A comment from yesterday by William James Tychonievich on the subject of the "creativity" of the post 2022 iteration of "Artificial Intelligence" (AI) is well worth highlighting:
Real creativity is impossible for a computer, but since “AI” is based on industrial-scale plagiarism, it’s possible in principle that it could “produce” something moving. In that case, it’s pale fire would have been snatched from the sun, the human beings from which it plagiarized.
Industrial-scale plagiarism is a useful phrase to remember.
Current AI is Exactly That - and as with all forms of plagiarism, whenever it generates something apparently creative, that is merely a re-labelling of human-derived creativity - an unacknowledged theft more or less disguised through distortion by selection and recombination.
It reminds me strongly of that "fake creativity" I discussed in The Genius Famine (word search for it); when humans (e.g. those working in in advertising, PR, journalism) claim other people's original ideas, but disguise the origins of their de facto plagiarism using similar strategies.
Yet, as William goes on to say: All this is hypothetical, though. In the real world, “AI” products remain palpably and repellently soulless.
That spiritual fact tells us much about the motivations behind AI.
The intentional psychological and spiritual harm of current "AI" is located in the deceptive sleight of hand that pretends "intelligence" and creativity when dishonest plagiarism is done by computers.
Because these machines are operated by mega-corporations that stand above-the-law and control the mass media and "science" in a closed-loop; they are enabled to steal brazenly, indeed with vast self-congratulation; larded with repeated assertions of their own brilliance and wisdom.
Such behaviour would potentially lead to legal action and heavy fines if it was proved against ordinary human beings.
But when done under the disguise of AI, this is supposed to make us stand in awe of the industrial scale plagiarizers; to induce us to acknowledge them as higher and better forms of "intelligence".
We are supposed to conclude that the Establishment justifiers, funders, and operators of AI; not only can and shall (by force majeure), but actually deserve to, take-over the running of the world from the minds and souls of (puny) individual persons.
The idea is that post-2022 AI has successfully rendered obsolete those human beings from-whom anything that happens to be good in AI (including the existence of AI programs and engineering) has originally been stolen.
4 comments:
"Such behaviour would potentially lead to legal action and heavy fines if it was proved against ordinary human beings. "
Indeed.
A technology corporation would attempt to sue into pauperdom anyone who tried to reverse engineer their proprietary software. If not try to get jail time for such an individual.
Yet, when they use terabytes of material off the Internet, material that was specifically posted because it was assumed it would *not* be used commercially, then we're supposed to applaud them as humanitarian geniuses.
Industrial-scale plagiarism is a good way of defining it. In many ways, higher case AI is little more than an amplification and of what I refer to as lower case "ai" -- specifically, the more conventional and prevelant forms of "artificial intelligence" that System apparatchiks have been utlizing for decades; plagiarism, parroting, and pirated research.
The System brims with this form of "ai"; midwit leaders and managers sporting all sorts of fancy credentials, often procured through the 3 p's. Every once in a while, one is "exposed" and sacked, but they are usually replaced by other "ai" candidates. The System appears to actively desire such low ai candidates. It's not difficult to discern why.
In this sense, higher case AI appears to aim at justifying, normalizing, and celebrating lower case "ai", with the caveat that ai is somehow acceptable if AI is used to do it.
What troubles me is the exultant attitude many have adopted concerning the diminished "need" for actual, authentic human creativity. The spiritual implications are immense.
@NLR - There is all the evidence one needs for global totalitarianism - i.e. the single-minded coordination of finance, research, politics, media and the law.
@Frank - "What troubles me is the exultant attitude many have adopted concerning the diminished "need" for actual, authentic human creativity. "
Or human effort, even. I saw someone (who prides himself on being awakened and skeptical) saying that a good use of AI was in making summaries of the essence of very long and complex data dumps, such as happen when government files are made available.
But this is exactly what AI cannot do - it cannot elucidate unfamiliar and novel material .
I worked briefly in the NHS bureaucracy (18 months), and preparing summaries of longish and complicated material was a part of my job. It was a Very difficult task to do well, requiring a lot of intelligence, insight, memory, hard work; exactly because you did not know what was going to be important and significant.
It is exactly the kind of job that can only be done by an able, expert, and motivated person.
I can understand why organizations would want such people to be replaced by computers, but it is not possible - IF you really want the job done well.
This difficulty, and the need for high aptitude, is exactly why top performers in the Oxford and Cambridge degrees were recruited for government administration (Indian Civil Service, Foreign Office etc).
I see the proposed (and actual) use of AI in such tasks as evidence that either the jobs don't need doing at all - in which case they should of course be abolished; or (most likely) that the top-down motivation is to guarantee that such human-only work will be done Very Badly by AI systems, and destruction will ensue - which is a major purpose of the exercise.
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