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  #21  
Unread 06-17-2022, 11:28 AM
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Allen Tice Allen Tice is offline
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What are my thoughts so far? It seems evident that language manipulation by nonhuman devices will progress to the point where for all practical purposes it will be indistinguishable from human output. For impractical purposes like art: stories (even ones with pictures), poems, songs, even epics, for me everything will depend on there being a human or team like Gilbert and Sullivan at the other end. Computers already can play essentially perfect chess, perfect Go, and so on. Doubtless they can do superbly well at Scrabble. They can’t do so well at mobile situations such as self-driving cars yet.

What’s the interest in a chess game played at great speed between computers? I’ve played some chess, Scrabble, even some Go, and for me the important part is the interaction with another organic individual, preferably at my skill level or below (as with a youngster). Reading (or rejecting!) something verbal composed by an actual person with something to say far surpasses decoding machine spiel.

I suppose an AI could rip-off Fanny Hill, and extrude AI porn. What do we think about that?

There may come a time when anything we can do, an AI can imitate “better.” So what? I don’t think I will want to hold hands with glass and titanium mechanism covered with soft plastic unless it were a robot medical nurse or equivalent, even if it had a high robot “IQ”. (“Emerson’s” 160 is baloney stolen off the back of a truck full of brain-proud mensa clams.)

Thank you, Ralph. It sort of sums up what’s above on AI language production. There’s no there there. If you want electronic woolly mammoth, you get electronic woolly mammoth.
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  #22  
Unread 06-17-2022, 02:44 PM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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We may not be "there" yet, but someday we will be. It seems inevitable. There were people who said that no computer would ever beat the best human chess players because there's something about human creativity that transcends mere programming, but we all know how that prediction turned out. If there are 20 gazillion neurons that make up our brains, someday they will develop an artificial neuron and put 20 gazillion of them together, along with an ability to speak and hear, and no doubt the resulting contraption will claim to have a consciousness and experience "feelings", but even then it will be a philsophical and moral question whether to believe it. But let's say we believe it, since why shouldn't we? Even then we'd have to wonder at what point true consciousness kicks in? Is it 10 gazillion neurons? Fifteen gazillion? Is there some sort of magical phase transition that occurs to generate the ghost inside the machine, the feeling of selfhood and the conviction that we have something like a soul? Or is it all an illusion? (And if it's an illusion, don't you have to have a consciousness to be subjected to an illusion?)

As you've no doubt guessed by now, I'm prattling on way above my pay scale and I really don't know much about the subject, but what the heck.
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  #23  
Unread 06-17-2022, 04:02 PM
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Allen Tice Allen Tice is offline
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Roger, seems to me that you are prattling along at the recommended 55 miles an hour safe speed on the road of “what’s it all about, Alfie?” — which is OK.

By the way, what if an AI was asked to generate a successful “bodice ripper” sexy novel for summer reading at the beach (for those who like “bodice rippers”—you know who you are)? The larger question about AI Fanny Hill imitations and beyond for all 800 sexes is still: if the consumer knew it was a machine product, would it be as potent (sorry, erotic) as a human product? And if the reader didn’t know, where are we then?

What about real human artistic fakers? Might not some famous fakes like the Donation of Constantine be somehow better than a spurious AI document in Latin?

Which brings me to poems. And the feel of of the deal. I suggest that even a credible hostility between human artists (and frauds) surpasses in quality the considerable hostility I would feel against an AI “poet.” Blood should be cozier than silicon in some way.

Your witness, counselor and others.

Last edited by Allen Tice; 06-17-2022 at 06:54 PM.
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  #24  
Unread 06-17-2022, 07:35 PM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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Perhaps it would be appropriate at that point to wonder how Garry Kasparov felt about eventually losing his match against Deep Blue. Which I imagine is on record. I would speculate myself that he feels no strong hostility toward the machine, which after all is simply executing its program. The programmers however could be a different matter: clearly, they could not themselves beat Kasparov, but they devised a means to do so and arguably, end chess's mystery forever. Was that a thing that needed doing?

Cheers,
John

Update: I see I've missed some of this thread. I don't know that a computer as yet plays "perfect chess," it is more that it plays it quicker than the other guy and thus outruns the bear. I'd not heard that AI can as yet defeat the world's best human Go players.

Last edited by John Isbell; 06-17-2022 at 07:37 PM.
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  #25  
Unread 06-17-2022, 08:04 PM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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John, look at this.
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  #26  
Unread 06-17-2022, 08:30 PM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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Thanks, Roger - it looks like AI beat humans at Go in 2016, and at chess in 1997, so a 19-year lag. I'd imagine more programmers worked on the chess problem, but I've always heard Go was harder for AI.

Cheers,
John
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  #27  
Unread 06-17-2022, 10:28 PM
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Allen Tice Allen Tice is offline
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Some thoughts so off-track that they are out of place here, so back to Eratosphere central and how to respond to AI “art”.

Last edited by Allen Tice; 06-18-2022 at 07:46 AM.
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  #28  
Unread 06-19-2022, 09:51 AM
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Allen Tice Allen Tice is offline
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Default 3 Yes or No Koans. Vote.

A tree fell in a forest with no one there. Did it make a sound? Yes [ ], No [ ].

A Big Bang occurred in a forest with no one there. Did it still bang? Yes [ ], No [ ].

An Artificial Intelligence recited its best poem in a forest with no one there. Was it still crap? Yes [ ], No [ ].

Last edited by Allen Tice; 06-19-2022 at 04:44 PM.
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  #29  
Unread 06-19-2022, 01:55 PM
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Jennifer Reeser Jennifer Reeser is offline
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A.I. is my job, in the field of linguistics. Our technology is cutting-edge, state-of-the-art, the top tier on the planet.

It is nowhere near the mythic, ominous levels that most people believe it to be. But that sells papers.


J
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  #30  
Unread 06-19-2022, 02:05 PM
David Callin David Callin is offline
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Speaking of papers ... https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/d...mind-z0hv57vfj

(That may be paywalled, but hopefully they will allow a free article or two to be read.)
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