This was really interesting, and closely related to two different things I've been thinking about recently:
1. The cultural feedback loop that will shape acceptable use of LLMs is in high gear, and it is really hard to predict where we end up.
I see so much experimentation with voice interfaces, talk at e.g. a recent Disability Tech conference on how to use LLMs to help people with dyslexia interact with a text-heavy world, etc.
But I also see push-back: people reacting negatively to text that seems LLM-authored; more and more of my friends (30-ish professionals in Copenhagen, Denmark, I guess) taking up reading, like... fiction, sometimes after having given it up for years. Because it feels real in an unreal world.
2. It certainly seems that a cultural feedback loop was missing from the Turing test. Through the process of anthropomorphization we seem ready to accept many new breakthroughs as having finally made it, seeming human. But a few months later, we learn how to break that new version of LLMs, and the magic fades, and we push it back into firmly not-Turing-test-passing territory, firmly machine, not human-like.
That is: as we learn how to interact with new technology it seems less human. Kind of like how we keep thinking we must have reached the peak of realistic video game graphics, and have every 5 years since I was 15.
Passing the Turing test through novelty seems much easier than still passing it a year later, after thorough interacting with and shaping of our culture.
I like the notion of a cultural feedback loop! And definitely agree our perceptions of "humanness" always evolves past wherever technology is; I'm also reminded of the saying "AI is whatever computers can't do yet"
"... but we’ll equally need a new personal ethic for living alongside AI, an alertness to how new technologies shape our minds for better and worse."
The idea of a "personal ethic" in the context of AI is so helpful. I work in the children's online safety and digital wellbeing space and do lots of education and consulting with schools and families, and this is such a great way of articulating that this is a need - and I'd say, a must.
This was really interesting, and closely related to two different things I've been thinking about recently:
1. The cultural feedback loop that will shape acceptable use of LLMs is in high gear, and it is really hard to predict where we end up.
I see so much experimentation with voice interfaces, talk at e.g. a recent Disability Tech conference on how to use LLMs to help people with dyslexia interact with a text-heavy world, etc.
But I also see push-back: people reacting negatively to text that seems LLM-authored; more and more of my friends (30-ish professionals in Copenhagen, Denmark, I guess) taking up reading, like... fiction, sometimes after having given it up for years. Because it feels real in an unreal world.
2. It certainly seems that a cultural feedback loop was missing from the Turing test. Through the process of anthropomorphization we seem ready to accept many new breakthroughs as having finally made it, seeming human. But a few months later, we learn how to break that new version of LLMs, and the magic fades, and we push it back into firmly not-Turing-test-passing territory, firmly machine, not human-like.
That is: as we learn how to interact with new technology it seems less human. Kind of like how we keep thinking we must have reached the peak of realistic video game graphics, and have every 5 years since I was 15.
Passing the Turing test through novelty seems much easier than still passing it a year later, after thorough interacting with and shaping of our culture.
I like the notion of a cultural feedback loop! And definitely agree our perceptions of "humanness" always evolves past wherever technology is; I'm also reminded of the saying "AI is whatever computers can't do yet"
"... but we’ll equally need a new personal ethic for living alongside AI, an alertness to how new technologies shape our minds for better and worse."
The idea of a "personal ethic" in the context of AI is so helpful. I work in the children's online safety and digital wellbeing space and do lots of education and consulting with schools and families, and this is such a great way of articulating that this is a need - and I'd say, a must.
Glad the framing resonates!