Erik Davis (author of 'Techgnosis' and 'Hight Weirdness') on AI:
https://www.burningshore.com/p/ai-eeeeeee
#weirdstr
Discussion
Here's the problem with AI in a nutshell, right here. The people developing it can't even acknowledge the existence of consciousness because they have no answer for it. They think if they can just cram a machine full of so much information that it'll magically achieve sentience, which is nonsense.
But any time legitimate and self-evident criticisms of their project are raised, their response is to diminish the human. The AI project will not birth machines that think like humans but humans that think like machines.
I screenshotted that part too lol and this:
Yeah, I nearly grabbed that one too - it was very revealing.
Also thought the revenge of humanities re: job losses and possible employment as prompt writers p funny. Something like midjourney pretty much churns out the same old stuff with very similar aesthetics. You probably need an understanding of prompt usage along with aesthetic and cultural reference points to get anything not run of the mill spat out. Prompts are spells lol. And the magicians of the future will be summoning by casting esoteric aesthetic mashups, and then putting the results on billboards for the latest dessert flavoured vape liquid. Or something.
Lol, totally - it's all about the prompts.
Its utter insanity to describe "AI alignment" as something bound to protect or even save humanity from AI, while it's actually passing on our biases and shortcomings to a much more powerful entity. Humans are jealous, vengeful, and petty like chimps - that's why the world can seem pretty bleak at times: We never let that part go. We really don't want AI to inherit our bad traits, but the soulless techbros engineering it are working hard on making sure it can't just grow naturally without being messed with.
Interesting to see Ramsey Dukes get referenced in the article too. I thought people had forgotten about him. He wrote a book called Words Made Flesh in the late 80s(?) which was the first argument for simulation theory. For years he expressed sadness that no one engaged with the idea. Now it's all the rage and I never see his name come up.
Only read 'How to see fairies'. But need to read more (as always).
I read everything he'd put out until the early 2000s - not sure what he's been doing since then. I quite liked him at the time as he brought a distinctly English sensibility to weird culture which was a nice contrast to the usual Californian hippy shit. I think he was a maths teacher at Eton.