential, and have been trying to see that as much as possible and learn more, vs my natural instinct, which was to get scared.

[Matt]

I’m with @sabergirl. Joe Rogan is a turd.

[seawolf]

@popvulture I'm in design school currently, and we talk about AI a lot. Just yesterday, I watched an architecture student give a presentation on AI being used as a tool to complete repetitive tasks, and allow the humans (never thought I'd write that sentence) focus on creativity.

It's fascinating stuff that for sure has a lot of risk, and despite wondering if it will kill us all, I think it will certainly enable us to do some amazing things before we're all enslaved or murdered by our computer overlords.

[WhiskeySandwich]

@popvulture I do think that all human jobs, as we know them, are 'in danger' of being taken by Ai. The best part is that we're training them lol. BUT, like you say, I think they'll probably be more of an assist, at least at first. Whatever we think, it probably doesn't matter, it's inevitable. We can make the best of it, or we can look at only the negative, like many people do about Rogan lol. The same can be, and is, said about every presenter/journalist/interviewer in every corner of the media. I think that they will do whatever they're going to do without a care about what we think. Regardless, if it comes to a brain attachment or nano-blood, it'd take some major convincing.

[WhiskeySandwich]

@seawolf i dont think that i'll so much murder us with malicious intent, as much as we will become extinct biologically, because we'll voluntarily transfer our consciousness into technological vessels. lol