[HN Gopher] Philosophy Eats AI
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Philosophy Eats AI
Author : robg
Score : 50 points
Date : 2025-01-19 18:49 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sloanreview.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (sloanreview.mit.edu)
| Terr_ wrote:
| > what counts as knowledge (epistemology), and how AI represents
| reality (ontology) also shape value creation.
|
| As a skeptic with only a few drums to beat, my quasi-
| philosophical complaint about LLMs: we have a rampant problem
| where humans confuse a character they perceive out of a text-
| document with a real-world author.
|
| In all these hyped-products, you are actually being given the
| "and then Mr. Robot said" lines from a kind of theater-script.
| This document grows as your contribution is inserted as "Mr. User
| says", plus whatever the LLM author calculates "fits next."
|
| So all these excited articles about how SomethingAI has learned
| deceit or self-interest? Nah, they're really probing how well it
| assembles text (learned from ones we make) where we humans can
| perceive a fictional character which exhibits those qualities.
| That can including qualities we absolutely know the real-world
| LLM does not have.
|
| It's extremely impressive compared to where we used to be, but
| not the same.
| TJSomething wrote:
| That's one of the things. Even in human-written fiction, the
| depths of any character you read about is pure smoke and
| mirrors. People regularly perceive fictional characters as if
| they are real people (and it's fun to do so), but it would be
| impossible for an author to simulate a complete human being in
| their head.
|
| It seems that LLMs operate a lot like I would in improv. In a
| scene, I might add, "This is the fifth time you've driven your
| car into a ditch this year." I don't know what the earlier four
| times were like. No one there had any idea I was even going to
| say that. I just say it as a method of increasing stakes and
| creating the illusion of history in order to serve a narrative
| purpose. I'll often include real facts to serve the
| verisimilitude of a scene, but I don't have time to do real
| fact checking. I need to keep the momentum going and will
| gladly make up facts as a suits the narrative and my character.
| exe34 wrote:
| > it would be impossible for an author to simulate a complete
| human being in their head.
|
| unless it's a self-insert? or do you reckon even then it'll
| be a lofi simulation, because there real world input is
| absent and the physics/social aspect is still being
| simulated?
| jdietrich wrote:
| Humans just aren't very good at understanding their own
| motivations. Marketers know this implicitly. Almost nobody
| believes "I drink Coca-Cola because billions of dollars of
| advertising have conditioned me to associate Coke with
| positive feelings on a subconscious level", even if they
| would recognise that as a completely plausible explanation
| for why _other people_ like Coca-Cola.
| og_kalu wrote:
| As long as it affects the real world, it doesn't matter what
| semantical category you feel compelled to push LLMs into.
|
| If Copilot will no longer reply helpfully because your previous
| messages were rude then that is a consequence. It doesn't
| matter whether it was "really upset" or not.
|
| If some future VLM robot decides to take your hand off as some
| revenge plot, that's a consequence. It doesn't matter if this
| is some elaborate role play. It doesn't matter if the robot
| "has no real identity" and "cannot act on real vengeance". Like
| who cares ? Your hand is gone and it's not coming back.
|
| Are there real world consequences ? Yes ? Then the handwringing
| over whether it's just "elaborate science fiction" or "real
| deceit" is entirely meaningless.
| anxoo wrote:
| > In all these hyped-products, you are actually being given the
| "and then Mr. Robot said" lines from a kind of theater-script.
| This document grows as your contribution is inserted as "Mr.
| User says", plus whatever the LLM author calculates "fits
| next."
|
| and we are creating such a document now, where "Terr_" plays a
| fictional character who is skeptical of LLM hype, and "anxoo"
| roleplays a character who is concerned about the level of AI
| capabilities.
|
| you protest, "no, i'm a _real person_ with _real thoughts_! the
| character is me! the AI 'character' is a a fiction created by
| an ungodly pile of data and linear algebra!" and i reply, "you
| are a fiction created by an ungodly mass of neuron activations
| and hormones and neurotransmitters".
|
| i agree that we cannot know what an LLM is "really thinking",
| and when people say that the AIs have "learned how to [X]" or
| have "demonstrated deception" or whatever, there's an
| inevitable anthropomorphization. i agree that when people talk
| to chatGPT and it acts "friendly and helpful", that we don't
| really know whether the AI _is_ friendly and helpful, or
| whether the "mind" inside is some utterly alien thing.
|
| the point is, none of that matters. if it writes code, it
| writes code. if it's able to discover new scientific insights,
| or if it's able to replace the workforce, or if it's able to
| control and manipulate resources, those are all concrete things
| it will do in the real world. to assume that it will never get
| there because it's just playing a fancy language game is
| completely unwarranted overconfidence.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Philosophy eats AI because we're in the exploration phase of the
| s-curve and there's a whole bunch of VC money pumping into the
| space. When we switch to an extraction regime, we can expect a
| lot of these conversations to evaporate and replaced with, "what
| makes us the most money" regardless of philosophic implication.
| SequoiaHope wrote:
| If that ever comes to pass. This is not guaranteed.
| Sleaker wrote:
| I'm confused on the premise that AI is eating software. What does
| that even mean and what does it look like? AI is software, no?
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| The software that powers LLM inference is very small, and is
| the same no matter what task you ask it to perform. LLMs are
| really the neural architecture and model weights used.
| jdietrich wrote:
| There are a whole bunch of software problems where "just prompt
| an LLM" is now a viable solution. Need to analyse some data?
| You could program a solution, or you could just feed it to
| ChatGPT with a prompt. Need to build a rough prototype for the
| front-end of a web app? Again, you could write it yourself, or
| you could just feed a sketch of the UI and a prompt to an LLM.
|
| That might be a dead end, but a lot of people are betting a lot
| of money that we're just at the beginning of a very steep
| growth curve. It is now plausible that the future of software
| might not be discrete apps with bespoke interfaces, but vast
| general-purpose models that we interact with using natural
| language and unstructured data. Rather than being written in
| advance, software is extracted from the latent space of a model
| on a just-in-time basis.
| grey-area wrote:
| A lot of the same people also recently bet huge amounts of
| money that blockchains and crypto would replace the world's
| financial system (and logistics and a hundred other
| industries).
|
| How did that work out?
| jdietrich wrote:
| A16z and Sequoia made some big crypto bets, but I don't
| recall Google or Microsoft building new DCs for crypto
| mining. There's a fundamental difference between VCs
| throwing spaghetti against the wall and established tech
| giants steering their own resources towards something.
| Hoasi wrote:
| It is even less meaningful than "software is eating the world".
| But it sounds catchy, and people can remember it.
| qrsjutsu wrote:
| > The critical enterprise challenge is whether leaders will
| possess the self-awareness and rigor to use philosophy as a
| resource for creating value with AI
|
| what the fuck. they haven't even done that with post 90's
| technology in general and it's not only that no intelligent
| person wants to work among them that they will fall just as short
| with AI. I'm still grateful they are doing a job.
|
| but please, a dying multitude right at your feet and all you need
| to save - so you can learn even more from - them in your hands
| and you scale images, build drones for cleaning at home and war
| and imitate to replace people who love or need their jobs.
|
| and faking all those AI gains - deceit, self-interest and what
| not - is so ridiculously obvious just build-in linguistics that
| can be read from a paper by someone who does not even speak that
| language. it's "just" parameters and conditional logic, cool and
| fancy and ready to eat up and digest almost any variation of user
| input, but it's nowhere even close to intelligence, let alone
| artificial intelligence.
|
| philosophy eats nothing. there's those on all fours waiting for
| whatever gives them status and recognition and those who,
| thankfully, stay silent to not give those leaders more tools of
| power.
| initramfs wrote:
| The world is becoming an algorithm.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Creepy_Line Algorithms create a
| compression of search values not unlike a Cartesian plane.
|
| The question is, will more people embrace the Cartesian
| compression of ubiquitous internet communication?
| rapnie wrote:
| Isn't Nature like algorithms at work?
| initramfs wrote:
| yes and no. ones encoded by the previous generation, and
| biological life is an open or partially open system
| layer8 wrote:
| You mean the journal? ;)
|
| More seriously: An algorithm is discrete (consists of
| discrete steps). Nature however appears to operate in a
| continuous fashion.
| polotics wrote:
| I strongly disagree with the article on at least one point:
| ontologies, as painstakingly hand-crafted jewels handed down from
| aforementioned philosophers, are the complete opposite of what
| LLM's are bottoming-up through their layers.
| scoofy wrote:
| I have multiple degrees in philosophy and I have no idea what
| this article is even trying to say.
|
| If anyone has access to the full article, I'm interested, but it
| sounds like a lot of buzzwords and not a ton of substance.
|
| The framing of ai through a philosophical lens is obviously
| interesting, but a lot of the problems addressed in the intro are
| pretty much irrelevant to the ai-ness of the information.
| moffers wrote:
| I was about to be very excited that my bachelors in Philosophy
| might become relevant on its face for once in my life! But, I'm
| not sure that flexing that professionally is going to get me at
| the top of any neat AI projects.
|
| But wouldn't that be great?
| rvense wrote:
| Once I'd started a new job and was asked to write "a little
| bit" about myself for a slide for the first company meeting.
| There were a couple of these because we were a bunch of new
| people and my little bit was in a font like half the size of
| all the others, because I have a humanities degree so I can
| and will write something when you ask me to.
| readyplayernull wrote:
| The article is about mapping Philosophy into AI project
| management.
|
| > Philosophical perspectives on what AI models should achieve
| (teleology), what counts as knowledge (epistemology), and how
| AI represents reality (ontology) also shape value creation.
| Without thoughtful and rigorous cultivation of philosophical
| insight, organizations will fail to reap superior returns and
| competitive advantage from their generative and predictive AI
| investments.
| rvense wrote:
| Doesn't that hold for all other applications of software and
| really technology? Without further context that just seems to
| be saying you have to, like, think about what the AI is doing
| and how you're applying it?
| laptopdev wrote:
| Is this available in full text anywhere without sign up?
| redelbee wrote:
| So we're back to the idea that only philosopher kings can shape
| and rule the ideal world? Plato would be proud!
|
| Jests aside, I love the idea of incorporating an all encompassing
| AI philosophy built up from the rich history of thinking, wisdom,
| and texts that already exist. I'm no expert, but I don't see how
| this would even be possible. Could you train some LLM exclusively
| on philosophical works, then prompt it to create a new perfect
| philosophy that it will then use to direct its "life" from then
| on? I can't imagine that would work in any way. It would
| certainly be entertaining to see the results, however.
|
| That said, AI companies would likely all benefit from a team of
| philosophers on staff. I imagine most companies would. Thinking
| deeply and critically has been proven to be enormously valuable
| to humankind, but it seems to be of dubious value to capital and
| those who live and die by it.
|
| The fact that the majority of deep thinking and deep work of our
| time serves mainly to feed the endless growth of capital -
| instead of the well-being of humankind - is the great tragedy of
| our time.
| XorNot wrote:
| What's the philosophy department at the local steel fabricator
| contributing exactly?
| apsurd wrote:
| To ponder whether there's any value in doing anything beyond
| maximizing steel fabrication output.
|
| if it's absurd to you to think that a steel fabrication
| company should care about anything other than fabricating
| more steel, well that's your philosophy.
|
| there are other philosophies.
| Hammershaft wrote:
| > The fact that the majority of deep thinking and deep work of
| our time serves mainly to feed the endless growth of capital -
| instead of the well-being of humankind - is the great tragedy
| of our time.
|
| I'm not blind to when this goes horribly wrong, or when needs
| go unaddressed because they aren't profitable, but most of the
| time these interests are unintentionally well aligned.
| alganet wrote:
| There is a lot of this "philosopher king" stuff. Prophets,
| ubermenchs, tlatoanis. It seems foreign to the concept of
| philosophy. As I see it, this comes more from the lineage of
| arts than the lineage of thinkers (it's not a critic, just an
| observation).
|
| I think this is very obvious and both artists and philosophers
| understand it.
|
| I'm worried about the mercantilist guild. They don't seem to
| get the message. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't really know much
| about what they think. Their actions show disgerard for the
| other two guilds.
| Onavo wrote:
| No paywall
|
| https://tribunecontentagency.com/article/philosophy-eats-ai/
| alganet wrote:
| Philosophy is mostly autophagous and self-regulating, I think.
| It's a debug mode, or something like it.
|
| It's not eating AI. It's "eating" the part of AI that was tuned
| to disproportionally change the natural balance of philosophy.
|
| Trying to get on top of it is silly. The debug mode is not for
| sale.
| treksis wrote:
| wishful article
| treksis wrote:
| wishful
| antonkar wrote:
| How can you create an all-understanding all-powerful jinn that is
| a slave in a lamp? Can the jinn be all-good, too? What is good
| anyways? What should we do if doing good turns out to be
| understanding and freeing others (at least as a long-term goal)?
| Should our AI systems gradually become more censoring or more
| freeing?
| tomlockwood wrote:
| Philosophy postgrad and now long time programmer here!
|
| This article makes a revelation of the pretty trivially true
| claim that philosophy _is_ an undercurrent of thought. If you
| ask, why do we do science, the answer is philosophical.
|
| But the mistake many philosophers make is extrapolating
| philosophy being a discipline that reveals itself when
| fundamental questions about an activity are asked, into a belief
| that philosophy, as a discipline, is _necessary_ to that
| activity.
|
| AI doesn't require an understanding of philosophy any more than
| science does. Philosophers may argue that people always wonder
| about philosophical things, like, as the article says, teleology,
| epistemology and ontology, but that relation doesn't require an
| understanding of the theory. A scientist doesn't need to know any
| of those words to do science. Arguably, a scientist _ought_ to
| know, but they don 't have to.
|
| The article implies that AI leaders are currently _ignoring_
| philosophy, but it isn 't clear to me what ignoring the all-
| pervasive substratum of thought would _look like_. What would it
| look like for a person not to think about the meaning of it all,
| at least once at 3am at a glass outdoor set in a backyard? And,
| the article doesn 't really stick the landing on why bringing
| those thoughts to the forefront would mean philsophy will "eat"
| AI. No argument from me against philosophy though, I think a
| sprinkling of it is useful, but a lack of philosophy theory is
| not an obstacle to action, programming, creating systems that
| evaluate things, see: almost everyone.
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