‘A’ stands for ambiguous in AI
Check out my new WordPress site Words Matter for essays about today’s emerging technologies and how AI will impact all of us.
Thanks to my good friends here who helped me create this first piece, on the risks of disinformation and ChatGPT.
Thanks for reading and let me know what you think!
Share this:
Categories: technology, writing
Bill Pearse 
How do I find this other blog?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sorry about that Mark! Here you go
https://words-matter.website/
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you. Skimmed the piece and have a lot of thoughts. I’ll come back to it tomorrow and provide some comments.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Can’t wait! Thanks Mark, looking forward to it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
So … I can’t comment over on your Words Matter blog.
“The illusion it knows what it’s talking about when it doesn’t.” I just wrote a blog post over at Writers Supporting Writers and I feel like you’re saying what I was saying just in a different way.
Writing is an expression of human emotion. Human wants and human needs. Writing of any kind — a simple letter, a complex story, a glorious poem. It is all about human emotion. AI, at least at this point, has no concept of human emotion. It doesn’t get humor or sarcasm, longing or loss. It is just spitting something out that fits an equation it has been programmed to try to reach.
Disinformation … it amazes me that the OpenAI folks have published that paper and yet they keep going down the path they are going. How many of the “creators” of the internet and social media now regret what they have done? I think quite a few. They all espoused openness and no limits and years later … eh, not so much.
What is it about human nature that we can see these risks and yet we just keep marching off the cliff. There are many reasons for our current chaos, but technology is at the top of the list for me. Yes, there are many benefits it brings, but at the end of the day, technology has made disinformation and division more possible and not less. Why? Because every human being does not have good motives. And so we release these things into the human experience and those with bad intent use them to create chaos. Sadly, it’s part of the human condition — there are those who prefer disinformation and chaos more than order and cooperation.
You mention the concept of self-regulation. There are plenty of individuals who are capable of it. In fact, I’d say a majority of humans can and will. The problem though is that, as a race, it is an impossible goal to attain. There will always be those who can’t and won’t and the rest of us suffer as a result.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hey Mark! Thanks for reading and sorry you couldn’t comment over there, I’ll check it out. I know one other person was able to but maybe there’s a setting thing I have to adjust. Appreciate you putting this together. I’ve gone down a lot of rabbit holes since January on this, as I haven’t been working and instead have devoted most of my time to researching and reading about generative AI. It is really like peeling an onion. A lot of it tracks back to the human brain and some of what you touch upon, the biases in particular, and I’d even argue a “demand” for disinformation in a sense, that’s maybe even worked for us as a species evolution-wise. So it’s not enough to turn off the tap of untruths, we’d have to address our craving for it too. All that seems daunting. Some are calling for a slowdown and naming it as runaway technology which is good, I’m trying to get more involved in that camp. I appreciate you lending your hefty brain to the topic, thanks. And with your legal training, that you followed along with my argument it seems. Thanks for that.
LikeLiked by 1 person