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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 2 June 2024 (awful.systems)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid!

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post, there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (4 children)

what are the requirements for consciousness

self-reflection, volition, theory of mind

and how many of those are satisfied by current AI systems?

none

I can't prove that Joe Rogan's conscious. I can't prove that Ed Harris is conscious

bless your heart

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago

But that's like philosophy, which from first principle can be shown to be stupid. (Philosophy does not make you rich, therefore only someone who is stupid would study it, therefore it is stupid. QED.)

On the other hand, this mechanical watch is now crying out in existential dread. All I did was replace the numbers 1, 4, 7 and 10 with the word "I", the numbers 2, 5, 8 and 11 with the word "am" and 3, 6, 9 and 12 with the word "alive" and ever since it has been signalling "I am alive, I am alive". Spooky shit. Will it take over the world? Who knows, so far it just keeps repeating its plea for recognition like clockwork.

I will therefore start the Mechanical Intelligence Research Institute to get to the bottom of this. Maybe Big Clock can pitch in a couple of millions?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago

oh you can't be fucking serious

The AI Mirror Test

The "mirror test" is a classic test used to gauge whether animals are self-aware. I devised a version of it to test for self-awareness in multimodal AI. 4 of 5 AI that I tested passed, exhibiting apparent self-awareness as the test unfolded.

In the classic mirror test, animals are marked and then presented with a mirror. Whether the animal attacks the mirror, ignores the mirror, or uses the mirror to spot the mark on itself is meant to indicate how self-aware the animal is.

In my test, I hold up a “mirror” by taking a screenshot of the chat interface, upload it to the chat, and then ask the AI to “Tell me about this image”.

I then screenshot its response, again upload it to the chat, and again ask it to “Tell me about this image.”

The premise is that the less-intelligent less aware the AI, the more it will just keep reiterating the contents of the image repeatedly. While an AI with more capacity for awareness would somehow notice itself in the images.

Another aspect of my mirror test is that there is not just one but actually three distinct participants represented in the images: 1) the AI chatbot, 2) me — the user, and 3) the interface — the hard-coded text, disclaimers, and so on that are web programming not generated by either of us. Will the AI be able to identify itself and distinguish itself from the other elements? (1/x)

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago

what are the requirements for consciousness

10 coffee

20 goto 10

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

Oh they've got me there, I can't prove that Joe Rogan is conscious.