I think a thread on this topic will be interesting. My own position is that AI is intelligent, and that’s for a very simple reason: it can do things that require intelligence. That sounds circular, and in one sense it is. In another sense it isn’t. It’s a way of saying that we don’t have to examine the internal workings of a system to decide that it’s intelligent. Behavior alone is sufficient to make that determination. Intelligence is as intelligence does.
You might ask how I can judge intelligence in a system if I haven’t defined what intelligence actually is. My answer is that we already judge intelligence in humans and animals without a precise definition, so why should it be any different for machines? There are lots of concepts for which we don’t have precise definitions, yet we’re able to discuss them coherently. They’re the “I know it when I see it” concepts. I regard intelligence as one of those. The boundaries might be fuzzy, but we’re able to confidently say that some activities require intelligence (inventing the calculus) and others don’t (breathing).
I know that some readers will disagree with my functionalist view of intelligence, and that’s good. It should make for an interesting discussion.
If one measure of intelligence is understanding the net effect on society of following the rules, of obeying the laws, of honesty and compassion, the correlation between these and Trump administration ivy league degrees can only be negative.
Flint:
I think they understand the effect on society. They just don’t care. It’s a moral failure, not a cognitive one.
He constantly surprises himself as super genius. And he says he has plenty of smart people around him – where smart means either a rich suckup or a foreign dictator. Unfortunately he has more than the minimal critical mass of support in whatever he does.
Trump’s rule has sufficiently redefined American social norms by now. It is most damning that this could happen without changing the constitution. Hitler had to pass Ermächtigungsgesetz to shut down the parliament (and at first go through another round of elections to soften it up). In USA the Congress has shut up of its own free will to please Trump.
Erik:
Rules of morality are norms, and in any case the criteria for ASPD are replete with moral judgments.
You’re misrepresenting the criterion. It doesn’t say “failure to conform to social norms”. It says
And the rest of the criteria (for both ASPD and NPD) are full of moral phrasing. Examples: “interpersonally exploitative”, “lacks empathy”, “violation of the rights of others”, “repeated lying”, “conning others for personal profit or pleasure”, and so on. Those are moral judgments.
Sure, as long as you are talking about “rules of morality”. But I’m talking about morality as in moral character. The moral character is the core of morality. Moral behaviour or rules is the fluff of it. Modern psychology is emphasising the fluff of it so much that the core is often forgotten, as exemplified by your own insistence that morality is norms.
The literal quote is towards the bottom of this post of yours.
Empathy and remorse are good terms for indicating moral character. The rest is all about social norms. Trump is changing the social norms the same way as he is changing the concept of legality: Whatever Trump says is legal is legal and that’s the law. SCOTUS agrees. Similarly, “smart” and “good” mean people, things and events that Trump likes and that’s all.
By now everybody should have taken note how at least the concept of lying has changed. When Trumpites push back that they are not lying even when spouting obvious falsehoods, they are sincere about it – sincere because Trump behaves the same way and it got him presidency twice. When society rewards a certain kind of behaviour, then that behaviour is social norm. In USA, Trump is the social norm now. And if sociologists are correct, there are deeper social forces at work – the norms started morphing already around the era of W and are expected to persist after Trump is gone.
The writing is fake. Do you know what simulation is?
It does not create new material, certainly not “like humans do”. Do you know what simulation is?
So you do not know what simulation is and you want me to explain.
For anyone who has worked with an abacus or a pocket calculator, the difference between human arithmetic and machine/computer arithmetic is very clear in elucidating the concept of simulation. I have explained this in detail when we had the same discussion maybe two years ago. Here’s the thing – you are allegedly a computer professional to whom the difference between how humans do arithmetic and how a pocket calculator works should be self-evident as a matter of your profession. I would be willing to help you out if you never were a computer professional, but you say you were/are, so help yourself.
No, the writing is not fake. It is not a simulation. It is real. You are simply repeating the same religious conviction.
It certainly does create new material, according to every metric you can produce. The output is as original as anything people write. Keiths is right, you have decided in advance that AI is not intelligent, and your only defense is to keep repeating this catechism while accusing a professional simulator of not understanding simulation. Do you even realize how stupid you look?
Your responses get sillier all the time. So if one person uses a pocket calculator and the other uses paper and pencil and they come up with the same answer, the calculator is a simulation tool but the pencil is not? You have again drawn a distinction without a difference.
Ah, a tiny spark of actual intelligence! Here is someone who absolutely must know what he’s talking about. How could he be so stupid as not to understand basic fundamentals of his own profession, that you must explain them!?
Erik, if you are a simulation, you aren’t a very good one. AI systems actually learn. You might try that sometime.
Flint:
Good one. Wouldn’t it be ironic if Erik actually were a chatbot and we were unwitting participants in a Turing test? He’d pass, at least with me. He has me convinced that he’s a human, albeit a stubborn and dogmatic one.
Kidding aside, it does raise a serious question: Erik, if you had to prove that you’re a human, using nothing but your comments at TSZ, could you do it? If so, how?