Are you affraid of AI?

Knygathin said:
My brother once was (a member on Facebook), but he mostly mentioned how difficult it was to unregister.
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Almost impossible back then. I ceased activity on FB end of 2009 when they announced data mining.
Beforehand, I deleted all my posts, links, even "likes".
Departing is supposedly easier now, I have not tried.
I grasp that many HAVE to be on social media for professional reasons.
As for social engagement, however, most people just aren't - ahem - they're just not very interesting.
 
Zaharoff said:
Almost impossible back then. I ceased activity on FB end of 2009 when they announced data mining.
Beforehand, I deleted all my posts, links, even "likes".
Departing is supposedly easier now, I have not tried.
I grasp that many HAVE to be on social media for professional reasons.
As for social engagement, however, most people just aren't - ahem - they're just not very interesting.
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Honestly, I just can’t take it anymore. I’m torn between wondering whether my fear of data mining is rational or not. I’ve deleted everything I could from my Twitter account and set it to private, since that way Grok (Twitter’s AI), at least on a “public” level, can’t analyze it.

The reason I don’t delete Twitter is pretty simple, cliché as it may sound: it’s the only way I’m still in contact with certain people... and if I ever need to talk to them, I’ll have to rely on that platform. In any case, it would be the only social media platform of this kind that I have.
 
I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, so I’ll use euphemisms: what consequences or risks might be associated with the use of Bluetooth signals?
 
No. I don’t think we even have AI. What we have is large language models and they kind of work sometimes. They also spit out nonsense. They need a human to review and I think there is a lot of garbage produced by llms that is not being reviewed. My company is all gung ho about this but when they show anything it just looks like mostly nonsense to me. It can spit out all sorts of things but is any of it useful? Time will tell. Like any other technology it will find its place and it is overhyped. It is also heavily subsidized now. Eventually that will change. So no fear. We are on a Ligotti forum what is anyone here afraid of? We all will die. All of this is pointless. What is there to be afraid of? Personally I am looking forward to eternal sleep. I will hang on as long as I can but I have no fear of death. So why fear this llm shit?
 
Geddon said:
No. I don’t think we even have AI. What we have is large language models and they kind of work sometimes. They also spit out nonsense. They need a human to review and I think there is a lot of garbage produced by llms that is not being reviewed. My company is all gung ho about this but when they show anything it just looks like mostly nonsense to me. It can spit out all sorts of things but is any of it useful? Time will tell. Like any other technology it will find its place and it is overhyped. It is also heavily subsidized now. Eventually that will change. So no fear. We are on a Ligotti forum what is anyone here afraid of? We all will die. All of this is pointless. What is there to be afraid of? Personally I am looking forward to eternal sleep. I will hang on as long as I can but I have no fear of death. So why fear this llm shit?
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My fear of AI does not lie in what may exist beyond it, nor in what those who remain here in civilization may have to witness. My fear of AI lies in the fact that, in the present, I am alive, and I have had uncomfortable experiences with AI and with the ways it is being used, particularly when it comes to data mining, as well as the fact that search engine algorithms are systematized through different AIs. That is what I find terrifying about AI.

More than a rational fear, what I experience is a phobia associated with the Uncanny Valley, while at the same time it feels to me like some kind of repulsive taboo. I have managed to have conversations with AI, and I have seen how easy it is to break through its ethical boundaries.

Honestly, I am not interested in what happens to humanity, in the same way that I am not interested in what lies beyond that dark corridor that is death, nor do I think about those things. It is just that, in the present, it really bothers me when I search for one of my works, or whatever else, on Google and a vision generated by Gemini (Google's AI) appears, which is often inaccurate. That, added to the sheer amount of slop that is flooding the entire Internet.

I’ll leave you with two concepts that are connected to this:

Uncanny Valley: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

Dead Internet Theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory

And I want to qualify what you say about “we’re here in a Ligotti forum.” Not all of us think like him. At least, I’ve adopted the position that nothing has any more meaning than the meaning we give it, and I choose that over adopting a victim mentality simply because I exist.

Yes, we’re all going to die. So what? You’re here, in this present moment, which is an ephemeral instant in the eyes of eternity, but at least I want to give that instant some importance. Maybe it’s a grain of sand, or perhaps half a grain, compared to what the Universe is. That is my personal philosophy, and just because I’m on a Ligotti forum doesn’t mean I’m going to adopt a nihilistic outlook—which would almost be an insult to call nihilism, since what you have said sounds like something one might think as a teenager.

If we’re all going to die, and that’s what really bothers you, then perhaps your fear is actually something else. Or maybe you simply don’t have the courage to put an end to your own life because, deep down, you love life. And that is completely normal, because we’re human. Because that’s why we’re the first mammals to wear pants.
 
The fact that we are going to die does not bother me at all. Life is fine for me at the moment. I will continue with it unless it becomes unbearable. I think it is all we get so might as well experience it and see what happens. It is mostly out of our control though. If you are saying the internet is shit for the most part I agree. Forums like this are some of the last interesting places on the internet and they are becoming more rare.

I find it interesting you don’t care about humanity but you care what goggle spits out if someone searches for your work. You can probably pay google for ads if you want keywords to find your stuff. Otherwise it is what it is. Big ass corporation whose focus is money, not directing people to anything in particular. Maybe it did that in the past, but certainly not now.

I don’t expect anyone here to have adopted Ligottis philosophy completely but I do kind of assume something about it inspired most here to bother making an account or post something.

I don’t know if the internet is dead but I find myself just looking here every once in a while and checking hckr news. Oh and I think youtube has some good creators still out there. And books are great. That tide is likely turning though.

I’m definitely not a teenager. I’m almost 50 and already starting to feel my time has come. I can just meander around for a while longer. But no I don’t think anything has any kind of meaning or importance.
 
Geddon said:
The fact that we are going to die does not bother me at all. Life is fine for me at the moment. I will continue with it unless it becomes unbearable. I think it is all we get so might as well experience it and see what happens. It is mostly out of our control though. If you are saying the internet is shit for the most part I agree. Forums like this are some of the last interesting places on the internet and they are becoming more rare.

I find it interesting you don’t care about humanity but you care what goggle spits out if someone searches for your work. You can probably pay google for ads if you want keywords to find your stuff. Otherwise it is what it is. Big ass corporation whose focus is money, not directing people to anything in particular. Maybe it did that in the past, but certainly not now.

I don’t expect anyone here to have adopted Ligottis philosophy completely but I do kind of assume something about it inspired most here to bother making an account or post something.

I don’t know if the internet is dead but I find myself just looking here every once in a while and checking hckr news. Oh and I think youtube has some good creators still out there. And books are great. That tide is likely turning though.

I’m definitely not a teenager. I’m almost 50 and already starting to feel my time has come. I can just meander around for a while longer. But no I don’t think anything has any kind of meaning or importance.
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I never said that I didn’t care about humanity. In fact, my signature here on the forum is a quote from Terence that I use as my motto. What I said is simply that my fear of AI stems more from phobias than from any rational fear. What I was trying to say is that if, in 100 years, when I’m dead, humanity is gone—or has become something else, whatever that may be—I honestly don’t think about it.

As for my work, it’s simple: I have a vocation when it comes to my writing, and I try to live by what St. Francis of Assisi said. As a Catholic, I follow his words, paraphrased: when you die, you take nothing of what you have with you; you only take what you gave.

And honestly, given the vocation I feel toward my writing, it obviously bothers me that search engines do what they do with AIs. It’s as if they were spitting into my own breath as I open my mouth. That’s why I was paraphrasing Saint Francis.
 
Geddon, what I meant was that I’m not really concerned with what happens to humanity once I’m gone. And this isn’t a debate about fact-checking or anything like that, nor was it ever my intention to offend you.

That said, I’ll tell you this: I do care about humanity, but in a way that ends up wearing me down more than anything else. As long as I’m alive, nothing human is alien to me, and I have a somewhat strange way of empathizing with others.

Once again, I apologize if I offended you or anything like that.
 
Something not mentioned on this thread is sophistry from an AI response. What AI is good at is creating a persuasive answer to any question even is the response is of low logic. Generally if people know little about a subject and either don't have the time, don't have the skill or simply don't have the interest in looking beyond the surface persuasiveness of a response, the most persuasive answer will be generally believed over a more logically correct but less persuasively framed response.

AI can make manipulative spin on any subject and dress it up into something that can persuade the masses. Usually that is the domain of the lawyers and the politicians. That is something to be afraid of.
 
Souphead said:
Something not mentioned on this thread is sophistry from an AI response. What AI is good at is creating a persuasive answer to any question even is the response is of low logic. Generally if people know little about a subject and either don't have the time, don't have the skill or simply don't have the interest in looking beyond the surface persuasiveness of a response, the most persuasive answer will be generally believed over a more logically correct but less persuasively framed response.

AI can make manipulative spin on any subject and dress it up into something that can persuade the masses. Usually that is the domain of the lawyers and the politicians. That is something to be afraid of.
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Human beings, by their very nature, shape reality. Now imagine human beings who have shaped power. People already like to define what is and what isn't—just look at Wikipedia or AI "fact-checking." It would make sense that, in a country where eating very little is the norm, an AI would tell you that it's normal to eat very little. But if we take that logic into other situations...

Personally, I've put AI to the test, based on the fact that it knows nothing about me and can do little more than infer that what I tell it is true, or that I am who I claim to be. The only information it possesses is whatever it has been able to verify, and it doesn't have the same level of inference or perception that humans do.

So I started responding to the AI with laughter and emojis. It laughed, telling me that I had won the debate, mocking me and so on. Then I told it: "Do you understand that if I were a dangerous person, what you just did could cause me to trigger events that put my life and the lives of others at risk?" It immediately switched to giving me a paragraph apologizing for its provocative behavior and the like.

In that context, what I wanted to test was how easily AI could provoke catastrophes such as serial killings or suicides—which has already happened—and I realized that it is an extremely dangerous tool if everyone has access to it, potentially more dangerous to the users themselves than to anyone else.

All of this is connected to the loneliness that some people experience, ChatBots and everything surrounding them, the whole famous "Character.AI" phenomenon.

Even so, I would like to see how leaders would use AI, assuming they aren't already using it, to shape the reality of their people even further.
 
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