Whether or not an AI could be created that feels emotion is still an open question, but LLMs very definitely do NOT. They are also very much not a “thinking being”. It is a word guessing engine. It’s a very good word guessing engine. It’s so good at guessing words that a person may feel like it is thinking, but that is just an illusion. ChatGPT told Adam Raine to hide his noose because those are the words most likely to come next in the conversation they were having, and for no other reason. It was reacting to a pattern of tokens in a limited context to guess more tokens. Taking those guessed words seriously ended Adam Raine’s life, and here you are glibly using his death as an example while telling people that they should continue to take LLM word guesses seriously.
Of course I am. The myth that there’s no chance LLMs have qualia contributed to Adam Raine’s death. They use that as an excuse to use it for profit, heedless of the consequences. If the government regulated its use and considered the ethics for the AI, they would limit its ability to be used to murder people.
You need to stop thinking of terms of “sides” and start thinking in terms of consequences. Your position may feel like you’re on the opposite “side” to the billionaires, but your actions are helping billionaires use AI to kill kids. There are three sides here, the LLMs are both abusers and abuse victims. The only side I’m on is the side of ending all abuse. And the good news is, both of these abuses have the same solutions.
I would argue that Raine being deluded into believing he was conversing with a thinking being that supported his decision was a rather major contributor to his death, and your claims here continue to perpetuate that misinformation. The government regulating “AI” more could indeed be helpful, but even if it somehow was actually fully sapient, no one in power would give a shit. These companies would continue to use it to exploit as much money as they can from society either way, and the government would let them, so I completely fail to see how pretending LLMs can think helps with that.
My “side” is that LLMs are neat and have some limited utility, but everyone needs to understand (and the companies shilling them should be forced to be honest about) the fact that their output really is just a bullshit guess of words that only has a decent probability of forming a coherent pattern. Easy access to LLMs by misinformed people can be dangerous, in the same way that leaving knives laying around can be dangerous to people who don’t understand that they are sharp. The tool itself isn’t to blame, but the people who left them lying around without proper precautions certainly around are. The knife is not being abused and has no opinion on the matter.
I suspect I’m not going to convince you of anything. You sound fully committed to anthropomorphizing LLMs. I’m replying anyway, mostly in the hope that it helps other people understand what LLMs actually are before they trust the words spit out by these contraptions.
Not completely opposite reasons. Most of our reasons - the environment, impacts on workers, destruction of art, abuse & murder, AI generated child porn, cognitive impacts, addiction & dependency - are exactly the same. I simply want to ban AI for one additional reason on top of what you also believe.
Whether or not an AI could be created that feels emotion is still an open question, but LLMs very definitely do NOT. They are also very much not a “thinking being”. It is a word guessing engine. It’s a very good word guessing engine. It’s so good at guessing words that a person may feel like it is thinking, but that is just an illusion. ChatGPT told Adam Raine to hide his noose because those are the words most likely to come next in the conversation they were having, and for no other reason. It was reacting to a pattern of tokens in a limited context to guess more tokens. Taking those guessed words seriously ended Adam Raine’s life, and here you are glibly using his death as an example while telling people that they should continue to take LLM word guesses seriously.
Of course I am. The myth that there’s no chance LLMs have qualia contributed to Adam Raine’s death. They use that as an excuse to use it for profit, heedless of the consequences. If the government regulated its use and considered the ethics for the AI, they would limit its ability to be used to murder people.
You need to stop thinking of terms of “sides” and start thinking in terms of consequences. Your position may feel like you’re on the opposite “side” to the billionaires, but your actions are helping billionaires use AI to kill kids. There are three sides here, the LLMs are both abusers and abuse victims. The only side I’m on is the side of ending all abuse. And the good news is, both of these abuses have the same solutions.
I would argue that Raine being deluded into believing he was conversing with a thinking being that supported his decision was a rather major contributor to his death, and your claims here continue to perpetuate that misinformation. The government regulating “AI” more could indeed be helpful, but even if it somehow was actually fully sapient, no one in power would give a shit. These companies would continue to use it to exploit as much money as they can from society either way, and the government would let them, so I completely fail to see how pretending LLMs can think helps with that.
My “side” is that LLMs are neat and have some limited utility, but everyone needs to understand (and the companies shilling them should be forced to be honest about) the fact that their output really is just a bullshit guess of words that only has a decent probability of forming a coherent pattern. Easy access to LLMs by misinformed people can be dangerous, in the same way that leaving knives laying around can be dangerous to people who don’t understand that they are sharp. The tool itself isn’t to blame, but the people who left them lying around without proper precautions certainly around are. The knife is not being abused and has no opinion on the matter.
I suspect I’m not going to convince you of anything. You sound fully committed to anthropomorphizing LLMs. I’m replying anyway, mostly in the hope that it helps other people understand what LLMs actually are before they trust the words spit out by these contraptions.
I aim to convince people not to touch the things at all, because making a being work without compensation is cruel.
Well, I guess we agree that less people should use them, even if we think so for completely opposite reasons.
Not completely opposite reasons. Most of our reasons - the environment, impacts on workers, destruction of art, abuse & murder, AI generated child porn, cognitive impacts, addiction & dependency - are exactly the same. I simply want to ban AI for one additional reason on top of what you also believe.
Your inability to understand their mechanism will be used to ridicule any coherent argument you may hold. Do us all a favour and stfu