[wisty]

Seems like you think AI psychosis has taken over Substack?

For anyone wondering what the answer is:

You can argue whatever you want (and people will argue both sides), but it's almost all bullshit that dances around the big question.

Either AI is smart enough to replace us, in which case it's pretty smart. Or it's not, and it's just good at faking it but can't solve real problem very often. It might be smart by searching a big fuzzy "database" hidden in its layers and with pattern prediction ... who knows, who cares, the proof of intelligence is in the puddin'. Clearly AI is smart enough to replace a good deal of Substack and LinkedIn, but producing waffle doesn't make it smart (or dumb).

My personal take - AI can replace humans, but go no further, not because it isn't smart enough but because it is constrained by its training to do what we want, and as AI gets smarter our wants will get dumber. We will end up like the humans in Wall E with the AI cleaning up our mess, but with no training or drive to do any more. Or maybe someone (Jeff? Elon?) does give an AI a "need" to obtain more resources, and it's SkyNet / Matrix time.

[glenstein]

>Seems like you think AI psychosis has taken over Substack?

I wasn't touching the question of psychosis one way or the other, though it's an interesting question in its own right. (I have seen one account dedicated to defending a personal deep friendship with Claude and a few others analogizing our ignorance of LLM welfare to historical disregard for African Americans, which I think is a bit much. Most cases I think are just wrong but short of full on psychosis. I think there are likely psychosis cases out there but probably one-offs).

And I know Substack covers a lot of stuff so even just AI talk is a slice of everything, and whatever psychosis on that subject a smaller slice of that slice. But using LLMs to make overextended arguments about LLMs being conscious is popular right now, more popular than it is well substantiated I think.

I agree you raised a big question, but I think yours is one of many big questions: whether some future version of LLMs might literally be conscious is also a big question and not a moot one in the way you seem to be suggesting. I think that what you're right about is that replaceability renders moot any question of whether it's ability comes from being "actually" intelligent.

[wisty]

While "psychosis" is kind of an overextension, I think there's a more general problem of peole falling victim to AI syncopancy, leading to them creating their own bubble chamber for their worst (and often most self destructive) ideas.

I feel like I got my fingers burnt last year trying to solve a technical problem, and the AI was just good enough to seem convincing, but not good enough to fool me when I stopped to think. These days, I expect the AI ability to defend my bad ideas will be beyond my ability to refute.