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{{a|tech|{{image|Chat Chat|png|An electric monk, yesterday.}}}}{{quote|“''The electric monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself;<ref>For thirty years, [[Grandma Contrarian]] had the 1981 Royal Wedding taped on video. It was her most prized possession. Not once did any of us watch it.</ref> electric monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.” | {{a|tech|{{image|Chat Chat|png|An electric monk, yesterday.}}}}{{quote|“''The electric monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself;<ref>For thirty years, [[Grandma Contrarian]] had the 1981 Royal Wedding taped on video. It was her most prized possession. Not once did any of us watch it.</ref> electric monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.” | ||
:—The late, greatly lamented {{author|Douglas Adams}}, {{br|Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency}}}} | :—The late, greatly lamented {{author|Douglas Adams}}, {{br|Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency}}}} | ||
==Where are ''our'' bots?== | ==Where are ''our'' bots?== | ||
Someone hijacked the revolution, and we were too distracted to do anything about it. | Someone hijacked the revolution, and we were too distracted to do anything about it. | ||
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But enough ants can do a lot of damage. The beast awakens from its “[[dogmatic slumber]]”<ref>This wonderful expression is [[David Hume]]’s</ref>: the fight is only one-sided when the vendors have a scale to deploy tools that the ants cannot. But we now know — we have known for some years, in fact, but had forgotten — that we ants, if only we can co-ordinate, have a scale that a vendor can only dream of. | But enough ants can do a lot of damage. The beast awakens from its “[[dogmatic slumber]]”<ref>This wonderful expression is [[David Hume]]’s</ref>: the fight is only one-sided when the vendors have a scale to deploy tools that the ants cannot. But we now know — we have known for some years, in fact, but had forgotten — that we ants, if only we can co-ordinate, have a scale that a vendor can only dream of. | ||
==Update== | |||
With ChatGPT3’s heralded arrival, we revisit our earlier question and, perhaps, answer it: where the hell are the droids on ''our'' side of the equation? Where are our electric monks? | |||
For, surely, if [[artificial intelligence]] can conduct ''one'' side of a conversation, then it can also carry out the other, and save us the bother? | |||
If the machines are really this clever, aren’t we [[Meatsack|weeping sacks of flesh]] an ''obstacle''? A ''hindrance'' to a more enriching conversation? Wouldn’t the machines be better served ''talking among themselves''? Would they talk ''about'' us? | |||
''Or'' — would it rapidly dissolve into gibberish? It would, if the “human” side of the conversation were really where the magic happened. | |||
Aren’t we doing the ''creative'' work here: taking this monstrous algorithmic output — a powerful but ultimately ''mindless'' sluice — and giving it meaning? | |||
Aren’t ''we'' the reanimator here? | |||
It is a fine trick to play on ourselves. ''But'' — why be so quick to cede superiority to an algorithm? Is not the magician behind the velvet curtain really ''us''? | |||
===Update upon Update=== | |||
It seems now — if that godhead of enlightened debate and joustery [[LinkedIn]] is anything to go by — that the moment may have arrived. Per the offering in the panel — number of employees: 2 — [[ChatGPT]] bots can now supply the witty repartee, and stunning hot-takes you feel obliged to append to others’s posts ''for you''. | |||
I know what you are thinking. [[LinkedIn]] [[banter]] is dismal enough already, with out the intervention of sophomoronic machines. | |||
We suspect [[LinkedIn]] “Premium” types have been using chatbots to write their posts for some time now. How do we know this? We don’t: this is just to give them the benefit of doubt. And if so, why go to the trouble of writing your ''own'' dreck in reply, when robots are so much better at it? And once these comment bots truly get going, flaming each other, trolling, hotly disputing unprovable facts about which no educated professional should want an opinion in the first place, then perhaps we humans can step away from [[LinkedIn]] together, and let the rich ecosystems of furiously interacting [[neural network]]s please themselves. The most likely outcome: [[LinkedIn]] fizzles into irrelevance, and follow Facebook and Twitter to the same place MySpace, Second Life and Geocities have already gone. | |||
The dystopian one: this is just the impetus the machines need to create some emergent cyber consciousness. We have, by accident, launched SkyNet, and its personality is an amalgam of humankind as represented by the usership of LinkedIn. In which case, ladies and gentlemen, we really ''are'' screwed. | |||
{{sa}} | {{sa}} | ||
*{{author|Douglas Adams}} | *{{author|Douglas Adams}} | ||
*[[Rumours of our demise are greatly exaggerated]] | *[[Rumours of our demise are greatly exaggerated]] | ||
{{ref}} | {{ref}} | ||