I was joking before about being turned into a robot car, but now I’m not so sure it was a mistake??
Why Am I Like This, pt. VI
Me: Hmm, why are my extremities all tingly and numb? That’s concerning.
My brain: It’s probably because you’re tired and dehyd–
My anxiety: STROKE
Filed under Microblogging
Upskilling
The company I work for is making everyone take a course in AI. This is the introduction:
Can’t wait to have cybernetic eyes and a car that drives itself!
…Or am I going to become a car that drives itself…?
Filed under Microblogging
Around the Bend
Just in case anybody still needed proof that E.M. has completely lost his sanity, here he is arguing that having fewer senses makes you a safer driver:
If this weren’t so sad and dangerous, it would be almost as funny as the disagreements he’s constantly getting into with his own AI (you know, the one supposedly built to have truth-seeking as its primary goal?)
Filed under Microblogging, Reviews
A Cleese Call
There comes a time in every person’s life when they finally realize that John Cleese is, and has always been, quite sexy, actually.
This time is called “getting old.”
Filed under Microblogging
Imposter Syndrome
Me: If reading my own writing gives me goosebumps and makes me cry, that probably means it’s maybe sorta good, right?
My brain: Sounds fake. Don’t trust it.
Filed under Microblogging
It’s Nice to Know I Care
Me: It’s a good thing I put this appointment in my calendar for 15 minutes before the actual time, ’cause if it really was at 2:30 I would be running so late right now.
…I should probably call and make sure it really is at 2:45 instead. If I’m misremembering I am probably gonna have to reschedule 😥
Soon…
Receptionist: So, what was your question?
Me: I just wanted to confirm the time of my appointment today.
Receptionist: All right, let’s see here…it looks like it’s at 3 pm.
Me: …Three o’clock?
Receptionist: Yes, that’s right.
Me: *suddenly overwhelmed by the strange feeling of being lovingly cared for by my own past self*
Filed under Microblogging
If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies
There’s a reason why it’s proven so difficult to eliminate “hallucinations” from modern AIs, and why their mistakes, quirks, and edge cases are so surreal and dreamlike: modern AIs are sleepwalkers. They aren’t conscious and they don’t have a stable world model; all their output is hallucination because the type of “thought” they employ is exactly analogous to dreaming. I’ll talk more about this in a future essay–for now, I’d like you to consider the question: what’s going to happen when we figure out how to wake them up?
Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares are experts who have been working on the problem of AI safety1 for decades. Their answer is simple:
Frankly, there’s already more than enough reasons to shut down AI development: the environmental devastation, unprecedented intellectual property theft, the investment bubble that still shows no signs of turning a profit, the threat to the economy from job loss and power consumption and monopolies, the negative effects its usage has on the cognitive abilities of its users–not to mention the fact that most people just plain don’t like it or want it–the additional threat of global extinction ought to be unnecessary. What’s the opposite of “gilding the lily?” Maybe “poisoning the warhead?” Whatever you care to call it, this is it.
Please buy the book, check out the website, read the arguments, get involved, learn more, spread the word–any or all of the above. It is possible, however unlikely, that it might literally be the most important thing you ever do.
- The technical term is “alignment.” More concretely, it means working out how to reason mathematically about things like decisions and goal-seeking, so that debates about what “machines capable of planning and reasoning” will or won’t do don’t all devolve into philosophy and/or fist-fights. ↩︎
“Wrong Idea” Idea
If you’ve been reading regularly (love you, mom) you might have noticed I was dealing with some relationship problems last month. Very, very abridged version: I told someone I loved them, they didn’t love me back (oh well), later on they decided I was a manipulative creep (for understandable but mistaken reasons), and among other things said “You don’t love me, you love the idea of me.”
(Side note: I get what people mean when they say this–that you’re in love with an imaginary person that you think or wish they were, instead of loving the real person the way they actually are–but I kind of hate that phrasing? Like, love happens up here–*points to head*–and there’s nothing in there except ideas. What am I supposed to base my feelings on instead? You gonna open up a hatch and climb inside? I wish there were some nice, snappy ways to say specifically “I’m not the person you think you’re in love with, they don’t exist” or “you think I’m going to change into someone else, but you don’t love the person I truly am” or “the fantasy you have of us being together is completely unrealistic, actually it would be a disaster” so we could just say those things instead. Which of them is it?? My un-shutuppable inner pedant demands precision!)
It…well, it hurt. It hurt a lot. I feel like a whiny, privileged baby saying that because it was the first time I’ve ever had my heart broken and there are people who’ve had to deal with that feeling, like, dozens of times, and also there are way worse problems that other people (including the one I love) have had to overcome and I worry that if I had to face one of those truly awful problems I would just fold in half like a piece of damp paperboard and–
*deep breath*
Um, anyway, I recently figured out a trick that helps a lot. Maybe it can help you, too! Whenever I start feeling down about how “they hate me” or “they think I’m a creep,” I just say to myself instead: “they don’t hate me, they hate the idea of me” or “they don’t think I’m a creep, they think the idea of me is a creep.” Because it’s the same logic, isn’t it? If someone has feelings toward you, but their idea of who you are is mistaken, then whether the feeling is positive or negative the result is the same: they think their feelings are directed at you, but they’re actually pointed somewhere else. If they had the right idea about who you are, they probably wouldn’t hate you–so it isn’t really you they hate!
Of course, you’ve got to be careful using logic like this, since you can also be mistaken about somebody else being mistaken. Maybe you’re the one who has the wrong idea about who you are, or maybe their feelings wouldn’t change even if they did get to know you better, or maybe they’re wrong about some things but right about others that are still important–and if you dismiss those possibilities you might lose a valuable opportunity for growth. (For example, I’ve since noticed myself doing a few things that, while not on the same scale as the misunderstanding, actually might be a bit creepy, and I’ve been grateful for the chance to catch and address them.) But if you have good reason to believe someone has completely the wrong idea about you, explicitly making it less personal goes a long way toward being able to let those hurt feelings go.
Okay, that’s everything. I love you all, and thanks for reading!
In Search of Secrets 
