Cosmos Café: The Spirit of AI (an organic interlude) [2023-04-06]

[achronon (Ed Mahood)]

@Ariadne

And finally, just creepy.

“Creepy”: a very apt, pointed, direct, and lusciously concise description of the AI-Pin ad … at least that was my reaction as well.

It makes me wonder how AI itself would react, if it in fact can, which I strongly doubt. Maybe one day. Maybe never. We’ll see.

In this vein, however, I found the following article a helpful thinking prod in all of this. Just because we can describe language in mathematical/statistical terms doesn’t necessarily mean that language is a mathematical/statistical construct. We shouldn’t forget that we humans “discovered” (or did we “invent”) math long after we outed ourselves as language-saturated creatures. The sudden switch from description to generation is still making me a bit uneasy, but that’s not the issue here.

Language Machinery

FYI and thoughtful consideration, for those who might be interested.

[madrush (Marco V Morelli)]

Interesting article. And I believe we have to concede that much of writing is, indeed, “statistical”—because so much of communication is routine. We are playing roles, through which we engage in various verbal exchanges, even formalities, which themselves constitute the character and fulfill the purpose of the roles we play.

What makes these exchanges interesting, however, is precisely the individuality and uniqueness—even the peculiar errors and deviations—that we bring to them. The ‘language machine’ can mimic this by introducing some element of randomness into its predictions, but this is not the same as how the uniqueness of our ways speaking reveal and even celebrate our specific beingness—the quality of our conscious embodied existence, which is irreducible and ultimately inimitable.

It is not just the disembodied text, but the fact that another human being wrote it, that matters. It is this quality of literature (as distinct from mere rhetoric or conventional communication) that lets us know what it’s like to be that other person—to know what they know, to have experienced what they’ve experienced—and which in turn contributes to the language we have to express what it’s like to be ourselves.

Moreover, I hear little appreciation these days for the ways in which the process of writing, let alone reading, changes who we are. It is why people hate real reading and writing—it takes work! Often hard work. Often grueling, exasperating, seemingly impossible work… to actually come to the place in consciousness where one is able to say something that is uniquely true for oneself (not just something anyone could say, or any machine generate). One is not the same person after writing a real poem, a true story, an authentic letter, a thoroughly researched and considered essay, etc.

The point of writing is not just to exchange words that can be decoded into other words that translate some intended meaning and produce some desired influence or effect. It is to experience the meaning in the first place! And it is to convey that experience or in-sight, so that others can approximate the experience and, to whatever degree possible, understand it as well. In some sense, the text is merely an artifact—a discarded shell, which yet remains useful for memory—of the transformational process required to produce said artifact.

I think it would be interesting to read and discuss that Calvino essay referenced toward the end of the article: Calvino_Cybernetics-Ghosts.pdf (183.8 KB)

[Michael_Stumpf (LaughingCryingDancing)]

@madrush

I hear little appreciation these days for the ways in which the process of writing, let alone reading, changes who we are. It is why people hate real reading and writing—it takes work! Often hard work. Often grueling, exasperating, seemingly impossible work… to actually come to the place in consciousness where one is able to say something that is uniquely true for oneself (not just something anyone could say, or any machine generate). One is not the same person after writing a real poem, a true story, an authentic letter, a thoroughly researched and considered essay, etc.

A Felt-Sense Image of your words Marco that “Changed” the “Inner
Receiver/Reception which is a Creative Expression” that we all can
Embrace along with the Outer Creative Expression,which comes "With "

@madrush

the quality of our conscious embodied existence, which is irreducible and ultimately inimitable.

Maybe A Hospitality of Welcoming Visitors?

[madrush (Marco V Morelli)]

Being (in) a body matters.
The flesh matters.
Relationships matter.
Experience matters.
Love matters.

Is My Toddler a Stochastic Parrot?

[Ariadne (Maia)]

We are, it says, not allowed to read without subscribing.

Here is something wondrous strange:

2023 Resnick Aspen Action Forum | Bayo Akomolafe on the Art of Repair

in which a deeply intelligent Nigerian speaks with an AI named CLAUDE and …more mind-bending “cracks” he points to. Bayo Akomolafe is a very"invconvenient" world teacher.

[achronon (Ed Mahood)]

@Ariadne

We are, it says, not allowed to read without subscribing.

Hmmm … there was a time when one could register to read a limited number of free articles. I can well imagine that they may have changed to a subscription-only model. Many big-name sites have. Truth be told, I was bannered with a this-is-your-last-free-article notice when I followed a link to the article.

The short answer to the articles title question is a resounding “No!” The author, an informed mother, compares what she was experiencing with ChatGPT with what was happening with her own toddler’s acquisition of language. What she finds – unsuprisingly for many of us – is that there is in fact no comparison. Textual generative AI is and remains an unnatural simulation; a sometime mind-bendingly eerie simulation, but it’s unconscious (dead?) at its core.

Given the proper, responsible conditions, AI can be a useful and helpful tool, no doubt about it, but given humanity’s track record with innovative technologies, even this closet-optimistic curmudgeon is having a hard time comprehending the technotopians’ messianic-like surrender.

[madrush (Marco V Morelli)]

Sorry bout the paywalled article. I am not a New Yorker subscriber, but for whatever reason, the original link worked for me. See if this little workaround helps.

(Using https://12ft.io)

Regarding your statement, Ed:

@achronon

Textual generative AI is and remains an unnatural simulation; a sometime mind-bendingly eerie simulation, but it’s unconscious (dead?) at its core.

I don’t even think we could call text-generative AI “unconscious” or “dead.” That would imply the possibility of it being “conscious” or “alive.” But this is a category error. What we are talking about are technological interfaces that could be life-like, perhaps, but decidedly not the the real thing. There is an ontological difference. There’s no there there in the machine… not even a ghost… not yet, anyway…

Admittedly, the lines will be blurred, the distinctions made ever fuzzier, the closer the simulation comes to the reality, not to mention, the more machine-like people themselves become. We collapse these distinctions at our peril. That said, I think Sloterdijk was insightful in describing the human as an “anthropotechnic” species—i.e., we can’t really understand ourselves without factoring in our extensions. We may need to think more about how we integrate our machines with ourselves, rather than asserting that one or the other, humanity or technology, should be prevail.

[achronon (Ed Mahood)]

@madrush

I don’t even think we could call text-generative AI “unconscious” or “dead.” That would imply the possibility of it being “conscious” or “alive.” But this is a category error.

Thanks for this: it is precisely where I got hung up in writing my response, hence my wanting to stress the simulation aspect. Might “non-conscious” have been a better word, as it’s ungrammaticality could imply that there was no there there. That’s what I was sensing at any rate. Appreciate the help. Danke, nochmals.

[Ariadne (Maia)]

But…in many ways we are being “forced” or at least" very heavily pressured" to embrace, rather than think about or integrate. Those who run things, who have the money, et al, put up surv cams and surv sensors inside homes of renters, and the choice is to move or accept. Where is the room for integrating without full choice? This is experienced first in low income situations, then later, it permeates everywhere with various kinds of “pressures/incentives”, until…? How have “we” had the chance to decide to integrate technology or not? What happens if someone chooses to integrate almost none of the more and more tech stuff, orat least as little as possible? We are, in effect, ostracized, ie, are we not? And conversely, how many accelerating tech users really have thought much about integrating or not integrating? Seems like convenience and trends are the main drivers everywhere I look.
How many people are in virtually enslaved conditions, mining the cobalt and whatnotium for Iphones, computers, AI systems? They are out of sight, silent, while we what we are shown in spotlights, are the gleaming conveniences…neither laborers or landfills. For all the “cuteness” of machines writing bad poetry, what is the true price?

Okay, kicking soapbox aside…
And yet, and yet, can’t help it, I am sometimes so deeply angry about how the prevalence of surv cams and handy devices goes hand in hand with efficient weapons and efficient war. Ever more efficient death.

[Michael_Stumpf (LaughingCryingDancing)]

@madrush

We collapse these distinctions at our peril. That said, I think Sloterdijk was insightful in describing the human as an “anthropotechnic” species—i.e., we can’t really understanding ourselves without factoring in our extensions. We may need to think more about how we integrate our machines with ourselves, rather than asserting that one or the other, humanity or technology, should be prevail.

Very Interesting; there seems to be a thread that has been Spinning
for 100years or so,and we have Ingested in some Cafe’s…this thread
of awareness comes from Alan Watts collection of unpublished work by his son Mark Watts,
Titled Tao For Now;
“very slowly,the human being on the surface of the planet are realizing themselves into a total planetary organism with an electronic nervous
system. In science fiction ,which was published about 1920s, it was
always expected that [future human beings would have enormous heads,because they would have very big brains and they would be wise]. It didn’t work that way. What’s happening instead is that the human race is building a brain outside its body - that is to say an interlocking electronic network of telephonic ,television,radionic communications ,which is rapidly being interlocked with computers so that you will within a few years,be able to plug your own brain into
a computer… " and Now we can Have It Without Wires… A New Method that is, called at Present & in the Past ESP( Extra Sensory Perception)…” We’re getting our private life taken away! We’re being
organized into a body"…" that’s what happened to our own cells & neurons, & they objected at some time in the course of evolution"

I Guess I am having a moment of Flipping this Particular very Human
ego into "A EGG & Sitting with/on it "to “Feel-See” if said ego can Hatch into the Openness of Aliveness!

May the Coming Holidays & New Ride Around the Sun
be one of as much Dancing,Kindness, Laughter & Meeting
What Comes in/with a Relaxed -Alert Response , even if it
means Saying, Oh Hell No!!!

[madrush (Marco V Morelli)]

[Michael_Stumpf (LaughingCryingDancing)]

An Ecological Technology – with James Bridle

Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence by James Bridle.

A Listening,

[Ariadne (Maia)]

Yes! I loved this and recommended it on this website…somewhere around here, maybe in the wrong spot?
Thank you Michael, wishing you well in all dimensions!

[Michael_Stumpf (LaughingCryingDancing)]

It is on this thread # 37,I got the book,hopefully we have a Cafe’…

Sending Energy of Dancing Delight,with the New Year…

[achronon (Ed Mahood)]

RE: the James Bridle interview

He almost lost me at the get-go with the introductory teaser quote, and it was a bit touch-n-go with the ol’ curmudgeon through the first half of the recording, but I’m glad I listened all the way to the end: he eventually “caught the curve”, as my German friends like to say.

As a computer and cognitive-science guy, he’s – IMNSAHO – a lot of baggage to overcome. Computers haven’t “defined what is thinkable”; in fact, they haven’t even started thinking at all. It was oddly comforting to realize that I wasn’t the only one dealing with the subject who suffered from categorical error: I had, as the Germans call it, a Leidensgenosse [lit. a “fellow sufferer of the same malady”]. Computers, as their name quite clearly states, compute, and, for me at least, computing may be a cognitive act, but it’s not “thinking”, in the generally accepted meaning of the word. I can think I’m something I’m not, but can a computer? I think not. Of course, I also believe that part of the impeding issue here is over the last 40 years (how biblically significant) we’ve gone from asserting the mind is like a computer to asserting the mind is (only) a computer, which is, in the
everyday, common vernacular, bullshit. I’m not convinced that his approach to the subject via the concept of “intelligence” is the best way to deal with this topic.

At or around about 30:00 of the interview, he finally got down to brass tacks: the analog/digital debate, which has been raging since at least my own appearance in Silicon Valley a biblical generation ago. This is a much more fruitful argumentational approach, and here is was back on much more solid ground, I found. Life – at least as I understand it – can be described as analogical, even if the changes that induce the process of continual change which characterize it are perhaps discontinuous, but discontinuous <> digital, even if the techtopians would like us to believe it is so.

@Michael_Stumpf

hopefully we have a Cafe’…

So, I agree with you, Michael: there is a lot here to cogitate upon, and it could be very helpful and productive to co-cogitate with others regarding what the good Mr. Bridle has to offer. I’m thinking of ordering the book myself. However, at nearly 400 pages, we need to find a way to do the reading together, Café-style, that is more distributive than the traditional, tried-and-tested approach to Cafés in the past. Any suggestions that anyone has would be greatly appreciated.

[Ariadne (Maia)]

Yes, I know what you mean, Ed. I read the book (library) a few weeks ago and did not feel a total match, but a true vein of honest investigation into AI’s limitations, etc with much nuance and contextual agreements along the way. BECAUSE I did not agree with his take 100 percent, I thought it might be better than a book we do completely agree with? His sensibility/spirit feels essentially trustworthy to me, so I am willing to contemplate/sit with aspects I don’t necessarily find immediately appealing.
Re: the interview, I too experienced a shift around 28-30 minutes when he focused on connecting with non-binary world (living evolutionary analog ) and how different we beings are from digital (“conservative constrained computation”…going on with AI. But our “built world/political world” tries so hard to imitate the digital/binary, separating more and more from “unknowing” and letting go of binary thinking and control which is destroying the analog, or even spiritual…which seems like so many of us are longing for. (Plant Spirits among our teachers, oh yes.) “Yearning towards entanglement… with the more than human world” Teaching each other how to more deeply imagine ourselves INTO the living world, including a politics that reflects “solidarity” with all of life.

However, I am not sure I can attend many meetings via Zoom calls, since lost free long distance calling (long story). Of course, that should NOT stop you all from reading/meeting around the book…I would selfishly love to listen to those recordings. So far, the machine lords still allow me to do that!

The New Dark Age, his earlier book, btw, sounds intriguing.

[achronon (Ed Mahood)]

@Ariadne

Yes, I know what you mean, Ed. I read the book (library) a few weeks ago and did not feel a total match, but a true vein of honest investigation into AI’s limitations, etc with much nuance and contextual agreements along the way. BECAUSE I did not agree with his take 100 percent, I thought it might be better than a book we do completely agree with? His sensibility/spirit feels essentially trustworthy to me, so I am willing to contemplate/sit with aspects I don’t necessarily find immediately appealing.

You said it much better than I could: engaging reasonableness in writing with which we don’t (completely) agree is much more rewarding than merely having our own thinking reinforced, for the latter all too often leads to complacency, maybe even misplaced confidence. At times, I’ll admit, I find the challenge of staying with the confrontation more than I bargained for, but, more often than not, worth enduring. The old saw has some truth to it: nothing of value comes easy.

His switch to the analog/digital debate brought back oddly fond memories of the metamorphosis from my Mr.-Chipish life as a teacher at a German private boarding school in a castle in a forgotten corner of rural Central Germany (at that time, at the edge of the so-called “Free World”) to one as a non-engineer in the technological Promised Land (black hole?) known as Silicon Valley. Talk about a different way of being! I couldn’t have been more analog, the Valley more digital; yet I lived to tell the tale (because of and thanks to the analog), so it was heartening to see Mr. Bridle pick up that thread and weave it into his own story.

@Ariadne

However, I am not sure I can attend many meetings via Zoom calls, since lost free long distance calling (long story).

Ouch! Very sorry to hear that … one would think, given that most, if not all in the meantime, long-distance calls are VOIP that calling charges are a thing at all. Shouldn’t they simply be included in one’s internet access fees? Of course, not everyone, even in the so-called “developed” world has true broadband access, regardless of all the hype, so I’m assuming even voice-only access to Zoom is more than your connection can bear? 'Tis a shame as your real-time, thought-provoking contributions to our chats created a special dynamic in the conversation that would surely be missed.

@Ariadne

The New Dark Age, his earlier book, btw, sounds intriguing.

Heh, heh, heh … on the one hand, I agree, but on the other, I’ve got a number of doom-n-gloom-apocalypse-trumpeters on my shelves already. We curmudgeons need to be careful about the number of I-told-you-so’s we proclaim, so I’ll most likely wait till I’m through Ways of Being (unsurprisingly, I bought the book, as interlibrary loans for English-language books here are something of an odyssey of their own; it arrived yesterday, so, no, I have not read it yet ) before thinking about the darker one. Maybe it’s just a supply-and-demand problem: we’re making good progress as a species toward demanding more electricity faster than we can produce it, so I’m guessing the lights are going to go out, at least periodically, before all too long. But, I really don’t want to imagine the panic that is going to induce. Let’s keep those hyperventilation paper-bags handy.

[Ariadne (Maia)]

Ed, ah yes, the digital divide: I am firmly as possible keeping nearly both feet in the analog realm. I feel a visceral loyalty to most all the “old” tech. I use a landline, old or refurb computers with old programs I thoroughly understand, I support small, odd companies, sometimes free, sometimes more expensive than the typical. It was Google free calling that kicked me out, and I’m glad on the one hand, mad on the other. I now will be forced to rely on (support) CREDO, a long distance company with actual values besides making money. I joined decades ago, but Paradoxically, one has to pay more because they aren’t giants with unlimited power to grant or withdraw their favors at will.
I cannot speak via Zoom calls, neither do I wish to, if at all avoidable. IN this case, due to poor equipment, not money. AND I vastly prefer to speak over the phone landline, using a “handset”, and not via a screen on the internet. I can lie down and wear my headphones, no screens! IN past zooms I called in to meetins on a landline, did not have to go through internet at all.Now I will have to be very frugal about calls, but what else is new?! I will come to some Cafe meetings, have to miss others…
This situation is partly chosen and partly necessity. I accept limitation as a creative challenge… and and a necessary consequence of choosing , not going along with the latest this or that and thereby supporting greedy giants. But also, Ed, I adore simplicity in my gadgets, the fewer features the fewer things that will break or glitch…I know you are familiar with the second law of thermodynamics operating in all bodies, digital and analog, metallic and fleshly.

I hear you re: doom-calorie restriction! We do have to choose with care, whatever the realm. Food. News. Technology. I sometimes cannot stand another single sentence on climate disaster, corporate dominion, war, et al. Other times, in the right circumstances, and from the right source,
I listen, moved and absorbed deeply…

We weave between extremes, trying to find our rightful places…until…the next stumble or glitch.
Enjoying your mind, Ed, via email/posting, and will at the very least get to hear you opine
among other Cafe-istas, via low-tech audio recordings and cheap earbuds!

Tahi, Maia

[Michael_Stumpf (LaughingCryingDancing)]

Speaking in Felt-Seeing -Sense to Ed & Tahi,Maia…

The Looming of the Brain-Body & Environment !

I find so much Pleasure in Consuming Both of You , In Thought,Word,
& Listening to Your Hearts…Curmudgeon & Rebel…

A Moment in Time- the Grave Side of My Father,Grieving has
given the Gift of a Broken-Open Heart. Which You Both Vibe
with this Small Creature not Feeling Alone!!!

[Ariadne (Maia)]

You, Warrior of HeartBody, are a treasure!
Tahi means Peace in the Tsalagi (Cherokee) tongue.
Wishing Tahi to take to her wings and shed her quiet joy
to you, and All.