Mastodawn

RE: https://mastodon.social/@mcc/116004809011481588

Anyway the reason I roll my eyes at most of the discussion about "AI", "AGI", "the singularity", "intelligence self-improvement feedback loop" is that like, it happened, it's already happened, it's been happening, it's us. We're it.

Kurzweil talked about lusting for a machine that can make him smarter. I have that, it's a piece of paper. I can write math on a piece of paper and solve problems I can't solve in my head. I can upload all the information in the world directly into my brain (books).

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mcc Feb 4

What "singularity" fanatics actually want is to not have to put in the work

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✧✦Catherine✦✧Feb 5

@mcc I don't think this is inherently bad. for example, I'm unwilling to put in the work of learning hundreds of human languages, so I'm using machine translation tools. I'm unwilling to put in the work of writing letters (or punching through punchcards) so I type on a keyboard.

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mcc Feb 5

@whitequark I'm putting hundreds of hours into learning a new human language and what I believe is that when I am done I will be able to read texts in that language, which is not the case with the machine translation tools. Source: I have tried the machine translation tools and they weren't shit

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✧✦Catherine✦✧Feb 5

@mcc the RoI of learning Chinese to read poetry (at which machine translation tools suck) is very different from RoI of learning Chinese to read another stuipd datasheet for something you pulled out of e-waste (at which machine translation tools are quite good or at least sufficient because it is so formulaic)

source: I have tried the machine translation tools and they were the shit

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niconiconi

@whitequark @mcc I'm now feeding my own blog posts into LLMs for author-reviewed machine translations, including both Chinese and English originals. I can always write in both languages if it's a must, but I don't believe spending another week on a mechanical task of rewriting 100 KiB of literature review after a project's completion is a productive use of my time.