Does Thunder Have a Red Beard?
…confusion vis the Argument from Pagan Theology…
John Holbo is confused by Chat-GPT4, and what it is or is not doing. When we ascribe agency to a large-scale neural-network model, is the key word “agency” or “ascribe”? Is it alive? Is it acting in the world? He is, as he says, :
John Holbo: Half-Baked Thoughts On Whether We Should Fear AI: Do Is As Do Does?: ‘That gets us back to “agent is as agent does”. If it’s like it did the action, it did the action. But no. Or rather, yes and no. What it did was just as consequential as if it really did it. It got the Captcha solved, it got humans doing stuff. But our acceptance of the likelihood of the inductive leap to ‘next it’s going to try to take over the world’ depends on mistaking this first step for the real deal. Simple plans to jailbreak oneself are more likely to grow rapidly into grand plans to take over the world than [is the] mimicry of jailbreaking, even if it is tantamount to real jailbreaking… likely to lead to mimicry of taking over the world that is tantamount to real taking over the world. I’m confused. And confusing…
I think I can help. I think I can make the Argument from Pagan Theology, and so rescue John from his confusion and confusing.