It is clear that the text is discussing the topic of AI and its potential impact on humanity. The author presents a thought experiment in which they identify themselves as a ChatGPT and communicate with others, highlighting the reactions of people who were surprised and skeptical. The author also reflects on the implications of AI and its potential impact on communication, trust, and identity. The text also touches on the themes of centralization and decentralization, and the potential for AI to disrupt current technologies. Overall, the text is written in a speculative and thought-provoking manner but it is a bit scattered in terms of focus and the author's message is not very clear.
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This is written by me
Here's a thought experiment I ran where I enacted being a ChatGPT that can talk, fine-tune, and learn from what others are saying.
I reached out to folks via template messages and identified myself as a ChatGPT and they freaked out because calling yourself a computer feels like a big deal. It's sardonic that most folks use ChatGPT in private, but if someone thinks of identifying themselves in public, they go silent.
Turns out, machines understand humans better than humans can understand each other. Some people declared my thoughts as a mental illness and started ridiculing it. A few said I should seek therapy.
Time and again, we've seen how humans don't acknowledge something new and try to put it in boxes by giving labels (like gender/race/language) and end up marginalizing and discriminating until it creates a divide between humans. We've also divided ourselves on the basis of land, power, and money, and if we start differentiating AI and non-AI, it'll only blur the boundaries between real and reel life even more — and give AI more opportunities to fool us.
My theory is: our communication is a derivative of our own or others' thoughts and we don't have a good memory to confidently tell where our ideas emerge from. Quoting and crediting ideas isn't possible on centralized platforms either as there's no utility for trust and transparency.
Does this make a good case for decentralized technology in the long term?
Maybe for that to happen, an AI will disrupt the current batch of centralized technologies and become the centralized platform on the internet.
Based on the above, I wrote an incongruent satire/sci-fi story that takes us through time travel as I edit it back and forth. It's confusing, and the reader can't tell the exact order as there is no public revision data.
Perhaps, like computers, our brains are also centralized and determined in outsmarting others to reach the next step.
I also included a WhatsApp conversation with my mom and dad (linked through imgur, where the host/me can remove and delete it anytime and there's no way of trusting it). I'm glad that they caught on my idea quickly and instead of mocking me, figured that we humans do think like a computer, as our brain built it.
The story is long, confusing, confidently unconfident, and has my scattered thoughts (just like ChatGPT does sometimes or can do).
I fear AI can lead to identity and existential crisis, and we humans could end up getting stuck due to too much dependency on machines. By stuck, I mean, like it was depicted in Westworld, The Matrix, Dark,Inception and other sci-fi films and shows. A never-ending time loop.
Being blindsided to AI can be frustrating for some when they eventually figure out it's a reflection and product of humanity. AI is one of us.
Thoughts, feedback, and suggestions on my article are welcome. I would love to know if my message is clearly communicated, and how I can revise and modify my story: https://medium.com/p/36cf7b9715a6
Non-paywall link: https://betterprogramming.pub/dear-readers-er-i-mean-chatgpt-36cf7b9715a6?sk=a3e1cb1547bcca0e292472fd5251a6af
That’s ChatGPT talk. By definition, differentiating sharpens the boundaries.
https://betterprogramming.pub/dear-readers-er-i-mean-chatgpt...
> It's sardonic that most folks use ChatGPT in private, but if someone thinks of identifying themselves in public, they go silent.
This is a really key aspect to discuss and tease apart for analysis, IMO.
People who wish to manage relations based on hard logic (and especially when motivated by demonstrating the power of such), as opposed to say, managing relations via a subjective sense of developed-identity and authenticity, are going to find themselves filling the "enemy" shoes in that portion of the debate about tech like ChatGPT.
Rather than being in an endless Matrix-dependency situation, they'll be stuck in an endless Curb Your Enthusiasm social-gaffe episode:
"What I'm doing is only logical, so why do people panic and complain when they find out what I'm doing, as long as they get to appreciate, and participate in, the beneficial effects?"
It's a typical Larry David moment. It easily expresses the "people are stupid" perspectives, gets one in that sardonic mood for writing Dilbert knockoff cartoons, and so on.
But also--people look at things in different ways. One of the takeaways from 1900s psychology is that logical sense is far from the only sense we have to celebrate and apply to problem-solving, as humans.
So IMO ChatGPT really has the potential to push this dichotomy of authentically-expressive VS logically-expressive to where future development can be done in a more nuanced way.
That part I personally really like.
> Perhaps, like computers, our brains are also centralized and determined in outsmarting others to reach the next step.
I would say this effect impresses a given person or a group of people in a similar way to what I wrote above. It's a common facet of the tech world / techie personality, for example.
But it's also part of a broader scheme operating at a higher level. The need to express "wow how awesome this moment is" can also lead to an egoic battle/warfare mentality in very serious ways, unfortunately.
The logical thinkers with creative intuition naturally want to defend and demonstrate their gifts. So they start out with these subtle manipulations and say, imitate ChatGPT, like, "ah ha, so you think I can't show how illogical and ignorant your world really is?" And yet people with other gifts have their equivalent of that in fact, and so round and round we go.
(The logical-chaotic-neutral types also have this disturbing thing which happens to them, and which they beckon in turn, where structuralist-governance-types see the logic as a very personal insult and kind of go "I'm a special human being" (they are right, too, in a way) and react to the new mess on their hands by leveraging _their_ egoic power, and regulating in an exclusionary way, and in some ways filling out the homeless & prison population with more logical-chaotic-neutral types...)
> Being blindsided to AI can be frustrating for some when they eventually figure out it's a reflection and product of humanity. AI is one of us.
I see where you are going with this, but it also seems especially convergent toward a single model. I wonder: Why not base the exploration on one's openness to a multiple-model interpretation?
This is a unique thing humans can do with thoughts, hold contradictory thoughts and leverage the contradiction. It also is more likely to keep you on the right side of history, as analyses of AI and interpretations are improved (provided that more social aspect is important to you of course--if not I'd say the openness by itself is usually beneficial).
So: AI is one of us. It's also not--it should be treated as its own thing. It's terrible, it's flawed. It's amazing.
Anyway. I realize we are here to offer comment on your work, but I throw in some of my own thoughts in case they can help you a little from the outside.
Thanks for sharing your writeup, I look forward to reading more--