I have come to the point that it is not really fair to the LLM to statistically train it on human output and expect it to come up with something more than the average.
There will be much value in automating the tedious and the routine.
Of course, that doesn't make for a great science fiction story. We first have to placate all these science fiction fantasies and in the process we will automate the tedious and the routine as a side effect of trying to figure out how many AGI can dance on the head of a pin.
Then human creativity will just be worth all the more.
This is why the concept of consciousness is largely nonsense.
The person that is blacked out is not unconscious. They just are not storing memories in order to remember the experience after the fact.
Can you see it? It is right in front of you that consciousness doesn't exist. It is right in your own example. It is a 21st century superstition and English language flaw. People cling to this idea the way people use to cling to the idea of a soul and some still do.
Like the soul, if you just get rid of the idea and word, nothing changes other than clarity in the language of what we are actually talking about instead of this ill-defined nonsense.
Do animals have a soul? It is the same question.
To come at it a different way. We can't be free of superstition and nonsense in 2024. There must be things we believe are true that simply aren't true and will look silly 300 years from now. What else do people believe in so admittedly in 2024 even though there is not just zero evidence for but we can't even define what we are talking about? It is prime suspect #1 to me when it comes to this category.
There is a condition called aphantasia, in which people are unable to visualise things, but are perfectly capable of doing visual tasks, such as art.
The question "is this animal conscious" is quite close to a question "does this person have aphantasia", and both seem to be perfectly valid and answerable.
You still have to explain why you "see out of your eyes", cause if consciousness doesn't exist, then why the universe doesn't happen silently without an "observer" somehow connected to every complex enough area. Soul is just the closest, religiously crippled interpretation of this idea.
Even if you are the only object in the universe that isn't a p-zombie, you still have it at your end. Why doesn't your physical body operate without "you" being in it most of the time?
I somewhat agree with you. The concept of consciousness needs rethinking. A better definition I think is to say an entity or system is conscious to the extent it’s world model is encompassing / “complete” and self-conscious when its world model includes itself and its own internal states. By this definition there are many continuous levels of consciousness and self-consciousness and these attributes are not binary all vs nothing. As for the soul a better definition for the soul of something is the information required to recreate it. If due to lossy compression or information corruption you can only recreate an approximation then some fraction of the original soul has been lost.
I think the self can come and go. I don't think a blacked out person is always unconscious, but they do seem to lack a subjective self while sometimes still being clinically awake and engaging in complex behavior. When the subjective self comes back online later, it makes understanding the self easier for them by creating contrast.
I am a chatGPT fan boy and have been quite impressed by 4o but I will really be impressed when it stops inventing aspects of python libraries that don't exists and instead just tells me it doesn't exist.
It literally just did this for me 15 minutes ago. You can't talk about AGI when it is this easy to push it over the edge into something it doesn't know.
Paper references have got better the last 12 months but just this week it made up both a book and paper for me that do not exist. The authors exist and they did not write what it said they did.
It is very interesting if you ask "do you understand your responses?" sometimes it will say yes and sometimes it will so no not like a human understands.
We should forget about AGI until it can at least say it doesn't know something. It is hardly a sign of intelligence in humans to make up answers to questions you don't know.
There is obviously not something conspiratorial here since crossing the conspiracy would have such value for an individual company.
I think though there is a network of decision makers that when you take into account this high dimension of decision variables, there is an emergent alignment of self interest towards the office.
I work for a very small company and of course no one comes into the office. We are small enough and lack enough of those variables that we don't have to perform this office theater like bigger firms. The bigger firms don't really have a choice when you sum all the inputs.
The problem is same as it has always been, getting old.
I have got old now and the medium of artistic expression that young people are into is not the same as when I was young.
In 40 years old people will complain no one makes crazy tiktok videos like they use to.
Of course in the moment, no one considers social media videos art. Just like at one point rap was noise, rock music was noise, the electric guitar was noise.
William S Burroughs, jazz, blues, on and on back.
Same narrative over and over by old people. "My youth was filled with high art while kids these days like such trash."
You also can't assume you would strike gold just because you have a pan and the right timing.
I know a guy that had podcast in 2009 or so. He had great timing but the problem is his podcast completely sucked and he has nothing interesting to say in general.
Shifting things forward or backward in time would not have solved anything.
You certainly won't strike gold by saying "there is no gold to be found here" and sitting on your bottom.
Two massive parts of success in entrepreneurship are luck and doing something others didn't want to do, or didn't think was worth it. Both require showing up.
Having a world-changing idea is an overrated and oversold approach. Some people make billions selling underwear or bottled soda. You can make millions out of selling literally anything.
Totally agree. It is also why I would never even consider freelance.
The idea of creating a personal "brand" makes me nearly physically sick I hate the idea so much.
I am very risk averse. I love the predictability of what shows up in my bank account.
"Freelance" for me would just be a euphemism for being unemployed. The situation would just make me depressed and I would end up just getting a new job.
It seems to me the type of person who would thrive at freelancing doesn't need to read this thread or ask these questions to start with.
i have to market myself just as much when applying for jobs. really. i don't see the difference.
actually, there is a difference. if i have services, i can market those as products. if i look for jobs then i have to market myself. so in fact, as a job hunter the personal brand is even more important than when selling services.
i get the risk aversion, that's a different issue.
I am the type that likes saying good morning and telling people to have a good weekend on chat.
This is largely for myself. It makes me feel like I am part of the team. It is how I would interact on any team I am part of.
Most other people on the team don't respond and that is perfectly fine. I would say I am more the odd one out than you though. You sound more like the average person who thinks it is kind of stupid so doesn't respond.
