In my previous post about Anthropic's Project Vend, I argued that the much-discussed failure of this experiment was primarily a system design issue rather than the result of specific AI issues.
100% agree about the dangers of treating AI as anything other than a useful tool, but I couldn't help being reminded of B.F. Skinner's quote:
"The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man."
We still don't really know what consciousness is, but humans do seem to act in accordance with various clashing algorithms (i.e. conceptually not so far from "a system that manipulates symbols without understanding their meaning"?)
And "constructing an elaborate rationalization..." in an "attempt to maintain coherence in its outputs despite contradictory inputs" sounds like a lot of voters these days!...
100% agree about the dangers of treating AI as anything other than a useful tool, but I couldn't help being reminded of B.F. Skinner's quote:
"The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man."
We still don't really know what consciousness is, but humans do seem to act in accordance with various clashing algorithms (i.e. conceptually not so far from "a system that manipulates symbols without understanding their meaning"?)
And "constructing an elaborate rationalization..." in an "attempt to maintain coherence in its outputs despite contradictory inputs" sounds like a lot of voters these days!...