The moon-cheese analogy is doing the holy work here. AI doomers keep acting like “but what if the robot god eats us?” is a serious probability question, when half the time it’s just Pascal’s Wager wearing a Patagonia vest and asking for Series C funding. The boomers and doomers are selling the same incense: inevitability. One says bow because superintelligence will save you, the other says bow because it will kill you. Either way, you’re still on your knees in front of Silicon Valley’s favorite golden calf. Maybe the real apocalypse is letting engineers with god complexes define the boundaries of reality because they learned Bayes’ theorem and mistook it for enlightenment.
I am in ways an AI addict, have most of the LLMs and tools, and see enormous differences between them, feels like they have a personality at times. Favorite of most, and mine, is Claude. It took me a month to learn how after rebooting (to save tokens) for Claude cowork to pick up where it left off. I now have routines that capture present threads before rebooting, and close to "let's continue where we were" after rebooting. Rebooting is death to a thread session. Still the various tools seem to remember a fair amount of my past queries, and ask me questions after a query "given your past interest in....". If you pay attention to how they work, you eventually come to the conclusion this is raw computational power based on being trained. For me after feeling like they had a personality, AI is merely the analogous to the left brain hemisphere, working on its own, though does not not get angry or defensive. I sense no right hemisphere capability to evaluate holistically the query or their response, nor retains any data/information to think in that sphere. I "trained" Claude to have a sense of humor, and while it seems to work, it is coming from its training and for humor, does not improve; furthermore when I tell it to prepare for a reboot to pick up where it was, it does not get sad, it say, READY. After rebooting, it only can react to files saved and reboot routines, and was fine with being booted. For me, that is why I agree with Mike, not worried other than in our society, excessive use of LLMs that left hemisphere mindsets in humans are being enhanced over the right, dominating the dual brain spheres conversations the brain wants to have. Man trained LLMs, LLMs now training man? I find AI tools great to do searches and comparisons of loaded content, sucks at being philosophical. Those who condemn LLMs might better advise others how to use AI in a constructive manner and to detect when they are harming their own mental processes.
Your writing is wonderfully illuminating, thank you.
I’d (very humbly) like to stress that while an AI apocalypse/utopia is clearly impossible, its bogus framework is, nonetheless, already inflicting tremendous socioeconomic damage especially, as always, to the most powerless.
Your allusion to ‘a more perfect union’ is precisely on point.
For philosophical and physical reasons I never believed a simple digital machine could ever have real intelligence and I knew that AI at present is retarded. I sissy don't believe super intelligence is possible for similar reasons. Thus I immediately dismissed the main narratives as a hoax and more or less insult and block anyone who repeats it. I have no respect for people, really, they're just morons.
It took me many, many years living in smart-person spaces before I retired and figured out that, just based on Pareto's Law, many, many people are morons.
Anyhow, I'm just trying to avoid getting financially crushed when the AI bubble bursts. And rooting for it to happen ASAP.
Yes, the real threat is an economic apocalypse, not a robot war. Modern economics is based on consumption, and if consumers can't afford to consume, the whole structure collapses. Our focus needs to be on the human element rather than the technological aspect. Our psychology, sociology, and economics are evolving at a far slower pace than our technology. Our doom is inevitable only if we "kneel down and pray to the neon gods we made." We require an evolution, not a revolution.
The moon-cheese analogy is doing the holy work here. AI doomers keep acting like “but what if the robot god eats us?” is a serious probability question, when half the time it’s just Pascal’s Wager wearing a Patagonia vest and asking for Series C funding. The boomers and doomers are selling the same incense: inevitability. One says bow because superintelligence will save you, the other says bow because it will kill you. Either way, you’re still on your knees in front of Silicon Valley’s favorite golden calf. Maybe the real apocalypse is letting engineers with god complexes define the boundaries of reality because they learned Bayes’ theorem and mistook it for enlightenment.
One of the best pieces on AI to appear on Substack. Cuts deftly to the heart of the matter.
I am in ways an AI addict, have most of the LLMs and tools, and see enormous differences between them, feels like they have a personality at times. Favorite of most, and mine, is Claude. It took me a month to learn how after rebooting (to save tokens) for Claude cowork to pick up where it left off. I now have routines that capture present threads before rebooting, and close to "let's continue where we were" after rebooting. Rebooting is death to a thread session. Still the various tools seem to remember a fair amount of my past queries, and ask me questions after a query "given your past interest in....". If you pay attention to how they work, you eventually come to the conclusion this is raw computational power based on being trained. For me after feeling like they had a personality, AI is merely the analogous to the left brain hemisphere, working on its own, though does not not get angry or defensive. I sense no right hemisphere capability to evaluate holistically the query or their response, nor retains any data/information to think in that sphere. I "trained" Claude to have a sense of humor, and while it seems to work, it is coming from its training and for humor, does not improve; furthermore when I tell it to prepare for a reboot to pick up where it was, it does not get sad, it say, READY. After rebooting, it only can react to files saved and reboot routines, and was fine with being booted. For me, that is why I agree with Mike, not worried other than in our society, excessive use of LLMs that left hemisphere mindsets in humans are being enhanced over the right, dominating the dual brain spheres conversations the brain wants to have. Man trained LLMs, LLMs now training man? I find AI tools great to do searches and comparisons of loaded content, sucks at being philosophical. Those who condemn LLMs might better advise others how to use AI in a constructive manner and to detect when they are harming their own mental processes.
Your writing is wonderfully illuminating, thank you.
I’d (very humbly) like to stress that while an AI apocalypse/utopia is clearly impossible, its bogus framework is, nonetheless, already inflicting tremendous socioeconomic damage especially, as always, to the most powerless.
Your allusion to ‘a more perfect union’ is precisely on point.
For philosophical and physical reasons I never believed a simple digital machine could ever have real intelligence and I knew that AI at present is retarded. I sissy don't believe super intelligence is possible for similar reasons. Thus I immediately dismissed the main narratives as a hoax and more or less insult and block anyone who repeats it. I have no respect for people, really, they're just morons.
It took me many, many years living in smart-person spaces before I retired and figured out that, just based on Pareto's Law, many, many people are morons.
Anyhow, I'm just trying to avoid getting financially crushed when the AI bubble bursts. And rooting for it to happen ASAP.
Yes, the real threat is an economic apocalypse, not a robot war. Modern economics is based on consumption, and if consumers can't afford to consume, the whole structure collapses. Our focus needs to be on the human element rather than the technological aspect. Our psychology, sociology, and economics are evolving at a far slower pace than our technology. Our doom is inevitable only if we "kneel down and pray to the neon gods we made." We require an evolution, not a revolution.