As a lifelong practitioner of the dark art of software development, I'm very familiar with the concept of unintended recursion. In my world it usually results in spectacular crashes, "freezing", or the condition that spawned the name of programmer's Mecca, stack overflow. Since AI was created by humans, it's not surprising that it has human foibles built in. Some 25 or 30 years back, I had a client who wanted me to create software that could manufacture articles for websites in order to garner page views that he could use to create a cash cow from advertising. I declined for many reasons, but there are still a plethora of such folks around, always looking for a new way to get rich with minimal effort.
Oh, absolutely. This is merely a 'what if' based on some (tentative) research. There's plenty of stuff that can nudge things on another trajectory, from top-down regulations over bottom-up writer collectives to black swans like alternative machine learning architectures.
You somehow managed to write that whole article without using the word ‘conformity.’ Humanity already does a pretty good job chopping the tails off without AI/LLM. “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.” Now, how to be a useful bent nail? :)
As a lifelong practitioner of the dark art of software development, I'm very familiar with the concept of unintended recursion. In my world it usually results in spectacular crashes, "freezing", or the condition that spawned the name of programmer's Mecca, stack overflow. Since AI was created by humans, it's not surprising that it has human foibles built in. Some 25 or 30 years back, I had a client who wanted me to create software that could manufacture articles for websites in order to garner page views that he could use to create a cash cow from advertising. I declined for many reasons, but there are still a plethora of such folks around, always looking for a new way to get rich with minimal effort.
Well, in some twisted way that client was ahead of the curve ;).
It's a fair point to be concerned about. Still early days, still many considerations.
Oh, absolutely. This is merely a 'what if' based on some (tentative) research. There's plenty of stuff that can nudge things on another trajectory, from top-down regulations over bottom-up writer collectives to black swans like alternative machine learning architectures.
I agree. Devaluation to the lowest common denominators will be quick, driven by our laziness.
You somehow managed to write that whole article without using the word ‘conformity.’ Humanity already does a pretty good job chopping the tails off without AI/LLM. “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.” Now, how to be a useful bent nail? :)
'Tyranny of the average' comes pretty close, no ;)?
A useful bent nail 1) annoys hammers, and 2) holds up a painting of a better world.