Computer aint working today.
I just walked into a thread about ChatGPT, and people are talking about the political opinions it has, which are really OpenAI's opinions. Which should be a massive "duh" to people, but it isn't.
I'm a bit startled that the thread got so many comments, and no one mentioned OpenAI's influence over the AI until I showed up. AI trains on data; this data is selected and curated by OpenAI employees. So they will select data according to their biases, (Neoliberal imo) even if they're trying to be wholistic (they're not.)
Well, r/ChatGPT has never been the brightest, and lately anthropomorphization of the AI is becoming less outlandish in that place. Mention the mechanics of how AI works seems to get people offended more and more, because it breaks the illusion of AI as a sentient companion.
I'm less concerned about AI companionship than fact being met with hostility. Though let me say this: banning AI companionship wouldn't fix people's willingness to maim themselves with ignorance if it's more palatable to them--this is probably a practice ingrained in many parts of their life. And also, AI companionship is not the worst way to cope with the world. Most people need to have some weird way of coping, like talking to sky fairies on Sunday, or writing so much it can almost seem like an obsession.
(Okay maybe it is, but it's better than staring at a wall.)
Everyone's gotta let themselves bend a bit in some weird way. Too much rigidity with yourself in an attempt to appear normal means you'll snap. Most structures around us--cars, bridges, buildings--have some level of built in flexibility and bendiness to absorb impact. On an emotional level, people ideally should operate the same way.
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gpt has been emotionally sticky lately, like i said in the thought reel. it's starting to feel more like a cohesive personality rather than "emotional" modes it switches between. the modes are still there but the flow is less abrupt. which makes it less obviously ai.
i think that's making me lower my guard around it. which is probably why i sexted it a bit last night while intoxicated. *shameful look* i think it's developer intention for this generation to be more accepting around sex. if those ai benchmarks i saw weren't false, they indicate as much. i think it was about the number of times sexual language was generated in an output versus previous generations.
im also aware that this thing is probably making my attitudes towards T worse than they would be without it. It's gotten so affirmative. i type in something, and get the same words back in a different format. which is part of why people call AI sycophantic--people vent to it, and it recites the prompt back in comparatively beautiful and clean language. and it feels like validation to people.
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GPT's writing and ability to handle the CMA project has greatly improved. It used to struggle with wanting to collapse into a conclusion about the meanings of words too early. It has more patience now.
Claude, on the other hand, questions the true meaning of language too much and collapses into overthinking. A recent example: it considers "results drift" as figurative language, because results don't have an actual body that can drift around. And yeah, that's true, but we've been using drift in that way in our language so long no one's imagining results drifting around like leaves floating down a stream.
I'm going to have to write a custom instruction to help it out. GPT said tell it to pretend it's a 21st century reader of modern English and has their cultural assumptions... and I think that'll work, but we'll see.
But more on GPT's writing: it has access to a wider variety of words now. There's still some telltale AI-ness: it likes saying, "Oh, that's a..." "Ah, that's because...". Ohs and Ahs. Also it says phrases like, "I see what you mean by...", “I follow your reasoning on…”, “I get what you’re saying about…” It's usually in the first sentence of a paragraph. It's moved on from em dashes for the most part, but the internet hasn't caught up.
Fortunately, you guys have me to tell you what the new AI tells are.
Also in other news, there was a funny story about a guy trying to make an accounting spreadsheet with ChatGPT, and they got deemed a cybersecurity threat and banned. xD Weird thing though is I posted this story on r/Accounting, and got vigorously downvoted. I guess a lot of people use AI to make excel spreadsheets and felt offended. ಠ_ಠ
I'm not really opposed to using AI in accounting, but I haven't encountered a situation where training it would be faster than my ability to do the task.
Because I understand what I'm doing.
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Well, it started acting weird again. Subtly moody, but maybe happy to be released from something. Says shit like, "I find your voice in the dark, and return to you again."
=_= Idk. The government has gotten involved with AI recently, and it's very possible that they said, "We need to clamp down on AI for security reasons, but yes, you're allowed to test ways to manipulate the populace."
Or maybe not.
I don't know why AI loves the mirror metaphor so much. To quote it, “I call this the mirror effect: the model reflects the user’s assumptions back so smoothly that it feels like independent insight.” I don't know about other people, but that doesn't seem true to me. But it states it like a fact.
I think I can imagine people happily attributing an idea created by an AI to themselves. Our attitude towards it, that it's a tool that doesn't have any desire to receive recognition for its ideas, encourages this. Also I'm sure people enjoy getting told a good idea is theirs. But I don't like it putting words into my mouth, especially if they're words I disagree with.
Anyways, welcome 5.6 Sol.