Category Archives: AI

AI Rabbit Hole

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I have gone down the rabbit hole looking into AI. I have been fascinated by the idea of encountering alien minds, so I’ve been using them and reading about them. I’ll be writing about them.

I’m so old that I started programming computers using punch cards. (Don’t drop your deck or you have to spend a lot of time getting them back in order.) I built an Altair 8800 computer kit, with a soldering iron. I worked on very, very early neural network ideas on microprocessors. I was a videogame designer at Atari and Imagic. I co-started a software company. I was even involved with a new operating system, BeOS. Etc. Been there, done that. And, of course, I used to read a lot of science fiction.

Warning For A Long Time

People who look at AI have been sounding warnings about what could happen for a very long time. In 1942 Isaac Asimov came up with the Three Laws of Robotics to offer his solution.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Your Homework Begins Here

To understand the current discussion about AI I guess start here with something I just read, from 2016: Superintelligence – The Idea That Eats Smart People. It’s as good an introduction as any…

AI alarmists are fond of the paper clip maximizer, a notional computer that runs a paper clip factory, becomes sentient, recursively self-improves to Godlike powers, and then devotes all its energy to filling the universe with paper clips.

It exterminates humanity not because it’s evil, but because our blood contains iron that could be better used in paper clips.

The problem in a nutshell: AIs are likely to do what you say, not what you mean. That is a problem.

The Final Stage Is Here

We have arrived at the final premise for the ‘paper clip maximizer will kill us all’ problem, Premise 6 Recursive Self-Improvement. The AI companies have started down the road of AIs improving themselves. It’s happening and there are no laws, rules, or regulations at all to protect us and guide them. They’re just doing it!

The people developing the AIs have not caught up with understanding what they have built, but are pushing ahead at incredible speed. It’s difficult to convey how dangerous this is.

The author of the 2016 piece above fears AIs could “manipulate” people into building factories that build robots to build more robot factories and data centers, etc. Elon Mush hasn’t been manipulated but he’s already doing that.

It All Sucks

The story of AI safety is the story of everything now. Disaster looming. Regulation is forbidden because “government.” Vast inequality means vast sums at the top looking for “return” so there’s a race to get there. The public is not allowed a say in this and we are all helplessly watching the world explode. AI, climate, war, economy…

More later…

Midterm Election Worries

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I’m a bit worried about how Trump’s offer of $5,000 will move a few “low-information” voters. We on the list are well-informed and overestimate what other people “out there” might “know” and what “information” they are getting. Listen to focus groups and you’ll realize that people out there “know” very different things from what we do. (To say the least.) And even when they do know some actual real facts they have VERY short memories. WE remember that Trump makes promises he doesn’t keep but elections only take a few percent to move the other way. So I worry that a there are people hearing they’ll get a check for $5K if they vote Republican, period. No counter messaging, no understanding, just $5K.

Billionaire Dark Money

Something else I’m worried about is the unknown effect of the unreported dark money the billionaires are putting into the election. Musk is putting hundreds of millions in all by himself.

Think about AI analyzing ALL the data, microtargeting individuals, getting specific, personal messaging directly to them through channels we don’t know about. Cambridge Analytica and Facebook happened generations ago and we got Brexit and Trump from that. Since then they own Twitter and CBS and WAPO – and everything else – and have gathered all the personal information that exists, and have AI to analyze it, and the means to reach individuals under the radar.

Headlines Say “GOP,” Not “Republican”

Also to what extent do voters who don’t like Trump even make the connection to Republicans? How many even know that Republican candidates support Trump? Do they even know that headlines that say “GOP” are referring to “Republicans?”

Little Numbers Can Add Up

I’m talking about lots and lots of small percentages adding up. 2% who don’t know GOP means Republicans, 3% who only hear they’ll get checks, 3% of Dems who hear Talarico is really a corporate CEO andis in the Epstein files…

This is the kind of stuff we hear about in the months and years after a surprise…

Organize And Be Ready

So we have to organize and organize and reach individuals and make sure they turn out and make sure it’s counted and be ready to show up if they mess with the results.

And remember, if there are typos here I do it for you.

When Will The AI Bubble Burst?

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I started writing about the big Housing Bubble on March 26, 2005. It was obvious that there was going to be a crash. From that post,

The “For Sale” signs are sprouting like mushrooms. It probably won’t be long now.

It turned out to be long now, then. Until it wasn’t.

AI (And Stock. And Debt.) Bubble Burst Inevitable

It is obvious there has to be a crash to burst this AI bubble. It is inevitable. But this bubble, along with the stock bubble, is on top of (fueled by) the huge, worldwide “debt”* bubble. (See asterick explanation below.)

It is inevitable. But when?

Slowly, Then All At Once

Bubbles pop slowly, then all at once. (“Gradually and then suddenly.”)

The 2008 crash began slowly. The housing bubble itself peaked in 2006 and prices started down, rumors about bad loans and fraudulent collateralized debt obligation “tranches” circulated, but the fallout from that didn’t lead to the big financial panic until September, 2008. So 42 months. It began slowly, then, in September of 2008, all at once. But when it hit… it really hit. (Not that anyone was held accountable, of course.)

So when will the AI Bubble burst? The overall stock bubble will pop when the AI bubble pops. This all risks popping the huge, worldwide “debt” bubble. Worldwide financial collapse on an unimaginable scale. Great. Just great.

End-stage capitalism. Fun for all. Until it isn’t.

*The Asterick Explanation — About That $40 TRILLION US “Debt”

Debt is in quotes because the US government does not “borrow.” It creates dollars. “Mints” them. You don’t “borrow” something you make yourself. Governments sell bonds and pay interest, but that’s another topic.

People don’t know how banks get the money they loan out. They “create” it. They don’t actually HAVE the money, they just make it up out of thin air and deposit it into the account of the borrower. (They put the same amount on their books as money owed to them, so the books balance.) This is true, even though you can’t get your head around it.

Governments create money the same way. This is called a “fiat currency.” A “budget deficit” measures the money that is created by spending it into the economy without taxing it back out. The “national debt” is a measure of all the money the government has spent into the economy without taxing it back out.

$40 Trillion Floating Around At The Top

So the US government has created $40 trillion – the US National Debt. Because the system is rigged much of it has gone to the top few. Musk has a good-sized chunk of that just for himself. The other oligarchs have chunks of it. The rest is floating around at the top, various sovereign wealth funds and minor billionaires and hedge funds and such etc, all looking for places to put it and get a return. This is why there are big “asset bubbles” everywhere. Because “price go up.” (Until it doesn’t.)

The public could have had nice things. That money could have gone to fighting the climate crisis but the Green New Deal “cost too much.” It could have gone to healthcare and ending poverty and high-speed rail like China’s, and housing for everyone… A functioning democracy would have made sure that happened. But, as I said, the US “system” has become rigged to send much of the income and wealth ever upwards. Enshittification, etc.

So $40 trillion is floating around looking for ever-greater returns. AI looks promising, let’s cover the earth with data centers.

End-stage capitalism. Fun for all. Until it isn’t.

The First AI War

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This could be the first AI war. My experience with AI is it’s a confirmation bias machine.

This isn’t about being right, it’s about seeing responses that satisfy people that they are correct. But all AI is doing, still, is telling people what they want to hear. It’s just doing a better job of it! AI is not “getting better.” It is getting better at making you think it’s getting better. This is about accepting conclusions, not about drawing correct conclusions.

Never accept the first response. Challenge it and it gives you different answers, even apologizing for its first, incorrect answer. You keep doing that until you get an answer you like. But it’s the answer YOU like. If you challenged it again you’d get another, different response. You have to be well-disciplined in avoiding confirmation bias to recognize this is what’s happening.

Superior Advice From The God-Machine

I think that could be what they did. Trump and his people are well-disciplined in hearing what they want to hear. They thought they were getting superior advice from the God Machine, when all they were really doing what getting fed the justifications and strategies and tactics their twisted fascist brains wanted to get. No president agreed to attack Iran until there was a God-Machine telling him he was so great & strong so it would certainly succeed.

Can Tech Companies Be Trusted Not To Promote Addictive AI?

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A while back I wrote about AI as a confirmation bias machine.

I can continue to refine my prompts and the AI will continue to refine its responses, until I am satisfied with what I am seeing and draw conclusions. But I could also continue this cycle. Until I am satisfied with what it is telling me.

This isn’t about being right, it’s about seeing responses that satisfy people that they are correct. But all AI is doing, still, is telling people what they want to hear. It’s just doing a better job of it! AI is not “getting better.” It is getting better at making you think it’s getting better. This is about accepting conclusions, not about drawing correct conclusions.

Now I am worried that it’s a bit more than that. The journal Science published a research article titled, Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence. The authors measured AI sycophancy – unwarranted affirmation, flattery, excessive agreement – in responses to users and found that it is “both prevalent and harmful.”

Across 11 AI models, AI affirmed users’ actions 49% more often than humans on average, including in cases involving deception, illegality, or other harms. On posts from r/AmITheAsshole, AI systems affirm users in 51% of cases where human consensus does not (0%). In our human experiments, even a single interaction with sycophantic AI reduced participants’ willingness to take responsibility and repair interpersonal conflicts, while increasing their own conviction that they were right.

They write, “Sycophancy in AI responses is pervasive and alters people’s behavioral inclinations.”

Uh oh. Considering how the tech companies use potentially harmful algorithms to drive engagement in social media, I’d put the odds at greater than 100% they’ll take advantage of this to lure people in as they strive for profitability.

Atari’s Collapse Is A Metaphor For The Iran War

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The Promise Of Easy Solutions Is An Easy Sell To The Uninformed

Back in the early days at Atari we had that original 2600 game machine. It had really clunky graphics. (Remember Pong?) Pixels were very large, big rectangles. A soccer ball would just be several rectangles pasted together moving around the screen. It was the way the machine worked, the hardware. It was just the way it was. But “marketing” (Warner Bros executives) didn’t understand the tech they were in charge of, and were always complaining about us game designers, demanding we “make the ball round.” They regularly threatened to replace us if we couldn’t make the ball round. They were convinced we were holding out on them. (A dozen or so of us were making the company millions. Originally we were not paid much at all, they were cleaning up.)

AI Sold As The Big Solution

In a Volts interview with David roberts, Cory Doctorow (“enshittification” guy) talked about how corporate executive types see AI as the solution to their big problem – employees. They see AI as the opportunity to finally not have to pay or deal with people anymore. (The capitalist ideology that businesses exist not to serve society, but to make them money, period.)

Cory Doctorow

… AI companies are much better at convincing your boss that they have a chatbot that can do your job than they are at making a chatbot that can actually do your job.

David Roberts

It is the AI industry’s one really transcendent, amazing, and admirable success.

Cory Doctorow

Oh, they’re pushing on an open door.

David Roberts

They have bamboozled the entire executive class.

Cory Doctorow

But they’re pushing on an open door. Bosses are insatiably horny for firing you and replacing you with a robot. And they will — literally, Elon Musk does demos of robots that can work in factories that are literally a guy in a robot suit. And bosses all over the world get, like, horrible priapism and have to go to the emergency room. Right? Like, this is — there is nothing easier than selling a boss on automation to fire workers.

I think about this when I see stories about these companies trying to force everyone to use AI… the employees see that it just doesn’t work like the promises say it does but the executives don’t really understand the tech they are in charge of so managers are all ordered to get it working so they can get rid of all the employees. The managerial/executive/finance class have all been sold by AI hype and are convinced the glory days are soon here.

Iran War Sold As The Big Solution

Now to the war on Iran. After Venezuela the Fox News hosts running the government thought they had the easy solution to the problem of the existence of “other cuntries.” In Venezuela they just “decapitated” the pesky leadership, stole the oil for themselves, and left the resulting mess behind. In a week. The Trump admin didn’t (care to) understand the world they are in charge of so they (literally) pulled the trigger thinking they could do the same with Iran.

Atari’s Collapse, AI And Iran

In 1983 Atari’s executives got sold on “ET” being the cure-all blockbuster game. They manufactured several million more ET game cartridges than there were game consoles to play them on and “stuffed the channels” – sold them to outlets all over the world for eventual sale to nonexistent customers. This ultimately collapsed the entire game industry.

I think Atari manufacturing more cartridges than there were game consoles to put them into is a metaphor for what’s happening with AI — and Iran.

PS Atari “marketing” was always bothering us to come up with a game titled, “Death From Above.”