[HN Gopher] Cognitive security is now as important as basic lite...
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       Cognitive security is now as important as basic literacy
        
       Author : lisper
       Score  : 15 points
       Date   : 2025-03-16 20:52 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (twitter.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
        
       | Terr_ wrote:
       | > I brought up the metaphor of the Wizard of Oz. In the movie,
       | the wizard is posing as an immensely powerful entity but turns
       | out to just be a guy operating machinery.
       | 
       | The drum I keep beating: Every AI assistant you "talk to" _is a
       | fictional character in a movie-script_. There 's code that "acts
       | out" its lines to you, and your own text becomes "then the user
       | said X" lines. The nameless ego-less LLM iteratively Makes The
       | Document Longer, in ways that fit all the documents its seen. An
       | ultra-powered mad-libs.
       | 
       | > For instance, I told it to become "Robert," who talks only in
       | dumb ways
       | 
       | Right: The exact same system could have the human user conversing
       | with Dracula, Vampire Lord of the Night.
       | 
       | "Dracula" would be demanding that you convince all your friends
       | to donate blood and boycott products made with garlic. The
       | character would "fear" wooden stakes and crucifixes--in the same
       | way that this "AI" character doesn't "want" to be turned-off or
       | deleted.
       | 
       | However making software that _writes stories about_ X is not the
       | same as _creating_ X... not even when X happens to be  "an AI
       | sharing the same product name."
       | 
       | > I told Bob that he is not alone: some of the smartest people I
       | know are getting fooled.
       | 
       | Not only that, but the mistake is being _deliberately encouraged_
       | by other humans. They have deliberately built the system make
       | users _think_ they are talking to a discrete intelligent
       | entity... and for investors to believe they have invented the
       | same.
        
       | justonceokay wrote:
       | We used to have to assume that anyone we were talking to on the
       | internet could actually be a 12-year-old. Now we have to assume
       | they could be bots
        
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       (page generated 2025-03-16 23:01 UTC)