Anyone wishing to catch a glimpse into the future would be well advised to read this short article from Business Insider, in which Conor Grennan, Dean of MBA Students at the NYU Stern School of Business and self-confessed ‘frequent ChatGPT user’, gives us his pearls of wisdom about how to use the programme to ‘level up [one’s] personal and professional life across any industry’.
Far too many people do not understand that it is by doing things yourself that you evolve. To learn is to progress; it is to evolve.
In the past, when I saw my stepfather (very old) getting tired doing this or that, I didn't understand why he wanted to get tired so much. Later, I ended up understanding that when you don't do anything anymore, you're dead.
Yes, exactly right. I also think there is something clearly and obviously different about relying on central heating to keep us warm versus relying on technology to perform/assist fundamental social interactions.
Aye. It amazes me that people wish to achieve goals so much that they are willing to sacrifice their own competence to do so. We are witnessing the master's utter dependence upon their slaves all over again.
No matter how nuanced AI chatbots become, they will still just be calculators. But they will be the most potent tools yet created to manipulate actual human behaviour.
Interactive A.I. programs are within a few years of becoming the most potent tool to manipulate humans ever invented. As they perfect their ability to simulate empathy and intimacy, their capacity to personalize those skills will be enhanced by access to online databases that track individual behaviour. These databases—compiled and sold by everything from cell phone apps, credit cards, online and offline banking services, corporations, browsers, and websites, to Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant, to traffic cameras, private surveillance cameras, court records, academic records, civil records, medical records, criminal records, and spyware—have already compiled comprehensive information about every American.
Intelligent machines, and the avatars they will animate in applications ranging from tabletop personal assistants like Alexa all the way to virtual creatures inhabiting fully immersive worlds in the Metaverse, will never think. But they will convince you that they think because they will know you better than you know yourself.
Consider this achievement as the ultimate tool for controlling public opinion. Sophisticated A.I. algorithms are already used to manipulate consumer behaviour and public sentiment at the level of each individual. Now put all that power into an A.I. personality that is designed to make you fall in love with it.
Yes, and it's astonishing how blithe the Grennans of this world are about this. I have my doubts that AI is ever going to be capable of real 'intelligence', let alone consciousness, but its potential deployments are frightening.
As someone with an MSc in AI who is, ironically, sceptical of AI ("know thy enemy", perhaps...?) I don't really understand why the large language model chatbots raise more concerns than search engines, which to me represent the tip of this particular spear. Is it that people are so lazy and venal these days that removing the requirement to synthesise separate texts into a single text is something they want to offload to robot slaves, no matter how badly it is done? Or is it that severing the link between the library and the mind has raised applied ignorance to a kind of degenerate art form?
Finally, I note that a computer program has always been spelled 'program', even when we are British. However, spell how you wish as I support all rebellions against technology, and that includes the dictionary, as Illich was perhaps the first to realise. Perhaps, however, ChatGPT should be understood as both a program and a programme... I shall leave this thought to fester.
I don't know if laziness is exactly the right word. It's more that constant interaction with the web has bred in people a preference for superficial, instrumental engagement with reality itself.
Far too many people do not understand that it is by doing things yourself that you evolve. To learn is to progress; it is to evolve.
In the past, when I saw my stepfather (very old) getting tired doing this or that, I didn't understand why he wanted to get tired so much. Later, I ended up understanding that when you don't do anything anymore, you're dead.
Yes, exactly right. I also think there is something clearly and obviously different about relying on central heating to keep us warm versus relying on technology to perform/assist fundamental social interactions.
Aye. It amazes me that people wish to achieve goals so much that they are willing to sacrifice their own competence to do so. We are witnessing the master's utter dependence upon their slaves all over again.
Very thoughtful article, sounds like Conor Grennan has fallen in love with ChatGPT.
This excerpt from Edward Ring
https://amgreatness.com/2023/02/22/artificial-intelligence-and-the-passion-of-mortality/
No matter how nuanced AI chatbots become, they will still just be calculators. But they will be the most potent tools yet created to manipulate actual human behaviour.
Interactive A.I. programs are within a few years of becoming the most potent tool to manipulate humans ever invented. As they perfect their ability to simulate empathy and intimacy, their capacity to personalize those skills will be enhanced by access to online databases that track individual behaviour. These databases—compiled and sold by everything from cell phone apps, credit cards, online and offline banking services, corporations, browsers, and websites, to Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant, to traffic cameras, private surveillance cameras, court records, academic records, civil records, medical records, criminal records, and spyware—have already compiled comprehensive information about every American.
Intelligent machines, and the avatars they will animate in applications ranging from tabletop personal assistants like Alexa all the way to virtual creatures inhabiting fully immersive worlds in the Metaverse, will never think. But they will convince you that they think because they will know you better than you know yourself.
Consider this achievement as the ultimate tool for controlling public opinion. Sophisticated A.I. algorithms are already used to manipulate consumer behaviour and public sentiment at the level of each individual. Now put all that power into an A.I. personality that is designed to make you fall in love with it.
Yes, and it's astonishing how blithe the Grennans of this world are about this. I have my doubts that AI is ever going to be capable of real 'intelligence', let alone consciousness, but its potential deployments are frightening.
As someone with an MSc in AI who is, ironically, sceptical of AI ("know thy enemy", perhaps...?) I don't really understand why the large language model chatbots raise more concerns than search engines, which to me represent the tip of this particular spear. Is it that people are so lazy and venal these days that removing the requirement to synthesise separate texts into a single text is something they want to offload to robot slaves, no matter how badly it is done? Or is it that severing the link between the library and the mind has raised applied ignorance to a kind of degenerate art form?
Finally, I note that a computer program has always been spelled 'program', even when we are British. However, spell how you wish as I support all rebellions against technology, and that includes the dictionary, as Illich was perhaps the first to realise. Perhaps, however, ChatGPT should be understood as both a program and a programme... I shall leave this thought to fester.
Stay wonderful!
Yes, a program and a programme indeed.
I don't know if laziness is exactly the right word. It's more that constant interaction with the web has bred in people a preference for superficial, instrumental engagement with reality itself.