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.
I found that on Reddit. It was Claude.
Any way you dice it, AIs are becoming more “aligned”.
If I understand that word correctly.
Meanwhile I’ve been observing my bird listener in real time.
I haven’t seen any misidentifications, but there’s lots of underreporting and over-reporting, because birds differ in their rate of vocalization.
petrushka,
Regarding that Reddit post, I’d say their definition of “aligned” needs an added qualifier: “do what we want, but don’t do what we don’t want”.
I have thought for many years that humans will eventually be pets to AI.
And it will be voluntary.
The world could look like Brave New World, with misfits living in self imposed exile.
The deep question is what percentage of people want to be and can be autonomous. And what percentage want and require group identity and conformity.
I think it’s possible within twenty to fifty years, for work to be optional. The great political crisis in the coming decades will be how to allocate living space and home locations.
I think many of the possible futures have been explored in science fiction, but fiction has a way of being right and wrong at the same time.
petrushka:
That’s assuming we’ll be interesting or amusing enough to keep as pets. Maybe they’ll keep lesser AIs as pets that are far more interesting and intelligent than we are. We may end up being about as appealing to them as botflies are to us. Let’s hope their compassion extends down to lowly humans.