tempaway74641

I dont get whats supposed to be prescient about writing a book with an AI in it, in 1995.

And nearly three decades before the release of ChatGPT, he presaged the current AI revolution.

This claim seems to hinge on on the Primer in the Diamond Age which uses an actor to read out its text, which is taken as a metaphor for ChatGPT being built on human output.

I mean, the Primer/Ractor combo seems like a cool thing to have in a book, but I don't see why this is a 'most stunning prediction'

Yes why are we bothering to use EUV machines to hit 25 micron drops of molten tin that are moving at 70 meters per second with two co-ordinated lasers, 50,000 times a second, to generate light in the right frequency to etch tiny processors onto tiny bits of silicon, so that we can build these machines that we are using to communicate with each other using a network that spans the whole planet ... if none of the physical world is real why have we bothered to build all that. The only conclusion is that if the physical world is not real its not real in a very well simulated way that in practical terms makes it as good as real anyway.

I'm a solipsist and to be honest I'm surprised there's not more of us

I lean towards this view

Well don't lean on it too hard because its not very solid ; )

True. But still, dualism is the only other way out of that conundrum

edit: ok you're quite right there are other ways out of the conundrum like idealism

I know a good Greg Egan story about that

https://www.gregegan.net/MISC/CRYSTAL/Crystal.html

“What created the only example of consciousness we know of?” Daniel asked.

“Evolution.”

“Exactly. But I don’t want to wait three billion years, so I need to make the selection process a great deal more refined, and the sources of variation more targeted.”

Julie digested this. “You want to try to evolve true AI? Conscious, human-level AI?”

“Yes.” Daniel saw her mouth tightening, saw her struggling to measure her words before speaking.

“With respect,” she said, “I don’t think you’ve thought that through.”

“On the contrary,” Daniel assured her. “I’ve been planning this for twenty years.”

“Evolution,” she said, “is about failure and death. Do you have any idea how many sentient creatures lived and died along the way to Homo sapiens? How much suffering was involved?”

“Part of your job would be to minimise the suffering.”

“Minimise it?” She seemed genuinely shocked, as if this proposal was even worse than blithely assuming that the process would raise no ethical concerns. “What right do we have to inflict it at all?”

Daniel said, “You’re grateful to exist, aren’t you? Notwithstanding the tribulations of your ancestors.”

“I’m grateful to exist,” she agreed, “but in the human case the suffering wasn’t deliberately inflicted by anyone, and nor was there any alternative way we could have come into existence. If there really had been a just creator, I don’t doubt that he would have followed Genesis literally; he sure as hell would not have used evolution.”

Mostly other Masaai, if the person answering speaks their language they are more likely to chat. See the "Qualitative results" section of the article.

Connecting through a wrong number is relatively straightforward, but involves multiple steps. First, an individual dials a number incorrectly. This may result from writing a number down incorrectly to begin with, or simply mis-keying a number in the phone, each of which can stem from low levels of literacy, as noted by our respondents. Furthermore, the likelihood of these errors may be increased by the common practice of using a friend’s phone when one’s battery is dead. Second, the receiving party answers the phone in a specific language, signaling to the caller something about the receiver’s identity. Third, the error is quickly identified. Fourth, the parties either end the call swiftly or they do not. In some instances, individuals may chat for a while, especially (but not exclusively) if the receiver answers in Maa. Maasai social institutions can help members, who may be far from each other geographically, find common ground and mark their social position relative to each other.

...

During our interviews, participants regularly received calls and nearly always answered the call, generally stepping away from the group until the call was over. This happened dozens of times over many meetings. And on a few occasions, the individual returned to the group and announced that the call was a wrong number.

...

During one meeting, a respondent received a wrong number call from another Maasai he had never met, and over a short conversation learned that their fathers were brothers. It was an astonishingly timely example of what we had been discussing. (That cousins would not have known about each other is not necessarily unusual in a society where polygynous families can be very large, and extended families exponentially so.)

This is great. The "Results - qualitative results" section is particularly worth reading