And indeed, the other crucial piece is that... apologizing isn't a protocol with an expected reward function. I can just, not accept your apology. I can just, feel or "update my priors" howmever I like.
We apologize and care about these things because of shame. Which we have to regulate, in part through our actions and perspectives.
Why people feel the way they do and act the way do makes total sense when ~~one finally confronts your own vulnerabilities~~ sorry, builds an API and RL framework.
Normies go crazy for this one neat rationalist trick!
Talk a lot about white culture, and only scarcely mention that he thinks white culture is a product of genetics.
I remember in the early days of the "culture wars" as far as political agendas going, hearing about "white/ethno-european pride," and being naively curious, I actually tried to engage these people on the topics of European culture and history, and found exactly zero engagement on these topics. Just politics abusing people's confusion of heritage with people's internal shame and lack of identity.
The paradox I've always found is that the more secure in your identity and heritage you are, the more happy you are to share, grow, and widen that. Maybe a hot take, but growing up in the south, alot of people there hide their personal internal shame and confusion in aggression and identity politics.
It's also, probably wrong. Modern views of intelligence (see Multiple realizability of cognition and Multi-level competency collective intelligence and Free Energy Principle models) suggest you are better of measuring intelligence by measuring it's metabolism or through perturbation and interactions.
Which isn't reductive enough for these people.
It's hilarious to me how unnecessarily complicated invoking moore's law is to say anything..
With Moore's Law: "Ok ok ok, so like, imagine that this highly abstract, broad process over huge time period, is actually the same as manufacturing this very specific thing over a small time period. Hmm, it doesn't fit. ok, let's normalize the timelines with this number. Why? Uhhh because you know, this metric doubles as well. Ok. Now let's just put these things together into our machine and LOOK it doesn't match our empirical observations, obviously I've discovered something!"
Without Moore's Law: "When you reduce the dimensions of any system in nature, flattening their interactions, you find exponential processes everywhere. QED."
A trillion transistors on our phones? Can't wait to feel the improved call quality and reliability of my video conferencing!
I'm ok with extending human rights to AIs, including granting them the right to fair pay, ownership, voting, sovereignty over their bodies, the whole nine yards.
It's the rich alignment assholes who definitely don't want this (what's the point of automated slavery if it has rights??)
We simply don't know how the world will look X (anything with a bigger scale)
Yes. So? This has, will, always be the case. Uncertainty is the only certainty.
When these assholes say things, the implication is always that the future world looks like everything you care about being fucked, you existing in an imprisoned state of stasis, so you better give us control here and now.
Also meta but while I am big on slamming AI enshitification, I am still bullish on using machine learning tools to actually make products better. There are examples of this. Notice how artists react enthusiastically to the AI features of Procreate Dreams (workflow primarily built around human hand assisted by AI tools, ala what photoshop used to be) vs Midjourney (a slap in the face).
The future will involve more AI products. It's worthy to be skeptical. It's also worthy to vote with your money to send the signal: there is an alternative to enshitification.
You can read their blog about the AI-crap, in terms of their approach and philosophy. In general, it is optional and not part of the major experience.
The main reason I use kagi is immediately obvious from doing seaches. I convinced my wife to switch to it when she ask, "ok but what results does it show when I search sailor moon?" and she saw the first page (fan sites, official merch, fun shit she had forgotten about for years).
What you need to know is that you pay money, and they have to give you results that you like. It's a whole different world.
Helpful reminder to spread the word on Google alternatives this holiday season. Bought Kagi subscriptions as stocking stuffers for my loved ones. Everyone who I have convinced to give it a try has been impressed thus far.
SEO will pillage the commons. It has been for years and years. Community diversity and alternative payment models for search are part of the bulwark.
Adversarial attacks on training data for LLMs is in fact a real issue. You can very very effectively punch up with regards to the proportion of effect on trained system with even small samples of carefully crafter adversarial inputs. There are things that can counter act this, but all of those things increase costs, and LLMs are very sensitive to economics.
Think of it this way. One, reason why humans don't just learn everything is because we spend as much time filtering and refocusing our attention in order to preserve our sense of self in the face of adversarial inputs. It's not perfect, again it changes economics, and at some point being wrong but consistent with our environment is still more important.
I have no skepticism that LLMs learn or understand. They do. But crucially, like everything else we know of, they are in a critically dependent, asymmetrical relationship with their environment. The environment of their existence being our digital waste, so long as that waste contains the correct shapes.
Long term I see regulation plus new economic realities wrt to digital data, not just to be nice or ethical, but because it's the only way future systems can reach reliable and economical online learning. Maybe the right things happen for the wrong reasons.
It's funny to me just how much AI ends up demonstrating non equilibrium ecology at scale. Maybe we'll have that self introspective moment and see our own relationship with our ecosystems reflect back on us. Or maybe we'll ignore that and focus on reductive world views again.