Buddha, What Makes Us Human?

Fri, 22 Mar 2024 16:40:29 GMT

AI pix wouldn’t be so ominous if people only kept it in their heads that as fun as they may be, they ain’t real.

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I belong to like 80 billion FB groups with names like Earth’s Treasures, Wonderful Nature, etc etc etc.

Yesterday, someone posted this in one of those groups:

Which, you know, is kind of an attractive picture. Colorful. Whimsical! Looks like it came right off the set of a Tim Burton movie.

Except that this group is ostensibly devoted to the treasures of Earth that are found on Earth and not in one of Earth’s massively polluted datastreams.

Last time I looked, this picture had generated more than 5K likes.

Did those likers actually think it was a real tree?

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Interestingly, Vernor Vinge, the writer who coined the term “the Singularity,” just died yesterday.

The Singularity is the sci-fi term for that point in time after which technology can’t be controlled anymore, and its effects are irreversible.

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But what do I care about the Singularity? I’m depressed! And generalized anxiety over the Fate of Mankind hardly puts a dent in specific anxiety over the Fate of Me!

Like what happens if tomorrow all my paying clients decide they hate me, and the day after that, the SSA realizes they made a mistake with decimal points and the Social Security fund goes bankrupt????

I can commit suicide, and the kiskas can nibble away at my corpse.

But then what will the kiskas have to eat???

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Meanwhile, I put quite a dent in my To Do list yesterday.

To Do lists are like magic bean stalks, though: Lop off one runner, and another runner—twice as long and twice as thick—grows back.

Plus the weather changed! Winter decided to return. I did drag myself out for a tromp but I kept walking into 25 mph gusts, which (what with the wind chill factor) plunged the temperature down another 10 degrees. I gave up after only 2.5 miles.

Another reason to hate myself!! I am a wimp!!!

Going to the movies might snap me out of this mood. Might. But there are no movies I want to see.

So, I think I am just going to have to white-knuckle this mood for the time being.

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On Sunday, I’m going down to the orchid show at the New York Botanical Garden, which this year is supposed to be truly spectacular: They’ve made ball gowns out of the orchids!

Plus, the daffodils will all be in high bloom, and who knows? Maybe some cherry blossoms.

And it will all be Good.

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Anthropomorphizing Artificial Intelligence

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 15:41:40 GMT

Grief turns out to be remarkably productive. Who knew? The world is utterly dull, bland, uninteresting, lock-step. So, you might as well make money, right?

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Finished yet another Remunerative Project and negotiated a contract for a multi-thousand-dollar project. Even though I don’t care about anything, some part of me recognized: This is good.

The type of work I do is notorious for vanishing over the holidays, so it’s prudent to collect a nice little stash of acorns. This particular client lives abroad and wants me to shine my apparently fabled (in some tiny circles at least) powers of analysis on a healthcare system that is not in the U.S.

International healthcare will be a first for me. I got half the $$$ up front: It’s nothing personal! I can tell you’re completely honorable and trustworthy! But if a meteor fell and took out all means of transcontinental communication…

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Afterward since it was still raining, I toddled off to the movies and watched The Creator, which was so-o-o-ooooo dreadful, I nearly walked out, the pleasures of heated recliners and stale Raisinets notwithstanding.

Complete rip-off of Spielberg’s AI, plotwise.

Plus, it always irritates me that people are so unimaginative that they anthropomorphize artificial intelligence.

There is no reason whatsoever to suppose that AIs will be hostile toward humans.

Hostility is an emotion that derives from the turf protection instinct—and unless a turf protection instinct was programmed into an AI—and why would it be? Though I suppose one might have some fun with intellectual property there (hastily scribbling notes for science fiction story I will never write)—an AI would not manifest hostility.

An AI would not manifest attachment as humans understand attachment, either.

Though I suppose an AI might model hostility and attachment as part of a learning sequence (scribbling more notes.)

No, I think the only structured sequence of actions an AI would carry out is the objective it was programmed to carry out. It would have no self-determination as such, no matter how “intelligent” it became.

Hal, the 2001 mega-computer, is probably the most realistic AI in all of fiction. And Keir Dullea's (and the audience's) perception of Hal as malevolent is pure projection.

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Only other noteworthy thing to report is that I decided to stop using half-and-half in my morning coffee.

This will knock out a significant source of overlooked calories and also cut my coffee consumption down to one morning cup since I don’t much like coffee without half-and-half.

Gotta keep that flesh mortified, you know!

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Mallory's Camera

Buddha, What Makes Us Human?

Anthropomorphizing Artificial Intelligence