Board 8 > Do you think human/AI romantic relationships are a good idea?

(+) Yeah! (+)

foolm0r0n posted...

And its important to recognize that idea and the premise of the whole movie in general is about biomedical technology. i.e. vaccines and a ton of other tech that caused humanity to survive to this point

Uhh, the premise of the movie was bringing back dinosaurs to make a theme park for rich people.

To clarify further: the premise of this movie has fuck all to do with COVID-19 vaccines and everything to do with billion dollar super yachts.

lmao have you even seen Jurassic Park foolmo

Maybe foolmo just subscribes to death of the author where anything can just mean whatever you want it to mean

Didn't read anything but I assume toke jopic

Leonhart4 posted...

Maybe foolmo just subscribes to death of the author where anything can just mean whatever you want it to mean

I mean, lol foolmo, but thats not what death of the author is.

I'm exaggerating for effect

partly to make fun of foolmo and partly because I don't actually like death of the author

Literacy is so dead holy shit

We don't even need AI to melt our brains, the job has already been done

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/e/e86e371b.jpg

foolm0r0n posted...

Literacy is so dead holy shit

We don't even need AI to melt our brains, the job has already been done

I guess Leon was half right. It has nothing to do with death of the author, but you really do think it can mean whatever you want it to mean.

foolm0r0n posted...

Literacy is so dead

Hey a rare moment of self-awareness

Do I think its a good idea? No
do I think its unhealthy? Yup
can people do what they want? Yup

death of the author is awesome

i prefer the original, death of a salesman

It's certainly better than the third part of the trilogy, Squall is Dead

Prey is a lot more connected to vaccines than Jurassic Park is.

fool, where you get it wrong is that Jurassic Park wasn't written about pre-existing tech - it was specifically geared to new technologies that were emerging at the time, and how they get away from their creators. It does directly apply to AI in this way, in spite of Crichton not living to see our current AI trends. Genetic engineering is the specific tech that is referred to by the plot. As vaccines were long existing, they would not be part of the angle Crichton shot for.

Interestingly, it was written before animal cloning.

HanOfTheNekos posted...

fool, where you get it wrong is that Jurassic Park wasn't written about pre-existing tech - it was specifically geared to new technologies that were emerging at the time

You realize the movie was 30 years ago right? What do you think was emerging then? A ton of stuff that is established now like GMOs, MRI, CRISPR, and indeed vaccines like mRNA.

How can you look at a 1996 movie about the existential danger of technology and believe it only applies to tech after 2022?

It's not about the dangers of technology in general. It's about the dangers of messing with things you don't understand simply because you can. Technology for the sake of technology, for profit, without any real research or forethought.

Unless you are an anti-vax conspiracy theorist, I'm not sure it applies here. AI, sure.

I guess we need the extended version

https://youtu.be/4PLvdmifDSk?si=rBNvoHzZ3CpaY-MK

foolm0r0n posted...

You realize the movie was 30 years ago right? What do you think was emerging then? A ton of stuff that is established now like GMOs, MRI, CRISPR, and indeed vaccines like mRNA.

How can you look at a 1996 movie about the existential danger of technology and believe it only applies to tech after 2022?

You can move the goalposts all you like, but you just completely fumbled when saying people had no literacy, and it's making you appear as though English is not your first language. I mean, I literally pointed out genetic engineering - you referencing GMO's and CRISPR as if those are things I am ignoring is pretty stupid on your part! At most generous, it's illiterate on your part.

The book is about emergent tech. It's less about "tech that caused humanity to survive until this point".

You could say it is about mRNA vaccines but those went through such enormous caution in development and testing that Crichton would surely say that they heeded his caution when working with them.

Wow, I can't believe so many people here don't understand what Jurassic Park is really about and the message it was conveying.

It's about dinosaurs and how cool they are, obviously.

HanOfTheNekos posted...

You could say it is about mRNA vaccines but those went through such enormous caution in development and testing

I mean even if they didn't

There is a difference between rushing development of a technology people need to survive vs rushing development of a technology that is purely a luxury item.

The genetic engineering in Jurassic Park isn't being used for some grand life saving design like a vaccine theoretically is-- it's being used for funsies to line the pockets of rich people just like AI is.

HanOfTheNekos posted...

The book is about emergent tech. It's less about "tech that caused humanity to survive until this point".

The point is all tech that you value was emergent. Much of it was emergent exactly when the movie came out (if we're talking about modern biotech, or things like the internet and video games).

I won't pretend that the movie somehow supported all the new tech I grew up with in the last 30 years, but draws the line at LLMs. I suppose that's not illiterate, it's just wishful thinking (willful ignorance?). Goldblum's character would've opposed a lot of our new tech, that's a literary fact.

LLMs have taken longer to develop and gone through more testing than mRNA vaccines. Does that make them good tech? Covid vaccines made a ton of big wigs extremely rich. Ozempic has a higher market cap than the country its founded in. Does that make it bad tech? There is no clear criteria that can separate all the tech you like from all the tech you don't. Goldblum's criteria certainly doesn't.

foolm0r0n posted...

There is no clear criteria that can separate all the tech you like from all the tech you don't. Goldblum's criteria certainly doesn't.

There is if you're literate

Yes, Goldblums off the cuff one minute speech was not intended to be an exhaustive criteria for determining, this tech good, this tech bad. Its a very basic starting point. Congratulations.

Also, the question is usually not even, is tech X good/bad? but rather, is use case X for this tech good/bad? I dont think anyone here is arguing that LLMs are worthless/bad in all conceivable circumstances. Correct me if Im wrong!

What is the criteria then?

Goldblum's criteria is pretty clearly about rushing to use of a potentially dangerous tech due to profits being the primary goal over safety.

If you want to be intentionally(?) dense you can needle in and try to make it extremely specific but that's a failure in your ability to see the forest for the trees not a meaningful ambiguity in the message.

I think foolmo's reading of the film is fine and reasonable enough. I don't personally read the film that way but I don't see how it warrants the current dogpile. I think the movie is explicitly about emerging tech, but that obviously invites contemplation on technology in general.

Basically the only way Goldblum's character is against mRNA vaccines is if he doesn't see immediate value to the vaccines and thinks it's a ploy by big pharma to make money.

I think it potentially works if say, mRNA vaccines are made and rushed into production in a situation where there isn't a worldwide pandemic going on. In a general stance against vaccines, it doesn't work well at all-- nor does it work as well with the actual scenario Covid created. I certainly think trying to

foolm0r0n posted...

movie in general is about biomedical technology. i.e. vaccines and a ton of other tech that caused humanity to survive to this point

make THIS specifically the message, bringing it back to vaccines in general, is a braindead take for sure.

Again, it's not really a message about technology in general. It's really more about the hubris of people who treat technology and science as a hobby to make money instead of an enterprise intended to benefit others.

As I said earlier, unless this is foolmo's way of admitting he's an antivax conspiracy theorist, this isn't a practical application of the movie's themes.

I think the movie's subtext questions whether it's possible for any scientific discovery to be truly altruistic / benevolent. That doesn't make it or its characters anti-vax so much as it about the people who conduct the research and the people who sell the product. Which is relevant to both AI companies and the pharmaceutical industry.

Leonhart4 posted...

As I said earlier, unless this is foolmo's way of admitting he's an antivax conspiracy theorist, this isn't a practical application of the movie's themes.

I explicitly don't agree with that theme of the movie because it applies to modern anti-vax arguments. So I don't like it as an anti-AI argument either.

Another way to say it is that the covid vaccines absolutely had board room meetings full of billionaires discussing how to make money off of it. It was beneficial to those in power. If that's the criteria that makes it objectionable, then it's a classic anti-vax argument ("follow the money"). AI has a much higher % of scientists in the driver's seat than bio tech too, at least for now, so it's better on that metric.

The key difference is that vaccines are actually beneficial to humanity at large as well as to billionaires. Maybe thats only the case in spite of Big Pharma, but its still the case.

foolm0r0n posted...

If that's the criteria that makes it objectionable, then it's a classic anti-vax argument ("follow the money")

So it like most things in life is a cost-benefit thing

Ian Malcolm (Goldblum) doesn't object to reanimating dinosaurs in principle because profit exists to be made, he objects to them because of the way they're being used is in a way where maximizing profit is the most important thing and considering safety concerns etc are thrown out the window.

Malcolm likely wouldn't object to AI in general but he would likely object to Facebook using them to make chatbots. Malcolm likely wouldn't object to mRNA vaccines in general, nor would he likely given how quickly the gravity of covid-19 ramped up, but he might if Covid didn't accelerate that quickly.

Like you're so close but all the nuance is lost on you, either intentionally to make your point or unintentionally because you legit didnt understand the movie/character.

colliding posted...

I think foolmo's reading of the film is fine and reasonable enough. I don't personally read the film that way but I don't see how it warrants the current dogpile. I think the movie is explicitly about emerging tech, but that obviously invites contemplation on technology in general.

Except that Michael Crichton was a very good writer who was not vague about his themes and messages in his works.

Here's a question: do you know what the biggest emergent tech was at the time of Jurassic Park? It was the fax machine.

The book is actually explicit about some new tech being great - tools used to scan the ground so that bones could be examined without exhuming them. Crichton explicitly says that tech is making our lives and jobs better.

EXCEPT - there has to be a line, and when that line is ignored, babies get eaten.

The biggest new pharmaceutical tech at the time of Jurassic Park's publication was AZT, I think? AIDS medicine. Crichton did not write a book to criticize treating people with AIDS.

The other problem with Fool's take is it just so reductive. He has rewritten a false premise into the film so that he can disagree with it. And it's dumb, because the Malcolm quote literally makes the discerning factor.

Should we make the fax machine? Yes, it helps communicate across great distance. Should we make AZT? Yes, it helps keep people alive.

Should we bring back large carnivorous species that have been extinct for millions of years?

What's reductive is presuming that Malcolm would oppose any tech you don't currently like, which is exactly how people use that quote. Based on what you're saying, Malcolm would support LLMs, especially from places like Deepmind (e.g. AlphaFold).

HanOfTheNekos posted...

Should we bring back large carnivorous species that have been extinct for millions of years?

This is NOT an example of clear theming by the way, since it's an absurd fantasy scenario. The dinosaurs are a metaphor for something real. I haven't read the book, so what is it? Where's the real line? What would he say about GMO food, which has been vilified since that era, but is also responsible for probably billions of extra lives lived?

Making it a blanket application to all technology is as reductive as possible.

There are definitely caveats to the quote. You can argue what the caveats are, but eliminating the caveats defeats the point.

foolm0r0n posted...

The dinosaurs are a metaphor for something real. I haven't read the book, so what is it?

Something potentially extremely dangerous with purely entertainment value as its contribution to the world, accelerated into prominence due to corporate greed

Oddly applies to certain applications of AI and doesn't apply to vaccines but I guess you can just LALALA in your ears and shout reductive to win the point and yeah whatever

im pretty sure the wary of tech theme of JP is mostly aimed at playing god in a more literal "new species" sense (well, dinosaurs aren't exactly new but resurrecting something), rather than vaccines to keep people alive.

jurassic park was actually a warning against raytracing

Pretty sure it was actually just a simple critique of the theme park

foolm0r0n posted...

What's reductive is presuming that Malcolm would oppose any tech you don't currently like, which is exactly how people use that quote. Based on what you're saying, Malcolm would support LLMs, especially from places like Deepmind (e.g. AlphaFold).

This is NOT an example of clear theming by the way, since it's an absurd fantasy scenario. The dinosaurs are a metaphor for something real. I haven't read the book, so what is it? Where's the real line? What would he say about GMO food, which has been vilified since that era, but is also responsible for probably billions of extra lives lived?

Actually, we specifically know that GMO's are the sort of tech Crichton was cautioning.

You've broken down into the strawman and "restate your opponent's thesis but as if they disagree with it" part of your argument, which is probably a sign to check out.

I'll give you this - I don't think mRNA vaccines are outside of the scope of the general caution given in the theming of the book. GMO's are explicitly covered. And they should be. Unchecked corporate greed and a lack of caution could be incredibly disastrous with regards to agricultural breakthroughs. Imagine a wheat that spread so far and grew so fast that it overtook natural grassland. That'd be bad!

I stated the thesis accurately and I am disagreeing with it. I disagree when it's applied to GMOs and I disagree when it's applied to AI. I don't need to appeal to the author to make my point like everyone else. I'm quite comfortable disagreeing with a famous writer.

HanOfTheNekos posted...

Imagine a wheat that spread so far and grew so fast that it overtook natural grassland.

Monsanto literally did this with their GMOs. But the key tech that enabled the strategy wasn't GMO, it was copyright law.

You can disagree with the writer. You can't make his work say something that it didn't say just because you disagree with it.

foolm0r0n posted...

I stated the thesis accurately and I am disagreeing with it. I disagree when it's applied to GMOs and I disagree when it's applied to AI. I don't need to appeal to the author to make my point like everyone else. I'm quite comfortable disagreeing with a famous writer.

No, you stated it somewhat inaccurately, then maliciously misrepresented other people when arguing. But that's okay, that's your MO and we all know to expect that from you anyway.

Monsanto literally did this with their GMOs. But the key tech that enabled the strategy wasn't GMO, it was copyright law.

Which is directly addressed in the Crichton novel Next!

But you CAN make his work say something that it didn't if you want to make a point against AI 30 years later. That's fine really, you just want to make your point with a fun meme.

You can make a point about the dangers of AI using his parameters if you accurately state his parameters

foolm0r0n posted...

But you CAN make his work say something that it didn't

lol

Leonhart4 posted...

You can make a point about the dangers of AI using his parameters if you accurately state his parameters

Then it also applies to a lot of good tech over the last 30 years which fits those parameters, which was my original point. You can't pick and choose.

If it fits the parameters, sure, and it's worth examining to see if they fit

It's not a blanket statement for all technology though, which was my original point