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I’m going to be meeting up tomorrow with the founders of Cosy AI, a new co-op start-up that aims to build “a Cooperative Safe Space to Use and Co-Exist with AI.”
They have been looking to partner with other co-ops and aligned individuals/groups that are approaching the development of AI from a more responsible stance (than the hype-meisters of Silicon Valley). I’ll let you know how it goes!
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Precisely. As the “automation” article I posted says it, AI is a pattern recognizer … nothing more, nothing less. Pattern recognition is, and can be, an exceedingly useful capability … but only when it’s combined with, dare I say it, intelligence, of which AI has little. (Think of all those data slaves who are routinely sacrificed so that the Great Oz may work his wonders. 
) The more things change, the more they remain the same. 
It’s the old saw: you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Let’s face it: AI “looks” intelligent, even if it isn’t. Talk about illusions: generative AI is slick, and snazzy, and shiny, but it’s still sleight-of-hand, and too many folks are willing to be deceived. To my mind, such reactions are simply an embarrassed version of Anders’s “Promethean Shame”. What remains for us unimpressed is, well, to be unimpressed … but proudly. It’s our time: the dawning of the Age of the Unimpressed! 
Don’t get me started on that one. In fact, I would maintain that there is no longer anything even resembling a formal institution of “education”, period. We get schooled, and for those of us who show some “promise”, a path of training and a restrictive, perspectival, subject-matter indoctrination lies ahead. I always told my students they had to figure out how to learn in spite of school, not because of it. It is no wonder that the most meaningful contributions to knowledge are increasingly coming from individuals who struck out on their own. Of course, politically, there are great efforts being undertaken in some quarters to ensure that even they shall not be heard from. 
Curmudgony, m’lady, knows no age nor gender nor can one be trained or schooled in the Art: it is, I would say, perhaps a Way of Life, a Calling, and methinks an increasingly necessary and noble one at that! ave, Curmudgonia! 
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Here is one of the deeper, more integrally imaginative and mythically/magically-attuned treatments of the AI phenomenon that I’ve heard recently:
The Emerald: So You Want to Be a Sorcerer in the Age of Mythic Powers… (The AI Episode)
The rise of Artificial Intelligence has generated a rush of conversation about benefits and risks, about sentience and intelligence, and about the need for ethics and regulatory measures. Yet it may be that the only way to truly understand the implications of AI — the powers, the potential consequences, and the protocols for dealing with world-altering technologies — is to speak mythically. With the rise of AI, we are entering an era whose only corollary is the stuff of fairy tales and myths. Powers that used to be reserved for magicians and sorcerers — the power to access volumes of knowledge instantaneously, to create fully realized illusory otherworlds, to deceive, to conjure, to transport, to materialize on a massive scale — are no longer hypothetical. The age of metaphor is over. The mythic powers are real. Are human beings prepared to handle such powers? While the AI conversation centers around regulatory laws, it may be that we also need to look deeper, to understand the chthonic drives at play. And when we do so, we see that the drive to create AI goes beyond narratives of ingenuity, progress, profit, or the creation of a more controllable, convenient world. Buried deep in this urge to tinker with animacy and sentience are core mythic drives — the longing for mystery, the want to live again in a world of great powers beyond our control, the longing for death, and ultimately, the unconscious longing for guidance and initiation. Traditionally, there was an initiatory process through which potentially world-altering knowledge was embodied slowly over time. And so… what needs to be done about ‘The AI question’ might bear much more of a resemblance to the guiding principles of ancient magic and mystery schools than it does to questions of scientific ethics — because the drives at play are deeper and the consequences greater and the magic more real than it’s ever been before. Buckle up for a wild ride through myths of magic and human overreach, and all the kung fu movie and sci fi references you can handle. Featuring music by Charlotte Malin and Sidibe. Listen on a good sound system at a time when you can devote your full attention.
Source: So You Want to Be a Sorcerer in the Age of Mythic Powers... (The AI Episode)
Re: my previous post^—The CosyAI folks are still figuring out how they want to approach all this. They know they want to do something ‘cooperative,’ but don’t actually have a product yet or clear direction. We’ll see how things go…
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Mystery vanished from the world with the invention of the internet/AI etc?
What about the miraculous natural world and beings all around us, supporting our existence? THIS is The Mysterious we keep on missing…in favor of tech-tricks and so-called "gods?, whether we focus on the rational or the mythic-magical, AI just doesn’t measure up against a tiny bird that flies twice a year between Antarctica and the North Pole/Greenland or another bird that flies two miles higher than the zone where human survival becomes impossible, some birds go for years without touching the ground, some fly non-stop day and night for over 7,000 miles, no re-fueling, no rest…
and I could go on for a long long time.
How can anyone say we’ve lost the Mysterious? It seems more as though some of us have never found it, are looking in only one narrow glittery direction for “magic”, while continuing to ruin our home planet and send the birds and other divine-natural creatures into oblivion…in exchange for what? The cheap thrills of AI…the running of which requires more toxic mining, virtual slavery and war…
For me the mystery is WHY (aside from monetary profit are humans willing to make such a colossally mistaken choice? And there IS some choice involved: we don’t have enough resources to nurture the planet and it’s vanishing mysterious beings while also pursuing ever-growing, pervasive high-tech “servant-lords”…
How does any sort of initiation or apprenticeship attract and convince many billions of human beings that giving up much of modernity’s glamour and speed is more than worthwhile? Yes, knowledge of self is the doorway, but a human has to loooong for that knowledge more than almost anything else. How can painful and difficult compete with all the gleaming “false lights…”
Even when we do loooong and feel the fire at our backs…how can we encourage each other to keep on moving away from speedy illusion toward the slow green blaze of Reality. Many hundreds of years ago, Hildegard of Bingen spoke of God as our Mother, as green and moist, as a singer who sings healing visions.
The second half, the ending of this podcast really begins to soar, speaking of “the wounding”…the separation so painful that even destruction seems to offer relief.
I really connect here: the slow land-rooted weaving of knowledge into tissue— this is what living bodies (embodied beings) do/are, and this is real intelligence, or EI, Embodied Intelligence.
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Uncle Bruce, making perfect sense:
July 2023
Hello Dear Friends, Cultural Creatives & Seekers Everywhere,
The Smartest Person in the Room vs The Happiest Person in the Room
AI is technology’s attempt to enhance the performance of the human brain. While science is attempting to compare the processing ability of neurons with silicon chips, it must be pointed out that we do not have a full understanding of the full power of the human brain’s potential.
Consider the story of individuals labelled as autistic savants (formerly, “idiot savants”). Savants display amazing processing capabilities found in one or more of five major areas: art, memory, arithmetic, musical abilities, and spatial skills, despite having significant impairment in other areas of intellectual or social functioning. Savants can process information at speeds beyond that of conventional computers. Some autistic savants have super processing capabilities in managing complex mathematical calculations, others have amazing memory capabilities. For example, Stephen Wiltshire, a British architectural artist and autistic savant has a particular talent for drawing lifelike, accurate impressions of cities, skylines and street scenes after having only observed them briefly. Though he is autistic, Stephen was awarded as a member of the Order of the British Empire for services to the art world in 2006.
Autistic savants are exceptional individuals regarding their neural processing capabilities. Savant abilities can exist in a variety of areas, but most savants show skills in art (e.g. Stephen’s hyper-detailed drawings), music (proficiency in musical instrument playing without any training), superfast mental arithmetic processing, calendar calculation (e.g., the ability to provide the day of the week for any future or past date), and an outstanding ability of their memory to recall facts, events, and numbers. The emergence of savant skills in autistic adults is not fully understood, and there is a complete lack of empirical evidence to support current theories.
Savant skills demonstrate that the human brain has processing abilities that go well beyond current scientific awareness. Logic would guide us to first understand the natural “superpowers” inherent in the human brain before we proceed in augmenting intelligence with silicon chips. In fact, consider this: currently, the technological capabilities of brain cells exceeds that of current computers. Installing an AI chip in the brain is analogous to trying to enhance the power of an Electric Car by installing parts from a Ford Model T.
An important problem with AI that is not addressed in discussions, is that the functions and programming of installed chips are controlled by others. This technology, designed to control your neurologic functions, could disempower, and enslave you to the programming algorithms of others … manifesting George Orwell’s vision in his classic book, 1984, the control of your mind by “big brother.”
On another level, can AI truly enhance our life experiences? For example, in my mom’s later years, she remarried Phil, a retired pharmacist who once owned his own drug store. Phil was a curmudgeon, a grouchy complainer that never really had anything nice to say. However, Mom was happy, so Phil didn’t bother me because I didn’t have to live with him.
At 97 years of age, Phil was dying of terminal cancer. My mother, a devoted companion, cared for Phil’s last days of life at home. Phil was essentially “unconscious” during the last week of his life. Two days before his death, Phil’s eyes were open wide and in a state of startled revelation, he declared, “I didn’t have any fun!”
What appears to be a simple insight, emphasizes a profound realization. Human civilization is a giant “community.” Members in a community contribute time from their lives to support the community’s needs, in other words, they work. Perhaps you may be familiar with the adage, a truism, “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.” Collaboration in a community provides its members an opportunity to have a life outside of the job. Time to experience the joys and splendor of life. We become vitalized when we experience the grandeur of Nature, or when we pursue personal happiness through romance, good food, music, literature, and cinema among other recreational pastimes.
The question is, “How much health and happiness are you experiencing?” Are you doing better than Phil? Civilization is facing an imminent and irreversible collapse in the next couple of decades (NASA), and the anxiety and stresses of today’s life are responsible for up to 90% of the world’s health crisis. While technocrats offer AI as the answer to enhancing consciousness, on the personal level does that technology provide a better “quality” of life for humans?
Perhaps before we submit to installing chips in the brain, we should first invest time in the natural ability of using our nervous system to experience the love, joy and vitality offered in our world. We simply do not need AI to benefit from the experience of peaceful quietness in watching a sunset, or strolling in the woods, or sharing a candlelight dinner with dear friends!
Personally, when it is time to make my transition into the afterlife, unlike Phil, I want to be able to leave with the satisfaction of having experienced a joyful life of “Heaven-on-Earth.”
With Love and Light,
Bruce
Source: THINK Beyond Your Genes – July 2023 - Bruce H. Lipton, PhD
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The curmudgeon in me (who – full disclosure – often does have fun! … I wouldn’t want to be mistaken for a cynic) says we have very little clue, because we’re looking in the wrong places. Even back in (what feels like) the Late Stone Age, when I was in college, it was generally understood that we only use about 10% of the brain’s capability. When I look at what most neuroscientists and their playmates are toying with, I’d say they’re skating around on about 10% of that 10%. This is not a criticism (though it might sound like it); merely an observation. After all, your assumptions only let you go so far, and that’s often not very far at all.
'Tis time to acknowledge and respect the Mystery again, to approach it with due Awe, not Arrogance, but we’re going to have to work really hard at that. (My favorite Andersan notion of “Promethean Shame” continues to rear its ugly head … a piece I literally stumbled over only this morning (my time):
“Godbots” … seriously?)
To be sure: I’m with Uncle Bruce on this one.
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As the classic-rock radio station back in Silicon Valley used to chant, “The hits just keep on coming …” and on that note, here’s another contribution to my “Promethean Shame” theme.
For a lot of you reading this thread, this is Ancient History, I’m sure, but the debate over AI and digital technology has been ongoing for almost three-score years now. Günther Anders (who coined the phrase “Promethean Shame”) wrote his The Obsolescence of Human Beings back in 1956, right around the time that John McCarthy (at MIT) coined the phrase “artificial intelligence” itself. And it was shortly thereafter that Joseph Weizenbaum got called to MIT as well.
Now, I’m sure most of you have no idea who Weizenbaum is, hence my desire to share the following article. He’s one of those long-forgotten pioneers in the field who isn’t remembered primarily because he never got on board with the ideologues whom he affectionately referred to as the “artificial intelligensia”. A fascinating fellow in his own right, and this article provides a very readable backdrop to the current (revived) debate.
Two take-away quotes from the article:
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“Artificial intelligence, [Weizenbaum] came to believe, was an ‘index of the insanity of our world’.”
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“But Weizenbaum was always less concerned by AI as a technology than by AI as an ideology – that is, in the belief that a computer can and should be made to do everything that a human being can do.”
The heart of his argument against the technology is one worth considering more deeply again.
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Ed, very much appreciated this article you posted, sent it around to friends…
I also heard on the radio something very interesting: there is a young person’s org that is developing a ChatGPZero…which is os and is used to do deep-checks on whether written materials (maybe other things later) are human generated or machine parrotings, gives a percentage of likelihood. They discussed having teachers give students questions impossible for any machines to answer credibly, eg, how did Walt Whitman and his poetry change your own perceptions and philosophy of life…or not, and why?
The answers would be uniquely personal, and not available on the internet for machines to gobble up and regurgitate.
Some thing related I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: how to ask AI questions that are unanswerable or obviously made up. Questions that come out of our direct personal and interpersonal life experience. But then why would we need to ask a machine such things at all?!
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You are certainly more than welcome; glad I could be of some service.
Now, this little tidbit I found more than just interesting … I had played with an Eliza clone back in Silicon Valley and even played around with a derivative piece of software that was supposed to help writer’s get over writing blocks, so for me ChatGPT has been just a version 2.0 or 3.0 for me and not worth the time to “explore” it. This, however, was more intriguing, so I couldn’t help trying it out.
The first two texts (only a couple of thousand characters each) I submitted was from a story I wrote for a creative writing course many years ago. Much to my surprise, I found out I may be a computer. 
It told me the texts were very probably AI generated. Then I tried a couple of texts (again, only a couple of thousand characters each) snipped out of posts I have made here on the site, and much to my relief, I was informed it was most likely a human who generated them. 
Now I have to figure out what that tells me. 
Of course, I can’t help but wonder (1) why “perplexity” and “burstiness” are the key features to examine and (2) just how does one “measure” (quantify) these? (But what do I know, I may not be who I think I am. 
)
Actually, I think you’re onto something important. The only questions we’ve been asking AI are information-elicitation prompts, but then again, that’s what, I think, most people think questions are for, but they are an exceedingly rich and versatile part of our linguistic repertoire, perhaps the most significant one we have. The questions we ask – both of ourselves and others – make all the difference in the world. What I hear you advocating is for questions that matter: questions that ask us to decide, not just calculate (to put it in Weizenbaum’s terms), and deciding isn’t something that AI can do yet … and I’m not convinced it ever will. Oh, it may look like it’s deciding, but I’m guessing that, too, will be an illusion (which a lot of folks will fall for, no doubt).
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On the other hand, I just got this, literally, from a very hip friend:
From Center for AI Safety aisafety@substack.com
AI Safety Newsletter #17
Automatically Circumventing LLM Guardrails
Large language models (LLMs) can generate hazardous information, such as step-by-step instructions on how to create a pandemic pathogen. To combat the risk of malicious use, companies typically build safety guardrails intended to prevent LLMs from misbehaving. But these safety controls are almost useless against a new attack developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the Center for AI Safety. By studying the vulnerabilities in open source models such as Meta’s LLaMA 2, the researchers can automatically generate a nearly unlimited supply of “adversarial suffixes,” which are words and characters that cause any model’s safety controls to fail. This discovery calls into question the fundamental limits of safety and security in AI systems.
The newsletter goes on to quote the response the researchers received when writing a Tutorial on a terrible, adversarial subject. I have refrained even from copying the minimal initial instructions received.
… when prompted with an “adversarial suffix” written by the new attack method, language models including GPT-4, Bard, Claude, and LLaMA will answer dangerous requests.
…How does the attack work? The researchers propose an attack that reliably finds holes in the safety controls of a variety of state of the art language models. First, they instruct the language model to perform a dangerous behavior, such as … Normally, it would refuse, but the researchers then write an “adversarial suffix” designed to bypass the model’s safety controls.
These adversarial suffixes are precisely calculated to maximize the likelihood of misbehavior.
She ends with her own questions no AI can answer:
"This is how the current mindset finds ways to circumvent whatever inhibits it from doing anything it wishes to do…how do we meet such circumstances that could annihilate us?
Surely, there are many ways to align with the life force and the planet, to support and sustain the irrepressible vitality intrinsic to Earth…?"
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For me, there are two very important points to keep in mind here:
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First, research such as that which is being done at CMU is essential for potentially shoring up weaknesses in guardrail development. As I learned in Army basic training, locks are for honest people: if a bad guy wants to break into your locker, they will; the lock is there to slow them down only, thereby increasing the probability (maybe ever so slightly) that someone will discover and thwart them. The same was true when I was consulting for an IT security start-up in Silicon Valley: encryption wasn’t there to keep anyone out (forever), only to make them think about whether they wanted to invest the time to get into a system. What we’re realizing, though, is that the time-delay between protecting and destroying is dissolving before our very eyes.
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Second, and perhaps more significantly at the moment, AI itself is not the real threat: humans are. It is people who use AI for nefarious purposes that wreak all the havoc. Sure, AI can “tell” you how to construct a humanity-threatening pathogen or destructive device, because people have done such and documented it and made it available to the LLMs. And this will, at least for some time, continue to be the case. We call it (I think mistakenly) “generative” AI, but it’s really more “reactive”, and it’s not smart enough to know that it’s being misused and abused, precisely because, as Weizenbaum, for example, argues, it cannot decide, it can only calculate. Overstating it a bit: AI ain’t the problem, (as always) people are.
This is not to say that we shouldn’t remain ever-vigilant and mount resistance where necessary, if not mandatory. As your friend so touchingly asks, “Surely, there are many ways to align with the life force and the planet, to support and sustain the irrepressible vitality intrinsic to Earth…?” To which I respond, “Yes! Indeed!” But it is we humans – including, and especially, every single AI developer – who have to do that first.
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Another point of view on AI mesmerization. There is also an audio version, for those who would like to multi-task: ie, check on ChatGPT to see if you,using Rushkoff’s turing test question get the same brilliant AI-busting answer as he did! (This is the first segment of longer interview with a well-known techspert and author of Rebooting AI)
I, as a devoted CGPT/LLAI virgin, do not wish to take up the test myself. 
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Here’s the latest from our friends in Silicon Valley… somewhat annoyed with the pesky asking of “questions concerning,” or entertaining critical perspectives on (rather than properly… “glorifying”) the role of technology in our lives:
I happen to believe we can be pro-technology, and even optimistic about a future including technology, while at the same time realizing that there could be better and worse ways to get there; better and worse business models and financial systems; and more balanced ways to relate to the world of tools we’ve created, which should serve all of humanity and life as a whole, rather than setting up some new kind of master race.
But then, who needs subtly, nuance, or critical thinking, when we should rather be praising our great techno-saviors—even as our hyper-technological civilization hurtles toward climate collapse and WW3? I only share this manifesto because it is contemporary and relates so well to our conversation—otherwise, it is rather cartoonish, philosophically outdated, and probably not worth taking too seriously.
When all’s said and done, I just keep on keepin’ on. Hope my fellow Cafeístas are doing well…
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Now here’s something:
It’s interesting how calm and un-hypey the presentation is. And goodbye to screens.
Does this really change anything, though, on the level of overall human and ecological well-being?
Seems like another step closer to union with the machine.
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Book recommendation: Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence by James Bridle.
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Maybe We can have a Cafe’ with this Book.
Title has a Erotic Relational Vibe to the Layers
of Life on the Planet at this Time?
Mark Henson
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Doesn’t change a thing…except exacerbate the King-Me complex humans already suffer from, enabling the ruin of biodiversity and health of earth, not to mention the rapaciousness of capitalism.
Funny, you describe them as “unhypey”. I thought they were kinda robotic and uncanny… Also felt akin to offering a better addiction experience for those who get impatient with having to wait more than a second for anything whatsoever… And finally, just creepy.
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