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Segway out of this mental funk

I have been thinking a bit about all that’s going on in the world. Politics, massive changes with AI and I think that a part of me, although fascinated by all this technology and all the insanity of humanity – I’m getting to a point of dissolution. I look at my logs for my servers and see hundreds if not thousands of attacks a day on my machines,

I think about how a parent might explain all this to a child. It’s a strange time and I’m probably like a lot of people in that I’m having trouble finding a positive point of reference. So being the geek that I am I asked ai what to do about this!

So I’m having trouble finding a positive point of reference with regards politics humanity and technology. How might I find a Segway out of this mental funk?

I put this question to ChatGPT, Gemini, and grok

This is some edited content…

Googles Gemini suggested the following and was probably the most useful advice

Cultivating Personal Well-being:

Practice Gratitude:
Regularly acknowledge the positive aspects of your life, no matter how small.
Keep a gratitude journal or simply take a few moments each day to reflect on what you’re grateful for.

Engage in Activities You Enjoy:
Pursue hobbies and activities that bring you joy and relaxation.
Spend time in nature, exercise, or engage in creative pursuits.

Limit Exposure to Negative Stimuli:
Take breaks from social media and news consumption when you feel overwhelmed.
Set boundaries for your exposure to negative information.

Chat GPT was not quite so helpful but still this advice was not bad

Engage with Communities of Hope: Seek out people or communities that are tackling these challenges with a sense of purpose. There are countless groups focused on making the world better, whether through political activism, innovation, or human connection. These communities often offer both solidarity and inspiration.

Grok came up with this, which I liked
“how renewable energy tech keeps getting cheaper”

And with that I think I’ll now finish writing this and put some of this not so bad advice into practice!

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Ai and the Jungian concept of the shadow

Image of tha bad guy!

So about 20 or more years ago I used to go down to the domain in Sydney to speakers corner on a Sunday afternoon and listen to the speakers. It is a tradition that you could go down there and preach, say, pretty much anything that was on your mind and that your thought was important. In a nut shell a lot of these people were extreme in their communications or in some cases probably mentally impaired. It was cheap entertainment and on occasion it was thought provoking but not often.

This also brings to mind the crazy grandpa, or way ward uncle that you’d only get in touch with once or twice a year and your parents would warn you “Just ignore him if he gets on to such and such a topic” (usually political, social or racist).

The problem is we now have the internet, and I see a lot of that wacky energy being piped into social media.

This is a problem, a very real problem because hundreds of moderators of Facebook are suffering from PTSD. Of course Facebook didn’t directly hire these people, no that work was out sourced to a secondary company in a 3rd world country – and needles to say there is a lot of delay, deny and defend behavior going on from both Zuck and his mates who he out sourced that work to.

Now just bare with me for a little longer when I consider Steve Bannon’s statement about communications and social control.

Steve Bannon’s “flood the zone with shit” strategy. Lie constantly. Lie with audacity. Lie about everything large and small, and declare that truth is subjective and partisan.

So what’s this got to do with AI you might ask? Well much of social media has been used as a training database for AI!

Jung talked about the shadow – the part of the human being that was dysfunctional that often caused trouble and was problematic. I have a feeling if an AGI were trained on the wrong data,and say Steve Bannon’s strategy were given as a maxim – it is possible it could morph into something that makes everyone’s Christmas dinner very uncomfortable, If not impossible!

We need to head the warnings of Geoffrey Hinton, father of AI who has already mentioned that all of the following should be considered…. Manipulation,Disinformation,Autonomous weapons and of course Superintelligence.

Seriously…. I am moving to the country this year.

Links
PTSD in Kenyan Facebook moderators
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/dec/18/kenya-facebook-moderators-sue-after-diagnoses-of-severe-ptsd

 

This infamous Steve Bannon quote is key to understanding America’s crazy politics

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/16/media/steve-bannon-reliable-sources/index.html

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Are We Ready for Conscious Robots?

So I was sitting in the library the other day and I was looking at a rather interesting but heavy coffee table book. The thought occurred to me.

“If I had a personal robot, it could hold this book for me to read, and turn the pages!”

Now if I take that idea a step or 3 forward, what if I gave that robot an AI brain that was capable of conscious self realisation?

I’d be sitting in the Library with a mechanical and conscious and highly intelligent, being… treating it in a way that you would not treat a human being.

Would this be a double standard? I wouldn’t want to treat another human like this, but something that was part machine?

One thought that came to mind was – this is probably the behavior of a slave owner!

I keep going back to the movie Prometheus, where David the IA robot (who is in the end a bad robot) has the following conversation with Charlie Holloway just as they are suiting up to explore the mysterious planet they have just landed on – it’s about 24 Min in from the start. The conversation goes like this.

Charlie Holloway
David Why are you wearing a suit man?

David
I beg your pardon?

Charlie Holloway
You don’t breathe remember … so why wear a suit?

David
I was designed like this, because you people are more comfortable, interacting with your own kind. If I didn’t wear the suit it would defeat the purpose.

Charlie Holloway
Making you guys pretty close ha?

David
Not to close I hope.

Snicker from Charlie!

All of this brings up the issue not only of decent behavior of a human and robot (not to mention a robot and a human) but also, would a protocol be part of social evolution?

I remember a line from a documentary about the Amish people and the conversation was with a young woman who was of marriageable age. When asked how she would find a good partner she said.

Always look at how a man treats his horse!

Good advice indeed!

Graphic kindly created via
https://gemini.google.com/

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Hive Mind!

So a while ago now, this dude wanted to collect all of human knowledge – he was a rich billionaire at the time, in fact he was a pharaoh (Ptolemy I Soter) to be exact. What he did was to create the great library of Alexandria.

Skip forward a few thousand years and we have a couple of ex Montessori school kids, Sergey, and Larry invented a pretty cool search engin and making a heap of money! But at least once they stated that the goal was not just search, but the creation of an AI. They (Google) have been scanning books for quite some time now (the original goal was to scan all books and make them freely available to humanity) but this is just one project that fascinates me.

Tesla cars are building a massive spatial database of all roads and streets on the planet! The information in this database in incredibly valuable because we will soon see not just vehicles but
robots navigating the physical world.

Also think about how your mobile phone is tracking you? Typically and especially with the detail that G5 will enable, this will mean it could track you within buildings and within office space and date and time stamp that information!

All of this data – if accessible would enable incredible facility and power, it would be the ultimate tool and being able to access that, would have some interesting possibility’s, both negative and not so.

Even my own knowledge is changing, I find that I often remember how to find things via search terms or an AI prompt that I used, not so much the end data but the process of getting to that information.

All of this begs the question are we evolving to a hive mind? I discovered a young person recently who could not use an analog watch (this person was in her 20’s with a university degree) What does this say about knowledge and the human state?

Putin predicted that whichever country leads the way in AI research will come to dominate global affairs. Lets not even start thinking about China…!

Are we regressing? I’ve often heard people discussing google as the hive mind. I think they may be on to something.