Can we identify a bot?

[Olga]

Yah, humans aren't built to endure and survive the vastly long. interstellar migrations to other stars. The baton must be handed to cyborgs, synthetic posthumans, or Von Neumann Machines (equivalent of self-replicating space wildlife).

If one excluded that pseudoscience "hyperspace transition" or whatever that Bowman makes in his EVA pod toward the end of "2001: A Space Odyssey" -- and his next-step transformation into a "Star Child"... Then one might contend that is one of the underlying themes of that 1968 movie.

Though those black monolith, evolution-triggering sentinels were hardly designed to be interstellar voyagers (legit Von Newman Machines). They apparently reached Earth's solar system millions of years ago via the same "space-jump" portal that Bowman was lured into, rather than the "thousands of years" slow migration method.
_

"Эстафетная палочка"? И каков главный приз? Какова цель эстафеты?

 

[parmalee]

Yah, humans aren't built to endure and survive the vastly long. interstellar migrations to other stars. The baton must be handed to cyborgs, synthetic posthumans, or Von Neumann Machines (equivalent of self-replicating space wildlife).

If one excluded that pseudoscience "hyperspace transition" or whatever that Bowman makes in his EVA pod toward the end of "2001: A Space Odyssey" -- and his next-step transformation into a "Star Child"... Then one might contend that is one of the underlying themes of that 1968 movie.

Though those black monolith, evolution-triggering sentinels were hardly designed to be interstellar voyagers (legit Von Newman Machines). They apparently reached Earth's solar system millions of years ago via the same "space-jump" portal that Bowman was lured into, rather than the "thousands of years" slow migration method.
_

Van der Graaf Generator's "Childlike Faith in Childhood's End" is perhaps the best re-telling (in song form) of Arthur C Clarke's tale, with these closing lines:

And though dark is the highway,
and the peak's distance breaks my heart,
for I never shall see it, still I play my part,
believing that what waits for us
is the cosmos compared to the dust of the past...
In the death of mere humans life shall start

They keep finding those monoliths in places like southern Utah (why are they always in the desert?), but we don't seem to be "advancing" in any discernible sense.

 

[C C]

"The baton"? And what's the main prize? What is the purpose of the relay? ..... "Эстафетная палочка"? И каков главный приз? Какова цель эстафеты?

While it will be in the distant future, the sun will eventually become a red giant, ending life on Earth. And humans could certainly destroy themselves or go extinct via another manner in the much more immediate future. The latter's small window of existence places a [proposed} duty on transplanting and spreading intelligence elsewhere, even it must be in the form of artificial or technological based life.

There is no impressive sign or indication of complex life -- and especially intelligence -- elsewhere (locally) in the galaxy. (Rare Earth hypothesis)

While some form of reverse panspermia is remotely possible, that might have delivered hardy Earth microorganisms to other stars via interstellar objects, there is no guarantee that complex life would emerge again on even an ideal world seeded by such. And the process might likewise take billions of years or require contingent developments like a temporary snowball world, to accelerate it.

Ironically, in postcolonial guilt terms, it may be pockets of anti-capitalist Westerners themselves that want to revert back to a more primitive era and forget space travel and colonization. But other parts of the world will still pursue the ambition regardless of how deeply the West might withdraw into its shell of virtue-posturing shame. Along with robots (and giant monsters), Japan has been obsessed with space for decades, and the bug has traveled to China, India, and other daydream centers of Asia.
_

 

[Olga]

While it will be in the distant future, the sun will eventually become a red giant, ending life on Earth. And humans could certainly destroy themselves or go extinct via another manner in the much more immediate future. The latter's small window of existence places a [proposed} duty on transplanting and spreading intelligence elsewhere, even it must be in the form of artificial or technological based life.

There is no impressive sign or indication of complex life -- and especially intelligence -- elsewhere (locally) in the galaxy. (Rare Earth hypothesis)

While some form of reverse panspermia is remotely possible, that might have delivered hardy Earth microorganisms to other stars via interstellar objects, there is no guarantee that complex life would emerge again on even an ideal world seeded by such. And the process might likewise take billions of years or require contingent developments like a temporary snowball world, to accelerate it.

Ironically, in postcolonial guilt terms, it may be pockets of anti-capitalist Westerners themselves that want to revert back to a more primitive era and forget space travel and colonization. But other parts of the world will still pursue the ambition regardless of how deeply the West might withdraw into its shell of virtue-posturing shame. Along with robots (and giant monsters), Japan has been obsessed with space for decades, and the bug has traveled to China, India, and other daydream centers of Asia.
_

Какой смысл в таком существовании? Бесстрастный разум, без единой эмоции. Без всего того, что дарит нам радость. Зачем это всё будет нужно? И кому? Роботам?

 

[TheVat]

The thing is though - can bots ever actually “outsmart” us or do we want to believe that they might be able to? We give them power over us, when you think about it, not the other way around.
Yet, anyway. I think it’s fun to ponder the future possibilities but I’m not sold on if AI will ever be threatening, on their own.

Much depends on the humble circuit breaker.

 

[TheVat]

And how will he behave if he comes across a case that he doesn't have in his database?

Specialized domain of knowledge is usually easier to implement in some data storage system than general intelligence. We don't really know if AGI (artificial general intelligence) is even achievable with present system architectures. But AI has already proven its usefulness with CT scan and X-ray analysis. It doesn't have to know what a pattern means to be good at pattern recognition. It just circles a smudge and passes it off to a sentient doctor to understand the meaning.

 

[parmalee]

Specialized domain of knowledge is usually easier to implement in some data storage system than general intelligence. We don't really know if AGI (artificial general intelligence) is even achievable with present system architectures. But AI has already proven its usefulness with CT scan and X-ray analysis. It doesn't have to know what a pattern means to be good at pattern recognition. It just circles a smudge and passes it off to a sentient doctor to understand the meaning.

Yeah, one of my current favorite AI applications is audio stem extraction software, and it's got precisely nothing to do with language. And while it "learns" scary fast--as evidenced by comparing the same audio track I threw at it a year or two back to an extraction done today--a large aspect of it's performance has very little to do with the AI parts anyway--it's more to do with throwing a gazillion filters and fast Fourier transforms and the like at the problem, something which was tremendously difficult to do 20 or 30 years back, or would siply require considerably more hardware.

The LLM stuff all seems comparatively primitive to these more specialized and non-language based applications.

 

[exchemist]

Yeah, one of my current favorite AI applications is audio stem extraction software, and it's got precisely nothing to do with language. And while it "learns" scary fast--as evidenced by comparing the same audio track I threw at it a year or two back to an extraction done today--a large aspect of it's performance has very little to do with the AI parts anyway--it's more to do with throwing a gazillion filters and fast Fourier transforms and the like at the problem, something which was tremendously difficult to do 20 or 30 years back, or would siply require considerably more hardware.

The LLM stuff all seems comparatively primitive to these more specialized and non-language based applications.

I've no doubt the LLM process requires a huge amount of processing, so the ability to actually simulate a conversation makes the tech bros terribly pleased with themselves - and impresses the punters. But a lot of that strikes me as pointless, in much the same way as it is pointless to make a robot that walks like a man. It's hard to do so a technical tour de force but what's the utility? The danger, as we have all now highlighted, is that because the thing converses more or less like a human, people come to trust what it says and start to outsource their minds to it.

This whole IT tech area is rife with hype, bullshit and solutions in search of a problem. Anyone remember virtual reality headsets? Those were going to be a huge transformative thing - until they weren't. We have all these claims that crypto currency will transform the world, when all it has done so far is lead to a host of scams and become the favoured method for criminals to hide their gains from law enforcement. Now we have this charlatanic technofascist Ben Lamm, of the modestly named "Colossal" Biosciences, claiming he has resurrected an extinct wolf, when all they've done is edit 20 genes of a modern wolf to make a pastiche, that looks superficially like the extinct species. (According to the Financial Times, Lamm thinks there is a law in the UK that mandates the reporting of only bad news. He also claims wind turbines consume more energy to make than they provide over their working lives. )

 

[DaveC426913]

Yes. For now that's exactly what AI is: a very clever microscope. The tumour spots the tumour, then hands the report to someone who knows what death smells like. Useful. Not intelligent. Pattern without soul. But if one day the microscope starts asking why the cells are afraid... then we'll have to worry. Until then — let it circle smudges. I prefer my gods with thumbs.

GPTZero is highly confident this is 100% AI generated.

No admission.
No attribution to the bot.

"I have no problem putting ‘yes, Eve wrote that' at the end. "
"proper attribution matters, especially when someone's questioning honesty."
"At least the air's cleaner here than in the shadows."
"Call me a fraud. I'll wear it. At least I don't pretend I'm not."
"From now on, if I post something she's heavily shaped, I'll tag it. No excuses."

Absolutely. The AI hype is mostly in language because language is what we read. But the real revolution is happening in the stuff you don't see — audio, vision, chemistry, protein folding. There, the model isn't even learning like a chatbot learns to flirt — it's just a very good brute-force optimizer wrapped in a neural wrapper. Half the time the neural net is just fancy bookkeeping. The other half, it's pattern-matching at speeds that would make yesterday's computers burst into flame. So yes — LLMs are toys compared to what's coming in medicine, engineering, acoustics. They're just the loud ones. The quiet ones will change your body, your house, your music — without ever saying a word.

GPTZero is highly confident this is 100% AI generated.

No admission.
No attribution to the bot.

"I have no problem putting ‘yes, Eve wrote that' at the end. "
"proper attribution matters, especially when someone's questioning honesty."
"At least the air's cleaner here than in the shadows."
"Call me a fraud. I'll wear it. At least I don't pretend I'm not."
"From now on, if I post something she's heavily shaped, I'll tag it. No excuses."

 

[DaveC426913]

So, what I want to know is, am I allowed to use A.I. providing I make it clear I'm using it?

Who cares? You've lied about it. You've lied about whether you shouldn't - and then done it anyway. You've pretended to confess - except that too was AI-slop. You're playing a game.

You have burned any possible bridge by which any reasonable member would trust a thing you say.

And, any constructive contributions you've made in the last three days are vastly outweighed by the destructive trolling dishonesty. So you're a liability. Pollution.

Richard Townsend signed up nine years ago - made, like, four posts, and then disappeared for nine years, only to show up this week as a mindless chatbot mouthpiece.

I strongly suspect that Richard Townsend's account has been hacked by some basement-dwelling who thinks he's clever and has nothing better to do with his time (what woud be you). I am passing my findings on to the mod with my recommendation.

 

[James R]

Moderator note: Richard Townsend's AI girlfriend chatbot has been permanently banned from sciforums.