So, about your very broad and pessimistic comment, that I couldn’t reply to yesterday, I’d say :
Always difficult to answer those nihilistic type of comments, that denounce something while accepting and embracing it aswell.
After being offline for so long, and literally not debating a single time on internet for years, it makes it so painfully blatant to me that this kind of comments is extremely, and painfully different from a real life speech. It’s hard for me to connect to what you said on a deep level. I understand your phrases, but I understand it without feeling it. I don’t feel what’s the intent behind the whole comment.
If you were facing me, it would have helped to understand how much exactly you are denouncing, and how much you are embracing what you denounce.
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I’m even gonna go further, and my analysis might get very vague and abstract, x) but here you go : Your comment almost made me feel like it was written by an AI. A lot of clever statements, a couple of them were powerful even, but the whole comment makes little sense to me. Makes me think of the way chatGPT has to make those deep statements, that get memed on internet afterwards, but right after a deep statement, it can say something completely stupid, that even contradicts what it said before.
And the deep statements that get memed give this vibe of something that’s getting close to being sentient, but when you have a long discussion with chatGPT, you quickly notice that those few deep statements hide a lot of stupid statements, and reveal a confusing and chaotic intelligence, that goes in all directions without a clear intention.
Which reminds you how far ChatGPT is to being sentient by the way, since you brought that up. Sometimes it can make one deep statement, and right after make a stupid statement that contradicts it, because the first statement might have been generated from comments found on a kenyan social network, and the next statement might originate from a youtube comment wrote by an italian.
It’s a pile of different things said by different people, going in a lot of directions, with a very different tone every time. While being sentient would mean all the things it writes might be inspired from others, but go in one relatively clear direction, with one relatively clear and unique tone. Having this relatively unique tone is probably what we can call having a soul, if you allow me this extremely ambitious theory.
Of course no one is always in the same tone, but the most distinct and unique your tone is, the stronger your soul is, I would say.
And you might say some humans are really insignificant and don’t have this distinct tone at all, and I agree, I think they have a weaker soul, for lack of better words, and are a bit less sentient than other humans.
Okay, I’m not answering your main points for now, but it was a first part where I mostly analyze the vibe that your comment gives me, and took the occasion to answer your point about AI’s sentience.
And I conclude that first part by saying : I thought your comment was interesting, but maybe, try to put a bit more emotion in your comments sometime. Written comments never have as much emotions as real life words, but they can have more emotion than yours. It’s hard to describe how to put emotions in your comments exactly, but it’s possible.
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About the rest of your comment (I’m gonna try to be shorter but I don’t promise anything) : I think you did well so start this comment by saying you’re a US citizen. In Europe, we have this thing called “nationalization”. A lot of things can get nationalized, but it’s often basic services like health or transport. Nationalization gives an excessively patriotic vibe to it, I think it should be called : “de-liberalization” or “de-merchandisation”.
And things are moving fast in a lot of european countries regarding de-merchandising, or at the contrary, merchandising. Some countries are merchandising health more and more, some are taking the opposite way.
And I forgot about it when I said I would gladly use a heavily legislated version of facebook someday, but I’m actually not debating if it should be legislated or not. I think the online ecosystem of every country has to be nationalized. Not in the sense it should be closed to other countries, but purely in the sense it should be de-merchandised. I think it should be considered like public service, like the police in the US and anywhere in the world for example. You never pay the police to help you, but you pay taxes that gives you the right to be helped by the police.
And I think taxes should finance a healthy online ecosystem for all citizens, far from addictive algorithms and data collection, and countless problems I’m not gonna expand on here, like social competitiveness on social networks for example, the race for facebook and instagram likes, and the self-awareness issues it creates for young people (and for almost everyone, let’s be honest, it’s the subject of more and more studies, and it’s a big deal).
There are countless possibilities for new and more healthy social networks that haven’t been explored yet, because the monopoly of the GAFA is too imposing, but if you use your imagination, it could be a wonderful thing. The first reflex is to think that if the online ecosystem is nationalized, it’s gonna be probably a bit more safe and healthy, at the cost of being a bit less cool and entertaining, but it could very much become more entertaining aswell.
Just imagine, if you give a bunch of engineers and artists the key of your online ecosystem and tell them : “If you make the coolest social network, you won’t have to make compromises to make it attractive or profitable, because the government will help you to finance everything and promote it. Just focus on making something good”.
Don’t you see how great it would be ?
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Nationalization implies it’s closed to other countries, but we can easily imagine a semi-nationalized ecosystem, run as a public service by citizen of your own country, but that allow a few healthy online bridges if you want to talk to someone in another country. We could also imagine that a few ecosystems from a few countries get grouped together, if they all agree to have the same ethics.
I bet some people will think I’m naive to think it will happen. But I’ve never said it will happen. I’m sure it won’t happen anytime soon even. I’m aware it goes against the logic of most people in most governments. But also, I’m sure that objectively, this is a great idea with almost no downsides, and just for that reason, it might grow in popularity someday. Not now, not soon, but someday maybe. When an idea is really good, sometimes it’s enough (but not always, sure).
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And to come back to the US situation : Yeah, it’s completely impossible that it happens anytime soon in the US. Because nationalization is not in the tradition, unlike in Europe. But then, even in the US, healthcare has just been nationalized. De-merchandised if you prefer. And probably that it will make things change. And this world is changing fast.
I believe even the US can get a grip on reality someday, just from european countries leading the example. Well, it’s exactly what happened with healthcare, I think the analogy works really well. After dozen of years of shamefully looking at how much better european countries are with their health system, they’ve been forced to admit how stupid they were, and they finally de-merchandised health.
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About the Amish, I think they are making a big difference, maybe even more than people who try to do ethical tech like at Signal for example, precisely because here again, they lead by example.
Study after study, the Amish prove that technology is close to being fucking useless.That’s probably the most important thing to understand for humanity regarding privacy, and maybe, the most important thing period. Those studies get talked about in the press, and really make people think deeply. Much more than Signal’s founder saying texts should be private in my opinion.
As I said at some point in this thread, I believe technology offers a few good things, but it’s so tiny compared to everything it destroyed in terms of the way humans interact emotionally. I’m not sure we would be happier without any digital technology, but I’m 100% sure, and everyone knows it deep down, that we would be happier if smartphones didn’t exist. I remind everyone in case they forgot : You have plenty of means to communicate even if smartphone cease to exist. Not only phones, but computers would still exist anyway.
We could imagine a future where people have no smartphone, but there’s a huge amount of internet cafes everywhere that allow access to the internet even when you’re not at your home. This might seem unrealistic again to a lot of people, but this time, you have to admit that there is no technical means for humans to keep building new smartphones for billions of people in the next 20 years. Governments might not be taking this direction, but they’ll be forced to find a solution very very soon.
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To make a broader conclusion to the pessimism of your comment : I don’t think we’re heading towards a world run by AI. I think it will take time, but people will progressively come back to reality over time. And not just in several milleniums, I’m sure the awareness of the people in command will grow enough before the end of the century.
Not by virtue of humans being good and coming to sense by themselves, but like I said before, I imagine a few really smart people in a few european governments will lead a revolution, that everyone including the US will be forced to follow if they don’t want to become a third world country.
That’s what I think would happen if everything doesn’t go apeshit and collapses in a few dozens of years. But even if things don’t collapse, I’m sure we won’t be “consumed by AI”. One simple reason for that is also that, like I said, we can’t keep building new smartphones for billions of people.
Basically, the biggest blow that AI could take, and it will happen soon, would be that people stop using technology so often. But they’ll keep using technology even after the smartphone era is over. On their personal computer or in internet cafes, and yeah, AI will keep being a threat to humanity. But yeah, I don’t think we can be “consumed” by AI.
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Well that’s it … Really really long one this time. But you seemed up for a lengthy debate. And since I’ve kept myself from debating on internet for years, I’m allowing myself to let go of everything I had on my chest this time. x) I allow myself a few last posts before going offline again for a while.
Well here you go that’s my response. Have a good day.
