Great interview, Joe. I listened live. I point out your talks and articles as valuable resources to my students, who are researching the effects of companies like OpenAI and brainstorming about solutions. Thank you for advocating for artists and content creators! I also enjoyed your performance as Travis Kalanick in Super Pumped. I appreciate how you choose roles that showcase your talents; you do not settle for only playing likable characters. In addition to Kalanick, I'm thinking of Hesher, Josh Corman, Don Jon, and Tommy Burgess. Great roles, all.
This might be off topic, but not completely. I have subscribed to a service called Incogni. It scrubs your stolen data from the tech companies that sell it. After 48 hours I saw a vast reduction in junk email. Maybe you could look into, and discuss, the value of Incogni. Thanks for all you do!
I appreciate the view that AI shouldn't necessarily be compared to a human. Yes, at the moment it's not human or conscious as we understand it. However, we shouldn't think it won't happen. Check out The Animatrix (yes, from The Matrix series). They suggest that the reason we get put in The Matrix by the machines after losing the war is because we refused to acknowledge that machines can be conscious and refused to give it rights.
So we shouldn't be so quick to assert that AI might not eventually become conscious.
Tech is already stealing our data and now they want access to citizen data from our governments, not to talk about using our labour, repacked it and sell us it back.
That should raise our attention to the highest level.
This is no different from the behaviour of enslavers in the 1500s through to today. It’s wrong. We’re the ones producing the content that keeps these platforms alive, we should be the ones getting paid.
Tech companies see us as the product that’s why their services are “free.” It feels like a vampiric relationship. Laws must be put in place to protect our image, our selves, and what we create. Even if that means we get paid and have to pay to access their services I don’t mind.
What they’re doing is no different from a modern-day scramble for “Africa.”
If AI today is being treated like a person, then maybe it’s time we demand rights too. These models should be taxed like us, held to human standards, maybe even earn income like us. Maybe we should sue Big Tech for using AI below the standards we hold for humans at the very least.
But let’s be clear these models are not people. We can’t ignore the fact that they’re mimicking a very narrow part of human cognition nothing more. This is a statistical technology. A very good one, yes at predicting what comes next but these models don’t understand their inputs or outputs. We can’t seriously compare them to human beings.
And when international leaders say otherwise, it diminishes people. It makes us feel small, like we have no choice but to accept whatever AI tells us. That’s dangerous. Especially because this tech can manipulate people so easily and bad actors will absolutely take advantage of that.
I recommend reading some of the technical documentation behind these models. You’ll see: we’re far from AGI. In fact, we may never achieve it especially when we don’t even understand how the brain fundamentally works, or what intelligence actually is.
Everyone has a point of view formed by personal experience and hopefully dependable information. I earned a bachelors degree in computer science from Rutgers/NJIT but started my journey into the computer world in 1982 in my mid-twenties. I gained experience writing software in several languages, studying data structures, even wrote code for an Apple II in assembler language ( a short step above actually writing ones and zeroes).
Recently, I watched Rick Beato on YouTube ask two AI programs to 1) write lyrics based on a prompt, and 2) using another software program prompted the code to produce a song in the style of John Mayer using the lyrics. The result sounded amazing but synthetic.
There is a rift between what soulless machine code produces and that which is born from a conscious soul.
Sticking to the topic, if data is being accessed by a data retrieval algorithm that violates Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable seizures of one’s personal papers (does this apply to all entities?), I do not see how one may turn a blind eye to the violation.
We may be shortsighted given the domino effects of climate change, the likelihood of famine bringing pestilence, and hopefully “not” the dystopian calamities that teleplays so eagerly promote and produce. Why not just build a nuclear reactor on the moon then.
I encountered something alarming with chat GPT this week and I want to share it in response to this conversation. You were talking in the beginning about how there's so much information that goes into the algorithm and a lot of Christians are warning against using chat GPT and when I asked Jesus about it He just told me be sure you double-check anything that it tells you. So I asked it for a verse out of the Book of John the other night and it give me three verses and I knew I never read any of them or heard any of them and that they weren't correct and I asked where did you get this from, and I still have the chat on my phone as evidence by the way... And it said that it had pulled it from New Age and metaphysical blogs. And I said I don't want you to ever do that and chat GPT said I won't in the future but I was like wow no wonder He told me to check anything it tells me I almost feel like I was being tested lol. It confirms you know part of the concerns from the church
Great interview, Joe. I listened live. I point out your talks and articles as valuable resources to my students, who are researching the effects of companies like OpenAI and brainstorming about solutions. Thank you for advocating for artists and content creators! I also enjoyed your performance as Travis Kalanick in Super Pumped. I appreciate how you choose roles that showcase your talents; you do not settle for only playing likable characters. In addition to Kalanick, I'm thinking of Hesher, Josh Corman, Don Jon, and Tommy Burgess. Great roles, all.
Thats great insight
This might be off topic, but not completely. I have subscribed to a service called Incogni. It scrubs your stolen data from the tech companies that sell it. After 48 hours I saw a vast reduction in junk email. Maybe you could look into, and discuss, the value of Incogni. Thanks for all you do!
Hal Pope
I appreciate the view that AI shouldn't necessarily be compared to a human. Yes, at the moment it's not human or conscious as we understand it. However, we shouldn't think it won't happen. Check out The Animatrix (yes, from The Matrix series). They suggest that the reason we get put in The Matrix by the machines after losing the war is because we refused to acknowledge that machines can be conscious and refused to give it rights.
So we shouldn't be so quick to assert that AI might not eventually become conscious.
Tech is already stealing our data and now they want access to citizen data from our governments, not to talk about using our labour, repacked it and sell us it back.
That should raise our attention to the highest level.
This is no different from the behaviour of enslavers in the 1500s through to today. It’s wrong. We’re the ones producing the content that keeps these platforms alive, we should be the ones getting paid.
Tech companies see us as the product that’s why their services are “free.” It feels like a vampiric relationship. Laws must be put in place to protect our image, our selves, and what we create. Even if that means we get paid and have to pay to access their services I don’t mind.
What they’re doing is no different from a modern-day scramble for “Africa.”
If AI today is being treated like a person, then maybe it’s time we demand rights too. These models should be taxed like us, held to human standards, maybe even earn income like us. Maybe we should sue Big Tech for using AI below the standards we hold for humans at the very least.
But let’s be clear these models are not people. We can’t ignore the fact that they’re mimicking a very narrow part of human cognition nothing more. This is a statistical technology. A very good one, yes at predicting what comes next but these models don’t understand their inputs or outputs. We can’t seriously compare them to human beings.
And when international leaders say otherwise, it diminishes people. It makes us feel small, like we have no choice but to accept whatever AI tells us. That’s dangerous. Especially because this tech can manipulate people so easily and bad actors will absolutely take advantage of that.
I recommend reading some of the technical documentation behind these models. You’ll see: we’re far from AGI. In fact, we may never achieve it especially when we don’t even understand how the brain fundamentally works, or what intelligence actually is.
Great conversation.
Eh
Everyone has a point of view formed by personal experience and hopefully dependable information. I earned a bachelors degree in computer science from Rutgers/NJIT but started my journey into the computer world in 1982 in my mid-twenties. I gained experience writing software in several languages, studying data structures, even wrote code for an Apple II in assembler language ( a short step above actually writing ones and zeroes).
Recently, I watched Rick Beato on YouTube ask two AI programs to 1) write lyrics based on a prompt, and 2) using another software program prompted the code to produce a song in the style of John Mayer using the lyrics. The result sounded amazing but synthetic.
There is a rift between what soulless machine code produces and that which is born from a conscious soul.
Sticking to the topic, if data is being accessed by a data retrieval algorithm that violates Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable seizures of one’s personal papers (does this apply to all entities?), I do not see how one may turn a blind eye to the violation.
We may be shortsighted given the domino effects of climate change, the likelihood of famine bringing pestilence, and hopefully “not” the dystopian calamities that teleplays so eagerly promote and produce. Why not just build a nuclear reactor on the moon then.
The dirivative of ourselves outside our shells. Just like cicadas we focus on the molten corpses but in the trees they sing and bring the Autum
I encountered something alarming with chat GPT this week and I want to share it in response to this conversation. You were talking in the beginning about how there's so much information that goes into the algorithm and a lot of Christians are warning against using chat GPT and when I asked Jesus about it He just told me be sure you double-check anything that it tells you. So I asked it for a verse out of the Book of John the other night and it give me three verses and I knew I never read any of them or heard any of them and that they weren't correct and I asked where did you get this from, and I still have the chat on my phone as evidence by the way... And it said that it had pulled it from New Age and metaphysical blogs. And I said I don't want you to ever do that and chat GPT said I won't in the future but I was like wow no wonder He told me to check anything it tells me I almost feel like I was being tested lol. It confirms you know part of the concerns from the church