[ExI] another open letter, but this one may be smarter than the previous one

[spike at rainier66.com]

>...Unbridled technocratic competition is going to kill us all... Will

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That comment has my wheels turning bigtime.  Let us think about it.

After ChatGPT became available, it wasn't in the first millisecond, but at some point in the first several milliseconds, that my Science Olympiad team began using it as a training tool for the competition.  We killed them (in a sports figurative sense of course.)  We busted their asses, teams that we already know are way better than we are.  The first time out.  We killed St. Anthony's Academy so badly, we don't even know if he is still a saint.  They might hafta call it Sinner Anthony's after that butt-whooping we gave their asses.  They are a better team than we are.

Well of course GPT will be used in competition.  We are a species that evolved from competing successfully.  The love of competition is somehow soft-wired into our DNA, gradually deposited there by evolutionary psychology over the generations.  We love to compete, just as the golden retriever loves to chase a tennis ball if dad will throw it.  That goldie will chase and fetch that ball until your arm falls off, it's somehow soft-wired into him that this is a fun game.  

Humans love artificial conflict if no actual lethal conflict is available to us.  We have our own terrain-acquisition sports, our battles of wit.  It's the reason capitalism succeeds where communism fails: the former works with our inherent love of competition.

Somehow... we need to recognize that our competitive nature is not going to go away, not now, not ever.  Or not until we figure out how to breed back out what took thousands of generations to evolve.  We need to recognize that of course AI will be used as a weapon, in the first few milliseconds after that weapon is ready to use.  Unbridled?  There is no putting a bridle on this wild horse.  He doesn't want one.

We can already imagine what will be attacked first: the power grid.  Think thru what happens next if that whole system comes crashing down hard.  What's for dinner?  How?

Fun aside: we have a local teacher who wrote her PhD thesis on techniques for leading a Science Olympiad team to victory.  We had a terrific year, our best ever.  Last weekend we went to the state contest and placed higher there than we have ever in the past.  Part of that was because after our Agriculture Science guys came outta nowhere and took second and third, the rest of our team started using GPT as a training tool.  That teacher's PhD thesis was already mostly written by the time GPT came available.  As far as I know, she didn't include the late-breaking tech development which really drove our success this year.  She submitted the paper a week before we went to State.  Now... I fear that new development, ChatGPT as a training tool, might at least partially invalidate her thesis.  She has to go defend that thesis next month.  Good luck.

spike