@david_chisnall @troberts @hacks4pancakes

People generally expect "AI" systems to be (1) as reliable and (2) as maintainable as conventional procedural code. Like, when it identifies black people in photographs as gorillas, most people think that it must be a simple coding mistake that they can assign some intern to track down and fix the "if" statement. No, it's always much more complex than that, with many difficult to understand and explain dependencies. ...

@szakib @simonoid @hacks4pancakes

Im not really joking about relying on thought outside of critical thinking to defense self from self deciet or manipulation though - i think people really have atrophied themselves of defense mechanisms solely relying on and insisting that critical engagement spares them being decieved by their emotions like...

Denying we are in deep ecological shit cause we arent suffocating on the shit yet

Denying we are under fascist regime cause all the signifiers of a functional albeit ill Democracy are intact right now

Things like that...and lookie that, two major things people way smarter and critical than me with the actual ability to take cracks at them, dont do because their own rational survivorship depends on not letting the sense of doom drive subsequent act

@ftranschel @szakib @simonoid @hacks4pancakes

You are singing my tune with this - folks need a robust larger macro worldview and theoritetical framework and supporting frameworks to not be taken on rides. Even and maybe especially self deluded rides. One of my constant references is to Theories of Politics that inform causal expectations of partisan/political effort, and its not concrete - its a placeholder for an expansive political theory that covers big things, little things, other theories like Theory of Societal Change, and ultimately where you focus yourself if rhetorical effort and bonafide praxis.

I spoke of relying on emotional thought like a sense of humiliation that you are dipping into things beneath your dignity, thats an experiential thing where self decieving through addiction and compulsion are familiar and experienced to inform larger perils - like i dont gamble anymore despite talking about it because it is compulsive escapist behavior I have done - and if I feel the urge, then I know I need to talk someone about the real turmoil making me want to get lost in it.

A lonely teenager or young adult isnt gonna have the experience of doing things that feel good and are self destructive, and will actively fight you on the premise in a storied way many of us replicated in our time.

I mean, when we talk about losing people we love to addiction or compulsion or suicide or cults or fascism, we cant logically and rationally talk everyone down from the ledge, we have to tap on their emotional state and earnestly address it and be empathetic, but also have a limit and boundary lest we wind up in the soup with them, ya know? But you have the Logos Fire Brigade rushing in to douse the flames in one particular way and tossing up their hands when their only way fails the other person.

@mdreid @hacks4pancakes

The hype happened again in the ‘90s. I remember the BBC Tomorrow’s World doing an online Turing Test with three bots and three humans. It was far from rigorous science (many people could talk to the bots at the same time, the humans could conduct one conversation at a time, so the probability of talking to a human was very low). The main thing I remember was that Craig Charles being one of the humans and fewer people though he was a human than thought the bots were. To my knowledge, he is the only human to have failed a structured Turing Test.