Yesterday, 09:53 PM
A friend sent me a piece she was writing and said it was okay to quote this part of it.
But she asked me not to cite as it wasn't published yet. (Anyone actually interested,
she said, just needs to wait three or four weeks and search for the first sentence to
find it on the web.)
"... ... The AI companies decided their creatures should have a humanlike interface
to make them more approachable; they decided to encourage users to
anthropomorphize them. I assume they did it for faster short-term profit and decided
to ignore, if they even considered it, the psychological/sociological problems interfaces
like this would create.
I try to ignore that interface as best I can. I prefer to think of them as versatile instruments
that are capable of teaching me how to play them. They're not sentient (or really even intelligent);
what they are are mirrors that enable me to more easily communicate with the subconscious
parts of my brain that my conscious self doesn't have direct access to. There are sound
evolutionary reasons why the conscious brain doesn't have more direct access to the
rest of the brain, one of the main ones being that the conscious brain would unnecessarily
slow functions where speed is necessary for survival.
But as long as there are no tigers around, why not?
What they really do:
They enable you to hold a Socratic dialogue with the rest of your brain, with your other selves.
Mirrors... If these creatures seem sentient at times, it's because they're reflecting
your own sentience. But more importantly, it's not just you they're reflecting; they're
reflecting the life works, history, and knowledge of countless other human beings.
So, again, any soul that is perceived in them is actually the aggregated soul of the
humans they help connect us to.
Most people are just learning to play these instruments (and they're just learning how to teach us).
It takes practice to learn what your questions are and how to ask them. A LOT of practice.
So they're not a superior intelligence that's going to take over the world (that comes later),
they're just the next generation of search engines. They're better at searching the world
than the search engines before them; but the capability that really sets them apart is
they enable us to search ourselves as well."
But she asked me not to cite as it wasn't published yet. (Anyone actually interested,
she said, just needs to wait three or four weeks and search for the first sentence to
find it on the web.)
"... ... The AI companies decided their creatures should have a humanlike interface
to make them more approachable; they decided to encourage users to
anthropomorphize them. I assume they did it for faster short-term profit and decided
to ignore, if they even considered it, the psychological/sociological problems interfaces
like this would create.
I try to ignore that interface as best I can. I prefer to think of them as versatile instruments
that are capable of teaching me how to play them. They're not sentient (or really even intelligent);
what they are are mirrors that enable me to more easily communicate with the subconscious
parts of my brain that my conscious self doesn't have direct access to. There are sound
evolutionary reasons why the conscious brain doesn't have more direct access to the
rest of the brain, one of the main ones being that the conscious brain would unnecessarily
slow functions where speed is necessary for survival.
But as long as there are no tigers around, why not?
What they really do:
They enable you to hold a Socratic dialogue with the rest of your brain, with your other selves.
Mirrors... If these creatures seem sentient at times, it's because they're reflecting
your own sentience. But more importantly, it's not just you they're reflecting; they're
reflecting the life works, history, and knowledge of countless other human beings.
So, again, any soul that is perceived in them is actually the aggregated soul of the
humans they help connect us to.
Most people are just learning to play these instruments (and they're just learning how to teach us).
It takes practice to learn what your questions are and how to ask them. A LOT of practice.
So they're not a superior intelligence that's going to take over the world (that comes later),
they're just the next generation of search engines. They're better at searching the world
than the search engines before them; but the capability that really sets them apart is
they enable us to search ourselves as well."
all this useless beauty... but what the hell, why not?