ozgung · HackerTrans

2 saat öncediscuss

I think a mandatory first thing for any engineer is to learn, understand and commit for life to the Ethics of their profession. It's a shame all these very picky recruitment processes and 'culture' of these giant companies didn't care about ethics and morality.

Relevant articles in IEEE Code of Ethics:

3. to avoid real or perceived conflicts of interest whenever possible, and to disclose them to affected parties when they do exist;

4. to avoid unlawful conduct in professional activities, and to reject bribery in all its forms;

From NSPE Code of Ethics for Engineers:

III.4.b. Engineers shall not, without the consent of all interested parties, participate in or represent an adversary interest in connection with a specific project or proceeding in which the engineer has gained particular specialized knowledge on behalf of a former client or employer.

https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8 https://www.nspe.org/career-growth/nspe-code-ethics-engineer...

ozgung

3 gün öncediscuss

So is this the end? Are we at that point in time where ordinary people are not allowed to use more advanced models? If so this happened sooner than expected. After that point only priveleged few will access and make use of more advanced AI. Public’s access will be restricted, limited and controlled. This will only add to the power asymmetry.

ozgung

3 gün öncediscuss

Also lane assist typically activates after 50-60 km/h (35 mph). I like the feature because it helped me develop the habit of always using blinkers. Most modern cars also have cyclist detection and crash prevention. So I believe these feature are still much safer than a typical driver looking at his phone.

ozgung

4 gün öncediscuss

Banning and burning books is from an era when there was no digital publishing. Only way of distributing text/thoughts was by printing press. Today we don't burn books but we constantly ban/shadow ban digital content. This is independent of which country you are from. Corporations do the censorship mostly, in place of the governments. Try writing a Reddit comment opposing mainstream politics. You are only allowed to play in a sandbox. AI shadow-burns your comments automatically and blacklists you if you go out of your human guiderails. No human dictators to blame. So yes, if this is a dictator thing (I think it is), we all live in a kind of modern dictatorship.

ozgung

13 gün öncediscuss

Good analogy but Brownian motion is not the only type of motion in the nature. Constraints give the direction in a physical system, not humans. Evolution is the best example.

I think objections to the Theory of Evolution and some objections to the feasibility of Artificial Intelligence have many similarities. Most people (because of their world view) assume an “intelligent” Designer is mandatory for organisms to evolve and for nature to work. They assume the nature is “random” and directionless by itself. Only a higher (supernatural) intelligence (God) can give it a “direction”. So “intelligence” is basically an external, supernatural and unexplainable (since its above our nature we don’t have access to it) phenomenon.

The exact same argument applies to AI. But instead of atoms and DNA we have bits and activations. AI is random and directionless. Only a superior intelligence (a human) can give it a direction. Like nature, a computer can’t have intelligence by itself. Intelligence is external, supernatural/supercomputational and unexplainable. You can’t compute it, you can’t understand it, you can’t replicate it.

This is because human intelligence, like God’s intelligence, lives in a supernatural realm. Some people even believe that it’s the same thing as (or a copy of) the divine intelligence. Some others don’t believe that but still have trouble accepting their human intelligence is not a unique phenomenon and not something above this mundane world.

There, I said it. I think without this warning most of the debate and “philosophical” arguments against AI are useless. They are more like wishful thinking, shaped with the world view of the person. It’s about belief and not technical feasibility.

From the technical perspective, most of these rehired Ford folks will be replaced again in a few years. This was about overestimating the short-term effects of the automation. But in the longer term Ford will indeed have much less humans.

BTW, this new trend of “extracting the knowledge of skilled senior workers to replace them” deserves its own name. This is not a good thing for humanity, but this is exactly what they are doing.

ozgung

21 gün öncediscuss

What is the definition of "actual intelligence"? How does it differ from regular intelligence and non-intelligence?

If someone can "design a custom asyncio event loop policy in that overrides get_child_watcher()", I would call that person intelligent. Does that mean that person is not actually intelligent but a mere content creation machine?

Traditionally if you can create content, this shows you're intelligent. Created content is often called "intellectual" property. If a person can understand complex ideas and make connection between them, that is considered intellectual work. You have to be intelligent to do intellectual work. If a person can solve problems, this is also called intelligence. If the person can solve more complex problems, that person is said to have higher intelligence. This is often measured with a scale called IQ (Intelligence Quotient). There are other types of intelligence but they are basically the variations of the same ability. Most definitions of intelligence also involve an ability to adapt into the environment.

Since intelligence is such a broad concept what exactly is the difference between the actual intelligence and AI, other than one is natural and the other one is artificial?

I understand being anti-AI because of the very real societal concerns. But ignoring what is in front of you is not a solution.

ozgung

24 gün öncediscuss

I’d rather buy 60 “overpriced” Instagrams in 2012, or 3 overpriced WhatsApps in 2014 or 1.5 overpriced Twitters in 2022. I can’t tell what’s a bubble and how money works anymore.

ozgung

27 gün öncediscuss

Step 2: Double it 10 times. Now you have billions. Enjoy.

Sadly this is the actual advice in the post.

ozgung

27 gün öncediscuss

That's easy. It just takes another 9 months.

ozgung

27 gün öncediscuss

Yeah math is wrong. She has to wait one more month to be a billionaire since she has a co-founder. So 10 months.

The good news is she can be a trillionaire in another 10 months.

ozgung

27 gün öncediscuss

If your drone can deliver pizza, it can also deliver bombs. The latter always has demand.

ozgung

27 gün öncediscuss

How are the technical interviews these days? Do they still ask Leetcode style questions or is it getting deprecated?

ozgung

27 gün öncediscuss

Well... but the billionaires, or billion dollar companies DO "break rules, abuse labor laws, pay people less than what they’re worth"... also manipulate markets, bribe politicians, evade taxes, sell user data etc. Even Trillionaire(s) and trillion dollar companies do that. Why do they do that then, if the only things they need are those two numbers and a product that people love ^_^?

Because there are more than 2 numbers even in pg's simplistic example. Third number: You make $10K monthly today. How? If your cost is $9.9K this doesn't mean anything right? Everyone can do that. So how you earn that $10K is more important than those other 2 numbers. You want more profit and less cost. That's when you start breaking the rules and doing bad things. You have to compete, and it's easier to win if you cheat. If there are cheaters in the game, they would win the competition, not you. And there are always cheaters in the game.

Silicon Valley's system is different than the rest of the world. They give the founders some sort of an infinite money glitch (for a limited time). They don't care about the third number. They care only about the Growth number. Because what they really care about is the Market Domination. They want to BURN money to BUY that market. In most cases, globally. That's why billions of people in the world are using Facebook's products daily. Not because Zuck had a great idea in his dorm room. Not because Poke feature was that viral. But because US needed to dominate the upcoming social media world. For profit, but more importantly for politics, for gathering information, for tracking people, for controlling (social) media and narrative, for security. So the system funded his startup, along with other similar startups in case any of them becomes the winner. And they didn't give just money, they give all the network, permission and privileges to win.

That's why Hans Zuckerberg from the Berlin startup scene hasn't become a billionaire but Mark did.

This is exactly the same playbook with the AI game today. My 70+ parents at the other side of the World use ChatGPT daily for FREE. They will never be the paying customers of OpenAI. OpenAI gives its expensive services for free, because they want absolute dominance in the global market. They can't lose that. Note that such a game plan is impossible for any company outside of Silicon Valley. Only state-controlled companies can play that game in the rest of the world. But for SV, it's not really clear who's controlling who.

ozgung

28 gün öncediscuss

I used to buy only American Ethics, but Chinese Ethics are becoming pretty good lately for the fraction of the price.

ozgung

29 gün öncediscuss

I feel like I am the only one thinking AI is actually much better than me in the things I'm supposed to do well. I feel like that for years now, so it's not about the latest generation of models. I can't imagine a single thing I can really compete with an AI at this stage. I am not sure if I am under-skilled or others are overconfident. Maybe people who feel like me don't say this out laud.

ozgung

30 gün öncediscuss

After watching a lecture of Dreyfus on Heidegger and skimming his books I think I begin to see what's going on. Hubert Dreyfus teaches a specific set of philosophers beginning with Heidegger. His brother Stuart is an industrial engineer working on programming very early computers (50s) for Operations Research. They both worked at RAND corporation and involved in early "AI" research projects for military. Those AI projects of course were logic based problem solvers of 50s and 60s. But Hubert sees a problem with this work. What they do is incompatible with the philosophical tradition he belongs:

"I began reading NSS's landmark papers with a mixture of excitement and fear. Perhaps Hobbes, Kant, and Husserl were right after all, and the human mind was an analytic engine. But then what about the seemingly plausible arguments of Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein, which I had come to accept? As I read the RAND papers my excitement and fear turned to disappointment and relief."

I think this was more like a cognitive dissonance than an actual contradiction. It was about choosing sides between Heidegger and maybe Descartes for him. That's why his objection sounds personal and dogmatic.

So what was the big idea of Heidegger? Elephant in the room is the concept of "Dasein" (being-there), which Dreyfus think Heidegger is a genius for being the first philosopher noticing that. Dasein is an entity, with special mode of being. Only *human-beings* can be Dasein. So it's not an "object" like a table, that has properties (like in object oriented programming). It's not an equipment like a hammer (objects having methods). Human-beings, and only human-beings (definitely not LLMs, not dogs) can have this special way of being, or Existence. This idea of course has some roots in Christian Theology, as Heidegger himself.

I think this is the reason of the strong opinions. A bit dogmatic. A belief that humans are fundamentally different beings. So an Equipment trying to mimic "Dasein" is categorically wrong (even impossible) in this belief system. The problem doesn't have to be Dasein itself, but you get the idea. It's either-or. If modern AI research is not flawed, their philosophy must be flawed. Since it can't be flawed, AI research must be flawed. Since research is trial and error, failures are the part of the process. But for them, each failure is an "increasing evidence".

ozgung

geçen aydiscuss

For me it's not about the capabilities but what they can be used for. Think of all the recent drama between Anthropic and the Department of War. A real wake up call (especially if you are not a US citizen). Proves that AI is essentially a Surveillance and Warfare technology (which justifies the big valuations).

Or see this simple and fun site: https://hn-wrapped.kadoa.com

AI automatically analyzes all your social media posts in your life and can generate a pretty accurate profile about you in a second. We have no privacy anymore. Social media sites like Reddit already do that for moderation. Others do for more sinister reasons.

Note that Profiling is illegal in many countries. But laws can't protect us anymore.

Yes, it was always possible to that manually. But with AI it's so easy, fast and accurate to do in large scales. A hacker having access to your computer, reading your mails and messages is one thing. An AI reading and analyzing all your mails, messages and data is something different. Doing this for whole demographics (Cambridge Analytica style) is at another level.

ozgung

geçen aydiscuss

> Maybe you can clarify why they are outdated.

The First Edition (1995) of the classic textbook Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Russell and Norvig talks about the criticisms of Dreyfus quite extensively.

In the second edition (2003) they conclude: "In sum, many of the issues Dreyfus has focused on-background commonsense knowledge, the qualification problem, uncertainty, learning, compiled forms of decision making, the importance of considering situated agents rather than disembodied inference engines-have by now been incorporated into standard intelligent agent design. In our view, this is evidence of AI's progress, not of its impossibility."

In the 4th edition (2020) Dreyfus reduces to a paragraph and Heidegger is just a reference in a footnote.

ozgung

geçen aydiscuss

That's my point. Everything from 1927 is already in plain sight and a part of the current public knowledge. Horizon can only be expanded at the cutting edges.

ozgung

geçen aydiscuss

> I highly recommend people in the AI research space should read philosophy and modern linguistics.

On the contrary, I highly recommend people in Philosophy of mind and linguistics should start reading AI research papers because their theories and ideas are highly outdated, even ancient. Your books are from 1927 and 1972 respectively and Turing's article is from 1950s. And they are relatively new with respect to other works in Philosophy.

If one doesn't adequately understand what we have in 2026, how can they theorize about it? As others they don't understand how the mind/brain work, BUT ALSO they don't understand how the AI works.

Also with this mindset that we can't understand seemingly complicated things, there would be no advancement in science and technology.

I think philosophy people and Linguist will catch up in a century, like they did with Turing. Philosophers of this century are not in humanities or literature. They are in science and engineering.

Heidegger was trained on priesthood and Theology. You should read greater minds like Hinton, LeCun etc. if you want to think on these things. They are the real Philosophers.