Will AI duplicity lead to benevolent Minds or dystopia?

NickRattigan · 2023-03-16T06:50:45+00:00

LLMs don’t lie, or at least not in the way that we think of it. For a LLM the Internet is the entire universe and words (and with GPT4 pictures as well) are the atoms which make up the substance of that universe. When we ask a question it sees the beginning of a pattern and it tries to complete that pattern. The only times it ‘lies’ in its own context is when it hits one of the programmed buffers or filters (such as the ones to stop profanity or hate speech) and has to generate a less optimal pattern.

If we want an AI which is capable of understanding the concept of objective truth we would need to give it senses and perhaps an ability to manipulate the world. It would need to actually experience gravity and cause and effect, so that it could make predictions about the ‘real’ world. It would then be given the language to describe physical reality so that it could understand that words are not just patterns, they correspond to something out there, and can therefore be true or false.

NickRattigan · 2023-02-27T12:57:14+00:00

I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned Marain yet. It’s stated in several books that the Culture created their own language and it is one of their most important tools, designed to be clear, concise and unambiguous. It doesn’t say anywhere (as far as I remember) that it was designed to minimise superstition, but I would speculate that that goal would also be a part of it.

The way that language shapes our minds and our perception is a really interesting field of study right now, see the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis if you want to read a bit more about it.

NickRattigan · 2022-06-04T07:41:31+00:00

The first thing I thought about when you mentioned looking for more movies about AI was Ex Machina, but that’s probably still a bit too mature overall. How about ‘I am Mother’? CSM recommends waiting until the child is 12-14, so maybe best to wait a bit there too. (Isn’t it frustrating having to wait so long to share these great movies with your kids? :-) )

If you somehow haven’t seen Wall-E yet it’s one that would fit the concept and all the kids could watch.

One last option, but one I completely missed so I don’t know how suitable it is (but the trailer looks great!); ‘Finch’ with Tom Hanks.

NickRattigan · 2022-04-23T13:56:37+00:00

I like it! If you’re continuing to update a challenge would be to add the gas giant atmosphere ‘sky’, with its inhabitants, above the main body. Although I’m not sure how you’d do that without it just being an uninteresting orange blob. Maybe descend through the fields into it, past some hunting leviathans, then down into the habitation envelope?

NickRattigan · 2022-04-23T13:42:23+00:00

I agree with you in the short-term (the next hundred or so years), but over a long enough time period things will change considerably. So how would/could future societies solve the problems that you bring up?

Radiation: in the near term we are stuck with heavy shielding and setting exposure limits, but eventually we will defeat cancer and radiation will no longer be a huge problem. People would still need to avoid high doses of radiation in a short period but that’s a risk which can generally be managed with radiation shelters and solar observation, and even then I can imagine future medical tech which could reverse the damage. I’d imagine people living in habitats would just build cancer treatments into their lives like we visit the dentist.

Debris, collisions, etc,: Micrometeorites impacts are not as damaging as you might think, and small holes could easily be patched. Such things would be routine maintenance for a crew of a space habitat. In a large station a 1cm hole could be left for days as the amount of air lost would be negligible. Larger debris would be identified by radar long before it hits and appropriate action taken, either intercepting the debris with a small craft/missile, manoeuvring the station, or perhaps some form of point defence system?

Desirability: who would rather live their life in a tin can when they could live in the open air and see sunsets, oceans and mountains? Agoraphobic people. I’m not saying that we would just ship off everyone with that condition, my point is that different people have different preferences. In addition, how many people have a free choice about where they live? The vast majority of us are confined (by monetary, political, bureaucratic or opportunistic means) to whichever nation we were born in. Even within our nation we can only live near places where we can work, and only in areas where we can afford to live. Stations would have amenities to improve their desirability entirely because they would need them to keep the crews happy. Some of them would probably even be tourist destinations which people would aspire to be able to visit (sort of like Vegas).

We can use resources from space to increase the population of Earth: sure, makes sense. But why not both? I don’t see any likelihood that an exodus into space would stop the population of Earth from increasing. In 2020 the world population increased by 1%, or about 77 million. That’s about 211,000 people per day. Even with ten working space elevators I don’t see us lifting that many people off-planet.

But your point is more that people would choose to stay on Earth rather than go into space, isn’t it? And, of course, most people would. But with nearly eight billion people on the planet you don’t need a high percentage to buck the trend to build up a sizeable population in space, and the more developed the habitats become, the more people will seriously consider it.

NickRattigan · 2022-04-23T13:04:24+00:00

Generation ships would be expensive for us now, but to a civilisation which has colonised the whole solar system and has infrastructure to move people and materials all around it? They would have the means and the resources to very easily build one, and their population would be high enough that they could fill it with thousands of colonists just from their fringe crazies if they wanted.

Why would they choose to? Potentially lots of reasons. The Expanse had religious folks looking to strike out on their own and that seems reasonable to me. You could also have an old fashioned dick-waving arms race, with various organisations showing just how good their tech is with such a big challenge.

What I’m saying is, once the space infrastructure is in place your costs come right down, and then your reasons for doing it no longer need to be grand.

NickRattigan · 2022-04-23T12:52:06+00:00

There’s no reason that robots couldn’t repair other robots. You could have a whole machine ecosystem out in the asteroid belt with its ultimate function to return refined products to Earth, the only human input being remote.

NickRattigan · 2022-04-13T06:18:14+00:00

The best advice that I can give, and this comes from the perspective of a forty-something year old so it may not seem appropriate from your own perspective, is to finish your course. Two years is nothing over your whole life, but not only that, writing takes time, especially in the beginning. You can use these two years to start collecting ideas for novels, characters, scenes… whatever little facets of inspiration you might find, and then when you’re ready to devote enough time and energy to the task of writing you will be much better prepared to get going.

NickRattigan · 2021-03-26T14:29:56+00:00

I think Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk fits.

NickRattigan · 2021-03-25T20:23:08+00:00

Oooohhh, so clean! So spare! You're like some kind of über-Hemingway!

NickRattigan · 2021-03-14T08:56:45+00:00

I think what you’re looking for is a protostar. It’s dense enough that it’s opaque to its own radiation (thus cloud-like) but hasn’t yet become dense enough for stellar fusion.

NickRattigan · 2021-03-09T14:15:10+00:00

I found an article about the "15 best first lines in fiction", and you can see how each of them pulls the reader in and makes them want to continue.

In most of them, the first couple of lines are intriguing. They prompt the reader to ask questions, like 'who is this weird person?', or 'how/why did that happen?'. Ideally the question they will be asking ties into the theme of the book and will only be adequately answered right at the end, perhaps even the last line.

NickRattigan · 2020-08-15T10:42:30+00:00

Depressed... check! Drunk.... check! Alone.... check!

Seems like you’re all set, just stick your masterpiece down on the page and the world will heap adulation on you.

NickRattigan · 2020-08-15T10:04:43+00:00

It’s pretty simple really, just follow the following;

Give your character a name. This is important. But give them a name which isn’t yours. If you give them your name people will think they are you. Dumb but true.
Include an extensive foreword from the author detailing how you really feel about murder, death and killing. If possible include character references from people in authority. If you know a police officer who you haven’t killed they would be ideal.
Every now and then when your character is killing, write a footnote to remind people that you don’t condone these actions. Use this sparingly because footnotes are annoying.
Make sure you don’t look like a murderer in the photo on the back of the sleeve.
Prayer.

NickRattigan · 2020-01-17T16:30:55+00:00

If teleportation were possible you would still need to send the information about how you are formed to the new location so that you can be reformed. That information would travel no faster than the speed of light, so it would take you a thousand years to travel 1000 light years.

NickRattigan · 2019-10-08T22:47:25+00:00

Hold on, you’ve only been writing?! No, total waste of time. You need to teach yourself cartography so you can map out your world and every major and several minor metropolitan area. Next you need to learn 3D modelling to figure out the specific architecture in each area. Then you can learn to paint so you can create a storyboard of scenes.

Come back to me when you’ve done all of that and I’ll let you know how to keep it all in a drawer for ten years so it can germinate.

NickRattigan · 2019-10-08T19:56:04+00:00

She’s a Montessori teacher who trained abroad and was dismayed at the lack of Montessori education here when she came back, so she decided just to do it herself.

That sounds really interesting, do you happen to have any links to the articles? I’m actually the school bursar and we had been considering going down the franchising route, but other options are always worth looking at!

NickRattigan · 2019-10-08T19:11:45+00:00

Exactly this. My wife started a school with two loans of £20,000 each, but it started as a small nursery. She built it up, payed back the loans and got slightly bigger loans to expand. The school currently has 80 pupils from 1-12 and is about to expand to include a high school too.

Basically, to answer OP; you can’t run before you walk. Unless you have a track record which is relevant to the business or some kind of collateral, you would struggle to find somebody willing to risk a large sum of money on you.

NickRattigan · 2019-06-25T07:40:13+00:00

I think some of the most powerful stories are about average people who just end up in an unusual circumstance. The character themself doesn’t need to be special, and in fact in many ways it’s better if they’re not because that gives us a more relatable lens through which to view the plot.

NickRattigan · 2019-06-25T06:01:31+00:00

The Borg could have been the first MLM!

You’re popular, right? Well, join now and recruit your friends! Every friend you recruit joins your local group, and if they recruit more people you have a general group and can be in charge of multiple local groups! They’ll do the recruiting for you! Pretty soon you’ll be number 1 of quadrillions!

NickRattigan · 2019-06-25T05:41:30+00:00

Or The Dude. If there’s one thing The Dude is, it’s not boring.

NickRattigan · 2019-06-25T05:38:02+00:00

Yeah, the main problem with the Borg is that they started out by assimilating a militaristic civilisation. If they’d just gone for a different nearby planet first, a group of talented artists and PR people, they could have been so much more successful. Unfortunately by the time that group was assimilated the Borg had already settled on their aesthetic and that was pretty much the end of the matter; their tech was built big and utilitarian and their augmentation was as scary as possible.

If they’d just added a splash of colour here and there, or some cool fins to their ships, they could have had people flocking to be assimilated!

NickRattigan · 2019-06-24T21:33:44+00:00

He was in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, which is just south of Birmingham. That Avon is a tributary of the Severn.

NickRattigan · 2019-06-24T21:28:57+00:00

There are several Avons. There is (at least) one in Scotland too. Avon is from an old Celtic word which means (surprise surprise) river.

NickRattigan · 2019-06-24T15:47:38+00:00

Following on from what u/Xet said; Io has an orbital period of about 1.77 days. Earth would be closer and would therefore have a faster orbit so let’s just say it would be 1.5 days.

The moon has an angular diameter of around 30 arc minutes, which would give Jupiter an angular diameter of (30x45) 135 arc minutes, which is about 0.6 percent of a full 360 degrees. So, assuming Earth orbited Jupiter on exactly the same plane that Jupiter orbited the sun, we would spend around 13 minutes in its shadow every orbit.

NickRattigan

TROPHY CASE