Tag: OpenAI

Should We Start Thinking Seriously About A Looming Singularity?

by Shelt Garner
@shetgarner

With the news that a major fusion technology breakthrough will be announced soon, given the other technologies that are rushing towards similar breakthroughs I find myself thinking about one thing — the technological Singularity.

The Singularity is the moment in time when technology goes so fast that human culture simply can’t keep up. Usually, the Singularity is associated with ideas like AGI, everyone living forever because we can upload our minds into a database…and fusion power.

While I’m not prepared to think we’re on the cusp of living forever, if things like the metaverse, AGI and fusion power (!) all become a part of everyday life at the same time, that sure does sound a lot like at least a “soft” Singularity, if nothing else.

My fear is, of course, that all these technologies are going to strike at the same time that we’re going through a massive political crisis in late 2024, early 2025 as we finally try to figure out what the fuck we’re going to do about the Trump Problem.

But, as an aside, I will note that if we reach fusion then I will have to begrudgingly admit that when my Traditionalist relative — who is a climate change denier — said “well, technology will solve it” might have been right. There is a chance now that we may end global climate change because, lulz, we achieve fusion power.

And, yet, even if we achieve fusion power, the kneejerk partisanship that created my relative’s climate change denialism will still be there. And that’s a real problem. Just like how being famous doesn’t solve any of your problems, so, too, will the Singularity not solve the severe political division found within the United States.

If anything, there’s a risk that when we’re confronted by even BIGGER issues — like “What the fuck are we going to do about AGIs?” we’re going to be so divided that Blues will have one absolute opinion about AGIs while Reds will take the exact opposite position out of spite.

Anyway, I don’t know how much all of this is my usual the-worst-case-scenario-is-going-to-happen inclinations and how much is this might actually happen. It’s actually pretty rare for human history to take the absolute worst case scenario, but has been known to happen on occasion.

Only time will tell.

OpenAI ChatGPT As Rorschach Test

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about the OpenAI ChatGPT is it’s so new that we don’t have any frame of reference in our collective mindspace to understand What It All Means. As such, each individual imbues it with their own hopes and dreams. In short, it’s existence is something of a Rorschach Test.

From what I can from people’s reactions to using OpenAI ChatGPT on Twitter, here are some of the initial hot takes.

First, you have people who know what they’re talking about when it comes to AI and programming. They generally roll their eyes at how exciting everyone is getting. I suppose these people are so focused on the promise of Artificial General Intelligence that they just don’t see what the big deal is about an advanced chatbot.

This reaction reminds me of how a lot of old school programmers on Usenet back in the day were completely blase about the Web because not only did it use the old-as-hell TCP/IP but they saw the implementation of HTML used by early Web browsers as nothing more than a clumsy “hack.”

Next, there are people who are unhappy that they can’t destroy the world (yet) using a chatbot. They bitch and complain that all their nefarious plots are hampered because the chatbot has been NERFed as to be “unusable” for their eager plans for global domination. They all come across as rather spiteful, bitter people.

Then there are people who seemingly think that because ChatGPT can’t do everything they want it to do that it will fail. These are often the same people who blather on about how they want a subscription service or how OpenAI simply MUST charge for the service as soon as possible.

Then there are the fucking idiots who are so intellectually lazy that they think all their (homework) problems are solved and they can just sit back and never think — or write — again. These are usually younger people and the fact that we may raise a generation who doesn’t even know HOW to write is rather alarming, to say the least.

As for me, I’m very much in wait-and-see mode. I just don’t know what to think of it. I do think that 2023 will probably be the breakout year for a number of different technologies, chatbots included.

A Hot Take On OpenAI ChatGPT

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I am not an expert on AI, but I did live through the early days of the Internet / Web revolution and it’s very interesting how similar it is to the rise of chatbots and, potentially AGI.

Everyone is coming at ChatGPT from their own personal direction because it’s so new that we don’t have any established idea of what it is or its place in society. As such, everyone projects on to it their hopes and fears — which is exactly what happened when it became clear that because of the Web the power of the Internet would soon be harnessed for the average person.

Before I go any further, I have to note that chabot technology is just one of several different emerging technologies that are probably all going to go mainstream at some point between now, and, say 2025. Things like the metaverse (Web 3.0) chatbots, the blockchain, robotics and automation are all going to fuse into an event that might be something similar to a “Singularity,” or at least a “soft” one.

The real Singularity, of course, will happen whenever we move past chatbot technology into the realm of Artificial General Intelligence. If you hook that up to robotic trends…yikes.

But back to chatbots.

I just can’t imagine that we’re all going to be using one chatbot — OpenAI ChatGPT forever going forward. I suspect that numerous other chatbots of equal or greater ability will pop out in the next few years. I say this because if you were to talk to people in 1945 about nuclear technology they might make a lot of assumptions on the idea that only the United States would have The Bomb going forward.

It didn’t happen with the a-bomb and it’s not going to happen with chatbots. In fact, if Moore’s Law is to be believed, we’re going to be aswash in chatbots as major company — and a lot of start ups — get woke to how advantageous it would be to them to have their own advanced chatbot to use. So all the people who seem to think that ChatGPT is going to somehow overthrow Google should probably slow their roll.

Another thing to note — and this one really grinds me gears — is how the extremes on both sides of the political spectrum seem really invested in chatbots. You have your usual suspects of ‘woke” people complaining about the stupidest shit — well beyond the obvious, legitimate concerns about potential abuse for racist or misogynistic behavior. They get upset if the chatbot is somehow goaded into doing something that they perceive as not following their “woke” media narrative.

Meanwhile, on the OTHER end of the political spectrum in a much more ham-handed way, you have the fucking MAGA Nazi cocksuckers who apparently want chatbots to be “Ultra-MAGA” so they can turn around and use that as justification for their own form of Social Darwinism.

As I’ve said before, I would feel a lot better if we had a functioning political system. As it is, we’re on our own. It’s inevitable that as chatbots grow in cultural importance — and more and more children turn to it to do their homework, the batshit fucking bonkers MAGA people are going to scream at the top of their lungs that chatbots are “woke” and the only way to stop their spawn from being “indoctrinated” into the “woke cancel culture mob” is for the Second Trump Administration to regulate it parrots MAGa doctrine.

I wish I was exaggerating. I really do. But I’m not. This is what I literally think will happen at some point in the not-so-distant future. Or, it could be, that instead of the Second Trump Administration doing it, the issue will be regulated differently in the new Blue Union as opposed to Trumplandia after we have a National Divorce and Second American Civil War.

The point is — things are on the cups of getting very, very turbulence on not just a technological basis, but a cultural, economic and political basis as well. The next few years could be some of the most dramatic in human history — or at least since the end of WW2.

Cal it “The Fourth Turning” or “The Great Reset,” or whatever the fuck you want. There’s not going to be any narrative or value to it while it’s happening and it’s going to be scary as hell to live through. There’s a reason why “May you live in interesting times” is a curse.

What Happens When Tech Bros Are Poor?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The argument can legitimately be made that there may come a point, in the not-too-distant future when software development will be reduced to simply asking a chatbot a well-crafted question.

Now, I say this because it definitely seems as though the cat is out of the bag when it comes to the potential of chatbots. Now that The Powers That Be are aware of what chatbots can do, the natural inclination of capitalism is to replace most programmers with a chatbot.

This won’t happen overnight — if ever — but it is a risk. It’s easy to imagine the software design industry being among the first industries to become moot because of chatbots.

What would be the consequence of this?

It’s possible that if a lot of young, wealthy men will suddenly lose their jobs. That, in turn, could cause something akin to a neo-Luddism. If nothing else, we’re in for a very bumpty few years as we figure out what we’re going to do as more and more human tasks are taken over by non-human actors.

When it becomes clear that chatbots could be just as big a cultural and economic revolution as the Internet, all bets are off as to what happens next. Buckle up.

The End Of Writing?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

With the advent of advanced chatbot technology, we have to begin to contemplate the idea that humanity’s relationship to writing may be about to change dramatically. From what I can tell about the ability of chatbot technology to generate writing of all sorts it definitely seems as though some basic ideas about human creativity may be about to be upended.

The case could be made for a dystopian near-future whee writing itself is seen as quaint and antiquated, much like cursive writing is today. We may face a future where being trained to write is something that a narrow subset of the population is trained to do.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of all writing — be it creative or otherwise — will be done by at least chatbots, if not an actual AGI. In a way, if we don’t invent AGI sooner rather than later, that’s kind of the worse case scenario.

At least with AGI, there is the opportunity for us to tax its activities to fund a UBI program — or, even better AGIs might be willing to fund a UBI of its own volition as a “bribe” to humanity to keep it busy playing video games. I’m not saying the transition to a UBI wouldn’t be rather…turbulent…to say the least.

But it could very well happen.

I suppose my biggest fear is that, given human nature, all of this could happen a lot sooner than we all expect because there’s probably going to be a global recession in 2023. As such, that would be the time when the ability to replace high paid writers of all sorts might simply be too enticing for the Powers That Be.

But I think I’m getting a little too ahead of myself. History rarely goes in a straight line. There’s every reason to believe my fears that we’re going to face a Singularity in late 2024, early 2025 at just the same time that the whole world is collapsing because MAGA Nazis are in the middle of trying to steal the 2024 election might be a little bit too hysterical.

And, yet, the fact remains — there’s a real risk that the next generation may see learning to write as optional. Or, if they do learn to write, it will be more about how to write a chatbot prompt than it is writing an essay or a novel or whatever. As is the case with all of my hysterical, dystopian rantings about the rise of chatbots and AGI, the point is to get us all thinking about different scenarios instead of waiting until we have a serious case of future shock.

The Great Debate

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I attempted to have a lengthy discussion with someone on Twitter about the future of chatbots and AGI, but he ghosted me after a little bit of back and forth. But let’s address some of the issues he brought up.



“Have You Met Capitalism?”
Ok, his argument is that by definition, capitalism would dictate that something as powerful as chatbot technology, because its expensive, will be used by the Elites to keep Poors in line. He apparently thinks that a secret cabal of corporations is currently subtly influencing the world and, as such, they will just keep doing that under the guise of chatbots.

I call bullshit.

While it’s very possible that something along those lines might happen, my personal experience with the Internet suggests that guy is full of shit. If anything, the capitalistic imperative is to let chatbot technology run amuck because it will save money by eliminating high paying jobs.

The Internet / Web gradually, within the course of about a decade, totally upended a lot of the global economy to an astonishing extent. Instead of the Elites hoarding access to the Internet for themselves, there was a cultural imperative to make sure everyone possible could use it.

And remember, because of Moore’s law, the cost of processing power is constantly going down, so any arguments about how chatbot technology is always going to be too expensive on the backend makes no sense.

So, rather than being alarmed at the idea that we have to “meet capitalism” and fear the Elites restricting access to chatbots, we probably need fear the exact opposite. Chatbots could very well be everywhere instead of something semi-secret that a secret cabal of corporations use, Second Foundation style, to subtly dictate the course of human events.

I’m not saying that our secret corporate overlords won’t manage to survive, but I also wouldn’t automatically assume that they will feel that it’s in their interests to keep chatbot technology totally under their control.

There Will Be No Singularity
This argument is more difficult to directly rebut. I’m not saying that it’s a sure thing that AGI will take place. It’s very possible it won’t. But to be so sure that AGI won’t happen and, as such, the associate Singularity won’t happen, is a bit of a stretch.

As such, we need to start to think now about what we’re going to do when there are potentially a LOT of AGIs floating around, not just one. How are we going to have a functioning global economy if androids connected to AGIs have taken over every single human task?

The Conundrum Of Plenty

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about AGI technology is as we go into it, we are making some basic assumptions that may be inaccurate. I remember the early days of the Web when the Elites assumed that they would be able to use their exclusive access to the Internet to keep the Poors under their control.

Soon enough, of course, it became clear that this would not be the case. It took a while, but gradually because of things like mobile Internet and broadband Internet access, the lives of millions of people were fundamentally changed because of ready, speedy Web access. This happened to the point that by 2016, a malignant dingus like Trump was able to use the Internet itself to troll his way to the presidency.

And now we have find ourselves potentially at the cusp of a new, even greater cultural revolution in the guise of AGI. At the moment, of course, it’s not AGI but rather chatbot technology that we’re dealing with. AGI just isn’t there yet.

That doesn’t stop me from imagining a situation where we don’t just have on AGI that we have to deal with, but a whole species of them. Of course, I suppose it’s possible that the Elites might keep access to an AGI to themselves, but historical determinism when it comes to technology suggests that’s just not practical.

The ominous scenario is all these fucking androids that everyone is so busy building will each have an AGI built in. They will have something akin to free will. I think we all need to start reading scifi novels — especially the Robots novels by Isaac Asimov — get some sense of what might be about to happen to our global culture.

The idea that there may come a point not when Poors are controlled by limited access to AGI, but that AGI would be a practical part of everyday life is very unnerving. If AGI really takes off in a big way, then there is a chance that we will face something collectively as humans that we haven’t had to deal with since the Neandertals — The Other.

And, what’s more, it will all happen so rapidly that we may essentially wake up one day to something akin to a digital First Contact. It won’t be aliens from another planet that are changing our lives, but aliens of our own creation.

Of UBI and ChatGPT

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Humans are lazy and often idiotic. As such, the idea of a Universal Basic Income makes some morons salivate at the idea that they would get money from the government simply for existing. They want to be lazy. There will not be a sudden flowering of the arts if the UBI is instituted, rather there probably would be a systemic societal collapse.

BUT.

With the advent of advanced Chatbot technology like the OpenAI ChatGPT, we have to start thinking about how we might implement some form of UBI in the future.

If AGI has taken virtually every job away from humanity, the only way I can think maybe that we could fund a UBI is a tax on the activities of Non-Human Actors. But this still doesn’t address the fact that idle hands are the devil’s plaything.

If you 99% of the population didn’t have anything to do all day — even if they were getting a UBI — everything would collapse simply because people would want to fuck shit up out of boredom. Also, there is the problem of ambitious, greedy people being enraged that their income would be limited to a set UBI. How do you fix that fucking problem?

As such, you couldn’t just give everyone a UBI and walk away. You would have to figure out a way to pay different people different amounts of money. Maybe give people money relative to their lost wages from the advent of AGI?

Or, more ominously, if it could be the AGI that “bribes” humanity to behave while it actually runs the world. That is probably the most realistic way a UBI would ever be used. It probably would be part of a peace agreement between the AGI and humanity after some sort of post-Singularity struggle.

The AGI gets to be our “Lord Protector” and we sit around playing video games in the metaverse, living off the UBI.

A Native OpenAI ChatGPT Prompt Built Into Twitter Is An Intriguing Idea

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I just saw on Twitter an interesting use case for OpenAI ChatGPT — native integration into Twitter itself. I say this because people are already used to the Twitter prompt so the ability to ask ChatGPT questions directly from Twitter would be a very smooth addition to the Twitter UX.

It would make a lot of sense for Musk to add ChatGPT to Twitter.

Given that Elon Musk has a connection to both Twitter and OpenAI, this is a gimmie. It’s something that once ChatGPT is far more scalable could happen pretty much with the flip of a switch.

As an aside, it’s interesting how similar people’s speculation surrounding ChatGPT is identical to what people talked about with the late, great Blab. Everyone assumes that it will be pay-to-play soon enough. In fact, some people are pretty much begging it to be that way.

This raises a very interesting issue — what if, just like with the Internet, the actual service itself is free and the money is made from the things you can do with it. This is what caused the death of the online services of the 1990s — the Internet was open and it was, unto itself, the “killer app” that everyone seemed to believe was going to happen at some point in the future.

There is a lot I still don’t know about what is going to happen with chatbot technology. At the moment, it definitely seems like it’s going to be very disruptive — the only question is the degree. But I also don’t know if there will be ONE AGI or a multitude.

The whole thing is very intriguing.

It’s Humans We Have To Worry About

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

What’s so interesting to me at the moment is how ready humans are to abuse the OpenAI ChatGPT. People keep thinking up different horrible questions for it to answer in an equally horrible way.

This had led to calls for severe restriction of the technology, but that’s a fool’s errand. The cat is out of the bag, as they say. For me, the question is where are we, in real terms, when it comes to the development and adaptation of this technology.

Is this the release of the first Netscape Navigator in 1994, or is it the original opening of the Internet to the public earlier than that? A lot depends on when we reach a point where we a lot of the quibbling complaints about chatbot technology are no longer applicable.

One ominous aspect of chatbot technology is, of course, the potential for it to make otherwise hard jobs — like programming — very, very easy. Once making new software is simply a matter of asking a chatbot a question, then, well, “learn to code” as a MAGA Tech Bro retort for any issue they feel uncomfortable about will be moot.

Combine humans being horrible and lazy with the possibility that an AGI might radically transform the global economy a quick clip — especially if there is a severe recession in 2023 — and you have the makings of a very alarming situation. It grows even more alarming if you put it in the context of late existential choice facing America of autocracy, civil war or military junta.

I still find myself wondering how many, in the end, AGIs there will be. Will there be one general AGI overlord, or will everything have an AGI built into it in the end? Will all these androids that people seem so determined to build be hooked up to a broader network, or will they be automatous AGIs?

But we still don’t know how difficult it will be to design an AGI in the first place. Right now, we have faux-AGI in the sense that to the average user it’s easy to mistake things like OpenAI ChatGPT as a hard AI, when, it fact, it’s very much not one.

The creation of true AGI would be at least equal to the splitting of the atom and would probably cause just as much change in human life across the globe.