Artificial intelligence still has some way to go

New: we proved it could be done. I used an AI replica of my voice to break into my bank account. The AI tricked the bank into thinking it was talking to me. Could access my balances, transactions, etc. Shatters the idea that voice biometrics are foolproof https://t.co/YO6m8DIpqR pic.twitter.com/hsjHaKqu2E

— Joseph Cox (@josephfcox) February 23, 2023

To make this AI voice, I used just ~5 minutes of audio and uploaded to ElevenLabs, probably the most impressive and readily accessible AI-voice system at the moment (I read the GDPR into my mic). It's also being abused by 4chan to dox and harass https://t.co/YO6m8DIXgp pic.twitter.com/ZejpJ4awWg

— Joseph Cox (@josephfcox) February 23, 2023

in other news, this thread is full of people looking at themselves as a younger person (with a tiktok filter) and crying

ICYMI over on tiktok AI is hitting hard on genx.
I've always said wrt AI, expect the unexpected, the future's gonna be weirder than anyone can imagine. Skynet is the last thing to be worried about.
This is the real #aiart #AIArtCommuity pic.twitter.com/FlwUrftR6o

— memo akten ( @mem✧✧✧@masto✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧ ) (@memotv) February 23, 2023

Huh wonder how making adults look like children could be misused

i think those kinds of filters have been around for a while (snapchat, even instagram has them). i mainly posted that because i'm not sure i've ever really heard of people having an emotional reaction to it, but i guess it can hit hard

I finally started playing w ChatGPT and is it just me or does everything it generates have the quality of a porn intro

It's like everything's being spoken by this wooden actor whose lines are just window dressing

Maybe it didn't help that my most recent prompt was: "Write a page of dialogue about a boy who has ruined his mother's bedroom by doing science experiments in it"

Mother: (walks into her bedroom) Oh my God! What have you done to my bedroom, Johnny?

Johnny: (nervously) Uh, I was just doing some science experiments. I didn't mean to make such a mess.

Mother: Science experiments? In my bedroom? You've destroyed the curtains, stained the carpet, and what is this smell?

Johnny: (defensively) I was just trying to create a chemical reaction to see how it worked. I didn't think it would get out of hand like this.

Mother: (exasperated) You didn't think? You never think! This is the third time you've ruined something in this house with your science experiments. Last time it was the kitchen, and before that it was the garage.

Johnny: (apologetically) I'm sorry, Mom. I just get so excited about science. I can't help it.

Mother: (sighs) I know you love science, Johnny. But you can't just go around experimenting in the house. You need to be more careful and responsible. Now I'm going to have to spend a fortune getting this room fixed.

Johnny: (sadly) I'll pay for it. I have some money saved up from my part-time job.

Mother: (softening) It's not just about the money, Johnny. It's about respecting other people's property and taking responsibility for your actions. I want you to promise me that you'll be more careful in the future and that you'll never do experiments in the house again.

Johnny: (nodding) I promise, Mom. I'll find another place to do my experiments from now on.

Mother: (smiling) Good. And don't worry about the mess, Johnny. We'll clean it up together. But first, let's open a window and get some fresh air in here.

The lack of imagination here is just extraordinary

good short piece here btw - https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/1c6fd26f-fcd5-473f-9535-f3652ada92ca

I asked it to write a tribute to Gary Glitter.

It's still thinking about it.

There's no one quite like Gary Glitter.

He's a one-of-a-kind entertainer whose music is sure to get you on your feet.

He's always been a favorite of mine, and I'm sure he'll continue to entertain audiences for many years to come.

Thank you, Gary, for all the wonderful music you've given us over the years. You're the best!
Download and try this app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chatgpt.aichat.gpt3.aichatbot

The Jesus and Mary Chain are an iconic band from the 1980s and 1990s. They were known for their noise pop sound and their lead singer Jim Reid's distinctive vocals. The band was formed in 1983 by brothers Jim and William Reid. They released their debut album, Psychocandy, in 1985 and it was met with critical acclaim. The album was produced by their father, who was a member of the band the Velvet Underground. The Jesus and Mary Chain continued to release albums throughout the 1990s, but they never achieved the same level of success as they did with Psychocandy. The band broke up in 1999, but they reunited in 2007 and have been playing concerts ever since.

I first heard the Jesus and Mary Chain in the early 1990s, when I was a teenager. I was immediately drawn to their sound and I soon became a fan. Their music is loud and noisy, but it's also melodic and catchy. The lyrics are dark and often nihilistic, but they're also witty and clever. The Jesus and Mary Chain are a unique band and they have a sound that's all their own.

I think what I like best about the Jesus and Mary Chain is their intensity. They never hold back and they always go for it. They're a band that's not afraid to make a noise and they're always willing to take risks. They're also a band that's not afraid to experiment and they're always pushing the boundaries.

The Jesus and Mary Chain are a great band and I'm glad they've reunited. I hope they continue to make music for many years to come.
Download and try this app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chatgpt.aichat.gpt3.aichatbot

The album was produced by their father, who was a member of the band the Velvet Underground.

hmmm

theres been "ai computer programming" for a couple years now https://github.com/features/copilot ive not used it but ive looked into it a bit, you dont tell it to write you a program and it does it like you can with chatgtp rather it expands on an already existing tech called code completion where you start typing and it attempts to complete what youre writing for you, seems to work pretty well but cld def see it introducing some bugs if youre not really paying attention to what its doing

theres also the more general conversation on whether ai will replace programmers cause you can just tell it to write you a program and itll do it but of course that will produce be weird results cause you dont have granular enough control so theyll make one that takes more structured prompts and developing those prompts is what you call computer programming

which is not to say that people wont figure out some real sicko shit to do with the technology in question cause im sure they will

> they never achieved the same level of success as they did with Psychocandy.

UK album chart positions:

Psychocandy 31
Darklands 5
Automatic 11
Honey's Dead 14
Stoned & Dethroned 13
Munki 47
Damage and Joy 16

depends what measure of success you take, i guess

Yeah, that one's not getting their degree...

Blue Monday is a song by the British new wave band New Order. It was released in 1983 as a single from their album Power, Corruption & Lies. The song was written by New Order bassist Peter Hook, and is based on the concept of the "Blue Monday" depression that was popularized by British journalist Paul Mason.

The lyrics of the song describe the feeling of depression and despair that is associated with the "Blue Monday" phenomenon. The song's dark and moody soundscape reflects the feelings of hopelessness and despair that are often associated with depression.

Blue Monday is one of New Order's most popular and well-known songs. It was a major hit in the United Kingdom, and has been covered by a number of artists. The song has been praised for its dark and moody sound, and its lyrics that capture the feeling of depression.
Download and try this app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chatgpt.aichat.gpt3.aichatbot

It's parallel universe stuff, innit?

perfunctory

As an AI language model, I can certainly provide you with some LinkedIn post titles inspired by the band Slayer:

"Raining Blood: How to Conquer Your Toughest Business Challenges"
"Seasons in the Abyss: Surviving the Ups and Downs of Business Life"
"Angel of Death: How to Overcome Fear and Take Charge of Your Career"
"Hell Awaits: Navigating the Challenges of Entrepreneurship"
"South of Heaven: How to Find Your Ideal Workplace Culture"
"Dead Skin Mask: The Importance of Authenticity in Business"
"Black Magic: Unlocking Your Creativity for Business Success"
"Chemical Warfare: Battling Toxic Workplace Cultures"
"War Ensemble: Mastering Team Collaboration for Business Growth"
"Postmortem: Learning from Failure to Achieve Success in Business"

hahaha excellent

The only good stuff is when you hack it in some way

Re: Github Copilot the BBC blog mentions it, and quotes a guy saying "I’ve coded, mostly as a hobby, my whole life – it’s a big creative outlet alongside writing – it’s so rarely felt like this. It feels like flying"

If you consider that the job of computers is to do all the tedious shit for us that we don't want to do ourselves then huge amounts of computer coding must fall under this category

yeah idk that guys a hobbyist he doesnt have to deal with the fallout of bugs bad architecture and so forth, i mean i think theres def a use for these tools but "flying" lol calm down

theres no way it will ever match the exquisite high of a perfect vim environment

I think copilot is cool as a learning tool to raise your proficiency in the same way copy/pasting stock code and modifying it to fit your needs is useful. It just cuts out the searching and copy/paste imo

The criticism of wooden prose is only half-accurate. It's just that ChatGPT is bad at guessing the tone you want.

if you have a specific style you want, copy and paste an example (eg: lester bangs, greil marcus, yourself), and then ask it to write text in a similar way.

it will still be a bit robotic but can be spookily good (rather than dumb)

yup. when you realize it’s just guessing which words should follow previous words based on how other people have written text it’s digested, you can attack it from the right angle

Yeah, that's what's interesting to me about that old ai recipe thread... chatgpt2023 doesn't understand food or cooking any better, it's just better at choosing the right words and combining them more convincingly... (not nearly as funny though...)

Here’s a startup that aims to replace what’s left of local radio with a realistic AI voice that scans Facebook for trending topics and uses GPT3 to comment on those topics. Evidence that AI biz models are all about consolidation. https://t.co/FXTyxJBTtr

— Eryk Salvaggio (🐘cyberneticfore✧✧✧@assemb✧✧✧.e✧) (@e_salvaggio) February 28, 2023

i think spotify is working on something similar as well

snapchat has a new chatbot ("My AI"). it says sorry in advance

"As with all AI-powered chatbots, My AI is prone to hallucination and can be tricked into saying just about anything. Please be aware of its many deficiencies and sorry in advance! All conversations with My AI will be stored and may be reviewed to improve the product experience. Please do not share any secrets with My AI and do not rely on it for advice."

Xp how about those clowns in congress

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYd0QcZcS6Q

In the Q&A that followed Bender’s talk, a bald man in a black polo shirt, a lanyard around his neck, approached the microphone and laid out his concerns. “Yeah, I wanted to ask the question about why you chose humanization and this character of human, this category of humans, as the sort of framing for all these different ideas that you’re bringing together.” The man did not see humans as all that special. “Listening to your talk, I can’t help but think, you know, there are some humans that are really awful, and so being lumped in with them isn’t so great. We’re the same species, the same biological kind, but who cares? My dog is pretty great. I’m happy to be lumped in with her.”

He wanted to separate “a human, the biological category, from a person or a unit worthy of moral respect.” LLMs, he acknowledged, are not human — yet. But the tech is getting so good so fast. “I wondered, if you could just speak a little more to why you chose a human, humanity, being a human as this sort of framing device for thinking about this, you know, a whole host of different things,” he concluded. “Thanks.”

Bender listened to all this with her head slightly cocked to the right, chewing on her lips. What could she say to that? She argued from first principles. “I think that there is a certain moral respect accorded to anyone who’s human by virtue of being human,” she said. “We see a lot of things going wrong in our present world that have to do with not according humanity to humans.”

The guy did not buy it. “If I could, just very quickly,” he continued. “It might be that 100 percent of humans are worthy of certain levels of moral respect. But I wonder if maybe it’s not because they’re human in the species sense.”

Many far from tech also make this point. Ecologists and animal-personhood advocates argue that we should quit thinking we’re so important in a species sense. We need to live with more humility. We need to accept that we’re creatures among other creatures, matter among other matter. Trees, rivers, whales, atoms, minerals, stars — it’s all important. We are not the bosses here.

But the road from language model to existential crisis is short indeed. Joseph Weizenbaum, who created ELIZA, the first chatbot, in 1966, spent most of the rest of his life regretting it. The technology, he wrote ten years later in Computer Power and Human Reason, raises questions that “at bottom … are about nothing less than man’s place in the universe.” The toys are fun, enchanting, and addicting, and that, he believed even 47 years ago, will be our ruin: “No wonder that men who live day in and day out with machines to which they believe themselves to have become slaves begin to believe that men are machines.”

The echoes of the climate crisis are unmistakable. We knew many decades ago about the dangers and, goosed along by capitalism and the desires of a powerful few, proceeded regardless. Who doesn’t want to zip to Paris or Hanalei for the weekend, especially if the best PR teams in the world have told you this is the ultimate prize in life? “Why is the crew that has taken us this far cheering?” Weizenbaum wrote. “Why do the passengers not look up from their games?”

Creating technology that mimics humans requires that we get very clear on who we are. “From here on out, the safe use of artificial intelligence requires demystifying the human condition,” Joanna Bryson, professor of ethics and technology at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, wrote last year. We don’t believe we are more giraffelike if we get taller. Why get fuzzy about intelligence?

Others, like Dennett, the philosopher of mind, are even more blunt. We can’t live in a world with what he calls “counterfeit people.” “Counterfeit money has been seen as vandalism against society ever since money has existed,” he said. “Punishments included the death penalty and being drawn and quartered. Counterfeit people is at least as serious.”

Artificial people will always have less at stake than real ones, and that makes them amoral actors, he added. “Not for metaphysical reasons but for simple, physical reasons: They are sort of immortal.”

We need strict liability for the technology’s creators, Dennett argues: “They should be held accountable. They should be sued. They should be put on record that if something they make is used to make counterfeit people, they will be held responsible. They’re on the verge, if they haven’t already done it, of creating very serious weapons of destruction against the stability and security of society. They should take that as seriously as the molecular biologists have taken the prospect of biological warfare or the atomic physicists have taken nuclear war.” This is the real code red. We need to “institute new attitudes, new laws, and spread them rapidly and remove the valorization of fooling people, the anthropomorphization,” he said. “We want smart machines, not artificial colleagues.”

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-chatbots-emily-m-bender.html

No they shouldn't.

See, murder is a serious crime, and punishments are severe.

But the punishments for financial fraud can run much higher.

Not having personally encountered any true believers I wondered what the response was to the imo irrefutable argument that meaning cannot exist without referents and that llms, swimming in a sea of words and nothing else, can never have even the smallest fraction of understanding of what words mean. Now I know, and it's 'uh shutup yes it can and yes they do'.

Referents, actual things and ideas in the world, like coconuts and heartbreak, are needed to produce meaning. This refers to that. Manning now sees this idea as antiquated, the “sort of standard 20th-century philosophy-of-language position.”

that was an excellent article, thanks.

The credulous will not, until it’s too late, realize that the body is one of the major components of what makes meaning for us — and that therefore AI, no matter how smart and how human it can seem, will not ever be anything like actually sentient or intelligent.

That doesn’t mean it won’t destroy us, and probably soon.

I follow a lot of talking birds on Instagram, and there are a few that I know without a shadow of a doubt are investing their words with personal meaning. Probably not something we’ll ever be able to properly parse, but dammit they’re trying. I’ve had dogs that tried very hard to speak English, and I’ve had dogs that can hardly be coaxed to give a fuck about the word “walk” or “supper” … where was I going with this? … something about being a physical creature and how emotions and sensation and thoughts are a tangled inextricable web that produce experience in a way that a language model could never ever. I have more kinship with a cockroach, and so do you, than with any computer no later how lifelike. The fact that MDMA has similar effects on cephalopods that it does on us, despite the fact they branched off from us earlier than any other animal that could plausibly have anything like personhood, whoooo! That’s some heavy deeds. Give Bing some MDMA and see what happens (spoiler: nothing).

I’m super interested in AI for all sorts of reasons (closet technocrat) but goddammit stop being an idiot about what makes a being a being.

I'm willing to believe that roughly a billion years of life-or-death consequences for earthly life forms has created living beings for which "meaning" has far greater reach and depth than the pattern perception, recognition, and manipulation of objects that AI is currently capable of.

If a robot picking up blocks and using them to form the Microsoft logo were frequently interrupted by other robots who smashed the first robot or disassembled it into pieces in order to cannibalize it, and all the robots involved were frequently recreating themselves and passing along their programs with small random variations, then I could envision robots for which fear, anger, curiosity, love and laughter constituted major sources of meaning enriching their existence. Maybe after some millions of years. Otherwise, they are just as real and sentient as Pygmalion's statue.

That sounds like you're asking researchers to speed run millions of years of robo-brutality in a simulator!
https://img2.thejournal.ie/inline/2792085/original/?width=480&version=2792085

I tried Bing image creator - 'my perfect husband' came up with one lol result (a bride and groom with their faces sort of melted together by accident) plus 3 men of varying ethnicities. When I tried 'my perfect wife' I was told it wasn't allowed and had blocked that search request!

all the blocking makes the ai experience no fun, we all just want to make the ai tell us some fucked up stuff let us do it

The fact it can find a perfect husband but no wives measure up is a bit off if you ask me

it simply believes all wives are perfect

Nothing Forever is back but it feels like it's lacking something, I think this has happened, sadly:

No joke, I watched for almost four hours straight. It’s one of those things that is going to get worse as they “improve” it.

― Karl Malone, Wednesday, 1 February 2023 14:52 (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

also the George character now has long blond hair for some reason

wait, I think the Elaine character is the one with long blond hair, it's difficult to tell which character corresponds with which voice.