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mostlysignssomeportents · 7 months

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The real AI fight

Tonight (November 27), I'm appearing at the Toronto Metro Reference Library with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.

On November 29, I'm at NYC's Strand Books with my novel The Lost Cause, a solarpunk tale of hope and danger that Rebecca Solnit called "completely delightful."

Last week's spectacular OpenAI soap-opera hijacked the attention of millions of normal, productive people and nonsensually crammed them full of the fine details of the debate between "Effective Altruism" (doomers) and "Effective Accelerationism" (AKA e/acc), a genuinely absurd debate that was allegedly at the center of the drama.

Very broadly speaking: the Effective Altruists are doomers, who believe that Large Language Models (AKA "spicy autocomplete") will someday become so advanced that it could wake up and annihilate or enslave the human race. To prevent this, we need to employ "AI Safety" – measures that will turn superintelligence into a servant or a partner, nor an adversary.

Contrast this with the Effective Accelerationists, who also believe that LLMs will someday become superintelligences with the potential to annihilate or enslave humanity – but they nevertheless advocate for faster AI development, with fewer "safety" measures, in order to produce an "upward spiral" in the "techno-capital machine."

Once-and-future OpenAI CEO Altman is said to be an accelerationists who was forced out of the company by the Altruists, who were subsequently bested, ousted, and replaced by Larry fucking Summers. This, we're told, is the ideological battle over AI: should cautiously progress our LLMs into superintelligences with safety in mind, or go full speed ahead and trust to market forces to tame and harness the superintelligences to come?

This "AI debate" is pretty stupid, proceeding as it does from the foregone conclusion that adding compute power and data to the next-word-predictor program will eventually create a conscious being, which will then inevitably become a superbeing. This is a proposition akin to the idea that if we keep breeding faster and faster horses, we'll get a locomotive:

https://locusmag.com/2020/07/cory-doctorow-full-employment/

As Molly White writes, this isn't much of a debate. The "two sides" of this debate are as similar as Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Yes, they're arrayed against each other in battle, so furious with each other that they're tearing their hair out. But for people who don't take any of this mystical nonsense about spontaneous consciousness arising from applied statistics seriously, these two sides are nearly indistinguishable, sharing as they do this extremely weird belief. The fact that they've split into warring factions on its particulars is less important than their unified belief in the certain coming of the paperclip-maximizing apocalypse:

https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/effective-obfuscation

White points out that there's another, much more distinct side in this AI debate – as different and distant from Dee and Dum as a Beamish Boy and a Jabberwork. This is the side of AI Ethics – the side that worries about "today’s issues of ghost labor, algorithmic bias, and erosion of the rights of artists and others." As White says, shifting the debate to existential risk from a future, hypothetical superintelligence "is incredibly convenient for the powerful individuals and companies who stand to profit from AI."

After all, both sides plan to make money selling AI tools to corporations, whose track record in deploying algorithmic "decision support" systems and other AI-based automation is pretty poor – like the claims-evaluation engine that Cigna uses to deny insurance claims:

https://www.propublica.org/article/cigna-pxdx-medical-health-insurance-rejection-claims

On a graph that plots the various positions on AI, the two groups of weirdos who disagree about how to create the inevitable superintelligence are effectively standing on the same spot, and the people who worry about the actual way that AI harms actual people right now are about a million miles away from that spot.

There's that old programmer joke, "There are 10 kinds of people, those who understand binary and those who don't." But of course, that joke could just as well be, "There are 10 kinds of people, those who understand ternary, those who understand binary, and those who don't understand either":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/11/the-ten-types-of-people/

What's more, the joke could be, "there are 10 kinds of people, those who understand hexadecenary, those who understand pentadecenary, those who understand tetradecenary [und so weiter] those who understand ternary, those who understand binary, and those who don't." That is to say, a "polarized" debate often has people who hold positions so far from the ones everyone is talking about that those belligerents' concerns are basically indistinguishable from one another.

The act of identifying these distant positions is a radical opening up of possibilities. Take the indigenous philosopher chief Red Jacket's response to the Christian missionaries who sought permission to proselytize to Red Jacket's people:

https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5790/

Red Jacket's whole rebuttal is a superb dunk, but it gets especially interesting where he points to the sectarian differences among Christians as evidence against the missionary's claim to having a single true faith, and in favor of the idea that his own people's traditional faith could be co-equal among Christian doctrines.

The split that White identifies isn't a split about whether AI tools can be useful. Plenty of us AI skeptics are happy to stipulate that there are good uses for AI. For example, I'm 100% in favor of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group using an LLM to classify and extract information from the Innocence Project New Orleans' wrongful conviction case files:

https://hrdag.org/tech-notes/large-language-models-IPNO.html

Automating "extracting officer information from documents – specifically, the officer's name and the role the officer played in the wrongful conviction" was a key step to freeing innocent people from prison, and an LLM allowed HRDAG – a tiny, cash-strapped, excellent nonprofit – to make a giant leap forward in a vital project. I'm a donor to HRDAG and you should donate to them too:

https://hrdag.networkforgood.com/

Good data-analysis is key to addressing many of our thorniest, most pressing problems. As Ben Goldacre recounts in his inaugural Oxford lecture, it is both possible and desirable to build ethical, privacy-preserving systems for analyzing the most sensitive personal data (NHS patient records) that yield scores of solid, ground-breaking medical and scientific insights:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-eaV8SWdjQ

The difference between this kind of work – HRDAG's exoneration work and Goldacre's medical research – and the approach that OpenAI and its competitors take boils down to how they treat humans. The former treats all humans as worthy of respect and consideration. The latter treats humans as instruments – for profit in the short term, and for creating a hypothetical superintelligence in the (very) long term.

As Terry Pratchett's Granny Weatherwax reminds us, this is the root of all sin: "sin is when you treat people like things":

https://brer-powerofbabel.blogspot.com/2009/02/granny-weatherwax-on-sin-favorite.html

So much of the criticism of AI misses this distinction – instead, this criticism starts by accepting the self-serving marketing claim of the "AI safety" crowd – that their software is on the verge of becoming self-aware, and is thus valuable, a good investment, and a good product to purchase. This is Lee Vinsel's "Criti-Hype": "taking press releases from startups and covering them with hellscapes":

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

Criti-hype and AI were made for each other. Emily M Bender is a tireless cataloger of criti-hypeists, like the newspaper reporters who breathlessly repeat " completely unsubstantiated claims (marketing)…sourced to Altman":

https://dair-community.social/@emilymbender/111464030855880383

Bender, like White, is at pains to point out that the real debate isn't doomers vs accelerationists. That's just "billionaires throwing money at the hope of bringing about the speculative fiction stories they grew up reading – and philosophers and others feeling important by dressing these same silly ideas up in fancy words":

https://dair-community.social/@emilymbender/111464024432217299

All of this is just a distraction from real and important scientific questions about how (and whether) to make automation tools that steer clear of Granny Weatherwax's sin of "treating people like things." Bender – a computational linguist – isn't a reactionary who hates automation for its own sake. On Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 – the excellent podcast she co-hosts with Alex Hanna – there is a machine-generated transcript:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2126417

There is a serious, meaty debate to be had about the costs and possibilities of different forms of automation. But the superintelligence true-believers and their criti-hyping critics keep dragging us away from these important questions and into fanciful and pointless discussions of whether and how to appease the godlike computers we will create when we disassemble the solar system and turn it into computronium.

The question of machine intelligence isn't intrinsically unserious. As a materialist, I believe that whatever makes me "me" is the result of the physics and chemistry of processes inside and around my body. My disbelief in the existence of a soul means that I'm prepared to think that it might be possible for something made by humans to replicate something like whatever process makes me "me."

Ironically, the AI doomers and accelerationists claim that they, too, are materialists – and that's why they're so consumed with the idea of machine superintelligence. But it's precisely because I'm a materialist that I understand these hypotheticals about self-aware software are less important and less urgent than the material lives of people today.

It's because I'm a materialist that my primary concerns about AI are things like the climate impact of AI data-centers and the human impact of biased, opaque, incompetent and unfit algorithmic systems – not science fiction-inspired, self-induced panics over the human race being enslaved by our robot overlords.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/27/10-types-of-people/#taking-up-a-lot-of-space

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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lllivia · 3 months

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"I kinda knew you had a thing for me"

Shauna Shipman x f!reader

summary: Shauna comforts you after you and your boyfriend break up

Warnings: not proofread, slowburn, prb cringy and cliche

"Shauna!" you call as you knock on her front door for what feels like the 100th time.

"Shauna are you home?"

Sighing you stand up on the tip of your toes to look through the window of her door and into the hallway for any sign of her, nothing.

With your red, puffy eyes you scan around for just one more second before giving up and sitting down on the stairs in front of your best friend's house, feeling too sad and exhausted to go home.

"Y/n?? What are you doing here? You said you were going to Tom's house today"

Shauna asks as she jogs up towards her yard, still clad in her well known yellowjackets uniform with a worried frown on her face as she sees you sitting with your knees drawn up towards your chest and the hood of your jacket pulled up over your hair.

"He broke up with me" was the quiet response she got in a low and broken voice as you look up from your lap. "I went over to his house earlier this morning and the only thing he said was that he didn't see our relationship going on any further and that he has found a girl that makes him happier than I ever have" you continue and sniffle as you try to hold in the inevitable crocodile tears.

"Oh sweetie" Shauna said and pulls you up, embracing you tightly into her arms and gently leading your head into the crook of her neck as you cry.

Despite just coming back from soccer practice she still managed to smell like her signature vanilla perfume comforted you.

"I don't know what I'm going to do, we've been together since 8th grade and I've practically surrounded all my life around him ever since then!" You squeeze her tightly and sob, finally letting all your emotions out after holding them in check since you left his house.

Shauna rubs your back and lets you cry into her shoulder for a couple of minutes before softly speaking up and turning your head to meet her eyes by taking a hold of your tearsoaked chin. "Y/n, baby?... How about we go to the diner down by the old bowling alley and get something to eat, maybe it'll make you feel better with some food in your system"

"Mm yeah.. yeah that sounds good" you sigh and step back, wiping your eyes on the sleeve of your jacket and directing a wavering smile up at Shauna.

"Let me just quickly take a shower and get changed first"

You sit in silence the first half hour, slowly eating your food as you listen to the 80s music silently jamming in the background.

You're not even completely sure why you're feeling this way, you and Chris had been fading away from each other for months now, and you knew that it was only a matter of time until you finally broke up your stereotypical high school relationship.

Other than that you were also starting to feel like the romantic emotions you had for him hadn't even been sincere for a while, the only thing keeping you from leaving was the emptyness you would be left with after so many years with a boyfriend.

"...are you feeling any better yet y/n?" Shauna speaks up after a while, breaking the tense silence as she notices how your gaze had drifted off into space.

"Hm? Oh yeah, thanks Shauny, I really needed this" you say, smiling up at your friend and blushing slightly in embarrassment as you get back from your thoughts.

She nods pitifully. "Of course sweetie, I know how hard this must have been for you" She says and reaches over the table for your hand, running her thumb over the softness of your flesh. Her own thoughts running wild as she thinks of all the times she secretly wrote in her journal about how she wished for this to happen.

Your smile widens. "I'm really happy to have you in my life Shauna, you're the best friend anyone could ever wish for"

"Of course y/n, yk I would do anything for you, anything" She says still smiling sweetly as she tightens her grip on your hand almost possessively, not noticing herself do so.

All you can do at the gesture is look away, slightly flustered as you try to think nothing of it.. You didn't want to admit it, even to yourself, but the last couple of months while your feelings were fading for Tom, they were embarrassingly growing for Shauna, everything she does - every lingering touch she leaves on your arm or when you catch her staring in your direction before she turns away, saying you had something on your face, they all make you feel all tingly and warm inside, you knew that you'd somehow managed to obtain a crush on her, but that didn't mean she had to know, you weren't even sure she liked girls, and if she did then the first person she would go for was probably her teammate Jackie.

"Fuuck, you know exactly how to get me in a better mood Shauny, I love this place above anything else!" you say, mouth still full of the sweet buttery dough and eyes filled with laughter at something Shauna just said.

You'd already been at the diner for a little over an hour now and your plates were starting to empty.

"Of course" She giggles, she'd quickly turned your mood from a 0 to a 100 real quick.

"Wanna get out of here? I'll pay the bill for us m'lady" she says and jokingly winks before almost knocking over her water glass. "Oh shit!"

You only start to laugh again, the thoughts of your now ex dissipating into thin air.

"Ok, follow me home?" You ask after your breath slowly returns to your lungs. "Yeah, sure" Shauna smiles back before paying the bill and grabbing her jacket as you head outside.

"So, you think you'll be okay? He meant a lot to you, didn't he" She says from her spot on the sidewalk beside you, her fingers anxiously playing in the pockets of her flannel as she tries to sound like she wasn't slightly bitter about your relationship.

You guys had always been super close, having been friends since the first day of elementary school, but one thing you never really spoke about was relationships, it had become a sort of unspoken rule that you guys had after Shauna once got unreasonably angry when you tried to tell her about the first time you made out with Tom.

"I'll be fine.. I think I'm mostly just kind of surprised, I always thought I would be the one to break up with him" you joke awkwardly and glance down at your shoes.

"And I think this was actually a good thing in the long run, we both had very different views on everything and I think I deserve to be with someone who loves me for who I actually am and not who I'm pretending to be."

Shauna quickly glances over at you, her mouth opening slightly to say something before she closes it again, deciding against whatever it was.

As the minutes go by in what feels like mere seconds, you eventually reach your house.

"Thanks again Shauny, you really helped me take my mind off of things" you say.

"I wouldn't have done anything less" she responds, her eyes flickering down onto the lower part of your face and she seems to hesitate for what she wants to say next. "I.. I want to tell you something" she finally continues after a painful couple of moments.

"Are you feeling alright Shauna-" You start to say, a crease forming between your eyebrows as you notice her shuffling around.

"I like you"

Silence.

She tucks a strand of dark hair behind her ear nervously. "I'm sorry that I'm suddenly saying this now but I really like you, like as more than a friend" she rambles "I've liked you for so long now, and I just can't go around pretending like I don't anymore. I know this is selfish of me to admit on the same day you got broken up with and I'm sure this is really confusing but I just had to tell you how I feel before some other stupid guy decides to see what I see in you and swoop you of your feet before I even get a chance to say something" She finishes slightly out of breath and considers running for it when you don't immediately respond.

"I like you too"

She looks up to meet your eyes once more, not believing what she just heard had come out of your mouth.

"What? But-"

This time it was your turn to interrupt her as you grin up at her. "Just kiss me"

Giggling you start leaning towards her, poking her arm when she just continues to stand still, seemingly shell shocked.

Her attention immediately gets drawn back to you before she pulls you towards her, arms quickly wrapping themselves around your waist as she not so carefully slams her lips onto yours, making you both stumble slightly. Her lips slightly chapped against yours as her teeth catch onto your lower lip.

You continue kissing outside your front door until you have to pull away for air feeling starstruck and dizzy.

"Well.. I kinda knew you had a thing for me" Shauna says, her arms still wrapped tightly around you as she smirks in a cocky manner, seemingly forgetting that she was about to start sobbing on your doorstep just a couple of minutes ago.

"Shut up dumbass"

a/n: please tell me if there's anything I can improve with my writing as I haven't written anything in a year.

This was all written at 1 in the morning so if anything is kinda confusing it's probably bcs I'm about to fall asleep 😭

Also if you liked this feel free to send requests, I really don't know what to write about 😍🙏