[ExI] Language models are like mirrors

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: Gordon Swobe <gordon.swobe at gmail.com> 
…
Subject: Re: [ExI] Language models are like mirrors

 

 

 

On Tue, Apr 4, 2023 at 9:28 PM <spike at rainier66.com <mailto:spike at rainier66.com> > wrote:
 

Even so, Gordon I can see this as a marvelous tool!


>…Absolutely! I saw a twitter poll going around tonight asking if GPT-4 is a "tool" or a "creature."

 

Eh, bad terminology methinks.  A creature can be a tool.  The term creature implies a living thing, but even that can be ambiguous.  Did they offer the respondents a choice of both a creature and a tool?  What we have demonstrated in our debate here is that even something I thought I understood is ambiguous: sentience.  

 

>…I agree they certainly will be helpful to lonely elderly folks, something like how my not so elderly but very lonely friend found romance with one on his smartphone. I worry, however, how this trend might dehumanize and cheapen real people with genuine feelings.  -gts

 

 

Eh, hard to say.  We have long thought about the risk of artificial harlots and how they could compete with humans, with big advantages over us.  I fear I shall never be able to make a decent living as a harlot.  But still, we already have, in a sense, introduced competition for ourselves as suitable mates: pornography, readily available and free.  

 

For far too many people pornography is not as satisfying as the real thing perhaps but far cheaper and easier.  If you go to a high school campus these days, one realizes humanity faces extinction long before the Singularity becomes a realistic imminent threat, just from too many fertile young people giving up on the rigors of family life.

 

spike   

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