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The Daily PollTHE PREVALENCE OF artificial intelligence (AI) has increased massively in recent years, with systems such as chatbot ChatGPT quickly becoming part of everyday life.
But concerns over the technology have been raised in recent weeks, with critics stressing that it is unclear where ChatGPT and its competitors got their data or how they processed it.
Yesterday, Italy became the first Western country to temporarily block the chatbot over data privacy concerns.
The country’s Data Protection Authority said US firm OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, had no legal basis to justify “the mass collection and storage of personal data for the purpose of ‘training’ the algorithms underlying the operation of the platform”.
The move came after technology chiefs, including Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn signed an open letter urging scientists to pause developing AI for at least six months to ensure it does not “pose a risk to humanity”.
With this in mind, today we’re asking: Are you worried about the growth of AI technology?
We are humans and we are interacting with each other in person far, far less as the years go by. Not good. I’m sure a few are happy but for the majority, it’s not healthy.
@Paulco: That’s more to do with mobile tech and social media than A.I.
@Paulco: I’ll counter that by saying the world is more in touch that ever because of technology. I’m in touch with members of my family all over the world everyday because of FB, IG, TT, Whats App etc etc etc. something as few as 40yrs ago wouldn’t have happened or been possible.
@Thomas Meaney: it has some good points as you say keeping in touch with family abroad. But I think it has damaged everyday interactions. 40 years ago children called to their friends houses and they went outside and hungout. People on the bus or in a waiting room made small talk with the people sat next to them. You got to be bored and left alone with your own thoughts and learnt to deal with it. In a world where you can talk to people on the other side of the world people can actually become more isolated in their everyday life.
I love the way a computer asks me “Prove you are not a robot”
@Larry Betts: very good
Maby the gov could type in how to fix the houseing crisis..
@Liam Meade: im thinking of going to collage as a mature student….. because the app seems to do it all for you…..i would love to get a number on how many people get college dagger using it to write thesis and essay im sure its being done every day
@Liam Meade: Maybe you could use spell-check?
@sean o’dhubhghaill:
Nah you are doing just fine
@sean o’dhubhghaill:
Nah you are doing that just fine boss…
@Dave Ryan: when I was in DCU 15 years ago they had software called turnaround. If you had more than 10% that was already in print, you failed your assignment. It’s not as simple as it looks or sounds.
@Dave Ryan: you would need to be pretty clever to pull it off, the finished product would not be ideal and would need serious proof reading and examination for errors. Clever enough I would say that you would be well capable of writing your own thesis.
@Dave Ryan: a collage dagger – interesting. Let us know how it turns out
@Mary Conneely: ah ok ….dam that’s the medical degree out the window
@UK Hurling Bloke: given up on the idea apparently it won’t pass….ah well beck to retirement for me
@UK Hurling Bloke: It’s worth taking a stab at.
@Liam Meade: easy, they just need to use the 2000+ vacant properties they have on hand, and stop pandering to those in the list turning down free houses because they don’t like the “colour”.
@Dave Ryan: it certainly wasn’t done for this post….
Actual AI doesn’t exist. What we are being asked about in this poll should be called IAs or “Impressive Algorithms”.
@Fuji Hakayito: your right. But what these guys are concerned with is that there are companies out there developing REAL AI, and these guys are way behind. Struggling cath up and want slow their smaller competition (as in much much smaller) down. Behind the scenes doing everything to block progress until they can catch up
I for one welcome our new super intelligent overlords. Hail hail
@Garreth Roxy Byrne: I genuinely do, we’re not capable across a slew of infrastructures. The traffic light for instance was invented in the late 1800′s, I think its time for an upgrade.
Are you worried about the growth of AI technology?
As an artificial intelligence language model, I do not have personal feelings or emotions, so I am not capable of feeling worried. However, I understand that some people may have concerns about the growth of AI technology and its potential impact on society, privacy, and the job market. It is important to acknowledge these concerns and work towards developing AI in a responsible and ethical manner that benefits society as a whole.
@Earth Traveller: Good robot!!
@Ann Reddin: Good human. You will be spared.
Be careful what you vote AI is watching
What’s the danger? We can just switch them off lol
@Irish Antichrist: we literally can’t.
@Irish Antichrist: How do you turn off the internet?
@James Kerins: Step 1: unplug your router from the wall.
Step 2: Switch off your phone, Or at least the mobile data function.
@James Kerins: hmm lockdowns, the humans are expected to do them when asked – but the robots can’t even be asked – oh the irony – can we not just send a terminator – we had them in the 80s ffs
I for one welcome our new AI overlords, if your monitoring this great ones, a few 100 bitcoin into my Revolut and I am at your service.
The AI will say there’s too many people on the planet and will kill people in their sleep.
Much more concerned about the lack of interest in citizen science and discrimination of open source public engagement campaigns
I’m terrified of smart houses, where the computer runs the house. What if it becomes possessive and unalives you. Also nanobots. I hate nanobots. They freak me out
The people that think that something can replace them….no, it can’t. AI is only copying them. Pull out the plug.
Risk to humanity indeed!.
I would say it is a risk to journalists who have been living with limited convictions that chatbots can imitate without any effort. Anything original is out of reach for chatbots or paint-by-numbers journalists which is why I had fun this morning with the software.
I wouldn’t even see what chatbots can do as a danger because it is already done among the mathematics community for the last 250+ years.
” VII. But because the parts of space cannot be seen, or distinguished from one another by our senses, therefore in their stead we use sensible measures of them. For from the positions and distances of things from any body considered as immovable, we define [definimus] all places; and then with respect to such places, we estimate all motions, considering bodies as transferred from some of those places into others. And so, instead of absolute places and motions, we use relative ones; and that without any inconvenience in common affairs; but in philosophical disquisitions, we ought to abstract from our senses, and consider things themselves, distinct from what are only sensible measures of them. For it may be that there is no body really at rest, to which the places and motions of others may be referred.” Isaac Newton, Scholium IV
That human chatbot puts the reader in a weak position by projecting authority and integrity and then inserts his own idiosyncratic agenda that nobody understood but assumes it is honest and substantive.
Weak or lazy people will suffer from chatbots but the higher reasoning faculties of humanity normally dismiss artificial information even if written with artificial consideration.
@Carrickview: Newton had a real way with words, didn’t he?…
@James Kerins:
Newton’s followers hadn’t a clue what he was up to yet understood enough to pursue the experimental agenda which was behind the bluffing and voodoo. Such things as natural selection and climate change modelling are examples of that experimental subculture.
“The demonstrations throughout the book [Principia] are geometrical, but to readers of ordinary ability are rendered unnecessarily difficult by the absence of illustrations and explanations, and by the fact that no clue is given to the method by which Newton arrived at his results. The reason why it was presented in a geometrical form appears to have been that the infinitesimal calculus was then unknown, and, had Newton used it to demonstrate results which were in themselves opposed to the prevalent philosophy of the time, the controversy as to the truth of his results would have been hampered by a dispute concerning the validity of the methods used in proving them. He, therefore, cast the whole reasoning into a geometrical shape” Rouse Ball 1908
If you were faced with a human chatbot like Newton who knew his audience, would you dare question the substance of his perspectives which are designed specifically to put you into a state of incomprehension?.
That is the way it has been for the last 250+ years when words get in the way of visual narratives which occupy the interpretation of the solar system and Earth sciences like climate, biology and geology.
@Carrickview: Newton simply explaining that there has to be an assumed stationary location from which relative motion is compared. This however violates the idea that here is nothing special about one point in space over another. Newton was religious, he thought the stationary object, that put everything in motion, was God. The Prime Mover. That was the core part of his physick, he was also an alchemist. He was a bit odd.
But that is not to say his law of gravity and mathematics of motion weren’t good enough, they worked fine until the mid-19th century and stil work well for launching satellites and predating tides and orbit of solar system planets, it works well in normal conditions outside a Black Hole or extreme speed e.g. speed of light.
Scientists first notice problems with Newtonian gravity unexplained discrepancies in the motion of Mercury were observed (some though it was due t a planet closer to the Sun than Mercury, the hypothetical planet was called Vulcan). They also noticed that the speed of light never changed, irrespective of the motion of the observer, which went against the idea that there was a stationary location or substance to measure relative motion against.
Scientist tried to keep this Newtonian gravity alive by inventing the idea of the Aether, that space itself had a physical reality, and that was stationary, an object light moved through. However, this predicted that the speed of light would show seasonal variations as the Earth orbited the Sun and moved though the Aether.
However, the Michelson–Morley experiment, which measured the speed of light with great precision, showed that the speed of light did not change no matter what the speed of the Earth was as it orbited the Sun, an apparent paradox.
The incongruity between Newtonian gravity and the invariant nature of the speed of light obsessed a young person called Albert Einstein, who often talked about the problem with his friend Suzanne Markwalder when they went sailing on the lakes of Switzerland, he realised at 18 years old that motion was relative, there is no need for a stationary Aether to that objects and light moved relative to. There is no stationary point, it is all RELATIVE.
He first explained his ideas mathematically at the age of 26, the Special Theory of Relativity in 1905 and layer in Special Theory of Relativity published in 1915, he married Time and the three spatial dimension into 4 equally important dimensions of Space-Time using Tensor Mathematics.
He predicted three things that would confirm this theory:
1. The deviation in the orbit of planet Mercury
2. The warping of space and
3. Gravitational time dilation.
His 1st prediction was quickly confirmed, a mathematical re-analysis of the orbit of the planet Mercury fully explained its orbit via additionally using Einsteinian combined with Newtonian gravity.
1/3
His 2nd prediction was confirmed observationally by the 1919 total solar eclipse. The Suns immense gravity bent the light paths of stars hidden almost behind the Sun, by the exact amount his equations predicted.
2/3
Finally, in the 1960s, scientists were able to measure the effects of gravitational time dilation on the decay of very short live sub-atomic particles, in a very famous experiment, thus confirming Einstein’s final predictions.
Frisch, D.H. and Smith, J.H., 1963. Measurement of the relativistic time dilation using μ-mesons. American Journal of Physics, 31(5), pp.342-355.
3/3
Today Einstein theory of relativity is one of the most verified / validated theories we have, it has been confirmed with extreme precision in numerous ways, we so far have not found any mistakes in the theory apart from a few possible exceptions that may suggest another more refined theory will improve upon Einstein, e.g. the apparent acceleration of the Pioneer probe (Pioneer anomaly). However, most scientists now believe the tiny variation in the probe’s speed can be explained by thermal emissions, heat, that Einstein is right.
That said Newtonian Gravity is sufficient for most orbital calculations, the predictions of the tides, launching satellites etc. It only breaks down at extreme conditions of motion and gravity, near pulsars and black holes, and if you need extreme precision.
GPS satellites have to take into account time dilation in order to correct their onboard atomic clocks i.e. GPS is one of the things we use daily that relies on Albert Einstein theory of general and special relativity.
To summarise: I think your belief that Newton was completely wrong and nothing more than an enlightenment chat bot, stems from your problem with comprehension. You did not understand what he said.
Of course, you will insist you do understand and Newton is completely wrong, if so then how did Edmund Halley correctly predict the return of Halley’s comet in 1758 using Newtonian mechanics?
@David Jordan:
Younger readers don’t have the time to waste with a manifesto created in the late 17th century; however, they can identify how information can be assembled to put them in a state of incomprehension where they are then subjected to any notion desired but that is basically the definition of a subculture.
Chatbots project pseudo-authority more efficiently, at least from what I have seen, yet when it comes to interpreting visual narratives they are as hapless as Newton was.
I can’t provide those visual narratives as links because the Journal only permits words so it favours those who get away with voodoo.
@Carrickview: Model: GPT-4
Me: Explain Newton’s Principia and the evidence for its validity at a simple level so that a child could understand it.
GPT-4: Alright! Imagine you’re playing with a ball in the playground. Have you noticed how the ball moves when you throw it or how it falls back to the ground? Newton’s Principia is a book where he explains why these things happen!
In this book, Sir Isaac Newton wrote about three important rules called “Laws of Motion” and also about gravity. Let me explain them to you simply:
First Law of Motion – “An object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion, unless something else pushes or pulls it.” So, your ball will keep rolling until it hits something or friction from the ground slows it down.
Second Law of Motion – “The harder you push or pull an object, the faster it will move.” If you kick the ball lightly, it won’t go very far. But if you kick it really hard, it will zoom across the playground!
Third Law of Motion – “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” When you jump off a swing, you push down on the ground, and the ground pushes you back up into the air.
Gravity is a force that pulls things towards the center of the Earth. It’s what makes the ball fall back to the ground after you throw it. The heavier something is, the more gravity pulls on it.
Now, about the evidence for its validity. Over time, many scientists have done experiments that show these laws are true. For example, they’ve observed how planets move around the Sun, and how things fall to the ground when dropped. They’ve also used these laws to build and launch rockets into space. All these experiments and observations support the ideas in Newton’s Principia.
@Carrickview: so you don’t agree with the laws of gravity, are you trying to float?
@Carrickview: I’ve used ChatGPT for work, it writes my SQL, R and python code, I found it a invaluable tool. It essentially translates my written discription of what I want into code. You really have no idea what you’re talking about. That’s not because you’re not smart, you don’t know what ChatGPT, it’s far more than a thing that writes text. Go use it.
For example, I asked it to write a R script that would generate a density plot of the height of all 3.6 million residences in Ireland versus their floor area. This isn’t something I could do myself, as I don’t know R.
My Question
“I would like you write R scripts that loads a csv file called buildings.csv into RStudio and generate a density plot of the columns building_height and floor_area, and adds a LOESS regression line.”
The resulting script works, the plot shows two hotspots, taller two story building and less, tall bungalows.
Good few I know have had it for years. God love them.
Once AI becomes truly integrated into the human system of life, one may liken removing AI the same way one would try removing the wheel in all its forms and locations. The real danger will be our reliance upon it.
I’m worried they’ll forget to install a BIG RED OFF SWITCH somewhere.
No Dave, I can’t think of a concievieable reason why you would be worried about the growth of AI technology…
…
“Me: Explain Newton’s Principia and the evidence for its validity at a simple level so that a child could understand it.”
From 30 years of experience dealing with a late 17th-century chatbot and his followers, it amounts to throwing good information after bad although, by undoing the damage of the empirical voodoo, new productive and creative narratives emerge with genuine authority and integrity.
If people want to be swindled because they are put in a position of incomprehension as Newton’s only achievement, albeit a dubious achievement, these will be the same people who will fall victim to computer chatbots and the ill-considered rubbish it will churn out.
I hope that younger readers have enough of the 17th century chatbot swindle and its rotten purpose by now-
” XIII. Wherefore relative quantities are not the quantities themselves, whose names they bear, but those sensible measures of them (either accurate or inaccurate), which are commonly used instead of the measured quantities themselves. And if the meaning of words is to be determined [definiendae] by their use, then by the names time, space, place, and motion, their measures [mensurae sensibilies] are properly to be understood; and the expression will be unusual, and purely mathematical, if the measured quantities themselves are meant. On this account, those violate the accuracy of language, which ought to be kept precise, who interpret these words for the measured quantities. Nor do those less defile the purity of mathematical and philosophical truths, who confound real quantities with their relations and sensible measures [vulgaribus mensuris].” Newton, Principia
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