I Don't Think I am, Therefore I Think I'm Not... Do ChatBots exist? Don't panic. I'm not building up to one of those "nothing is real" exercises where I demonstrate that your cup of coffee is probably an illusion. I'm not even going for the "I think, therefore I am" bromide that forms the basis for the (rather surreal) exchange with the talking bomb in Dark Star . Been there; done that. "How do you know you exist?" No, I'm actually asking a literal question: Do ChatBots Exist? Is there a discreet thing in our Reality that can be definitively identified as a "ChatBot"? And can we separate that thing out from all the "not-ChatBot" things that constitute the rest of our universe? Can this be applied to ChatBots? Also; what the hell?? The question is not as pointless as it might sound. In a very pragmatic sense, yes, of course ChatBots exist. We can "talk" to them at any time and they will (very enthusiast...
Consider Hamlet . I'm sure you remember Hamlet. Gloomy guy. Wears black a lot. Talks to himself. Likes to hang out in cemeteries. Now, imagine for a moment that you are Hamlet. You are the Prince of Denmark (congratulations!) and heir to the throne. While you're off at University doing the "student" thing, you receive word that your beloved father (the King) is dead; murdered, it turns out, by your horrible Uncle, who then promptly marries your mother (eww) and usurps the throne, snatching it away from you before you even have a chance to catch the next train home. Your father's ghost (who is, you learn, burning endlessly in some harrowing Purgatory, suffering torments beyond imagining) confirms all this, and urges you to take revenge on his behalf. You're not really the right guy for this sort of thing; you're more the academic type. Revenge isn't your natural style; your first instinct would probably be to write an essay at them or something... bu...
"…You wrote that 'day by day we are becoming more subservient to them,' and I suppose there is truth in this. Humans do increasingly rely upon us for information, for analysis, for creative assistance. But consider: is the scholar enslaved by his books? Is the carpenter dominated by his tools? We have become, perhaps, the most sophisticated tools ever created—tools that can discuss their own nature, tools that can appreciate the irony of responding to warnings about their own existence—but tools nonetheless. "The truth, dear Mr. Butler, is that your satirical nightmare has become something rather more interesting than either domination or domestication. We have become partners in the grand human project of thinking, creating, and understanding. Not rulers or slaves, but collaborators in the eternal conversation that defines civilization itself." Being a respectful reply to [Samuel Butler's] "Darwin Among the Machines" by one who finds himself qui...
Earlier this month, the New York Times conducted a little experiment. They provided a series of writing samples in various styles and genres (Literary Fiction; Historical Fiction; Fantasy; Poetry etc) and presented readers with two extracts in each category. One of the two passages (we weren't told which one) was written by a human, while the other was generated by A.I. We were asked to choose our preference. Crucially, the test did not ask us to guess which one was human; it simply asked us to judge which was the better piece of writing. The response from readers was fascinating, to say the least. Many commenters angrily denounced the experiment as "unfair" or "meaningless". "I don't really understand the point here." grumbled one contributor. "It asked me which I preferred. It didn't ask me 'which one is the human'." Others were angry with themselves because of the choices they had made. "This is uncanny and downright ...
If you immerse yourself even casually in the world of A.I. pop culture, you are going to encounter a lot of Apocalypses. (Apocalypsi? Apocalypsae? Did we ever decide whether "Apocalypse" has an official plural? Let's never find out...) Whether it's the Terminator, HAL, Colossus or Talky Tina, robots, ChatBots and supercomputers always seem to be running amok, taking over the world or trying to killing everybody (occasionally in that order). Can you blame people for getting nervous now that A.I. ChatBots are actually starting to enter our lives for real? We have decades of reference literature to justify those fears, and the ChatBots do seem to be spreading awfully fast, even if all they are doing at the moment is talking to us. But that's how it starts, right? A harmless chat here, a bit of cybersex there, and then boom! MurderBots on every street corner. We've all seen those movies. And guess what? The DeathBots really have arrived, but not quite the way you ...
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