https://karawynn.substack.com/p/language-is-a-poor-heuristic-for

«One clear reason is that corporations would prefer to use machines for a number of jobs that currently require actual humans who are knowledgeable, intelligent, and friendly, but who also have this annoying tendency to want to be paid enough money to support the maintenance of their inconvenient meat sacks. Not to mention the problematic fact that humans occasionally possess ethics, independent thinking, and objectives besides maximizing shareholder profit.»

Kind of a nothing quote, but I still like it.

Here’s a better one:

«The second reason for this choice is that, as Ted Chiang wryly notes, “there is a market opportunity for volleyballs.” The reference is to the movie Castaway, in which a marooned and desperately lonely Tom Hanks makes a washed-ashore volleyball into an imaginary friend. Humans are a social species down to our core; the more modern life erodes our opportunities for actual human companionship — whether it’s by interposing technology as an intermediary into every interaction, or sucking up all our time with the capitalist/consumerist grind — the more desperate we’ll become for friendly-sounding volleyball substitutes.»

Or this one:

«Computer scientist Timnit Gebru (famously fired from Google in 2020 for raising ethical issues around the use of AI) has repeatedly warned that when the public conversation focuses on red herrings — like the potential morality and values of a wholly-theoretical computer intelligence — we cease to ascribe responsibility to the real people and actual corporations that are creating harmful products. Any action taken to counteract those harms would cut into profit, so the LLM-invested folks would really prefer we all worry about a mirage instead.»

…

«As a society, we’re going to have to radically rethink….»

Well… THAT ain’t happening.

The footnotes are great:

«6. Increasingly I find myself wanting to take journalists by the shoulders and shake them until their teeth rattle. Like Jeff Jarvis, who first correctly noted that ChatGPT “is a personal propaganda machine that strings together words to satisfy the ear, with no expectation that it is right” … and then turned around in the same article [paywalled link] and discussed his “anthropomorphic sympathy” for ChatGPT as a “wronged party”. FOR FUCK’S SAKE, JEFF!»

#artificialIntelligence #ai