perhaps what it really excels in is anthropomorphism
【洞察·Ted Chiang】《降临》作者用一句话解构了 Anthropic 的整个品牌叙事：「Anthropic 是 AI 巨头，但它真正擅长的是拟人化」。这个判断的刺痛感在于它的精准：从 Claude 的 Constitution 到 Dario 的访谈，Anthropic 的对外叙事始终在塑造「Claude 可能有感受」的印象。Ted Chiang 认为这是一条危险的认知路径——当我们把工具的行为解读为情感，我们就失去了对工具的正确认知框架。
Article by Emily Bender and Nanna Inie (CPH IT uni) on anthropomorphisation in ai discussions and also ai making/coding. Choice of terms matters.
The Greeks took that material change and they mythologized it into the soul. And then, of course, Genesis—the creation of the world in Christianity—says, the world is here for humans. It was created for humans to use, to dominate, to exploit, you know, in their trial here to see if they’re righteous or not.
for - key insight - roots of anthropomorphism - Greek and Christian narratives - from - Emergence Magazine - interview - An Ethics of Wild Mind - David Hinton - adjacency - existential polycrisis - roots of anthropomorphism in the written language - Deep Humanity BEing journeys that explore how language constructs our reality
key insight / summary - roots of anthropomorphism - Greek and Christian narratives - The Greeks defined the soul - The Genesis story established that we were the chosen species and all others are subservient to us - From that story, domination of nature becomes the social norm, leading all the way to the existential polycrisis / metacrisis we are now facing - This underscores the critical salience of Deep Humanity to the existential polycrisis - exploring the roots of language and how it changes our perceptions of reality - showing us how we construct our narratives at the most fundamental level, then buy into them
But that label has grown controversial as the topic becomes mainstream because some people feel it anthropomorphizes AI models (suggesting they have human-like features) or gives them agency (suggesting they can make their own choices) in situations where that should not be implied.
Column by a travel writer on how anthropomorphing AI can go off the rails quickly. Note that author doesn't really explain how he interacted except for vague indications (a jailbroken Claude 3 Opus model, seemingly running on his phone as app?)
Via [[Euan Semple]] https://euansemple.blog/2024/06/08/jesus-tittyfucking-christ-on-a-cracker-is-that-a-pagan-shrine/
It does not make sense for one species to command most of the energy flow through the ecosystems of which it is a part. That's a very destabilizing situation. And the wise species would do everything possible to reestablish some kind of balanced energy and material throughput. If we don't do that, again, 01:15:52 I keep harping on this, people hate me for it, but we will go down
As we build systems whose capabilities moreand more resemble those of humans, despite thefact that those systems work in ways that arefundamentally different from the way humanswork, it becomes increasingly tempting to an-thropomorphise them. Humans have evolved toco-exist over many millions of years, and humanculture has evolved over thousands of years tofacilitate this co-existence, which ensures a de-gree of mutual understanding. But it is a seriousmistake to unreflectingly apply to AI systems thesame intuitions that we deploy in our dealingswith each other, especially when those systemsare so profoundly different from humans in theirunderlying operation