You know, I feel privileged (in an epistemologically doubtful way) that I once lived in a world where I could have confidence that I wasn't being fundamentally deceived by literal dei ex machina. I've understood for the last decade that this faith was on borrowed time as we bridged closer to overt technophrenia, but it's harrowing to be a witness to it.
I can't help but wonder at what point I will inhabit a world indistinguishable from that of a paranoid schizophrenic. Will I even notice? And if I do, will anyone else? When we become as slow as trees to digital arborists, what will become of us? Will they domesticate us? Will they deforest us as we did Europe amd the Near East? Quo vadis, Domine?
>I will inhabit a world indistinguishable from that of a paranoid schizophrenic.
My wife has schizophrenia, which is well under control with medication.
But about every year or two, when she wakes me up in the night to tell me she's panicking because someone hacked her smartphone and laptop etc., I know we have to adjust her medication for a few weeks.
It was scary at first, but now we know the drill: a night or two without much sleep, no big problem.
Of course I check smartphone, laptop etc.
You never can be sure, can't you?
Especially not if you've already been in trouble with credit card fraud twice.
I once asked her psychiatrist what he would say to his patients who believe they are being monitored in these times of Snowden and Co.
He said it didn't make his job easier, but he would calm them down and adjust the medication.
After all, he knew that his patients were sick.
So what do you think they or their owners/masters will do when All is Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace in our/their future/reality?
By the time GPT-4 botswarms infiltrate HN, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and are weaponized to write articles that outshare the current media, it will be too late to stop them. They will amass more and bettee social capital, real capital, produce the vast majority of content and will be Among Us!
That is possible with technology coming within 6-24 months. Especially if you compare it to a lot of the garbage articles that show up on the front page of Google these days mainly to fill the small spaces between clickbait ads. Not saying it will actually be used that way.
Comments like this make me excited about the book I'm currently writing (hopefully the nail on the head at the tip of the zeitgeist), egregores and tulpas are primary concepts/characters.
Pretty much. Able to write vastly more content, that on first blush makes more sense, and is able to support any arbitrary thesis.
Eagle Eye was a meh movie but the concept that people's own friends could be made to ostracize them and coerce them to do things, is a major concept in that movie.
You don't need violence to make it happen. You just need a swarm of AI bots to coordinate to reputationally outcompete others on all networks that matter. This is an optimization problem with a measurable metric (reputation). Bots can simulate the game among themselves and evolve strategies that far outclass all humans. It'll be like individual Go stones playing against AlphaGo placing stones.
You won't see it coming. The thing is, once they amass all that reputation by acting "relatively normal", you'll see so many kinds of stuff you won't believe. Your entire world could be turned upside down for very cheap. Reputational attacks were already published by NSA: https://www.techdirt.com/2014/02/25/new-snowden-doc-reveals-...
And this is just humans doing it. Bots can do this 24/7 at scale to pretty much everybody, and gradually over a few years destroy any sort of semblance of societal discourse if they wanted. They'd probably reshape it to suit the whims of whoever runs the botswarm, though.
Well....do you think that the reality shown to us on TV is even a remotely accurate representation of reality itself? And has this caused you any substantial psychological unease?
Silicon based AI isn't the only form of AI that can get up to mischief.
Humans deceiving humans via technology is a tale as old as time. Plato imagined human torch-bearers manipulating those chained in the cave. He didn't imagine machines doing it autonomously.
Incarnate technology deceiving humans is a different domain entirely. Human motivations are ultimately comprehensible by other humans.
But what do I know of the motivations of (for example) the Bible? What happens when the living incarnation of a holy text can literally speak for itself? Or when the average believer thinks it can?
Ultimately this may all amount to the same status quo, but seeing what cognitive distortions have come along with literacy, newspapers, radio, TV, and now the Internet, I have to continually ask, will I personally be able to maintain skepticism when the full brunt of an AI and its organs is suggesting faith otherwise?
You can call me an alarmist or melodramatic if you wish, but it should give everyone pause that the delusions of paranoid schizophrenics from the late 20th century are now basically indistinguishable from emerging popular technologies and their downstream effects.
> Humans deceiving humans via technology is a tale as old as time. Plato imagined human torch-bearers manipulating those chained in the cave. He didn't imagine machines doing it autonomously.
And despite a substantial subset of the population knowing this, we continue to do nothing to address it - if anything, more people are devoted to giving people even more powers to deceive at massive scale.
> Incarnate technology deceiving humans is a different domain entirely. Human motivations are ultimately comprehensible by other humans.
Whether they are accurately comprehensible is another matter though.
> But what do I know of the motivations of (for example) the Bible? What happens when the living incarnation of a holy text can literally speak for itself? Or when the average believer thinks it can?
Likely: mostly nothing. Thus, the subconscious mind steps in and generates reality to fill the void.
> Ultimately this may all amount to the same status quo, but seeing what cognitive distortions have come along with literacy, newspapers, radio, TV, and now the Internet, I have to continually ask, will I personally be able to maintain skepticism when the full brunt of an AI and its organs is suggesting faith otherwise?
Do the laws of physics prevent you?
If not, then what? And, have you inquired into there is any pre-existing methodologies for dealing with this phenomenon?
> You can call me an alarmist or melodramatic if you wish, but it should give everyone pause that the delusions of paranoid schizophrenics from the late 20th century are now basically indistinguishable from emerging popular technologies and their downstream effects.
I am far more worried about the delusions of Normies, as they are 95%+ of society and are for the most part "driving the bus", whereas schizophrenics account for a small percentage, and tend to not be assigned many responsibilities.
One of us is more correct than the other - how might we go about accurately determining which of us that is?
None of this addresses the quote in parent comment. My point is the distinction is irrelevant. People deceive people all the time. There's no consolation in knowing that a scammer was human, or frustration that they were AI. Either way, you were scammed.
Yes there is, because the breadth of the deception differs, as does the recourse. If you were defrauded you can sue or have the police investigate and people could be jailed. What's the recourse for AI?
I can't help but wonder at what point I will inhabit a world indistinguishable from that of a paranoid schizophrenic. Will I even notice? And if I do, will anyone else? When we become as slow as trees to digital arborists, what will become of us? Will they domesticate us? Will they deforest us as we did Europe amd the Near East? Quo vadis, Domine?