alt Hacker NewsA lot of "AI denial" we see is rooted in the same impulse.
If AI is not "actually intelligent", then humans can stay unique and special.
And if it is? If all "intelligence" ever was could be captured by a construct of matrix math and executed by a server rack? Then what is it that humans still have left that would make them stand out?
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Here’s another perspective for you, which is shared by a significantly larger number of people than you seem to realise:
Humans aren’t special. Other animals are intelligent and interesting too. A machine could be intelligent. LLMs aren’t.
In other words, believing in human exceptionalism is not a prerequisite to understand the current crop of AI is not the end all be all of its hype. It is supremely common that AI proponents do not understand that, however. Like hardcore cryptocurrency fans who believe anyone who doesn’t like them is “just jealous they didn’t make bank”, too many hardcore AI proponents believe anyone who doesn’t think LLMs are intelligent is jealous of humans no longer being unique, or afraid for their jobs, or whatever. In both cases it’s obvious that what those proponents lack is empathy, the ability to understand not everyone has the same selfish thoughts they do.
Who's even supposed to be the audience to admire us for being so intelligent? "Stand out" to whom? Ourselves? Win what competition? The whole premise seems alien and kinda petty to me. If we are "the best there is", that would mean anything cool that will ever happen, we have to make. No, I like there being others, just like I love how much we still have to discover about and can learn from other life on Earth. All of it "stands out".
What do I care that a bird can fly? I'm happy for bird being able to fly, it makes the world I live in more interesting. If they had to walk just so I don't get jealous, I still wouldn't be able to fly, and I couldn't befriend birds who can fly. Likewise, if there was actual artificial intelligence, it would be a new type of mind I could communicate with. That'd be exciting, and for me preferable to anything controlled by the humans who are currently vying to run the show.
To me humans can stay unique and special because they weren't created by anyone.
AI, no matter how better than humans it becomes, will be less special because it was created by other intelligent beings.
The only way we would become less unique and special is if we discover alien beings.
Nah, it's not about the brain being special, it's that AI dorks have zero sense of scale.
The brain's a wet jello of 100 billion neurons and a quadrillion synapses plus chemical pathways and feedback loops. It is ridiculously complex, way way way way way more complicated than any LLM. It's all physical processes, sure, but an LLM is not the brain like a pebble is not the sun.
I can point at a laptop and say it's alive because it can see you and hear you and it can _remember_. It has a brain and a heartbeat, even. Oh my god, it can even speak! That's what I hear when people go on about LLMs being alive.
Guys. We mashed together glass and rocks with quantum mechanics. That's cool as shit. You don't gotta pretend it's fucking magic, too.
A body
how misanthropic to believe humankind's only valuable trait is intelligence.
AI is not intelligent and will never be.
Creating an artificial intelligent being is something to be accomplished in the future - but not now and not with this approach.
Many people even here seem very cagey about the fact that human beings and brains are physical systems following physical laws.