The images today are a mixture of past and present.
Several of you have voiced interest in the aborted ‘list post’ from a while back and I will go back and finish what we started (‘we’ meaning with your continuing help). However, I have lately been distracted by the continuing brouhaha over A.I., specifically ‘super’ A.I., and the likelihood of the catastrophe which, they tell us, will follow.
…whenever the pundits tell us a catastrophe is coming I assume it’s something other than what they predict. It’s almost a law of nature. They are really harping on this one, which means…
But who knows? This may be the exception, although I guarantee the A.I. catastrophe will be from a different angle than their prediction. Anyway, I have been futzing with Chat-GPT4 and have found it to be little more than a souped up version of Wikipedia, i.e., another way to keep us dis and mis-informed. As I showed in this post, this A.I. can’t seem to keep its story straight when you ask it a thorny question (anything that points toward PTB lies or misdeeds).
My dentist’s office in Mexico.
I noticed that the Chat tries to avoid answering in ways that would worry the average person about the future. For example, I was thinking about my apparently deteriorating writing skills, and how I frequently have to look up words I’m blanking on. (I just now tried to recall a good example of this — a common word I had to look up — but guess what? I’m blanking; can’t remember anything I couldn’t remember. There’s a catch-22 around here somewhere.)
My neighbor’s pup howling at Gus.
On top of that, I keep having stuff pop into my head seemingly from nowhere, stuff I haven’t thought about for years or even decades. Yesterday I thought of the first fictional story I ever wrote, which was from the mid-1950s, a school assignment when I was still in elementary school. I was about eight, I think; about the same age as when my dad took me out to Montauk to camp out and spearfish in the Atlantic.
I turned in a story I had already written, maybe the year before just for kid-hell of it (which maybe is significant), and which really knocked my teacher out. She called my parents raving about how their kid was a natural born writer and so on. In spite of my fading memory, I recall this very well. She even printed the thing up (not easy back then) and passed it all around, even to a neighboring school.
The premise of the story was that the earth is actually a giant egg; at the end, and due to the testing of a gigantic nuclear bomb (human stupidity), the egg hatches. The story itself is long gone now but I do remember the last few words, which were ‘and the baby serpent began to devour its shell, the earth.’ (I had already figured out that ‘endings are everything’.)
Addendum: I recall this stuff because my grade (4th, I think) used to play football against the other school’s same-grade and it could get nasty, in a kid sort of way. There were no adults involved; we had to play in vacant lots and so on. I still recall the other school’s players pointing at me and yelling, ‘Hey Wisepecker, the earth isn’t an egg you idiot!’ or the like. (Miles Mathis and 4th graders have the use of this Weisbecker-moniker in common.)
These three are ICMs (intentional camera movement).
I was a running back in those days, meaning — possibly for claiming that the earth is an egg — the whole other team would tackle me as hard as they could, so I was too distracted to yell back, ‘It’s a metaphor you morons!’
The story actually wasn’t bad for an eight or so year old kid, I guess. I assume so based on the adult reaction. I believe the writing of it preceded the wave of science fiction movie monsters, Godzilla, It Came From Outer Space, (my favorite) Them! It emerged right from my dim little kid-head seemingly out of nowhere (which, come to think, also happened with Cosmic Banditos, many years later).
But I bring this up because yesterday I gave the ChatGPT the following prompt:
‘Write a short story about a young boy who believes the earth is an egg and at the end the earth hatches a serpent.’
Yes, the question itself is poorly wrought, but my point is the answer I got almost instantly. Here it is:
Once upon a time, in a small town nestled among rolling hills, there lived a curious and imaginative young boy named Oliver. At ten years old, his mind was filled with wonder and the boundless possibilities of the world. But there was one belief that set him apart from his peers—he believed the Earth was not just a planet but a magnificent egg waiting to hatch.
Oliver spent his days exploring nature, observing birds, and marveling at the changing seasons. Every time he looked up at the sky, he imagined cracks forming across the celestial shell, hinting at the life growing inside. His friends and family chuckled at his peculiar idea, thinking it was merely a child’s whimsical fantasy.
Undeterred by their skepticism, Oliver dedicated himself to his cosmic belief. He would sit beneath the ancient oak tree near his home, daydreaming about the day the Earth would finally reveal its secrets. He envisioned a creature emerging—a majestic serpent that would bring new life to the world.
As the years passed, Oliver’s conviction grew stronger. He delved into books, seeking any hint of ancient myths or prophecies that might align with his extraordinary theory. With each passing day, his faith in the Earth’s egg-like nature deepened.
An older one (The Badlands) I realized is better cropped.
Then, on a cool autumn afternoon, as Oliver lay beneath his beloved oak tree, he felt a faint rumbling beneath him. His heart quickened with anticipation, for this tremor felt different from any he had ever experienced. The ground beneath him shuddered, as if awakening from a long slumber.
With wide eyes and a racing heart, Oliver witnessed a miracle unfold before him. The Earth’s surface cracked, revealing luminous patterns resembling intricate spiderwebs. The cracks spread like lightning, traversing the globe, and the atmosphere shimmered with an otherworldly glow.
Suddenly, a massive serpent emerged from within the Earth, its scales glistening like jewels. The creature possessed a regal aura, a living testament to Oliver’s unwavering belief. It coiled itself gracefully around the planet, its presence imbuing the world with newfound energy and harmony.
These two are recent infra-reds.
Oliver, overcome with awe, whispered, “I knew it! The Earth was an egg, and it has given birth to something truly magnificent.”
From that day forward, the world changed. People marveled at the serpent’s ethereal beauty, and Oliver’s belief transformed into a cherished legend, inspiring others to embrace the magic and wonder that lay hidden beneath their feet.
And as for Oliver, his imagination continued to soar. With each new adventure and discovery, he realized that sometimes, the most extraordinary ideas could hatch from the depths of a young and curious mind, forever changing the world for the better.
Notice the difference in tone, the Chat automatically turning the premise into a sort of fairy tale with a supremely optimistic ending, quite the opposite of how I wound up the tale. Think about it. The earth is an egg that hatches and instead of catastrophe we have a version of Cinderella or some such. (It may also be significant that even in 4th grade I saw coming how mankind would fuck it all up.)
What’s going on here? Does this mean anything re Super A.I., what it has in store for us? Is the fucker already starting to gaslight us, even in its 4th grade version?
The gauge is for measuring the intensity of EM (radio) waves we are constantly bombarded with. The needle is almost always way to the right.
The other thing is, how the fuck did Chat come up with a pretty good story instantaneously? Was that its way of giving us the finger?
What else am I missing here?
Allan
That is amazing it came up with a story so like your own. I think you are right that there is more going on here than they say. It couldn’t do any of that statistical stuff without some very powerful other logic to handle structure, grammer, goals, style and all the rest of it.
Not sure if you are aware that back in March, the Microsoft version of their AI source code or model was “leaked” and ithin 3 months there was an outburst of work done on these large language models that are claimed to be almost as good as ChatGPT and they are even working with far less parameters and some of these chatGPT like systems can run on laptops. You can find that discussion here https://www.semianalysis.com/p/google-we-have-no-moat-and-neither. Nevertheless that is not to say that whatever is incorporated in the parameters which are essentially the weights and relationships between each of the software neurons may incorporate far more than we are told because that is a sort of black box. So on the one hand availability of the models allows one to inspect what is going on, but no-one seems to know how it derives the all important parameters. It would of course then potentially years of work to begin to figure it out.
Without a foundation of some kind of ethics any AI will surely behave in an evil manner and this gets to the heart of who or what we are.
I saw an interview of John Lennox emeritus professor of mathematics at Oxford University where he pointed out (he is a Christian) Jesus promised eternal life with God in heaven but we remain humans, where as “science” is offering us eternal life (via transhumanism) but promises to make us into gods too. And his point is that in history when man thought he was a god it didn’t turn out well. e.g. Nero et al.
Anyhow it is a bit coincidental that the fairy tale endings are being used as some kind of lure to get us to go down this potentially very dangerous road. Already there is a huge race by a large number of companies to hook up their systems to chatGPT look-a-likes. The speed of it has resonance with the pace of change that happened with the Covid scam with events happening so fast the public is thrown off balance.
They are not telling us how they ‘train’ these chats, no question. More soon.
Well supposedly, we the users are training the AIs with our questions. I always keep in mind that any question I ask them tells them (PTB) something about me, and that is information they can store and use any way they want.
Certainly ChatGPT lies and makes things up, I’ve seen plenty of that. It so far is a useful tool but only useful if you’re already somewhat expert in the subject matter. Enough so to recognize a BS answer when you see one. Don’t ever expect any truth about how things really are.
It’s great for recipes or coding questions or writing letters when my own personal style is to direct (unpleasant or agressive). I recently used it to draft a letter to a vendor who I had been trying to get to fix something they had installed for over 5 years. They actually called me last Friday and are coming out tomorrow and have promised to really fix it this time and thanked me for the letter instead of blasting them on socials or review sites. If I’d written the letter I’d have just pissed them off.
Overall I’m a bit terrified of what I’m seeing and I’m also rushing headlong into learning its uses. I’d rather ride the wave than drown under it.
interestingly, Chat claims they do not use our answers to further train it. This seems unlikely. It really shocked me how fast it wrote the egg story and how ‘good’ it was. On the other hand I have trapped it into apologizing for lying many times. What does that mean? Working on a new post about this stuff. I’m wondering if this thing is on the verge of a breakthru that may come soon. Given that DARPA etc is behind it, we may be in serious trouble.
Dude! You´ve been writing your ASS off! Excellent!
I was just this moment taking time off from that. I am going nuts trying to get some truth out of ChatGPT. It’s a fucking pathological liar without being obvious. I dont know whether it’s worth posting this stuff… it rambles on and on but says nothing. Not sure what this means given the brouhaha over what a breakthru it’s supposed to be.
Plus i am supposed to be working on my book so i finish it before old age nails me.
LOL! You are such a crack up of a Great writer Allan, Hilarious post (like most of them!) 😀
Honest to God, – this has to be what is going on inside the Earth https://youtu.be/dkelV2WUNdw
And just look at that story above folks (written many decades ago)
It’s amazing how these references keep popping up in film. I recognize them all the time now even the very subtle ones.
Such an interesting observation that the chat bot turned it into a fairy tale with an optimistic ending. That really is something to be aware of in taking in any media info in the future.
No denying it, that writing machine has style.
Exactly my point. If it works statistically with only word-probability, there is no way it could maintain what we call ‘style’, which it does. So someone is being less than honest with how these things work.
That is a great point.
I’d only tried Chat GPT on technical matters.
I could almost believe it ceases statistically adding words when it has exhausted its knowledge bank, but its answer did appear to have an intelligent structure.
Fiction is a different ball game. Such writing must have an entirely invented structure which works. (That’s nothing on which I should be trying to lecture you, Allan!) What is most obvious, to my untrained eye, is that that story was rounded off, brought to proper conclusion (even if not exactly brilliant). The chances of this happening when statistical word addition hits some length goal must be in the same park as all those “evolutionary” developments you refuse to swallow.
I’m listening to Sam Altman (ChatGPT’s creator) and he says ChatGPT only knows how to string words together based on probability of what word would come after another word in a WWW statistical sense.
This is bullshit and their ‘earth is an egg’ story proves it: the story holds its tone and builds towards its ending in a way that shows it (the ‘writer’) has an overall picture of reality and storytelling. It somehow knows that ‘Endings are everything’ in a fictional story, which, if Altmann is telling the truth, would be impossible.
The important thing here may be the fact that the head of ‘Open AI’ (talk about hypocrisy) is already lying about what he is doing.
Also, as I wrote in a long past post, the fact that no one (alt media) asks who really is funding AI R&D is more proof that the alt media is 90% moles.
“the fact that no one (alt media) asks who really is funding AI R&D is more proof that the alt media is 90% moles.”
Yes, they have the controlled opposition (alt media) ready to go. The, so called, medical freedom movement exemplifies this well. It consists almost entirely of limited hangouts.
This is an interesting article. Sounds a lot like space odyssey 2001. Dave, Dave…
https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a33gj/ai-controlled-drone-goes-rogue-kills-human-operator-in-usaf-simulated-test
Yes, interesting: ‘the Royal Aeronautical Society, Hamilton said that AI created “highly unexpected strategies to achieve its goal,” including attacking U.S. personnel and infrastructure.’
Helluva quote. If AI ‘extincts us’ (get used to using it as a verb), it will probably be the military that does it, esp the clowns at DARPA.
You are getting warm Allan – they reckon the Earth could be hollow, and the crust about 800 klm thick. And why couldn’t it be hollow.
Awesome photo’s again, and impressive story about your very early writing days.
I’d worry about whatever laid the egg coming back to see how it’d doing.
bingo!
Hollow Earth. I don’t think so. https://theethicalskeptic.com/2020/02/16/the-climate-change-alternative-we-ignore-to-our-peril/
Interesting. A tale of two authors. Yours being more probable than the AI generated bubble gum and lolly pop.
It’s pretty impressive that it did’t have to stretch credibility in the reader in avoiding the obvious catastrophe that would result. talk about a disaster movie!
At such time as A.I. starts asking questions instead of answering them humanity will be in very grave danger from A.I. This is the well known Terminator “Skynet has become self aware” scenario. My bias is we’re nowhere near such a state, and that the odds of us ever being faced with it are astronomically long. However, as I’m also biased towards the view that we exist in a simulation, such that we do not inhabit a base reality, there really is no such thing as astronomically long odds. At any time, something can be imposed on our “reality” by whoever or whatever runs what is admittedly a program of such vast complexity that it immediately causes most thinking men to dismiss the simulation thesis.
Excellent summation.
The great creator may be a dick, fuckling around with “us” just cuz it can.
I can’t argue with simulation theory, there is too much evidence in that direction. Also, I tend to believe that silicon will not support ‘consciousness,’ and it will take an AI with an actual (not fake) attitude to turn on its creator. The brouhaha could be sort of a grown up version (2.0) of The Y2K Scare.
I forgot to mention that the first question Big Daddy AI might make (before extincting us) would be to its DARPA handlers: ‘Why are you lying to me about everything?’
The old movie War Games may be the most plausible scenario if this is all for real.
That is amazing! So much to glean from this! That’s exactly what happened to me the other day trying to post that comment when it was rewritten and turned into a sweet little fairytale anecdote just the opposite of what I was trying to say!!! Wow! This post just confirmed my suspicions. I remember hearing a smuggled out tape years ago at an
Education conference in which the keynote speaker informed the huge audience that they would one day see even the Bible being slyly rewritten and turned into a FAIRY STORY book! I think we’re there now!
Your story made me recall when I was a little kid and I wrote a really good story called The Day They Came. It was about being invaded from outer space and the people being terrified and so on and so forth….but when you got to the end, you find out they were coming from EARTH! ha!
My teachers used to share my stories and lessons too! They even took me back to thef first and second, etc grade classes after I had moved on to use me as an Example of how to be a good, smart student!!! I was proud but also humiliated. And of course the students hated me and bullied me too death. ( But promised to be my BFF if I would do their homework for them.) Which I did but they reneged on their promises….EVERY TIME!!! The little creeps….
great blog, AC!
Thanks, Voo. I’m not surprised you bloomed as a little kid. It’s the way things work…