I find very unique the way that you are thinking and I'm so pleased that I have found you.
I read your thought-provoking article and here is my opinion: Humans have always been and will always be imperfect.
We would always try to reach God but fail in this physical garment. We are made of him and we have a divine part but we have also a dark part. This dark part always triggers us to do something wrong. Even in a perfect society, we would try to escape. Priests secretly drink, smoke, or swear.
The wrong is always attractive and it can teach us important lessons too. I'm not praising darkness, vices are very destructive but one way or another we all go through them.
So let's not pretend they don't exist.
Best wisdom comes in fact from those hurtful experiences. You can meet amazingly humble people, they all have one thing in common: they have gone through something really bad and they have survived to tell their story to the world, how their courage and their self-forgiveness helped them come back to the straight path.
AI cannot make people wise, only those experiences from hell and extreme adversity can make people infinitely rich in consciousness to not repeat the same mistakes. Isn't that what real progress is?
I love the concept but I’m not convinced that an AI LLM could differentiate between my values and morality and someone else’s. We also know that people regularly make choices in conflict with their values, and other people don’t have the foundation to make moral choices. I’m not sure AI could help them. I did a lot of values clarification work with others in the 1970s and when I stopped it was because I wasn’t convinced people could get that much clarity. Could AI help. I’m not sure!
I hope it's okay to post this here. I wrote a piece called "Can Robots Help Us Write Better Poetry?" on the subject of how we can use AI to actually help us grow as artists and people, expanding our knowledge and connecting to an even wider community of thinkers and thoughts. I think AI is a tool, like any tool it can help us grow and become wiser, or it can help us become lazier, etc. It depends on how we use it. Here's my article. https://treshathepoetrysaloncom.substack.com/p/can-robots-help-us-write-better-poems
I absolutely love this. AI, like everything, is a tool that we can use to do good or to do harm. But I think it is something that we, the users, must consciously ask for. We need to tell the makers it is what we want and then refuse to use it to do harm... which is hard. It's like choosing to go to a drive through and order the salad instead of the burger and fries. But, if I understand this correctly, it's possible that AI could evolve to show us the salad first and not even offer us the burger and fries? How do we control it or ask for AI to give us only the healthy options?
You surprised me with this one! AI and moral graphs… pretty fascinating. I am a believer that there is a light side and a dark side to human endeavor. I hope the path of AI development embraces the light. AI need not have a personal self interest, so it comes down to the altruism of the programmer to make the choice. Lift humanity by promoting common values? Or manipulate for gain? Time will tell…
In your own small way, you're helping the Internet make us less stupid, as is everyone reading this piece and commenting on it. To that end, I don't think it's an either or, because while the thought experiment is a nice one, to your point in quoting a 15th century humanist, we're not going to get around the fact that vices are more attractive than virtue when they provide limbic solutions to complex problems.
Another interesting question would be: how do we sublimate our "vices" in such a way that we can still pursue them (for various reasons that also include the simple thrill of subversion) without contributing to a more vicious society? I'd like to think we're somewhat on our way. Even if most people buy "organic" because they've been successfully marketed it / virtue signalling is extremely effective in hyper-capitalist society (which is often also devoid of a collective spiritual sense of meaning), at least people now know what organic means. It's a slow process, indeed. But the Internet will forever make us stupid AND smart. Oh, tremble! 'Tis the Age of the Great Oscillation.
People aren’t inherently bad or good, virtuous or vicious. The society in which we live influences our behavior greatly. It’s not even about AI, it’s about having morals, ethics, values by which we as a society abide. The internet is a reflection of what we believe. If our beliefs change, the internet will change. Like you described in your article, the algorithm was based on peoples’ values not vice versa. What will it take for us to change our values?
I like the idea of a more curated experience that learns from our choices. And hopefully it will become smart enough to not pigeonhole us into the same choices over and over (I'm looking at you, Spotify!) Glad that thought is going into to this of course, and keen to follow progress. Thanks for writing about it, so interesting!
It would be interesting to see search results based on more contextual input. I definitely prefer the conversational aspect of ChatGPT instead of the predictive text searches.
I included the thoughts below in my post, but then do a 100 degree turn and end up porposing something similar, I think? ...
Let’s start from the assumption that we would not want our values to be imposed upon us from the outside. This is a risk we would run should we build AI out to curate our experiences on the Internet, but let’s set that aside for now. Now, imagine some value that you hold to be a value for yourself. Or even better, imagine someone that you know,and the things they seem to value. Now imagine that they act in a way that seems to go against their values. You would immediately go find a journalist so that they could write a piece about this completely anomalous situation, where a person went against their values. 😉 I’m joking, of course, I’m just meaning to say that we do tend to go against our values all the time we act in ways that are contradictory. We're complicated. We can be confused about what we value, and what we think that we value can certainly be wrong, and change over time. If we have AI reinforcing what we have told it or shown it that we value, even if we were wrong about what that is, it would be all that much harder to change course. With a technology that lacks transparency, it will be impossible to change, adjust, or otherwise control it. That pregnant woman because if she’s pregnant by definition, I don’t think she’s a girl, might think that she values some thing based on her religious beliefs but in that difficult moment, she might find the opportunity to realize that her religious beliefs are in fact not in her best personal interest, and therefore miss an opportunity for deep reflection, not only about her interests, but about the nature of her faith. (Originally written with speech-to-text, edited for clarity.)
This comment is a direct answer to your title not to your article which I haven't read it yet. ( I promise I will).
I thought we make AI wise with our constant notes and ideas. Let's not forget that AI was made by man to be served by man.
Some people are scared of it, fearing that it will cause nuclear war or steal people's best ideas and other kinds of baloney scenarios but I don't buy into this bullshit. I believe it's useful, especially for us writers it can help us unblock our minds at times. Yes, AI is artificial but so is the internet.
The internet was also an old concept that one day became reality and now for all is normal to use.
The internet, AI, and whatever comes in the future will never replace human connection and emotion.
I believe that as we come closer and closer together from all parts of the world, the less we will need these machines of communication.
I find very unique the way that you are thinking and I'm so pleased that I have found you.
I read your thought-provoking article and here is my opinion: Humans have always been and will always be imperfect.
We would always try to reach God but fail in this physical garment. We are made of him and we have a divine part but we have also a dark part. This dark part always triggers us to do something wrong. Even in a perfect society, we would try to escape. Priests secretly drink, smoke, or swear.
The wrong is always attractive and it can teach us important lessons too. I'm not praising darkness, vices are very destructive but one way or another we all go through them.
So let's not pretend they don't exist.
Best wisdom comes in fact from those hurtful experiences. You can meet amazingly humble people, they all have one thing in common: they have gone through something really bad and they have survived to tell their story to the world, how their courage and their self-forgiveness helped them come back to the straight path.
AI cannot make people wise, only those experiences from hell and extreme adversity can make people infinitely rich in consciousness to not repeat the same mistakes. Isn't that what real progress is?
I love the concept but I’m not convinced that an AI LLM could differentiate between my values and morality and someone else’s. We also know that people regularly make choices in conflict with their values, and other people don’t have the foundation to make moral choices. I’m not sure AI could help them. I did a lot of values clarification work with others in the 1970s and when I stopped it was because I wasn’t convinced people could get that much clarity. Could AI help. I’m not sure!
I hope it's okay to post this here. I wrote a piece called "Can Robots Help Us Write Better Poetry?" on the subject of how we can use AI to actually help us grow as artists and people, expanding our knowledge and connecting to an even wider community of thinkers and thoughts. I think AI is a tool, like any tool it can help us grow and become wiser, or it can help us become lazier, etc. It depends on how we use it. Here's my article. https://treshathepoetrysaloncom.substack.com/p/can-robots-help-us-write-better-poems
I absolutely love this. AI, like everything, is a tool that we can use to do good or to do harm. But I think it is something that we, the users, must consciously ask for. We need to tell the makers it is what we want and then refuse to use it to do harm... which is hard. It's like choosing to go to a drive through and order the salad instead of the burger and fries. But, if I understand this correctly, it's possible that AI could evolve to show us the salad first and not even offer us the burger and fries? How do we control it or ask for AI to give us only the healthy options?
You surprised me with this one! AI and moral graphs… pretty fascinating. I am a believer that there is a light side and a dark side to human endeavor. I hope the path of AI development embraces the light. AI need not have a personal self interest, so it comes down to the altruism of the programmer to make the choice. Lift humanity by promoting common values? Or manipulate for gain? Time will tell…
In your own small way, you're helping the Internet make us less stupid, as is everyone reading this piece and commenting on it. To that end, I don't think it's an either or, because while the thought experiment is a nice one, to your point in quoting a 15th century humanist, we're not going to get around the fact that vices are more attractive than virtue when they provide limbic solutions to complex problems.
Another interesting question would be: how do we sublimate our "vices" in such a way that we can still pursue them (for various reasons that also include the simple thrill of subversion) without contributing to a more vicious society? I'd like to think we're somewhat on our way. Even if most people buy "organic" because they've been successfully marketed it / virtue signalling is extremely effective in hyper-capitalist society (which is often also devoid of a collective spiritual sense of meaning), at least people now know what organic means. It's a slow process, indeed. But the Internet will forever make us stupid AND smart. Oh, tremble! 'Tis the Age of the Great Oscillation.
People aren’t inherently bad or good, virtuous or vicious. The society in which we live influences our behavior greatly. It’s not even about AI, it’s about having morals, ethics, values by which we as a society abide. The internet is a reflection of what we believe. If our beliefs change, the internet will change. Like you described in your article, the algorithm was based on peoples’ values not vice versa. What will it take for us to change our values?
I like the idea of a more curated experience that learns from our choices. And hopefully it will become smart enough to not pigeonhole us into the same choices over and over (I'm looking at you, Spotify!) Glad that thought is going into to this of course, and keen to follow progress. Thanks for writing about it, so interesting!
This is good thinking.
a timely (and fun and existential) video on the ai question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EtxkkabRUw
It would be interesting to see search results based on more contextual input. I definitely prefer the conversational aspect of ChatGPT instead of the predictive text searches.
Hey, I decided to write a post on my thoughts about this: https://philosophypublics.substack.com/p/should-ai-decide-what-we-see-online
I included the thoughts below in my post, but then do a 100 degree turn and end up porposing something similar, I think? ...
Let’s start from the assumption that we would not want our values to be imposed upon us from the outside. This is a risk we would run should we build AI out to curate our experiences on the Internet, but let’s set that aside for now. Now, imagine some value that you hold to be a value for yourself. Or even better, imagine someone that you know,and the things they seem to value. Now imagine that they act in a way that seems to go against their values. You would immediately go find a journalist so that they could write a piece about this completely anomalous situation, where a person went against their values. 😉 I’m joking, of course, I’m just meaning to say that we do tend to go against our values all the time we act in ways that are contradictory. We're complicated. We can be confused about what we value, and what we think that we value can certainly be wrong, and change over time. If we have AI reinforcing what we have told it or shown it that we value, even if we were wrong about what that is, it would be all that much harder to change course. With a technology that lacks transparency, it will be impossible to change, adjust, or otherwise control it. That pregnant woman because if she’s pregnant by definition, I don’t think she’s a girl, might think that she values some thing based on her religious beliefs but in that difficult moment, she might find the opportunity to realize that her religious beliefs are in fact not in her best personal interest, and therefore miss an opportunity for deep reflection, not only about her interests, but about the nature of her faith. (Originally written with speech-to-text, edited for clarity.)
This comment is a direct answer to your title not to your article which I haven't read it yet. ( I promise I will).
I thought we make AI wise with our constant notes and ideas. Let's not forget that AI was made by man to be served by man.
Some people are scared of it, fearing that it will cause nuclear war or steal people's best ideas and other kinds of baloney scenarios but I don't buy into this bullshit. I believe it's useful, especially for us writers it can help us unblock our minds at times. Yes, AI is artificial but so is the internet.
The internet was also an old concept that one day became reality and now for all is normal to use.
The internet, AI, and whatever comes in the future will never replace human connection and emotion.
I believe that as we come closer and closer together from all parts of the world, the less we will need these machines of communication.
This is my vision for the future.