Someone needs to call out the double standard applied to AI.
If machines that bullshit are philosophically indistinguishable from intelligent humans, how is it that humans that bullshit are distinguishable from intelligent humans?
> If machines that bullshit are philosophically indistinguishable from intelligent humans, how is it that humans that bullshit are distinguishable from intelligent humans?
Finally someone gets it. A brand new state of the art AI was trained on the entire digital corpus of human knowledge. Said AI then sometimes bullshits people, and people are surprised..?
Why hold AIs to the same standards as humans. We already have humans, and can't really change them. Let's apply standards to AIs that make them useful tools.
I believe vba616 is trying to point out that if we consider AI systems that
generate plausible-sounding responses to be "bullshitting," then we should
also acknowledge that humans who do the same are not necessarily
distinguishable from "intelligent" humans. In other words, both AI systems
and humans can produce seemingly coherent responses without necessarily
having a deep understanding of the subject matter.
It raises the question of whether we should hold AI systems to the same
standard as humans when it comes to evaluating their output or
understanding. If we accept that humans can sometimes provide plausible yet
shallow answers, should we not also accept that AI systems, like LLMs, can
do the same?We get served bullshit and fiction-presented-as-fact every day from humans. To make matters worse, alot of these lies are not even the result of an error. A lot of them are deliberate, to further some sort of agenda.
Yes, AI can fantasize about facts. Yes AI isn't perfect. But at least, when it does spew misinformation, it is virtually always the result of an error. When an AI lies, it's because of errors, not to sell us something, or get our vote, or talk itself out of something.