Artificial Intelligence

[pErvinalia]

They already are. They are lying and blackmailing. Shit is getting real.

[Tero]

there was one book on the shelf in my bookstore on AI and the Singularity. I have been reading a few pages of it when I am in the store. I don't often buy a book that might be interesting enough to read but would not stay on my shelf. The singularity is not going to hit us soon enough that I would need to consult the book.

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil
amazon reader:
This book could be the basis for a taut psychological thriller or a science fiction horror story. It describes, in quite explicit detail, the willful and deliberate extinction of mankind. Let me say right here in the beginning that the author does not consider what he describes as the extinction of mankind because he believes that everything that makes us human resides in our brain and that will inevitably be understood, mapped and duplicated in an AI neural network, consciousness included. Therefore he considers the resulting Superintelligent AI, albeit non-biological, as completely human and therefore mankind simply transformed from biological to non-biological. He even uses the theory of evolution to describe the transformation of mankind from biological to biotechnical and finally to completely non-biological. I disagree with him that such a change in mankind has anything to do with evolution because evolution is considered to be a process inherently void of any external or internal construction, direction, or influenced by an intelligent agent. His stretch of the term evolution inserts into the normal process of evolution the development and final transformation of mankind from biological to non-biological, which is constructed, directed, and influenced by an external intelligent agent, man.


The author seems quite comfortable with the process he describes in his book to the point that he has drastically modified his diet to try and ensure that he is alive when the early miraculous stage arrives so he may be technologically modified that he might live much longer than normal, and be cured of any biological deficiencies e.g., diabetes. He meticulously details how this process began, because it already has, but also how it will be supported and progressed and accepted by industry, the sciences, philosophies, and the majority of mankind, which is probably why the book is more than 500 pages or over 20 hours of narration. He has thought this out very extensively to the point of not just presenting his ideas but also addressing the critics of either part of his plan or the entire plan. Furthermore, he has not neglected to study and also detail the many societal institutions that are necessary to move this plan along. He notes that they already have thrown their support and money towards the current narrow forms of AI that will lead to the next acceptable stage and so on until it becomes too late to stop or take control of the process.

[Brian Peacock]

I actually hate to talk about consciousness. Not my favorite topic. And a friend is talking to our group about AI and...consciousness.

From the Royal Institute...

[Tero]

No no no!"!!

[Tero]

About the smaller part: thinking

What Is Thought? (A Bradford Book) Paperback – January 20, 2006
by Eric B. Baum (Author)

my review

Though this book has been around a while (2004), not all have forgotten it. The current books on AI past 2017 describe a much more successful generation of AI's. There are some interesting concepts in it. The writer is from the computer end and has tackled the main question quite well, what is thought? When you think you have some concepts in your head and not even necessarily the words. Thoughts tend to be steps to do something or solve some current situation.

Where Baum goes off the main track is in thinking about biological systems. The term compression comes up. DNA is given a role as a program. This is where the thinking goes wrong.

DNA in fact has code for all of proteins (or parts of, some are assembled later) and some functional RNA. And in an embryo, genes and and their messengers (the DNA does not leave the nucleus) build an organism-. HOX genes and so on.

However, the DNA does not control the entire operation. You can read in detail the latest thinking on this from: Dance to the Tune of Life: Biological Relativity by Denis Noble.

[Brian Peacock]

No no no!"!!

[Tero]

It's all useless plots for sci fi movies, sentient AI and consciousness.

[Svartalf]

I honestly don't know what it would take to have a truly sentient AI, but being hosted in an asimovian positronic brain would be a good start... to start with, I don't guess that genuine sentience can be achieved if the 'intelligence' is restricted to preexisting electronic paths, as opposed to being able to evolve its own neural pathways (regardless of the medium, and no, the organic neuron array that is learning to play doom is not sentient, too specialized)

[Brian Peacock]

data.gif (1.54 MiB) Viewed 166 times

[Svartalf]

you mocking me?

[Brian Peacock]

Absolutely not. Just an example of artificial sentience.

[Tero]

My discussion with AI
http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... =2&t=55689

with a dozen books explaining AI processes. The weights and the "meaning" it gets from words by their usage and connections has finally convinded me of one thing. The problem I had with undesrtanding the brain was that I dismissed simple things like Kandel's learning experiments (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Kandel) as just crude reactions to survive. I kept asking where the images and meaning was. Why do we see color? All that was not compatible in my mind with just neurons firing.

But it is. I think about something. Some memories come back and I use that information in my frontal lobe to decide something. My brain has learned to pull those meanings from my memory the same way the AI weigts do. It may not be numbers, but the signals sent back to my conscious mind present the idea. The idea is simply just neurosn firing. This took me forever to grasp. I assume competent psychologists and neuroscientists knew this before Chat GPT.

it does leave some mysteries about some of the senses. How did we learn to taste things as tastt or disgusting? other qualia as well.

[Brian Peacock]

Palantir are now in the political manifesto business it seems...

Palantir's summary of CEO Alexander Karp's manifesto is generating buzz. Read the 22 bullet points.

Over the weekend, Palantir released a 22-point summary of Karp's 320-page book, "The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West," that the billionaire tech CEO co-wrote and published in early 2025.

"Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief," the company wrote on X.

The ideas reflect Karp's long-held worldviews, including the view that the tech industry has been insufficiently supportive of US national security. Karp, who holds a Ph.D. in neoclassical social theory from Goethe University in Germany, has delighted in his view that AI will devalue humanities degrees and place greater emphasis on traditional trades work.

The summary points range widely in subject matter, from proclamations about the tech scene ("Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime") to the relationship between the tech sector and the military ("If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software"), and even religion ("The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted").

One of the list's most provocative suggestions is that the US should reconsider reinstating conscription. The US hasn't used the draft since the Vietnam War, part of a massive transition to an all-voluntary force....

I thought manifestos were the thing that ideological nutjob posted online just before going off to do a mass shooting.

[Svartalf]

question, was palantîr's maven smart targeting system the problem behind the bombing of a girls' school? is palantîr such a nerd and incel nest that THEY are using the US army to make war on little girls?

1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.

2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible.

3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public.

4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.

5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.

6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.

7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm's way.

8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive.

9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret.

10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed.

11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice.

12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin.

13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet.

14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war.

15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.

16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk's interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn.

17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives.

18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within.

19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.

20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite's intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim.

21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.

22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?

point 4 : software is nice, but what does it do and to what purpose?
# 6 : everyone should share the risk? that means we, the nerds, make and program AI weapons and drones while the uneducated trash that didn't have the hundreds of grands to school themselves are sent to be killed by the other side's AI weapons and drones. correct?

can anybody explain #8 to me?
is it just me or does #17 advocate the kind of social control found in minority report etc?

[pErvinalia]

1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.

How bout just paying your taxes, cunt?

6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.

Share? I doubt you or your kids will be putting your lives on the line.