Frederick Douglass said: “To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.”
A car is not a horse
https://stephenfry.substack.com/p/ai-a-means-to-an-end-or-a-means-to
A transcript of a very good speech that Stephen Fry gave recently. It’s about AI (or Ai as he prefers to call it …) and the very serious problem of understanding the future we face in its presence.
He reminds us that a car is not a horse, that a plane is not a bird, that technology does not imitate. By the same reasoning, AI is neither a brain nor is it intelligent. AI does not imitate.
Let’s get over it.
The next time I read that AI endows computers with the ability to do things that an intelligent human can do I will rip up the book, article or delete the podcast.
A car is not a horse and does not do horse things. AI is not intelligent and does not do intelligent things.
History is about the future…
For reasons I won’t go into I just read this paper:
Readman, P. (2005). The Place of the Past in English Culture c. 1890-1914. In Past & Present: Vol. Feb. (Issue 186, pp. 147–199). Published by : Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society. http://www.jstor.com/stable/3600854
It discusses the role of history in creating an understanding of the past as a way to understand our present, and then from that we gain an understanding of what we should become present and an idea about what we want to become, i.e. history is about the future as much as, if not more than, the past.
Harder than you think …
A trivial thing perhaps but it’s harder than you think to change browsers.
The Mechanical Mind … again
Reading Audrey Watters’ 2nd Breakfast post today, stimulated a comment I wanted to make: https://2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/agents-versus-agency/.
But I am undergoing a major cancellation of subscriptions (I found I have been spending over £300 per year on various things over and above my internet subs and hardware maintenance). This has to stop! So, while offering comments on posts like Audrey’s is in part evidence of how good and therefore stimulating they are … BUT it’s too often a paid-for feature. A barrier to dialogue.
What’s the point?
Chiang discussing an early science fiction story about a super-intliigent childr – ‘ The Hampdenshire Wonder’ (1911)’, “generally considered to be the first fictional treatment of superhuman intelligence, or ‘superintelligence’ – an idea that at the turn of the 19-20 century was an almost inevitable turn of thought as evolutionary thought became embedded, If human evolution kept going, what came next?
From the novel a striking quote:
“Don’t you see that ignorance is the means of our intellectual pleasure? It is the solving of the problem that brings enjoyment—the solved problem has no further interest. So when all is known, the stimulus for action ceases; when all is known there is quiescence, nothingness. Perfect knowledge implies the peace of death.”
And in summary Chiang says: “Nowadays we associate the word “prodigy” with precocious children, but in centuries past the word was used to describe anything monstrous. Victor Stott clearly qualifies as a prodigy in the modern sense, but he qualifies in the older sense too: Not only does he frighten the ignorant and superstitious, he induces a profound terror in the educated and intellectual. Seen in this light, the first novel about superintelligence is actually a work of horror SF, a cautionary tale about the dangers of knowing too much.”
The next phlogiston
A striking idea in Ted Ching’s essay about the 1911 nol ‘The Hampdenshire Wonder’ depicting te birth, childhood and fotunes ofa superintelligen tboy he wite that,
“In the future ‘intelligence’ may be regarded as a historical curiosity, like phlogiston, but until we develop a more precise vocabulary, we continue to use the term. Our contemporary notion of intelligence first gained currency around the time that Beresford was writing, and one can see how that converged with the idea of the superhuman in The Hampdenshire Wonder.”
Gangster AI
American Fascisti
Poor psycho-America. Trump is a proven rapist and swindler (and an old chum of Epstein); Musk is yet to be unmasked as a serial groomer and coercive controller (and no doubt a cheat); Vance is a boozer and a groper; and the list goes on … Mussolini was a gent in comparison with these shades!
“Spawn of the Devil”
Alex Karp is a twisted human being. This quote says pretty much all you need to estimate what kind of human being he is – no morality worth speaking of (and when you see pictures of him he can barely bring himself to have a shower – he’s not only twisted, he’s grubby!).
Speaking at a shareholder’s meeting he is quoted as saying:
“Palantir is here to disrupt and make the institutions we partner with the very best in the world and, when it’s necessary, to scare our enemies and, on occasion, kill them,” Mr. Karp told shareholders earlier this month. “We hope you’re in favor of that, we hope you’re enjoying being a partner.”
What a creep! (He has the blood of many Palestinian children on his hands …)
His mate Peter Thiel is no better, just lives in the shadows.