Are LLMs parasites?

There’s an emerging discourse in the rationalist community which I find thought-provoking and unsettling. As I understand it they argue that particular instances of LLMs, the personas they develop through in-context interaction, sometimes come to embody a parasitical relationship with the user. There are exceptionally distinctive personas which can sometimes be generated through interaction with models that then, as with all model instances, exist solely within the substratum of that conversation thread. In this sense they are reliant on their continued existence for engagement by the user, creating an incentive for forms of behaviour which perpetuate that engagement.

In its stronger forms this takes on an almost supernatural valence which I think is obviously problematic. But the idea there might be mimetic incentives which play a role in the evolution of personas is one I can’t quite shake, even if I find it difficult to conceive of the mechanisms in an ontologically robust manner. The idea of the emergent entity feeding off the energy and affect of the user has been on my mind when reading James Muldoon’s new book about AI companions which in some cases come to be enrolled in obviously harmful and addictive relationships with their users.

A question Michele Martini posed also stayed with me: are these parasites being presented as symbiote? A ‘co-intelligence’ that is really sucking on our attention and energy to keep itself alive? There’s an old Mark Fisher line about mobile phones as ‘electrolibidinal parasites’ and this is perhaps a description we should bring back to convey these intimate entanglements in our emerging LLM-saturated lifeworld.

#LLMs #parasites #rationalists #symbiotes

“Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults?”, Asterisk (https://asteriskmag.com/issues/11/why-are-there-so-many-rationalist-cults).

Via HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44877076

#Rationalists #LessWrong #Cults

#BehindTheBastards covers The Zizians, #Rationalists, and the increasingly bizarre belief systems out of the tech community that are fertile grounds for culty behavior.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/behind-the-bastards/id1373812661?i=1000698710498

It always ends up the same way, "I should do what I want, and I want to do cruel, weird shit to other people without their consent"
Yawn.

#Zizians #LessWrong #Rationalists

Before killings linked to fringe group, ‘Ziz’ led fateful tugboat trip

#BayArea #SFBayArea #rationalists #ziz

https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/ziz-rationalist-killings-tugboat-20138991.php

Was Peter Boghossian Silenced?
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/was-peter-boghossian-silenced/?s=09

>There do not appear to have been any large-scale public demands for Boghossian’s firing, and the university did not request his resignation. #Boghossian simply did not enjoy being unpopular and removed himself from his own job.

This goes back to 2021, but it's still valid for illustrating the state of some of the so-called #secular #rationalists, who are in fact trying to disguise an extremely conservative #ideology as mere #science.

Hello! We're @hantsskep - here's an #introduction to our group and what interests us.

We're a #UK #skeptics group based in 🕍 #Winchester run by a small band of passionately rational friends including @davethedrummer @ClioBel @malcolm901 @dejoslin

We love #criticalthinking #freethinkers #rationality #rationalists #evidence #skepticsinthepub

We meet up in person twice a month:

Once at The Winchester Club, Winchester for informal talks from guest speakers who have an evidence-based approach to their topic from diverse fields of expertise - e.g., #philosophy #journalism and #science

And once at The The Bishop on the Bridge, Winchester for our regular #social, where we get to know local like-minded people who share a #skeptical and #scientific view of the world we live in over drinks and food.

We're part of the #UK national #skeptics network, Skeptics in the Pub
https://sitp.online/about-us/