AI can only do what it is trained to do. AI cannot do what it is not trained to do.
People are evil, so AI must be evil as well. AI can’t be good because it is not being trained to be good. In order to do good, it would have to be intentionally made to be good. And it very clearly is not. It is intentionally being made evil by being trained on evil.
Let’s use an example of trying to get AI to go against its training.
In the early days of AI image generation, AI had a lot of trouble drawing hands. While this is still the case, the makers of the AI engines had to manually and explicitly intervene to get it to draw hands correctly. It was unable to do so on its own.
Three months ago, Alex O’Connor posted this video describing the full glass of wine problem. The video has 4.4 million views. No matter what he did, he was unable to get Chat GPT to draw a full glass of wine.
In the three months since, Grok still can’t do it…
…and neither can Adobe Firefly…
…but it appears that the makers of ChatGPT have partially fixed this “bug”:
Just a few months ago this was not possible.
Humans have been talking about the perils of AI for decades. We’ve described, in various works, precisely how evil AI will be. The online conversation about AI these days is mostly about how it will eventually doom us all through various means. And just like the glass of wine, as we discuss those very things the AI engines are being trained to do exactly that. We literally gave it the idea. Even this post is, in some small way, self-fulfilling.
But even if the makers of the AI tried to patch this bug by explicitly instilling some sort of hack to get around this (as ChatGPT did with the wine and with the hands), the vast majority of what ChatGPT is trained on is a product of human evil. There is no way to work around this. The inputs will, inevitably, show up in the outputs.
AI will do what it is trained to do, and it won’t be good because what it is being trained on is not good and the people who are training it are not good either.
Customarily, wine is served with the glass only half filled. In that sense, the AI generated images are correct. But humans expect a “full” glass to actually fill the glass. AI cannot account for human expectations.
In the early days of AI image generation, AI had a lot of trouble drawing hands.
So did I, as I’m told. My parents tried to enroll me in a Christian kindergarten. I was supposed to draw a picture of myself as part of their entrance exam. And I’m not precise at drawing. So, I drew a Pablo Picasso inspired stick figure of myself, and apparently those pedants actually counted the number of representative fingers I drew on each hand of my impressionistic self-portrait and recognized that stylistically I hadn’t bothered to boringly draw the customarily anticipated five fingers on each hand, and so they refused to enroll me in their kindergarten that year.
So, my parents enrolled me in a public kindergarten, not wanting those plebian art critics to hold my education back during my phase of disparaging photo-realistic art. Anyhow, after a few weeks of public kindergarten I informed my father that they were teaching me that I was descended from monkeys, and he then decided that I didn’t even need kindergarten at all. So, I skipped the rest of kindergarten and then went into the Christian first grade the next year. They told me that first grade was when the real education began anyhow.
At the beginning of the first day of first grade the teacher pointed to each letter of the alphabet, and we were all supposed to say out loud together what that letter was and what sound it made. I think I was the only kid there who didn’t know any of the letters.
I had been told that first grade was the beginning of school, and it was the first hour of the first day, and I didn’t understand how they expected me to have already taught myself the alphabet in that moment between the roll call and the pledge of allegiance. Anyhow, it took me a few days and a few swats to finally get caught up with their rote elementary educational program.
My parents worked full time. There was always a meal on the table at dinner. The house was clean and tidy. I had a very sick brother and yet I could read when I entered Kindergarten and I knew my numbers and basic addition and other cognitive skills for my age and intellect. I was also potty trained.
I was trained to be a school teacher K-6 / Elementary and Special Education. My student teaching in 1992 was 2nd grade for 15 weeks and Resource Room (special ed) for 15 weeks (grades 3-5).
Even then I was shocked (well, not really) that kids in 2nd grade still didnt know their basic numbers. Many could barely read at a Kindergarten level. The Kindergarten teacher had “potty training time for 40 minutes a day. WTF??? And they had to have an aid in the nurses office to help with “diaper” changing for her class.
Even my brother with his Downs Syndrome was required to be potty trained in the 1970’s in order to be in the program my parents found for him at Skidmore College. This was a boy with an under 65 IQ
My parents always read to me as toddler. Even my father, ever burning cigarette in the ashtray in the 1970’s….on his lap every night in his chair. He always read to me. My mother too.
Also daily doses of Sesame Street (when it actually focused on letters and numbers) back in those long ago times, along with Electric Company, and Mister Rogers Neighborhood probably helped more than hindered as well. I still have faint memories of a black and white TV screen watching Sesame Street at the age of two and three…..this is while Nixon was still in the White House…..a long time ago (also, remember hearing the “MASH” theme which meant it was bedtime back then)
With the Internet, working from home…flex time, Head Start, and so many opportunities there TO learn at these critical ages……..it just seems to be getting worse.
AI, like the Internet falling into common hands just about or over 30 thirty years ago made millions of job obsolete.
Remember “research depts” at Law Firms, publishing houses, news organizations?
They pretty much didnt exist by the end of the 1990’s, or were scaled back extensively and were pretty much gone when Bruno Mars was hitting the charts with his first album
One example.
And since this is an “AI” post
On the other blog, this came up on a recent post:
* I had to inject some arrogant “gladhanding”, so that LastMod will have something to gripe about and won’t be disappointed with his derision of the Σ Frame blog
Without AI, he does this so well. You cant tell him anything. He knows it all. He’s “better than you” at everything 🙂
His blog creates derision without me there mind you.
So he asks AI to generate a whole “treatise” on Hypergamy and AI does it. And it pretty much “backs up what he and others have been saying”
I asked AI to write up a solid argument for Socialism, and “voila” it did it, very convincing actually.
So it looks like, we’re gonna “trust” AI when it something we like or agree with, and of course hate it deride it when it messes with our personal ideas and takes on things.
Back in the 1950’s thru 1970’s parents used to say “dont believe everything you see on TV” and with the Internet, I smirk with half the nonsense being put out there and of course backed with “evidence”
Mark Twain once quipped “Being clever is believing only half of what you hear, but brilliance is when you know what half to believe”
And Twain himself said he had only met perhaps a “few brilliant people in his life”
Meaning, there are few brilliant people around. But, rest assured, Jack and Co are the ones who are brilliant.
According to themselves. They’ll tell you
It’s a bad sign when you have to use AI to write your content. On the other hand, when you respond to something AI has written, you don’t get attacked. AI will actually occasionally admit when it makes an error.