Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Old man yells at cloud...

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Old man yells at cloud...

    Sorry, I just need to vent a bit...

    Reading about this ChatGPT and seeing how society is going got me worried. For years we have been seeing a drop in the quality of students; the level of education is dropping - and this is something observed in different countries (pandemic made it even worse). More and more media is biased, more and more information is mixed with misinformation and it is just getting worse. Everything got so superficial...

    The ChatGPT is heralded as the next big thing, but you already see its abuse. It was intended as a tool to write texts, NOT as a tool to consolidate knowledge, yet everyone is using it for the latter. Already one judge in Columbia has used ChatGPT to get informed on similar cases; the AI manages to pass some bar exams (barely but it manages) and school tests. But it does not know anything. It read billions of text so it can construct texts; its "knowledge" is a mixture of facts, fiction, propaganda and misinformation which it does not interpret but just combines. And now people will use it as a main source of text-writing and information. Even Google's advertisement for the competitor Bard made this mistake: it claimed that the James Webb telescope made the first photo of an exoplanet. Wrong facts (first photo was by an observatory in 2004), but even they used it ... in an advertisement. Alphabet's stock dropped 9% as a result, Microsoft's stock increased 3%, even though ChatGPT also makes similar errors. The press verifying facts already was out of the window, now I see it happening that the AI will be used for verification, which will give completely wrong results. The AI says its is so, so it must be true. The Dunning-Kruger effect will just get more enhanced: people think they have knowledge because they read a 2 paragraph text the AI presented them on the topic. And they can even write a 4 paragraph text on the topic: just ask the AI! It already is impossible to have good discussions as people stopped acknowledging knowledge and education; their feeling of the topic is just as true as your knowledge! (forgot who wrote: "my ignorance is as good as your knowledge"). I see on some forums how excited people are about it, but those are then the people that do not manage to write a single sentence without errors in their native language... And they don't even bother to properly read the article they comment on - or they don't grasp it. It is worrying and scary.

    And now in this world try to judge people's knowledge or work... In universities or schools... A lot of the time you have to ask students to write some text, in order to gain a knowledge of their understanding. It is not practically doable to question each student individually. And there are no tools that can identify AI texts from real text (the tool that was announced has very poor accuracy). The students often think that the point of exercises is the answer... it is not... the point is developing the process that allows you to find the answer. But if they have all answers just a question to ChatGPT away (at least, that is what they think), they will not be challenged to find the answers or think about it themselves. No process... no personal development...

    I can acknowledge that knowledge and skills disappear: we have much less blacksmiths now than centuries ago. Self-driving cars will make people loose driving skills, but that is not a loss in a world with self-driving cars. Young people now don't who how to set SCSI ids, but it does not matter now anyway. However, knowledge processing, language skills, reasoning skills, retaining learned knowledge, etc. are fundamental. Now, to me, it seems these skills are under threat... even more so than before. Everyone will think they are an expert, and just a small unheard group really will be.

    Maybe I'm too pessimistic on it, but I'm really fearful of the future. The Wall-E world, were people are just mindless beings barely able to walk or think, seems closer and closer...

    PS: an interesting read on issues with AI - there may be NSFW photos depending on how strict your workplace is, or ironically if they use AI to judge it: https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...y-women-bodies; it illustrates one issue, but similar problems are with all AI systems...
    Last edited by VJ; 9 February 2023, 09:13.
    pixar
    Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die tomorrow. (James Dean)

  • #2
    AI is just the latest version of digital brain rot. A recent paper recommended kids not be allowed on social media until they're 16. Mass bullying is a problem, made worse by politicization.
    Dr. Mordrid
    ----------------------------
    An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.

    I carry a gun because I can't throw a rock 1,250 fps

    Comment


    • #3
      Tbh, I think it is mosty showing we're just getting old. I think many had similar sentiments when the pocket calculator was introduced and word processors were expected to affect spelling adversely etc. Change is the only constant in the world.

      I liked the The Guardian article. I think, however, it is not an issue with AI itself but rather that we, people, on average judge pictures of females as sexual way easier and, separately, that it may be very hard for AI to "predict exceptions". I'm not even sure the AI would recognize the dude with the bra as a male (whatever that means nowadays, rofl). So I guess I am saying AI reflects humans without nuance pretty well.
      Join MURCs Distributed Computing effort for Rosetta@Home and help fight Alzheimers, Cancer, Mad Cow disease and rising oil prices.
      [...]the pervading principle and abiding test of good breeding is the requirement of a substantial and patent waste of time. - Veblen

      Comment


      • #4
        There were always shortcuts: hiring other people to write, plagiarism. When my bro was in hi-school and was late for homework, I would just scan encyclopedia, OCR and reword (this was before Wikipedia). The dedicated and curious people will always do their own research.

        I think the other bigger problem is that now many jobs can be automated although this process will take a lot of time. For example I see companies doing things by hand that they could automate with 1990s MS DOS level of technology. I think the smart/creative people will leverage AI like they were able to leverage computers before for calculations, simulations and planning.

        Comment


        • #5
          Read about Mike Judge and Idiocracy. You'll have everything and more in a nutshell.
          "For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism."

          Comment


          • #6
            I'm aware it may come across as me getting old - hence the title... :-)

            But I'm not sure...

            Originally posted by Umfriend View Post
            Tbh, I think it is mosty showing we're just getting old. I think many had similar sentiments when the pocket calculator was introduced and word processors were expected to affect spelling adversely etc. Change is the only constant in the world.

            I liked the The Guardian article. I think, however, it is not an issue with AI itself but rather that we, people, on average judge pictures of females as sexual way easier and, separately, that it may be very hard for AI to "predict exceptions". I'm not even sure the AI would recognize the dude with the bra as a male (whatever that means nowadays, rofl). So I guess I am saying AI reflects humans without nuance pretty well.
            The calculator example is a good one actually: if you see how many people have problems with simple calculations such as 2+3*4, then maybe that shows an issue with the introduction of the calculator. Still, the consequences of that are limited. But now imagine if the introduction of the current AI things cause the same effect on the ability to read texts, gain information, comprehend data, participate in discussions... and worse: if the texts you are presented on news sites already suffer from that as the author (the AI) did not have those skills.
            I agree that the article shows that AI mimics people, but my issue is with the way it will be used and how that will feed back into society. The AI clearly is making errors (e.g. guy with the bra), but images are currently judged by this AI... and this has consequences. A workplace using it could take measures based on these tools, as it all gets automated. Already now people get accounts blocked as some automated system determines inappropriate photos are stored... in a private backup (happens with Onedrive and Google). With this type of dumb text generation, there is a risk truths/falsehoods will get merged even more if no-one takes responsibility and just trusts the AI, and proper information will get rare.


            Originally posted by UtwigMU View Post
            There were always shortcuts: hiring other people to write, plagiarism. When my bro was in hi-school and was late for homework, I would just scan encyclopedia, OCR and reword (this was before Wikipedia). The dedicated and curious people will always do their own research.

            I think the other bigger problem is that now many jobs can be automated although this process will take a lot of time. For example I see companies doing things by hand that they could automate with 1990s MS DOS level of technology. I think the smart/creative people will leverage AI like they were able to leverage computers before for calculations, simulations and planning.
            There always were shortcuts, but the scale of it risks exploding. People faking their way through studies, through work... while the level over everything drops. Your example of the homework did create skills: using ocr, rewording the text (which means comprehending to some extent, writing sentences, ...) even if they were not in the field of the task itself: something was gained. The ability of ChatGPT allows one to fake without any effort and without any gain at all.
            Last edited by VJ; 13 February 2023, 06:39.
            pixar
            Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die tomorrow. (James Dean)

            Comment


            • #7
              I had the skill since then I worked as a freelance graphic designer and did the entire homework for my brother in that particular case. He was super late, it was late evening and due date was next day. He turned out alright and is successful now.

              Comment


              • #8
                Yeah.... still, the scale is different: faking one thing in a whole bunch of things is different from faking it all... At university we also cooperated with some projects where we shouldn't have, but that was mainly due to lack of time.

                And, outside of homework or studies, it is also causing issues for publishers:
                pixar
                Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die tomorrow. (James Dean)

                Comment

                Working...
                X