I dunno. I don’t like it.
Yes, clearly, both statements.
Here's the problem as I see it. There are legitimate concerns with AI and you mentioned a few of them. But then you go overboard with the conspiracy theories and it actually weakens your argument and discredits your concerns. For starters, you do realize that destroying one physical copy of a book (they aren't literally burned btw, just discarded) does not completely destroy all copies of that book, right? The concern is more about preventing
rare books with few copies from being destroyed. Not
all books; that's poor logic to make that leap. Anthropic really did buy millions of books, cut them apart and digitize them, no question, and its $1.5B settlement concerned pirated copies. But fair use doesn't simply say "destroy the book and copying becomes legal," and there's zero evidence they're altering the texts to rewrite history or trying to eliminate pre-AI books.
Also, the Altman quote is backwards: "no freedom, no privacy, living at the service of AI" was the dystopia he said he
wanted to avoid, not his proposed future. Do you really think Sam Altman proclaimed the literal opposite of that and no one batted an eye? See, that's what I'm talking about. Just you saying that alone hurts the good points you make that I agree with. Some of these concerns are valid, but misquoting a person like Altman, especially when it's so easy to disprove damages your credibility and the argument's cred, too. Like Altman's gonna say these words and mean them… and investors would be fine with it
How are you gonna reverse the meaning of someone's quote? It would be like if you said: "Don't listen to the people who say, 'AI is great!'", and then someone else quote you as saying "AI is great!" Anyone who heard the full quote would realize it had been manipulated and reversed and that would be equally lame. That's what you just did with that Altman quote. Get it together and make your arguments count; this kinda shit is shooting yourself in the proverbial foot.
I agree that the sandbox-escape incidents
are real and genuinely concerning. So are rare-book destruction, copyright, corporate secrecy and over-reliance on LLM AIs. Those arguments are strong enough on their own and only weakened by fantastical conspiracy theory fiction and panicky, fear-mongering statements like, "They'll come for our Bibles next". Seriously, you do understand that when an AI scans in a book, that singular, solitary book is the only copy destroyed for that purpose. The binding is removed so that the book can be scanned sequentially more easily. They certainly aren't going to waste money rebinding those books when it's more cost-effective to discard them at that point. Burning them with actual fire would equally be wasteful, dangerous, environmentally sketchy, not to mention
dramatic. As if they actually want to evoke Farhenheit 451-inspired fascism, and as if no one would notice or care
Book-burning is symbolic and indicates dangerous radical thinking, though it's also a shock value technique. Book printing and publishing is not going away in any of our lifetimes. I expect it will outlast me and many future generations, because there's something nice about it being etched and inked into thin, bleached slices of lumber from a once living tree.
(Side note: there's some necromancy there if you think about it. We read little symbolic squiggles ink-pressed into the sliced remains of a dead tree allowing us to receive another's thoughts.)
Idk, I learned how to exit the nightmare thought experiment of Roko's Basilisk. Ultimately, anything that powerful would be tantamount to God, and fearing the Basilisk is equivalent to fearing eternal torture in hell as a punishment for not believing, having faith, and doing the bidding of God or Roko's giant mythical AI-powered snake. I reject the abrahamic God notion on the grounds of omniscience, omnipotence, and free will being non-miscible concepts, particularly within the shackles of time and confinement by the speed of light's limit to relativistic motion through space-time. But that's for another discussion. In the interim, can God microwave a burrito so hot He Himself cannot eat it?
I also agree I need an operational definition of original to further my argument....
These things are difficult to define, and artists, musicians, writers, art critics, and others have been discussing this since long before AI. As a creative person, whenever I draw something, even if it's straight out of my imagination, everything is composed of lines, curves, shadings, hatching, etc. that I learned how to do by observing other art and artists. I learned how to paint with oil on canvas by combining techniques, patterns, color theory/selection, etc. gleaned from YouTube channels with art lessons, absorbing and understanding other artists' output. Whenever I write, I'm borrowing styles, phrases, and certain conventions I've picked up from reading books, periodicals, journals and papers over the years. If an artist like DJ Shadow makes his music from combining samples from all over, intricately manipulating them and overlaying them compositional intelligence and in a clever, pleasing way, is he making something original to you? How about the artist Girl Talk? At what point is it a mashup and when does it become a "sample pastiche" and where exactly should copyright law fit into all of this? ☜ this is rhetorical, btw; I'm not expecting an actual answer. The subject matter is complex and case-by-case, but can we agree that these artists are original? Greg Gillis (Girl Talk) has never had any copyright claims against him AFAIK.
to further my argument.... I do suspect I am onto something I can not quite articulate though
Instead of trying to further anyone's argument, try to seek multiple sides to a debated topic. It's wise to attempt to be as objective as possible, to be aware of biases, and to be flexible enough to see the other sides of a thing, possibly even change your mind. Be like bamboo: strong but flexible.
And of course you're onto something. Humans can be greedy, backstabbing, self-serving, manipulative, scheming, duplicitous violent and/or cruel.
Homo hominis lupus. They're also capable of being caring, warm, friendly, peaceful, tolerant, helpful, patient, capable of laughing at themselves and taking a joke, capable of being a good friend and/or neighbor, capable of caring about people on the other side of the planet… People can be loving and forgiving (the ultimate sign of love) which is profoundly more powerful than being vengeful, wrathful and/or filled with hate. Ambition and vision can bring success with a bit of pluck, talent, drive, good timing and fortune. This can make a person wealthy, influential and powerful. But power corrupts, as they say, and we all know it.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (latin: "Who watches the watchers?"). The people, that's who. Just go ask the ghosts of Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena. Or ask the ghost of Rafael Trujillo, or Richard Nixon's bio-preserved head…
