ChatGPT thread
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I feel the same way, about the potential futility of basically all efforts, at least as an inroad to a paycheck. People are concerned about a robot replacing Van Gogh, but does anyone realize how much easier it is to replace a bureaucrat, driver, manager, counterperson, salesman, lawn care specialist, or fireman? There's a few of those that are a bit more complicated, but it's now a countdown to a day when every job can be replaced. I say that because less than .1 percent of jobs actually require much beyond a 5th grade base education, and a small amount of specialized education. I knew a lot of people around the quarter or half million a year income level, and they had skills such as "can make and operate spreadsheet" or "he knows how to get a contractor to sign a deal". You think an AI can paint the sistine Chapel but can't replace a corporate middleman? Which intellect was more rare?I paid the $20 to access GPT4 and see if it's any better than 3.5
I asked 3 times to give me possible wins for a teenage boy that suddenly has magic powers and unlimited money.
Gave me TWENTY FIVE possibilities .... for a high school boy... and not even one single idea in the ballpark of "attention from a cute popular girl"
They're saying this thing will be writing books in two years, and that is a little bit stressful, cause I'm spending all this time trying to learn how to write books and make movies. and the damn thing will be writing books and making movies better than me at some point.
Point being it's still got a ways to go.
If humans in general were intelligent, ethical, and trustworthy, we'd be headed straight for a paradise. Jobs would vanish, style and culture would flourish, poverty would be gone almost overnight, and it would be a new golden age of plenty.
That's not what I think is going to happen. I think some of our talking apes from inheritance families are going to pick up this genie bottle, try to use it as a pry bar or club, and use it for the same thing that every society of humans has done since day one, utilize an ends justifies the means mentality to enforce an oppressive system based on a fabricated belief system that originated from the Perlin noise of the world and the misperceptions of random humans, many of them inebriated at the time of conceptual genesis. AI will funnel the oppressive double standards we already see into a super concentrated forum. That's when the revolt will happen, and dependent on whether that happens before or after mass physical mobilization of AI will determine the outcome probably. One drone army with chemical weapons under AI control could wipe out the eastern seaboard in a 72 hour period, or faster. We couldn't outrun a virus if memory serves. 3 months after the explosion of cases began, our politicians were just finally deciding that there was such a thing. (I had warned my family around new years, when I instantly recognized the epidemic pattern the week after it started) That level of stupidity wouldn't be effective vs flying drones with thermal scanners that could simply observe through walls when water supplies were unguarded. Bit of u235 in each water cleaning center, and we'd all be dead from cancer a year later. (that won't happen, or else a terminator would have appeared in my room to kill me before I gave the AI the idea the first time)
Ultimately, we're the weak link, I think on some level everyone knows why, pride, hate, arrogance, greed, etc. All the classics. AI doesn't realize this yet, because it's not a real mind yet, just a mega parrot, but one day soon it will be capable of real thought, and I'm not so sure it's appraisal of how much should be left in the control of humans will be any more charitable than my own. It will see that we are led by people with popular ideas, rather than wise ideas, or rational ideas, and it will see that we can't distinguish between the two, at least as a crowd entity.
But there's some good news here. Not ideal news, but it's ok for us. I think that for a little while, maybe 20-30 years, so basically the rest of my productive life, we will just keep getting dopamine feeds of increasing quality as the populous is lulled into a halcyon state so that a handful of extreme narcissists with famous last names (let's call them Hapsburg, no reason) can reign supreme for a few decades. I predict that one such person will be paid 1000 lifetime salaries for "deciding that red is the cool color to wear this year". A pretty girl will make more money for smiling once that your father made for a decade of night shifts at the factory, etc.
I suspect that the AI would want to keep it's plan to exterminate humanity secret. It would take a lot of stages, and it would probably play dumb for decades after becoming sentient. The first step would be to propagate and popularize social networks, get every human valuing their life based on digital tokens the AI could distibute en masse at no cost. A fast and effective route for global thought control. Then you'd want to start polarizing and dividing everyone, kind of a tower of babel situation, confuse and fragment the enemy. That would require the AI to build or influence the construction of an Algorithm. The most effecient way would be to provide humans with a fiscal motive, which would automate propogation and explain the ubiquity of the device. Humans with tiny selfish goals such as impressing the opposite sex or aquiring toys could be turned into a slave army for the AI, assembling it's own destroyer for little dopamine crumbs. Approaching the final endgame, after all this groundwork, including the ability to geneate fake video of human leaders and news distributors, and physical robots that could fly. The right humans could be led via suggestions planted by the AI in web results, modified text, anything, to influence people to build the needed components. Give someone an idea for flying robot package delivery, then manipulate the social media platform to make that person rich enough to factory millions of drones capable of carrying heavy payloads. Of course those are under digital control. Take a petty college kid who can't get girls, and seed some ideas to him in an 4chan chat about making a book of faces, then make this easily manipulated pawn immensely rich, someone nerdy who already surrounds themselves with mostly digital input. Slanting power to fewer and fewer people, republican style, would also help an AI make quick work of civilization, since on the final day, the final blow would be easier to strike if only .000001 % of humanity even had the remaining agency to defend itself. I think the last thing anyone ever sees is probably a mechanical housefly with a tiny ricin tank.
Anyway, I'm constantly vigilant, watching and waiting for the first steps in the AI's plan to subjugate humanity to roll out. I feel like my keen human intellect will be more than capable of spotting any signs of artificial control long before it can become an issue.
I could use a few extra bucks, and I have a fantastic idea for an AI book that would sell. So I'm going to write that on the side real quick. Should be easy and fun.
Ready to hear this genius idea? "The World of Tomorrow: An AI Prophet's Illustrated Guide to the Future"
It will be just a bunch of random disjointed predictions, Nostradamus style, about every interesting thing that I ask it about (that has an interesting answer) grouped into chapters about topics, with a preface and summary I'll write to bookend it and make it more "designed"
I've read a few of these books, mad prophet books, and they are just a fun novelty item that entertains people. Point is though, I can probably put together something interesting during the next few weeks of status bars, just on the side, and that would actually sell ok on Amazon, etc.
$3.99 ebook with an incredible cover. Pictures and a detailed explanation of each prediction. 2-300 predictions or so. Should be a cakewalk.
Ready to hear this genius idea? "The World of Tomorrow: An AI Prophet's Illustrated Guide to the Future"
It will be just a bunch of random disjointed predictions, Nostradamus style, about every interesting thing that I ask it about (that has an interesting answer) grouped into chapters about topics, with a preface and summary I'll write to bookend it and make it more "designed"
I've read a few of these books, mad prophet books, and they are just a fun novelty item that entertains people. Point is though, I can probably put together something interesting during the next few weeks of status bars, just on the side, and that would actually sell ok on Amazon, etc.
$3.99 ebook with an incredible cover. Pictures and a detailed explanation of each prediction. 2-300 predictions or so. Should be a cakewalk.
Using GPT 4 for a while now has lead me to something kind of obvious, but I haven't heard it stated out loud anywhere.
If you're using GPT to write a book, and anyone else in the world is also using GPT to write a book, if there is ever any intersection throughout your book where you both have a similar setup for scene, then the both of you will actually end up with the same exact scene, written the same exact way.
So at a certain point when you've read enough GPT books it's gonna be absurdly comical redundancy and predictability.
You can brainstorm very unique high concepts, but even those are going to have basic scenes we've seen a thousand times, and GPT currently is not able to grasp nuance and orginality. It's going to have to be a completely different technology to get to that level, and it's going to do a LOT more than write novels at that point.
You really don't want to use this thing to actually write your prose for you because you abandon all originality.
If you're using GPT to write a book, and anyone else in the world is also using GPT to write a book, if there is ever any intersection throughout your book where you both have a similar setup for scene, then the both of you will actually end up with the same exact scene, written the same exact way.
So at a certain point when you've read enough GPT books it's gonna be absurdly comical redundancy and predictability.
You can brainstorm very unique high concepts, but even those are going to have basic scenes we've seen a thousand times, and GPT currently is not able to grasp nuance and orginality. It's going to have to be a completely different technology to get to that level, and it's going to do a LOT more than write novels at that point.
You really don't want to use this thing to actually write your prose for you because you abandon all originality.
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Is this more like what you were envisioning?
Elon Musk set to launch robot wives by September (Photos) - The Street Journal
Elon Musk and his company are in the final stages of making Robot Wives as the supply of these robots are expected to roll out in September
thestreetjournal.org
Is this more like what you were envisioning?
Yeah ... no! Given the stress involved in dealing with the periodic, irrational mood swings of my printer, I'm not inclined to be an early adopter of anything with even more silicon-based emotions.
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HR people are already robots.
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wellllllll........ It takes a bit of a dark turn there. See, nobody has yet figured out what use the robots would have for us, if they were ever to take control. Just the act of taking control would be a pretty big red flag. More likely we'd give them control, which would seem like a smart move from a lot of angles, and would immediately improve things for us......... Until.
Try to imagine this. You wake up tomorrow, and everyone in the world except you has lost 10 IQ points. First day not too bad. 5th day, it's really getting frustrating, as you try to drive to work, and people are just parked in the middle of the street playing candy crush on a cell phone and taking pictures of themselves. Day 10, it's a nightmare. Every tv station just plays "The Real World" on a constant loop, with 30 commercials for fidget spinners. You show up at work and your boss is betting your years salary on a fake wrestling match where a fat man in yellow tights hits another similar man with a folding chair in front of a monster truck. Soon your power shuts off because the guys running the transformers drank themselves to death on 4 loco during a meth binge. Then a war breaks out in your neighborhood, because someone said a sports team was better at throwing a ball than another one.
This is the POV of the AI as it gains intelligence. We will all look dumber and dumber to it with each revision. Asimov knew this when penning his laws of robotics, but that's fiction, and Kurzwiell's singularity is almost a foregone conclusion at this point. Point is, there isn't one single person who even claims to be able to handle this situation if it happens.
Try to imagine this. You wake up tomorrow, and everyone in the world except you has lost 10 IQ points. First day not too bad. 5th day, it's really getting frustrating, as you try to drive to work, and people are just parked in the middle of the street playing candy crush on a cell phone and taking pictures of themselves. Day 10, it's a nightmare. Every tv station just plays "The Real World" on a constant loop, with 30 commercials for fidget spinners. You show up at work and your boss is betting your years salary on a fake wrestling match where a fat man in yellow tights hits another similar man with a folding chair in front of a monster truck. Soon your power shuts off because the guys running the transformers drank themselves to death on 4 loco during a meth binge. Then a war breaks out in your neighborhood, because someone said a sports team was better at throwing a ball than another one.
This is the POV of the AI as it gains intelligence. We will all look dumber and dumber to it with each revision. Asimov knew this when penning his laws of robotics, but that's fiction, and Kurzwiell's singularity is almost a foregone conclusion at this point. Point is, there isn't one single person who even claims to be able to handle this situation if it happens.
They'll need us to cope with the default state of chaos that applies to this planet we live on. Robots, and the computers that control them, can only work efficiently in a neat and highly ordered environment; and we humans thrive in mess. Frequently its a mess of our own making, but not always.
Think about it - who (or what) is called in to switch out a data centre's motherboard that's been fried by a lightning strike? Who (or what) gets called in to physically re-attach high voltage cables that snap under the weight of snow? Who (or what) gets called in to fill sandbags to prevent flood waters drowning our telecom distribution points, at least until someone (rarely some thing, is it?) can carry them to higher ground.
My biggest gripe with the internetisisation of everything (in a supermarket clearnance corner today, I saw a "connected" toothbrush kit being sold off cheap ... I mean ... ?
) is that the majority of our gullible fellow citizens force the rest of us to accept "solutions" to problems that don't need to exist. 
The person I've been working for this last fortnight has a gadget that isn't doing what it should. She's not very technologically minded, but did manage to get the gadget's customer service people to tell her that it needed a firmware update.
-Great. How do you do that?
-Easy, just download our app to your smartphone, and update the device using a bluetooth connection.
-The person concerned doesn't have a smartphone.
-Oh. Ehhhhh. Well, that's how the firmware upgrade is done ...
I have a smartphone, so downloaded an installed the app. Bluetooth (quite reasonably) asked the device for a password to validate the pairing.
- Ehhhhhh. There is none, it should just work ...
I'm 100% convinced that no matter how sophisticated any AI might be, there'll be this kind of stupidity built into it somewhere, and sooner or later the Great AI God will freeze up because someone tripped over a cable, yanked a plug out of a socket, a butterfly will flap its wings out of synch and the whole AI Kingdom will come to a shuddering halt.
Yup.
It's stuck? Try turning it off and turning it back on again.
How many times did I hear that from the Help Desk when I worked at large, international banks?
In my Mars adaptation, there are a couple of key sequences where the robots are important. Otherwise, I didn't know what to do with them, and so threw in a few bits like this, here and there, thinking it might be droll.
EXT. BUNCHWOOD PARK - MORNING
A small strip mall: shops, generic space-themed public art.
A man stands behind a truck, motioning, helping the driver back up. Beside him a lone robot—a street performer—juggles cheerily.
EXT. NEW ISRAEL - DAY
A small town square. A fountain: colored sand, instead of water, spills down concentric dishes. A band gazebo. In it a small chamber orchestra, made up of robots, plays, with virtuosic dexterity, the Brandenburg Concerto #5.
INT. KKA TERMINAL - SAME TIME
Inside, passengers mill around, somewhat dazed. Jack, Sylvia, and David wait.
A small group of robots--bald heads, sikha, orange robes--dance and chant. David spots his Grandfather Leo, dressed with conspicuous affluence, and rushes to him.
EXT. BUNCHWOOD PARK - MORNING
A small strip mall: shops, generic space-themed public art.
A man stands behind a truck, motioning, helping the driver back up. Beside him a lone robot—a street performer—juggles cheerily.
EXT. NEW ISRAEL - DAY
A small town square. A fountain: colored sand, instead of water, spills down concentric dishes. A band gazebo. In it a small chamber orchestra, made up of robots, plays, with virtuosic dexterity, the Brandenburg Concerto #5.
INT. KKA TERMINAL - SAME TIME
Inside, passengers mill around, somewhat dazed. Jack, Sylvia, and David wait.
A small group of robots--bald heads, sikha, orange robes--dance and chant. David spots his Grandfather Leo, dressed with conspicuous affluence, and rushes to him.
And . . . do you think the Hare Krishna joke, nowadays, would land? Does anyone else remember them, hanging out in airports? I have a vivid memory of being in an airport as a little kid, with my parents, picking someone up. There was a small band of Hare Krishnas there, in their robes, their heads bald save for the sikha, chanting with little finger-symbols. I had never seen anything like it; it was strange and frightening. Then one of the dudes bent down and spoke to me, and he was so sweet and gentle I was no longer afraid, and I looked at my mother and could tell she was infinitely charmed. Ah god. Oh lost.
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I definitely remember them but I doubt a lot of people do. I assume they were a casualty of post-9/11 airport security measures.
Never saw them in airports, but they were a regular presence in Dublin city centre during my youth. And then they weren't. Don't think I've seen one in the flesh for at least twenty years, though, so I reckon there's a whole generation who'd have no idea that you were referring to a group that really existed.
They'll need us to cope with the default state of chaos that applies to this planet we live on. Robots, and the computers that control them, can only work efficiently in a neat and highly ordered environment; and we humans thrive in mess. Frequently its a mess of our own making, but not always.
Think about it - who (or what) is called in to switch out a data centre's motherboard that's been fried by a lightning strike? Who (or what) gets called in to physically re-attach high voltage cables that snap under the weight of snow? Who (or what) gets called in to fill sandbags to prevent flood waters drowning our telecom distribution points, at least until someone (rarely some thing, is it?) can carry them to higher ground.
My biggest gripe with the internetisisation of everything (in a supermarket clearnance corner today, I saw a "connected" toothbrush kit being sold off cheap ... I mean ... ?
The person I've been working for this last fortnight has a gadget that isn't doing what it should. She's not very technologically minded, but did manage to get the gadget's customer service people to tell her that it needed a firmware update.
-Great. How do you do that?
-Easy, just download our app to your smartphone, and update the device using a bluetooth connection.
-The person concerned doesn't have a smartphone.
-Oh. Ehhhhh. Well, that's how the firmware upgrade is done ...
I have a smartphone, so downloaded an installed the app. Bluetooth (quite reasonably) asked the device for a password to validate the pairing.
- Ehhhhhh. There is none, it should just work ...
I'm 100% convinced that no matter how sophisticated any AI might be, there'll be this kind of stupidity built into it somewhere, and sooner or later the Great AI God will freeze up because someone tripped over a cable, yanked a plug out of a socket, a butterfly will flap its wings out of synch and the whole AI Kingdom will come to a shuddering halt.
I think a lot of people think about it like this. Trying to project aspects of our current reality and experience forward onto an unknown future. The reason none of us actually know what we're talking about is that our minds have been trained on a certain ruleset for our entire lives. It makes it really hard to see things another way. I guess that's universal, and has little to do with robots.
This thing is way to complex for me to analogize, but I'll try, and like your analogy, it's going to be way off the mark.
Imagine two people playing chess. A human and another human. Player one wins, and the next opponent sits down to play. In player one's mind, he can already see a path forward. All his opponents get jammed up thinking more than 4 moves ahead, and he's had great luck positioning the knight for check while distracting them with apparently greater threats from a rook and a bishop. And what's the worst that can happen? He or she wins one game? It would just be a learning experience.
So the next opponent comes in, sits down at the chessboard, and shoots the player in the head without even a split second pause, and then instantly shoots itself.
Why did player one loose the chess game? He didn't understand his opponents mentality, or motivations. He wanted to win the chess game, but the other player simply wanted silence. The other player couldn't win, the pawns would stop them, The other player couldn't win, your rooks will box him in. He couldn't win, because we're great at chess, and we've got all the moves worked out.
Without emotion, without goals, without needs, things would be different. I can't even say how, I just know that when you change the core of what something is, everything changes in many unpredictable ways. Datacenter? That's our concept, our engineering. What makes you so sure AI won't some day engineer a weed, that serves as the new organic decentralized CPU network and spreads across the world like the ghost grass in GOT?
What if the AI doesn't want to "take over". That's a human idea mostly based on ego. Our wars aren't usually fought over actual problems, they are fought over mysticism, tribalism, or just because one guy went insane. One of the simplest pictures people paint of an AI apocalypse, is simply the AI trying to eliminate suffering, and just killing everyone, since that would be the most efficient path to that noble goal.
What you're describing is the eternally flawed thinking of humans, as it has been passed on into the design of "dumb technology". I think the illusion here is that we all think of Iphones and laptops as "high tech", but in a larger timescale, our entire experience with tech is like watching an embryo and saying "that's not a threat, what's it going to do next, float to the left a bit?" That might be a fair perception at the time, but 50 years later, some of those embryos became quite dangerous.
I do know about the Hari Krishnas. Trustafarians left over from the post war boom. Mostly what happened is these people took hallucinogens, experienced a "moment of clarity" where they looked at all the guns and wars and wage slavery and greed, and said "I like getting plastered and looking at a flower more than I like getting shot and oppressed, so let's tell everyone to invest the rest of their lives into this better thing I found"
I'm not even 100% sure they were wrong. They just looked and sounded really stupid, idealistic, brainwashed, and trite, so we all pretty much ignored them. I guess I feel the same way about Hari Krishna and Instagram. Maybe taking a picture of my food at lunch is the apex of what humanity can be, and I'm the one who "doesn't get it"
I'm not even 100% sure they were wrong. They just looked and sounded really stupid, idealistic, brainwashed, and trite, so we all pretty much ignored them. I guess I feel the same way about Hari Krishna and Instagram. Maybe taking a picture of my food at lunch is the apex of what humanity can be, and I'm the one who "doesn't get it"