[ExI] External Reality

[Keith Henson]

"In other words, recent evidence suggests that words are more powerful
than most people thought. "

If you can generate the right prompts, they do a remarkable job of
designing large projects.

https://www.facebook.com/h.keith.henson

Keith

On Sat, Jan 17, 2026 at 10:46 AM John Clark via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Jan 17, 2026 at 9:57 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>>
>>> >> In that case I would've been correct because "both the pictures and the words came from the same external reality", and for an AI that only has access to such pictures or words, human interaction IS external reality.
>>
>>
>> > Depends on the definition of "external reality".  I thought you meant
>> external to everyone involved, including the humans.
>
>
> We have a clear picture of what "external reality" is for an AI, it is us. But we only have a blurry picture of what external reality is for us, as Plato said all we can see is shadows of it.
>
>
>> > The claim is that Chinese or Native American fundamental depictions of
>> things like "cat" are massively different from Western depictions, so
>> when AI keeps distilling to Western depictions, that's proof that said
>> other viewpoints are being excluded or not considered.
>> That's the claim, anyway.  From what I have seen of the "true"
>> cultures, many times the underlying concepts aren't actually all that
>> different, no matter how much they may feel different
>
>
> There is some truth in that because all cultures do have something in common; natural selection demands that human behavior, which is produced by an internal mental model of the way things work, is compatible with the external real world. What I find remarkable is that the way an AI that has been exposed to nothing but words organizes things is remarkably similar to the way an AI that has been exposed to words and pictures and videos and even operated robots and drones organizes things. Some say AI is just autocomplete on steroids, well maybe so, but it's starting to look like that's enough to create a singularity. In other words, recent evidence suggests that words are more powerful than most people thought.
>
> John K Clark
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