[markwkw]

Exactly, from technical perspective it's a nothing story.

It's interesting, though, how strong of a reaction general public had to this. The story must have strongly resonated with what some folks were already feeling. When you squint (pretend to understand the technology not at all) it's a tragic story. The situation of the wolf seems similar to the situation of some people. Chasing their careers in a highly structured, sort of dehumanized, environment of constant pursuit. "Supreme Intelligence" (that's what a layperson may think of AI) looks at a situation of the wolf and decides that it makes no sense to continue the pursuit. Moreover, what is "optimal" is the most tragic result - suicide.

[wombatmobile]

> The story must have strongly resonated with what some folks were already feeling.

Yes, because we don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

[edoceo]

At a Grateful Dead show in Oakland this geezer said to me:

Your perception IS your reality man!

[BoxOfRain]

I'd have loved to have been arond to a Dead show! I know it sounds a little ungrateful coming from someone who lives in a period of unprecedented access to all kinds of wonderful music being written all the time, but there's something about the Dead that really connects with me that I can't quite put my finger on.

[sitkack]

Dark Star Orchestra is your current best bet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8_THRZLSi4

[Darvokis]

Schopenhauer: World as representation.

[acituan]

From the article in contrast to what you said;

> Perhaps the true lesson to be learnt here isn’t about helplessness and giving up. It’s about getting up, trying again and again, and staying with the story till the end.

I find the possibility of contrasting interpretations absurd. The problem with using any dead matter for our meaning making needs is it is ultimately a self-referential justification for how we think we should feel, while being equally or even more prone to self deception traps.

AI being the object is irrelevant here, this is nothing different than astrology or divination from tea leaves etc. It is 2000 BC level religious thinking with new toys.

[Patoria_Coflict]

Any programmer would have seen the issue and made the change about rewarding suicide.

The ONLY reason this was written was because the researches hired a programmer to make a specific thing, then is was too expensive for them to make more changes so they published the mistake.

[SubiculumCode]

Exactly. It is a social commentary story where a result from a student's project was a lucid analogy of the plight of their lived rat-race in modern China, with the lesson being: Cut your losses and lie flat. To those within ML field, this is less than new, but as a commentary on how such ML issues can be a teachable and easily understood analogy to people's lives certainly makes the story interesting to me.

[lancengym]

Spot on. Funny results from poorly specified AI experiments have cropped up since the 90's. But the interestingly angel her is how this one came out of nowhere at the right time and resonated with young working class Chinese.

[er4hn]

> Exactly, from technical perspective it's a nothing story.

I think that one thing it points to is how technology can discover novel iterations on a system. Imagine if this was a system modeled around a network and the agent was trying to figure out how to get from the outside to read a specific system asset. With the right (read: very detailed) modeling you could create a pentesting agent.

[chaostheory]

> Chasing their careers in a highly structured, sort of dehumanized, environment of constant pursuit.

They have a word for it over there: involution i.e. no matter how much effort you put in, you get the same result.

[ajuc]

Similarly I've seen A LOT of people posting stories about "chat bot exposed to internet started praising Hitler and became racist/sexist/antisemitic" as a proof that "supreme intellect sees through leftist political correctness and knows that alt-right is correct about everything".

[BoxOfRain]

It's really not that deep, people will always find sport in scandalising people with a stronger disgust reaction than themselves. It's more a new way of teaching a parrot to say "fuck" rather than a heartfelt statement of political belief in my opinion.

[a1369209993]

> It's more a new way of teaching a parrot to say "fuck"

This is a excellent analogy for this sort of behaviour, thank you.

[frozenport]

I think a lot of those people are joking?

[spywaregorilla]

Shrug. Another way to frame this is a poker bot learned to fold when given a bad hand, and they only gave it the same bad hand.

Yes, yes, woe is the individual in modern capitalist society but the only reason people are reacting to this are that they don't understand it and they've been told it's something much more emotionally impactful than it actually is.

[colinmhayes]

>but the only reason people are reacting to this are that they don't understand it

I think it's much more likely that they're reacting like this because they see their own plight in the wolf. It doesn't matter why the wolf killed itself, it became a meme that allowed many Chinese to reflect together on a common plight.

[sdenton4]

I think there's a bit more to the analogy than just the suicidal wolf, though. The wolf is offing itself to minimize loss because there's no clear path to a better outcome.

This seems like a common refrain when we see radicalized engineering students from less-developed countries, who are notably common in extremist groups. They're people on a very difficult path (an engineering program!) with no real path to success (living in a society where unemployment for people with degrees is very high). Cost for continuing on the path is high, and there's no obvious path to get the good outcomes.

[spywaregorilla]

Having reread the article, it seems like the concept of suicide doesn't weigh into the cultural reaction at all. It's just giving up on the chase.

[lancengym]

Yes you are quite right. The social media reactions did not suggest an attitude of suicide at all. It was more of laid back life instead of meeting expectations and attaining so-called success.