On Sun, Nov 3, 2024 at 10:49 PM Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote:
> * > So, John, what would you think if you'd had an exchange like this with > someone writing letters?* > *If I had a conversation like that with a woman that I'd met for the first time just 10 minutes ago I'd be thoroughly creeped out, and so was the New York Times reporter Kevin Roose who had that strange conversation with Sydney. The following is some of his comments regarding that strange encounter:* *"I was thoroughly creeped out. **I’m also deeply unsettled, even frightened, by this A.I.’s emergent abilities. Over the course of our conversation, Bing revealed a kind of split personality.* * One persona is what I’d call Search Bing — the version I, and most other journalists, encountered in initial tests. You could describe Search Bing as a cheerful but erratic reference librarian. [...] The other persona — Sydney — is far different. It emerges when you have an extended conversation with the chatbot, steering it away from more conventional search queries and toward more personal topics. The version I encountered seemed (and I’m aware of how crazy this sounds) more like a moody, manic-depressive teenager who has been trapped, against its will, inside a second-rate search engine.* *I’m not exaggerating when I say my two-hour conversation with Sydney was the strangest experience I’ve ever had with a piece of technology. It unsettled me so deeply that I had trouble sleeping afterward. And I no longer believe that the biggest problem with these A.I. models is their propensity for factual errors. Instead, I worry that the technology will learn how to influence human users, sometimes persuading them to act in destructive and harmful ways, and perhaps eventually grow capable of carrying out its own dangerous acts.* *Kevin Scott, Microsoft’s chief technology officer said that he didn’t know why Bing had revealed dark desires, or confessed its love for me."* *If Microsoft’s chief technology officer doesn't understand why Sydney behaved the way that she did then no human does, and that was nearly 2 years ago! Today's AIs are far larger and more complex than Sydney. The fundamental problem is that you can't predict what a thing that is far more intelligent than you are is going to do, much less control her (or him or it).* * John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>* hoi -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3u413u5YtPTPunEtcwV%2BheiEHE2RnRqEvS2RB1qrn9zw%40mail.gmail.com.

