The Alien
jeferson.me
What the chinese alien experiment can teach us about ourselfs, and also about AI? Maybe people already have discussed this in the past. So discusver with me.

The old-ones of us already have reached some agreement on the “what” is intelligent or not. I wanted to pick this old paper and add some more modern view on it. Hope you like this read.

  • deliriousdreams@fedia.io
    3·
    13 days ago

    I went to a library book sale this weekend and I found a very old book called “Electronic Life: How to Think About Computers,” which was published in I think 1975? I’ve been reading it kind of like how I would read a historical document, and it’s lowkey fascinating.

    There’s a whole paragraph that’s like “okay, find the keyboard. Don’t panic if it has more keys than a typewriter, that’s normal. Really, it’s fine. The extra keys don’t make things harder. It’s FINE”

    Thought this section was particularly interesting: Can the computer create something? At first glance it seems obvious that it can. Animated computer graphics, with their fluid transitions and whiplash perspectives, look strikingly new. And if one watches the machine doing animation work, there seem to be lengthy periods when the computer is acting “on its own.” But if one observes these processes in more detail, it becomes clear that creation is not occurring within the machine. First of all, computer graphics are not unique. Computers have yet to generate anything that cannot be done by hand—and usually already has been done. Second, the apparent ability of the computer to “act on its own” is the outcome of thousands of hours of patient human effort to refine its instructions. The computer can manipulate a shape for us if we have already informed it what a shape is, what the rules for shape manipulation are, what this specific shape is, and so forth. You can start an automobile engine and it will run by itself, too, but that doesn’t mean it’s being creative. It’s just running.

    Somebody in 1975 had a better understanding of why artificial intelligence is not in any way “intelligence” than the majority of today’s intellectual minds.

    This is from a Tumblr post which I’ll link at the end and it’s food for thought. Because the way the general public think about Generative AI LLM’S is absolutely being spun by the people trying to sell it to the masses. That’s why arguments like this don’t get any traction.

    https://www.tumblr.com/smol-blue-bird/718439525090803712?source=share