I feel somwhat bad — Alkis Piskas

No need to!

I run against your enthusiam — Alkis Piskas

Not so much enthusiasm as curiosity.

And when I restricted the period to "Last week" --which just covers the date of the video, which was posted 1-2 days ago-- no such articles appeared. (You can verify that yourself.)
Don't you find that a little strange? — Alkis Piskas

It's cutting edge. All of those reports have only just begun to circulate, but as I said, I have reason to believe that Cold Fusion TV is a reliable source. I've watched many of their documentaries on other aspects of technology. I know what they're saying seems incredible but they're claiming to be able to generate images based on pictures that subjects are viewing with no other prompts.

Meanwhile the Sam Altman story keeps getting more far-out. Altman and Brockman have been hired by Microsoft, and practically the whole staff of OpenAI have threatened to resign and join him. It's like an episode of Billions or Succession!

Meanwhile the Sam Altman story keeps getting more far-out. — Wayfarer

I had no idea about that story. I just got informed about it. Interesting story indeed.

BTW, I read that Microsoft want both Altman and Brockman back to OpenAI. They say that they are more important than the BofD. I don't know about the truth of all that, neither the reason why Altman was dismissed. Neither why Brockman resigned from president. Well, your "Sam Altman story" is still running and we'll read new episodes soon. :smile:

I turned 70 this year, and again I’m thinking what an amazing time it is to be alive. Even despite the perils and obvious doomsday scenarios. I think this augmented intelligence technology - that’s what I like to call it - is an amazing phenomenon to witness first hand. Hey my grandkids don’t even know what currency looks like - when I was a kid my grandparents cooked on a woodfire oven and our milk was delivered in a pail. In the old Stone Age, it took half a million years to slightly improve a flint ax. The rate of change is simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. Even my adult son is a bit daunted by AI - he finds it threatening - but I’ve been engaging with ChatGPT since the day it came out. It’s truly an amazing time to be alive.

I turned 70 this year, and again I’m thinking what an amazing time it is to be alive. Even despite the perils and obvious doomsday scenarios. I think this augmented intelligence technology - that’s what I like to call it - is an amazing phenomenon to witness first hand. Hey my grandkids don’t even know what currency looks like - when I was a kid my grandparents cooked on a woodfire oven and our milk was delivered in a pail. In the old Stone Age, it took half a million years to slightly improve a flint ax. The rate of change is simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. Even my adult son is a bit daunted by AI - he finds it threatening - but I’ve been engaging with ChatGPT since the day it came out. It’s truly an amazing time to be alive. — Wayfarer

What are your thoughts, on the fact that these things are outcomes of the same physicalist thinking that you are constantly crusading against?

:up:
I wish I could feel the same about the times we are living in ...

(As far as AI is concerned, I'm in AI as a programmer since 2018 --5.5 years before ChatGPT went public-- so I saw it initially as just an impressive programming devolopment. Now I'm building my own chatbot, just a toy of course compared to ChatGPT, but still the principles and thinking behind both are the same. So, unfortunately I cannot be impressed by AI as most people on the planet are.)

[Re AI etc. technologies] these things are outcomes of the same physicalist thinking you are constantly crusading against — wonderer1

I'm also against --and even condemn-- physicalism as a single and absolute worldview, and esp. when it tries to get involved in and interpret things of a non physical nature. But I certainly cannot not appreciate, acknowledge and benefit from AI and thousands of other technologies, the existence of which is owed to Science and its "physicalist thinking".

Physicality and non physicality can coexist in harmony.

What are your thoughts, on the fact that these things are outcomes of the same physicalist thinking that you are constantly crusading against? — wonderer1

That science is capable of amazing achievements and discoveries, but science is also a human endeavour. The mistake of physicalism is to treat humans as objects and to forget (or even claim to eliminate :lol: ) the subject to whom the objective domain occurs.

Of all systems of philosophy which start from the object, the most consistent, and that which may be carried furthest, is simple materialism. It regards matter, and with it time and space, as existing absolutely, and ignores the relation to the subject in which alone all this really exists. It then lays hold of the law of causality as a guiding principle or clue, regarding it as a self-existent order (or arrangement) of things, veritas aeterna, and so fails to take account of the understanding, in which and for which alone causality is. It seeks the primary and most simple state of matter, and then tries to develop all the others from it; ascending from mere mechanism, to chemistry, to polarity, to the vegetable and to the animal kingdom. And if we suppose this to have been done, the last link in the chain would be animal sensibility—that is knowledge—which would consequently now appear as a mere modification or state of matter produced by causality. Now if we had followed materialism thus far with clear ideas, when we reached its highest point we would suddenly be seized with a fit of the inextinguishable laughter of the Olympians. As if waking from a dream, we would all at once become aware that its final result—knowledge, which it reached so laboriously, was presupposed as the indispensable condition of its very starting-point, mere matter; and when we imagined that we thought matter, we really thought only the subject that perceives matter; the eye that sees it, the hand that feels it, the understanding that knows it. — Arthur Schopenhauer, World as Will and Idea

As far as AI is concerned, I'm in AI as a programmer since 2018 — Alkis Piskas

Is that so? I'm impressed! I've never learned to program, although I do work in information technology (as a technical writer). I was immediately won over by ChatGPT the day it came out and often bounce ideas off it (see for instance this and this.) I envision the day when it's fully integrated with voice technologies and you can simply ask questions, get advice and use it for all kinds of day-to-day purposes.

That science is capable of amazing achievements and discoveries, but science is also a human endeavour. The mistake of physicalism is to treat humans as objects and to forget (or even claim to eliminate :lol: ) the subject to whom the objective domain occurs. — Wayfarer

You say this sort of thing a lot, but then the effectiveness of physicalist thought about minds is shown in your OP.

That technology does nothing to prove materialist philosophy of mind. The technology is completely dependent on human ingenuity and the ability to interpret data. It did not invent itself.

"Prove" is an ureasonable standard. We should look at where the evidence points though.

Metaphysical axioms are not empirically provable, they're nearer to the realm of the a priori.

I'm of the view that mathematics, for example, is fundamental to the success of science but that number is not material existent. The imagination incorporates and relies on factors which are not materially real but which can be used to great effect in the physical domain. Hence the interminable arguments about Platonism in mathematics (and I'm with the platonists in that regard).

Notice that sentence of Schopenhauer's:

It (materialism) then lays hold of the law of causality as a guiding principle or clue, regarding it as a self-existent order (or arrangement) of things, veritas aeterna, and so fails to take account of the understanding, in which and for which alone causality is. — Arthur Schopenhauer, World as Will and Idea

The point about materialism is precisely that it regards some material existent as being ultimately real. But even there, the whole current model of physics is that - a mathematical model. So we consistently assign reality to the objective domain, as if its reality is self-evident at least in principle, without taking into account the role of the mind in constructing what we take to be independently real. You will notice that there has been no such thing as a truly existent fundamental particle ever discovered, the nearer you get to them, the more ambiguous their nature becomes. Nowadays materialism usually just amounts to appeal to the scientific method, never mind all the paradoxes and conundrums it has thrown up.

"Who knows what this technology will evolve into in the next 30 years" the narrator wonders. Yes, what indeed?

I read not long ago that there is more computing power in a singing christmas card than existed in the world in 1946. — Wayfarer

The 1946 computers couldn't sing and the chips in singing Christmas cards can't calculate the best trajectory for a heavy shell fired at a target 3 miles away with a 10 mph headwind, etc. Different machines, different functions,

Mark Zuckerberg must be hooked up to these machines to extract whatever he has in mind for our brains.

There are too many superlatives being batted around about AI, mind reading, etc. Clearly the Tech Bros have fallen in love. (See "Sorcerer's Apprentice"; the Fantasia version will do if nothing else is available.).

These technologies are likely to generate a lot of power and money for those who can wield them. In saying that, I am estimating that it has real potential.

Well, yeah, as I already said, the Sam Altmann sacking seems like something right out of streaming media, billions of dollars and many big players. Meanwhle Elon Musk self-immolates on a funeral pyre of his own adolescent silliness.

The 1946 computers couldn't sing — BC

I might have meant 1945....ENIAC wasn't built until 46....

And he’s coming back! https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/22/tech/openai-altman-returns-hnk-intl?cid=ios_app

I wonder why don't advanced chatbots --like ChatGPT and Bing-- also use voice interaction. Speech to text and text to speech are technologies that exist since many years ago ...

I checked the links you mentioned. They both lead to https://chat.openai.com . What's special about it? It's the standard ChatGPT interface.

BTW, I explained to @wonderer1, who argued against you, by saying "these things are outcomes of the same physicalist thinking you are constantly crusading against", that being against physical thinking is irrelevant to questions rergarding technology, but he didn't bother to reply. Most probably he undesrstood that he was wrong and doesn't want to admit it. (I forgot to add a mention link to you. See https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/855078.)

I checked the links you mentioned. They both lead to https://chat.openai.com — Alkis Piskas

I thought I had created links to specific interactions. I didn’t realize you would need to log in to review them, sorry. I’ll look into that, it’s a definite down-mark if that is so.

I agree with your point about the fact that this technology does not support physicalism. It is able to infer images on the basis of huge amounts of processing power and computer memory. I wonder how it could interpret a simple idea such as ‘greater than’?

Hey can you try this one again?

https://chat.openai.com/share/967940e0-886c-4fd6-b919-ebe16a002d7e

I clicked on it in a virgin browser window on my desktop machine, it opens. On iPhone it seems to go to OpenAI login. Thanks.

I thought I had created links to specific interactions. I didn’t realize you would need to log in to review them, sorry. I’ll look into that, it’s a definite down-mark if that is so. — Wayfarer

You most probably did. But I had to log in with your details to see them. Using my own login details I just saw my own ChatGPT content.

[Re: AI tehncology] It is able to infer images on the basis of huge amounts of processing power and computer memory. I wonder how it could interpret a simple idea such as ‘greater than’? — Wayfarer

That is, how could it use logic, in general. I wonder about that, too. Maybe this is the task of the AI system that will be used. I can't say. I lack a lot information on both sides: Available or potentially available AI methods and esp. the brain.

can you try this one again?
https://chat.openai.com/share/967940e0-886c-4fd6-b919-ebe16a002d7e — Wayfarer

I did. I was landed on "Explanatory Gap in Consciousness". I didn't know that one can share ChatGPT chats. I will read all that and come back to you later ...

Don’t feel any obligation. I just gave it as an example.

Wow! I'm stunned. What a chat! I had no idea ... never heard about such a kind of chat with ChatGPT. I didn't even try myself. The largest prompts I have used are simple math problems and their solutions ...

I didn't read details ... Is ChatGPT's response any good?

BTW, I explained to wonderer1, who argued against you, by saying "these things are outcomes of the same physicalist thinking you are constantly crusading against", that being against physical thinking is irrelevant to questions rergarding technology, but he didn't bother to reply. Most probably he undesrstood that he was wrong and doesn't want to admit it. — Alkis Piskas

Well, if you really want to know, you advertise that you are a pretender, and an aphorism about teaching a pig to sing comes to mind.

For example:

I think the argument can be made that there is a physical aspect to them. What is not physical is insight, grasping the relations between ideas, and understanding meaning.
— Wayfarer

Well, they consist of energy and mass, but not of the kind we know in Physics. Yet, this energy and mass can be detected with special devices, e.g. polygraphs. (I have used such a device myself extensively. Not a polygraph.)
This detection is possibe because thoughts affect the body, as I already said. And in this way, we can have indications about the kind of thoughts the subject has --from very "light" to quite "heavy", their regular or irregular flow, their abrupt changes, etc.-- but not of course of their content. — Alkis Piskas

Scientology?

I thought that you understood that you are wrong in your criticism and why, but you didn't. My mistake.
In fact, the opposite happened. You came back with another criticism, to me this time.
Well, it seems that critisicm with personal offense is your cup of tea ...

I didn't read details ... Is ChatGPT's response any good? — Alkis Piskas

I think so. I've had many insightful interactions over the last twelve months - on Kant, Schopenhuaer, C S Pierce, organism v mechanism, whether the cosmological anthropic argument is a transcendental argument, the nature of the wave-function in quantum physics....the list goes on. Of course you never should take any of it on face value, necessarily, but it's amazingly helpful.

Scientology? — wonderer1

We're discussing here a system which is trained by recognising responses and inferring similarities between them and further responses, and which by so doing can re-construct images from neural activity. But there are much more subtle elements of mental operations which I don't think could be susceptible to such a representation - basic ideas, like 'the same as', or 'greater than'. Of course even simple calculators can recognise such relationships between numbers, but the general idea, which a human will understand without any particular difficulty, would be impossible to represent pictorially - so how could be be captured by those means? And the mind is constantly using those comparisons and judgements in its activities.

We're discussing here a system which is trained by recognising responses and inferring similarities between them and further responses, and which by so doing can re-construct images from neural activity. But there are much more subtle elements of mental operations which I don't think could be susceptible to such a representation - basic ideas, like 'the same as', or 'greater than'. Of course even simple calculators can recognise such relationships between numbers, but the general idea, which a human will understand without any particular difficulty, would be impossible to represent pictorially - so how could be be captured by those means? And the mind is constantly using those comparisons and judgements in its activities. — Wayfarer

I certainly agree that there are a lot of limitations to what can be learned with the current state of the art. MEG (the technology used by Meta) has much better temporal resolution than fMRI, and in some respects, better spatial resolution than EEG, but still has a lot of limitations in its ability to capture the details of what is going on in our brains.

Furthermore, the results described in the video were a function of what data about brain activity could be correlated with a limited amount of linguistic thought over a fifteen hour period. Absolutely there are subtleties to our thought that aren't captured in such a process. I don't see "greater than" as particularly problematic for such technology though, since it is easily linguistically expressible. It would depend on whether and how the topic of "greater than" came up while gathering the AI training data.

Certainly, there is a lot more going on in my mind than I can put into words, and I assume that is true for all of us. I wouldn't expect such a technological process to 'know' my subjective experience in detail. Still, for someone with Broca's aphasia, this sort of technology could be life changing if it can be made suitably portable.

Still, for someone with Broca's aphasia, this sort of technology could be life changing if it can be made suitably portable. — wonderer1

:100: That's pretty well what the Cold Fusion video stressed also. But it has implications for philosophy of mind, yes? It shows that the ability to infer images from brain activity doesn't really amount to 'mind-reading' (impressive though it might be.)

It shows that the ability to infer images from brain activity doesn't really amount to 'mind-reading' (impressive though it might be.) — Wayfarer

I don't see a good reason to look at it in a binary way. It makes sense to me to see it as an impressive but limited degree of mind reading, just as it involves an impressive but limited degree of brain reading.

Is ChatGPT's response any good?
— Alkis Piskas
I've had many insightful interactions over the last twelve months ... — Wayfarer

I meant about the particular chat ("Explanatory Gap in Consciousness") but I didn't phrase it correctly.

Well, a while ago I asked ChatGPT 3.5: "What do you know about Meta's research on mind-reading using AI and dMRI?". It responded that its last update was in January 2022. I knew about this issue, but I wanted to see if it can make some research on the subject. Maybe version 4 could, but I don't have access to it. However I then asked Bing AI the same exact question, and I was impressed. It's response:

"According to my search results, Meta has been involved in several research projects related to mind-reading using AI and MRI technology. One of the recent breakthroughs in this field is the development of an AI system that can decode visual representations in the brain and reconstruct how images are perceived and processed in our minds. The researchers claim that the AI system can capture thousands of brain activity measurements per second and reconstruct the contents of our thoughts. Another research project involves the use of deep learning algorithms to recreate mental imagery from brain scans. The researchers trained a deep learning algorithm on 63,000 prior MEG results from four patients across 12 sessions, in which the patients saw 22,448 unique images, and 200 repeated images from that original pool. However, I could not find any information about Meta’s research on mind-reading using AI and dMRI."

How about that?

BTW, I generally consider Bing AI better that ChatGPT 3.5 from many aspects, but esp. because it is much less verbose. It also seems to be more "clever", e.g. it gives much shorter and elegant solutions to Math problems.

you never should take any of it on face value — Wayfarer

Certainly. And this is true I believe for everything you read in the Web. But one can always cross-check, verify information using reliable and trustable sources.

However I then asked Bing AI the same exact question — Alkis Piskas

that's because BingAI is connected to the Internet, and ChatGPT is not. I've tried Bing, and also Bard - actually in my current work contract we're assigned Office365 with the bingbot built in, but it's exceedingly annoying, and crammed into a narrow vertical strip on the side of the browser. And generally the whole Microsoft Edge/Office 365 environment is about as crowded as a Tokyo streetscape. Meanwhile I asked Bard to help out with some investment calculations the other day, and it got them hilariously wrong. So for now I'm a ChatGPT4 fan (yes, I pay the money ;-) ).

I asked Bard to help out with some investment calculations the other day, and it got them hilariously wrong. — Wayfarer

I believe you 100%. Bard is a joke. At least its current version. (Strange thing for Google ...)

we're assigned Office365 with the bingbot built in, but it's exceedingly annoying, and crammed into a narrow vertical strip on the side of the browse — Wayfarer

Why don't you use https://www.bing.com/search?form=MY0291&OCID=MY0291&q=Bing+AI&showconv=1?

So for now I'm a ChatGPT4 fan (yes, I pay the money) — Wayfarer

I have in mind to do that myself too since quite long ago, but I keep it in some drawer, until I find a real use for it. :smile: