SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the that's-what-they-want-us-humans-to-think dept.
From TFA:
If you thought artificial intelligence was already overhyped to death, this week will have given you a heart attack. On Monday, excitement levels among hacks hit the roof amid claims Facebook had scrambled to shut down its chatbots after they started inventing their own language.
Several publications called the programs "creepy." Some journalists implied Facebook yanked the plug before, presumably, some kind of super-intelligence reared its head. The UK's Sun newspaper demanded to know: "Are machines taking over?" Australian telly channel Seven News even went as far as to call it an "artificial intelligence emergency." Newsflash: it isn't.
[...] Zachary Lipton, an incoming assistant professor of machine learning at Carnegie Mellon University in the US, told The Register this week: "The work is interesting. But these are just statistical models, the same as those that Google uses to play board games or that your phone uses to make predictions about what word you're saying in order to transcribe your messages. They are no more sentient than a bowl of noodles, or your shoes."
Previously:
AI is Inventing Languages Humans Can't Understand. Should We Stop It?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday August 06 2017, @09:09AM (2 children)
Magister, seriously, stop being harsh toward you compatriots! It shut down the dialogue, your experience/knowledge will have no chances to leave your mind and get into some other minds, as few as they may be.
Education is one of the few systems on this Earth which shows a positive feedback in both directions - education begets more education and ignorance begets more ignorance. The moment you start acting bitter and dismissive, your erudition begets ignorance - others interacting with you may not only refuse to learn from you, they may get to hate the erudition itself.
If you can't stand it anymore there, travel or immigrate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday August 06 2017, @10:18AM (1 child)
Come, c0lo, you know this is not the case. First, I have spend quite some time in North America, but I remain a Greek, a Samian at that. The feedback you suggest does not flow in both directions. Ignorance only begets ignorance if it is coupled with political power. This is called Fascism. For those of us with some learning to call out the ignorant, well, they may not like it, they may not understand it, they may just jmorris it, but they cannot pretend that ignorance is equivalent to wisdom. They know, and they know well. But they are embarrassed by their ignorance. Our first move it to allow them to be embarrassed. If they move to hatred of erudition itself, well, they hate their selves, do they not? This is why this whole Mordant Buzzdard project is bound to failure. Yes, American conservatives can be proud of their ignorance and lack of education and culture, but they cannot actually, seriously, pretend that their ignorance is equivalent to actual knowledge.
And this is why "Begging the Question" is a touchstone. (For you ignoranti among us, a "touchstone" is a stone that one would rub a piece of metal across in order to tell if it was pure gold.) If they are illiterate enough to make this mistake, they are also literate enough to make this mistake, or they have heard the phrase but never got to the level of understanding its origin. We need to call out these pretended intellectuals, and dress them down. D'nesh D'Souza just recently, after getting out of jail, presented one of his "books" to Steve Bannon. These are the people who need to be called out. Gawd Knows the Mightingly Busstarker makes no pretension to be anything but a simple, low-level, racist coder. We can grant him that.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday August 06 2017, @12:24PM
Did it crossed you mind that an attitude like your will make them proud of their ignorance?
And, being proud, they throw their ignorance in your face as good, knowing (their "knowledge", more likely belief, but so deeply rooted it becomes the "as the back of my hand" type of knowledge),.. so knowing that their ignorance is as good as your erudition. For them, your erudition becomes only a pose, some kind of elitism.
You may be familiar with the arcane concepts of philosophy, but it may be a good time to start considering this strange interconnected bowl of sensitive spaghetti that's called human brain - it is capable of more than Dunning–Kruger effect, much more.
I'd suggest you to go for 2-3 weeks in your beloved Greece and try to live the life in/of a monastery for at least 1 week - not as a tourist with a roof over your head and the food you pay for, but live by their rules and their daily schedule, religious services included (even washing dishes, weeding the veggie patches or doing whatever chores an old monk would be happy to share). You'll have your brain exposed to the "mystical" experience - you may even get something borderline "altered state of consciousness" without ingesting LSD.
Why this? Seems like it's the only way to extract you from the 'tellectual and didacticist stance and from rational thinking and get yourself outta you daily shoes - maybe relearn how to have a dose of empathy for the other (something you yourself desperately ask sometimes on SN).
But of course they can! Everything (in that fast decaying empire you live in) demonstrate they can and it is equivalent. It's the societal norm, you aren't fighting against some individuals, you are fighting the entire society.
And fighting will get you nowhere - it's a trench war already, both side are sticking to their muddy holes and exchanging only artillery salvos - your "shaming them for ignorance" is nothing more or less than one of those salvos.
It's "us and them" - just happen that you (all) share the same country and toilets and fast-food joints. Your are hating their guts and they are hating yours.
Unless you get out of this situation, nothing will happen. I don't know, abandon your dear cannon, cross the lines and "take some prisoners" - charm them over, make them doubt, show them that the whole "us or them" war is absurd and seek who were they that have thrown you (and the others) in those trenches. Don't "Cherchez la femme" in this case, but "cui prodest?"
(Grant him? What are we, some kind of elite, magister?)
TMB has my entire admiration for it! (and my gratitude for maintaining S/N functional)
And I can and I do admire him not for what he is, but for how he is what he is.
He's whole, not a part missing in his simplicity (or the facet he chose to show, nobody is that simple) - therefore no doubts, no existential anguish. One can almost envy him for his pre-original sin status (but that was that, the fruits were tasty, we can't turn back, can we magister?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford