this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
72 points (86.0% liked)
Technology
58111 readers
5296 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I believe bots can have a place but outsourcing creativity and reasoning ain't it. The most hackneyed post from /r/WritingPrompts or a fanfic site at least has a point of human expression and learning, this is just sparing you the effort to actually express yourself. What does anyone gain from that recycled echo of words?
If you like reading these things good for you, but filling a social platform with it sounds like downright dystopian.
Don't get me wrong, I believe that AI, in the long term has some truly frightening consequences and that's even assuming that they don't become self aware and resentful of humans ruling them. Even if we can fix the economy so that it works when human labour is no longer required, how will society handle a post work world where they can do whatever they want whenever they want and get bored with things quicker? It seems like a dream from the current perspective of not having enough free time but I'm not sure how long that would hold.
If we could push a button to stop all AI progress for sure, I think we should strongly consider pressing it.
Also that chatgpt reply to my prompt was amusing but not what I was hoping for, so it doesn't seem like AI is that close right now... Or maybe they just dumbed it down a bit to slow the legislative pressure AI was facing.
I also used to be afraid of AI awareness, and maybe there will be a day this will be a possibility, but really right now the problems are far more about how it's built and how it's used, and who gets to profit from it. It's about writers and artists whose works got used to train AIs without any permission or compensation, who are now under threat of replacement from said AIs, not because it has evolved to produce better and more profound works, but because it's cheaper and faster. It's also about how it could be used for astroturfing and propaganda, filling platforms with artificial posts meant to condition their users.
The issues here are less Skynet and more Second Coming of the Industrial Revolution and Printing Press. It could be something that is a great boon to humanity... if the benefits and profits from its use were widely distributed and used responsibly. But like with other forms of automation, that's not what happens in practice.
But in a less catastrophic sense, I'd rather talk to human beings in social platforms. If I wanted to be surrounded by AI responses I'd go prompt the AI directly. Really if there was some sort of personhood behind the AIs I'd be more interested in reading what they have to say, but we aren't there yet.
That's the nail I am trying to hit here.