@darwinwoodka i know. i love the demands programming makes upon my mind to think and behave very different than in natural language interactions with humans. i would really miss that in a Star Trek, just shout “Conputer, do this” kind of world.

@lobrien yes. i am much more concerned about more quotidian harms — algorithm-laundering of training set biases, capital owners plundering workers and consumers by enshittifying ( ht @pluralistic ) services to capture ever more surplus, cost of training and regulatory moats turning into barriers to entry further consolidating the market power of the already very powerful.

@agocke ha! my answer would probably be it’s up to each of us to answer, it’s an axiom we can accept or not, impervious to derivation or refutation.

@agocke if they do represent how we think, does that mean they think

@agocke (only humans could invent, use, and make sense of an abacus? to all other species, they were dried beans that somehow slide loosely on sticks!)

@lobrien i do think it interesting, a bit eerie, how variably capable these things seem to be! but we have faced so many superior competencies. there was John Henry vs the steam shovel, tractor vs ag workers. all led to big societal disruptions! mb there was similar apocalypticism about these technologies in their times? but do we have reason to fear LLMs will be more disruptive? and beyond any temporary disruption, unlike precedents, eventually harmful rather than beneficial?

@agocke it is easy to imagine, say, 150 years ago, making a case that while many animals in some sense or another “speak”, it is the uniquely human capacity for mathematics that truly distinguishes us from the beasts.

@notio interestingly, that’s a skill we can’t measure at all, among computers or other humans. i can’t know there is meaning behind your words, or ChatGPT’s. it’s always a choice to presume another mind, when we can only experience our own.

@misc arithmetic and memory were also human ability long before they were computer abilities! do we just like the capacities for which we may now have to cede the crown of superiority more than we valued those older human abilities?

a thing i don’t get is what is new. i mean, computers have long been much, much “smarter” than humans in, for example, their ability to perform arithmetic, or to remember things. recent AI tools are interesting for sure, but what superior competence of theirs makes these new systems so threatening, compared to older superior competences?

@MadMadMadMadRN Right. The dream is to be able to live without financial worries, travel nicely and more, and help family and friends who also suffer from precarity.

@rst we, like they, now have a very hard time making any real progress in aggregate. we just started from a better baseline.

@MadMadMadMadRN yes. exactly.

[new draft post] Quietly expensive desperation https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/06/04/quietly-expensive-desperation/index.html

Good analysis of the recent inflation by @DolanEcon https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-inflation-of-2021-22-was-different-what-we-should-learn-from-it/

#Economics

Some vendors are not asking for your consent, but are using your personal data on the basis of their legitimate interest.

for the purists, we offer a bread sandwich.

just don’t call me a psammophobe you beach.

what you inevitably find is that, if the only way to get anywhere is to drive, there isn’t anywhere worth bothering to go.