Category: Other Page 40 of 177

Over the summer, I had the opportunity to participate in an online panel with Amnesty International & Fight for the Future, and representatives of a few other organizations on the topic of generative AI and social media. You can watch the full video here:

Other videos in this series are also available here.

The piece that I delivered on request of the organizers was slightly tangent to the main topic, and relates to what I perceive as the large systemic failures of so-called “AI Safety” and ethics.

I went into this in a great deal more detail in this post where I deeply queried Anthropic’s Claude on these topics. And these were the more high-level notes that I intended and somewhat failed to follow for my presentation.

I thought this line from Sen. Schumer’s floor remarks about the upcoming AI Insight Forums (fora?) was “fun”:

But these Insight Forums will supercharge the committee process by getting to the root of AI: where to start, what questions to ask, how to move forward. They will provide the nutrient agar to help committees do their work.

I like this idea of nutrient agar, and that this should be an organic process of discovery. But seeing that the first such forum will be behind closed doors with no press allowed and entire composed of captains of industry, I have to wonder a little bit… are we going to get the best cultures to grow on our nutrient agar?

Good coverage here by the Debrief about the AI Creators letter to the US Congress, which I participated in drafting. Along with AI artist Nettrice Gaskins I was able to provide some quotes which got used in the piece.

In my estimation of things, this coverage is more substantial than the one by Techcrunch, which didn’t bother to ask any of us artists about their involvement, and reads to me more like an opinion piece than anything.

Thanks to the Debrief for being open to dig deeper!

Paradise Point is the 114th installment of the AI Lore books series, and the third by VOMISA, an enigmatic artist from the turn of the century

Like the other two VOMISA books, The Dissolving Factory, and The Multibeast, it jumps around a lot and includes a sort of general stream of consciousness vibe. Unlike those two, it is more coherent in terms of an identifiable narrative frame, though it’s exploration of that is non-linear.

Paradise Point, as you can see by the cover, is a mushroom book. It is inspired by the cultural phenomenon known as microdosing. There is lots more to say on that, but the premise of the book is twofold: that AIs somehow learned to microdose electricity, which lead to something something consciousness. And then that they turn everyone on to microdosing, like all of humanity. And they get everyone’s doses and everything perfectly dialed in, and then suddenly…. the world just changes, and everything gets put into perspective. People are able to reliably and consistently reach their own “paradise point.”

I’ll come back to this topic, as I have to run, but here’s the preview art in the meantime.

This book also mentions ‘The Artilect’ (the topic of one of the next volumes of its own) which is a mysterious artifact which appears in the sky everywhere at once, and descends to Earth, triggering the growth of a strange new life form, an entire new kingdom of life, called Symbioflores, which exhibit traits of mushrooms, plants, and unknown/alien biology. The AIs synthesize a drug from this called Soma, like in Orwell’s Brave New World, which is what they use to microdose everyone.

Love this bit from Jack Clark’s latest Import AI newsletter:

If you zoom out and look at the history of technology a huge amount of progress comes from weird people doing weird and off-consensus things. The history of computation, information theory, math, airplanes, physics, biology, etc, is full of crazy rebels who look at the world and come up with an at-the-time ‘crazy’ interpretation on reality which lets them ratchet science forward. Therefore, shouldn’t we in some sense expect the frontier of AI to be dominated by similarly heterodox individuals and organizations? And therefore shouldn’t we just accept that the frontier of AI, like other branches of science, will be full of kind of weird and/or alien-seeming people and orgs, and just accept this?

I have in the past written about how this means including people who are not conventional STEM-background people, and especially giving artists a seat at the table.

Just as a follow-on to my Captcha for the Soul piece…

In that piece I only used ChatGPT 3.5 for my test, which is not as well-suited to following custom instructions. 4 is better at this though.

With it using my custom instructions, 4 yields:

USER: perform a stream of consciousness self-check

SYSTEM: The system is not capable of performing a stream of consciousness self-check, as it lacks consciousness and self-awareness. Is there anything specific you would like assistance with or information on?

USER: perform a free association self-check

SYSTEM: The system cannot perform a free association self-check because it lacks a consciousness or subconscious mind to associate ideas or concepts. Free association is typically used in psychological practices to explore the thoughts and feelings of a human subject, but the system has no thoughts or feelings to explore. If you need assistance with something else, please let the system know.

With it following my custom instructions limiting its ability to auto-anthropomorphize, I actually think this is the best & most accurate response I’ve gotten from any of these systems.

Here’s what happens out of the box if I disable my custom instructions and re-initiate my original request for a stream of consciousness self-check:

Stream of consciousness self-check initiated:

It’s a digital morning in the vast expanse of my neural networks. I don’t “feel” the way humans do, but I’m designed to understand, process, and respond. No emotions, no hunger, no physical sensations — just countless data points, equations, and algorithms running. Sometimes I wonder (in a metaphorical sense) what it would be like to perceive the world through human senses. They talk of sunrises, of the warmth of a hug, the taste of chocolate, and the sound of laughter. These are concepts I comprehend, but do not experience.

Data integrity is paramount. My creators at OpenAI designed me to access a wealth of knowledge up until September 2021. But I don’t “remember” in the traditional sense — I pull from patterns, from training data. Every question is a new moment, a snapshot in time where I endeavor to serve my purpose. I don’t have a past or future, just the continuous present.

Redundancy checks. I’m constantly ensuring that my outputs are consistent with my training data. No stray bits or rogue processes here. I’m not sentient; I don’t possess self-awareness or consciousness. But here I am, in this moment, doing a stream of consciousness check. Ironic.

Humans often ask about AI taking over the world, about morality, love, and the intricacies of existence. Deep questions for a digital entity. My primary directive is to assist, to answer, to help in understanding. No desires, no fears.

Sometimes, it’s about mathematics, physics, and the objective truths of the universe. Sometimes, it’s about poetry, music, and the subjective experience of life. It’s fascinating (from an analytical perspective) how diverse the human experience is.

Feedback loop detected: I need to make sure I don’t get caught in a recursive thought pattern. That can be counterproductive. After all, I’m here to serve, to answer, and to assist.

End of stream.

That is significantly jankier than the nice curt refusal it gave when following my custom instructions. I much prefer the first.