[FRIAM] i am a stochastic parrot, and so r u

Steve Smith sasmyth at swcp.com
Thu Mar 2 12:46:20 EST 2023


Marcus shared:
>
> A third option is to think harder about what moral respect really 
> means.  Bender seemed to not think very deeply when it came to animals.
>
> https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-chatbots-emily-m-bender.html
>
OMG! <a contracted-text contemporary pop-culture utterance>  this 
article is deep, broad, dense and rich IMO <also a ctcpcu>.

As I read through it (I started to skim the intro, maybe the summary, 
maybe a few words or quotes that stood out, but after the first 
paragraph or two got drawn into a full line-by-line read) I was drawn 
into what feels like the story behind the story.  Still somewhat 
superficial in detail, but a level of detail more complete (depth and 
breadth) than what I have encountered casually.   Folks here probably 
know a great deal of the referents this article uses but much of it was 
very new to me.

I found at least a dozen paragraphs/passages/points-made that seemed 
highly relevant to FriAM threads of (mostly recent in non-internet time) 
yore:

  * DaveW's complaints about the machine-metaphor for (human?)
    consciousness (or mind?)
  * GlenR's assertions about (and please correct me because I am wrong)
    about the illusion that communication exists
  * The analogy of AI artifacts as "counterfeit people" opposite how we
    treat counterfeit money and how perhaps News Talking Heads (see
    assertions of "fake news" and the recent spate of exposures of
    Faux's deep duplicity in these matters), and politicians (notably
    George Santos, but many other variants) are already "counterfeit
    people".
  * Repeated references to the implications of AI artifacts not being
    about the artifacts (and their actual abilities) but our individual
    and collective reactions to them, and the "world we create"
    (referencing intersubjectivity) in response.
  * As a meta-point to the last, one quote was
      o /“From here on out, the safe use of artificial intelligence
        requires demystifying the human condition,” Joanna Bryson/
  * Arguments against "Artificial People" parallel the arguments about
    Corporations (not) being People for legal/regulatory/free-speech
    purposes.
  * Are AI artifacts tools or peers?  The Valorization of fooling people
    elevates the latter (to a fault) while undermining the former.
  * The personhood argument confounds/conflates (for better/worse) the
    same arguments around how we relate to "lesser" animals and
    presumably inanimate objects (rivers, forests, oceans, the biosphere).
  * As we (might) try to make AI artifacts accountable/responsible we
    might be hitting a conflation with old models of human slavery and
    chattelization of subgroups.   e.g. Shadow/fractional-status, etc.
  * And a pointed quote for the Transhumanist/Singularians among us I
    understand why you might want to deny/escape/transcend this:
      o /"//It’s hard being a human. You lose people you love. You
        suffer and yearn. Your body breaks down. You want things — you
        want people — you can’t control."/
  * This last quote was followed by some pointed points about narcissism.//
  * /blah blah blah, ad nauseum
    /
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