stupid peolpe = stupid technology

[barnakiel]

Who are we? Where did we come from? And where is it all going?


A boat leaves a coral studded anchorage. By night. No reason other than the skippers blind, and stupid, faith in digital charting. Keywords: digital, stupid, blind.



A person goes to Google and types "GMT now". He gets 14:05. He looks at his GMT clock and it says 15:05. He checks with https://greenwichmeantime.com/ and he discovers his non-AI plain mechanical clock on the wall to be correct.


We are told we need to fly to Mars now. We are told Google will invest over 100 billion, yes BILLION, USD in AI investments. They say they have already spent over 25 billion of your dollars on it.


And yet, a 25 billion USD AI cannot match the accuracy of a USD 100 wall clock, (built before AI, before the Internet, and probably before PC).


We are stupid enough to let the tech billionaires tell us AI is a threat.


Well, the only threat I can see is ourselves.


https://www.economist.com/content-as...713_LDC367.png


Stupid people create stupid technologies.


Correct answer : it was 15:05, contrary to multi-billion powered AI Google search engine result.


(vide image, attached)


Cheers,
barnakiel

[grantmc]

Does it matter?
Time is only an arbitrary convenience. On the island of Taveuni in Fiji you can stand on both sides of the international date line and exist in two dates at the same moment.

According to Gallup, 81% of U.S. adults believe in God. down from 87% in 2017.

And their god in this sense, presumably Christian, represents a wide range of the super natural including, heaven and hell, spirits/souls, demons, angels, purgatory, talking animals, an after life and a whole range of places and events only existing in the supernatural such as christophaphy. And many of them believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old, dismiss evolution, and a whole range of science.

Here's a wonderful web site: After The Rapture Pet Care

But at the other end of the scale I'm sure most people prefer to live in our world of science, even if they don't believe it exists.

[MicHughV]

never heard of stupid " peolpe" before....what's a " people?"

[MicHughV]

got me confused now...meant to say " peolpe"

[sailorboy1]

all this anti technology stuff

written on a computer

posted on the internet


Technology doesn't make or prevent people from being stupid, they either are or aren't. Only thing that has changed is stupid people may now know a lot of "stuff".

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

Who are we? Where did we come from? And where is it all going?
..........
Cheers,
barnakiel

Big questions.

Who are we? Where did we come from? You could include how did we get here?

Humans evolved from far simpler organisms and like all life, we need energy to survive. When the energy is limited, life dies out or evolves to find new sources of energy. Initial life forms extracted energy direct from heat sources, mostly the sun. Later on, such life evolved photosynthesis and plants were ‘born’ and so on until animals evolved by feeding on plant life. At some point on the evolutionary line, there was a split and ‘our’ humanoid line evolved with much larger brains than most animals. Most other animals chose to evolve greater muscle mass rather than brain mass. The thing is, the brain is highly energy inefficient, requiring at least 20% more input than the equivalent muscle mass. The advantage of a big brain is that it can innovate rather than just evolve in response to the surrounding energy sources. The big disadvantage is that a big brain requires much more energy just to survive. Human brains are the worst of all in terms of energy requirements, it takes about 25 years for a human brain to fully grow and it is very fragile for the first few years. Compare that to say a horse which can walk / run within a day or so and can feed itself within months. It takes a massive energy input to get a human brain to maturity where it can contribute to the collective innovation of human development.

So how did our inefficient big brain get to rule the world. We innovated and collectivity corroborated to found new energy sources, quite successfully in fact. We gathered food and when that wasn’t enough, we used fire to extract more energy from both plants and animals. We hunted as well as gathered. Still not enough energy, so we used our big brains (collectivity) to become agriculturists. To do this, we had to evolve language and innovate writing, both of which allowed for knowledge to be passed onto future generations. In fact, we could NOT survive now without using the knowledge of past generations.

The last big collective innovation was the enlightenment period (15th century) which allowed much more energy to extracted from the environment over the intervening centuries (e.g. use of coal which lead to oil and electrical sources). Population levels rose steadily since the enlightenment. However life always grows in response to energy supply and unless new energy sources are found, life dies. We are now at such a point where unless there is new innovations to discover a more abundant energy source, we will die out in the next few centuries (or sooner).

And where is it all going?

Some (many?) believe the development of the current computer age will lead us to a second enlightenment which will allow us to collectively innovate new energy sources in a similar way the first enlightenment bought use to where we are now. Computers are excellent in storing the knowledge past generations. AI will become excellent in using that knowledge for greater collective innovations.

However, alternately it could go pear shaped and lead us into oblivion.

So AI will be our saviour or a destroyer.

[sailingunity]

I'm not entirely convinced what we have now is even truly "AI".

It's a computer with access to the internet, and researchers have written a natural language model so that it can provide answers in a way that sounds human.

Most AI's built for specialized purposes have to be trained, so is it just pattern recognition?

[Leadfree]

“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”
--Edward O. Wilson

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Leadfree

“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”
--Edward O. Wilson

"Ant Man", Edward Osborne Wilson [June 10, 1929 – December 26, 2021] was a biologist, naturalist, ecologist, and entomologist [the leading authority on ants], known for developing the field of ‘sociobiology’, the study of the genetic basis of the social behaviour of all animals, including humans.

Also by E. O. Wilson:

“We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.”

“Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard, even when demonstrably false.”

“Sometimes a concept is baffling, not because it is profound, but because it is wrong.”

➥ https://eowilsonfoundation.org/about-us/e-o-wilson/

[HeinSdL]

Originally Posted by sailingunity

I'm not entirely convinced what we have now is even truly "AI".

It's a computer with access to the internet, and researchers have written a natural language model so that it can provide answers in a way that sounds human.

Most AI's built for specialized purposes have to be trained, so is it just pattern recognition?

Yes, it's not much more than pattern recognition. Complex patterns but patterns nonetheless. There is no original thinking going on so I am skeptical about problem solving capabilities using such original thinking.

For making our lives more efficient, sure: from writing code and legal documents to detecting malign tumors on a scan with a higher success rate (ie fewer false positives and fewer false negatives) than a trained human can achieve. But doing things which haven't been done by man already, not really. For that we still need Einstein and Van Gogh types.

[GordMay]

While Einstein [whose name is synonymous with genius] was in Boston, in 1921, he was given a copy of Edison’s Intelligence Test*, to see whether he could answer the questions.
As soon as he read the question: “What is the speed of sound?” [#71] he said:
“I don’t know. I don’t burden my memory, with such facts, that I can easily find in any textbook.”

Einstein's felt that one's mental capacity is a precious resource, that should be reserved for critical thinking, problem-solving, and creative endeavours. Instead of overloading the brain with details, readily available in external references, like books [or Google, or AI], Einstein encouraged a focus on grasping the essence of information [a deep understanding of concepts], and the ability to apply it judiciously.
In a world overflowing with information, the true mark of brilliance, as HeinSdL noted/implied [#10], lies in one's ability to comprehend, analyse, and apply knowledge judiciously.

* Thomas Edison's Intelligence Test ➥ https://www.thomasedison.org/_files/...80aa62628a.pdf

[LakeSuperior]

When problem solving or inventing, many times I have awoke with the answer, the way to approach the problem, or a brand new idea. The creativity in the sleep is formidable.

AI doesn't sleep!

[wholybee]

Originally Posted by sailingunity

I'm not entirely convinced what we have now is even truly "AI".

It's a computer with access to the internet, and researchers have written a natural language model so that it can provide answers in a way that sounds human.

Most AI's built for specialized purposes have to be trained, so is it just pattern recognition?

Yes, it is true AI. Yes, there is a lot of pattern recognition, but there is also more. The AI model starts as random weights, which learn and self adjust to produce the output. So, there is a random element, from which new ideas can form. Note the tendency of LLMs to hallucinate. They are not just repeating what they read, but are generating new content.

[Dr. D]

Originally Posted by wholybee

Yes, it is true AI. Yes, there is a lot of pattern recognition, but there is also more. The AI model starts as random weights, which learn and self adjust to produce the output. So, there is a random element, from which new ideas can form. Note the tendency of LLMs to hallucinate. They are not just repeating what they read, but are generating new content.

The problem being is the AI produced "hallucination" may be a complete nonsense, or something useful. Then human intelligence needs to determine which is the case.

[s/v Jedi]

Except it is all wrong. ChatGPT gets it but just for fun I check Google and it gets it as well.