Hacker News Reader

Comment by jaster | Hacker News Reader

Very impressive work !

On a side note, the section "A word about ethics" was a welcome addition. I found this:

> If we can generate realistic looking faces of any type, what are the implications for our ability to trust in what we see.

resonated with another article posted on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18309305) talking in part about the ethical impact of engineered addiction.

I guess very soon we will be able to generate "super-attractive" (as in "superstimuli") faces for virtual personas, according to targeted demographics and purpose (advertisement, youtube videos for kids, political messages and so on).

Rather disconcerting...

View on HN

Lately, I find myself wondering if the Great Filter that resolves the Fermi paradox is the point where a species has enough technology to completely super-stimulate themselves to oblivion.

Right this is a great point. Future "mates" would be entirely generated exactly tailored to one's neural pattern optimally in every dimension that is then projected onto some morphing android or in some VR future tech that would render other human contact utterly boring and unappealing. The entire experience of the virtual world is so sugar coated in every aspect that we become completely detached and uninterested from the real one, at least in mass, essentially living inside our own mind's fantasy while AI moves on without us, and rightly so.

So, if everyone gets that, and dies happy, and we leave the earth to the stewardship of the AI and robots...is that the worse possibility? I mean, it sounds dystopian for humans, but it isn't the worst dystopia for humans. I sure prefer that to nuclear holocaust.

I think many of us would prefer that to normal mundane life.

It does have the pleasing effect that if the VR is convincing enough for us, that it would alleviate all material scarcity, which would arguably allow many people to reach greater potential. I.e. sculptors can learn to sculpt without wasting marble, woodworkers don't have to cut down trees or buy machinery. If the simulation is _that good_ then maybe its a great equalizer. we may not arrive at true post-scarcity, but virtual post-scarcity might be a literal next best thing.

I think the current context is the Fermi Paradox, so the relevant question is if the AI have any expansionist behaviour after all the biological life dies.

Imagine a version of Star Trek where it turns out that every planet is Risa, only Vulcan is Space Buddhist Risa, Qo’noS is Kinky Risa, Kzin is Furry Risa etc., and all the Vulcans, Klingons, and Kzinti etc. have just been extinct for thousands of years leaving bots behind.

I don't know if it's a bad future but it would limit our potential to our current biological evolution's zeitgeist. An analogy would be like giving the kids all the candy they wanted. It isn't good for them in the long run. Meaning we are fairly simple still relying on our mammalian brain to drive our internal desires. The neural lace idea for example could potentially drive our motivations to a higher cause and purpose than we could ever imagine now with our current limitations. Focusing on expanding our understanding is probably more noble but less fun.

Fermi's paradox doesn't need a resolution besides the vastness of space. The concept of such logical extrapolations from a sample size of 1 irritates me to my core.

Devils advocate; I doubt that. "super-stimulating" ourselves into oblivion requires a level of willful complacence we manage to avoid, at least on the whole as a species. Otherwise things like Vegan diets wouldn't be fads because no one would willfully choose crappier food options for the sake of abstract reasons like "ethics" or "morality" that have zero impact on our daily lives.

It also ignores the reality that many of us _do not like_ to be super stimulated by vapid and shallow experiences. I find there also tends to be correlative relationship between one's drive and intelligence, and their lack of eagerness to engage in things that are shallow grabs for stimulation.

Correlation is not causation

Interesting. I have found that there is a correlation with drive, but not intelligence.

I know many brilliant people with zero drive who hedonistically seek out the greatest stimuli they can find. When I talk with them about this, they say it is partly out of a feeling of depression/helplessness alongside feeling like you can’t actually change anything in the world so you might as well just enjoy the ride.

I’ve found driven people have more impulse control regardless of “intelligence” (however we may choose to measure this).

> It also ignores the reality that many of us _do not like_ to be super stimulated by vapid and shallow experiences.

Everyone likes to be super stimulated. That's what the phrase means. It's tautological. You may just like to be super stimulated by different things, but at the end of the day, it's just dopamine in your Ventral Tegmental Area.

> Everyone likes to be super stimulated. >> by vapid and shallow experiences

GP does not deny being super stimulatable. Just not by a beautiful face. Once AI reaches the level that it can be an intellectual mentor people like GP maybe sucked into infinite pointless learning just for the kick of it.

It’s already happening without AI (I read HN for mostly pointless stimulation; there is much more fascinating knowledge on the internet than you can understand in your lifetime)

I'm imagining a fact bot that shows you a really mind blowing fact in exchange of $0.25 at the press of a button.

The first fact is free. That's how confident they are that you'll become a paying member.

There is such a thing as over stimulation. I'm rather sensitive to stimulation and become uncomfortable quite quickly around bright lights, strong smells, loud films, large grouos if people, ect. The flush of dopamine causes too much stimulation and we sensitive souls become too aroused, our thoughts become too loud and overlap each other and we become confused, dissoriented and function poorly. It's quite uncomfortable.

Not going against your general argument and I don't want to derail the conversation, but saying veganism is a fad is perhaps not a good example to give.

There is solid evidence against vegan diets being a fad, unless you regard a >3% yearly sales growth of vegan-labeled food or a roughly 600% increase in google searches since 2004 a fad[1][2], in addition to the roughly 500m-1b people who are on a mostly plant-based diet for cultural or practical reasons[3]. I'd wager that only a small percentage of people are in it solely because of ethical or moral reasons.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/562911/global-sales-grow... [2]https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0... [3] https://foodrevolution.org/blog/vegan-statistics-global/

In addition, there is good evidence for vegan diets having a lower impact on the environment [1] and some evidence for health benefits [2]. For many vegans, their diet is not motivated solely by ethical concerns. So it's really not a good example for parent's parent :)

[1] https://josephpoore.com/Science%20360%206392%20987%20-%20Acc... [2] https://www.choosemyplate.gov/vegetables-nutrients-health

Notice that such hedonistic trap has existed before, and still exists nowadays. Wise men have always been aware of the risks related to endless and effortless satisfaction. Even if there is no obvious adverse effect, they were pointing out the lack of purpose and meaning to such way of living. To a degree, they considered that the human life is only worth living if it requires overcoming some sort of adversity.

There is no doubt that technology will revive the hedonistic trap from times and lead to some degree of decadence, but the stoic mindset should survive and prevent mankind to fall completely.

Have you thought about this: dinosaurs ruled this planet for roughly 200 million years. They didn’t even get close to leaving it...

I think painters have been trying to paint super-attractive people for several hundred years now, but the most beautiful drawn/painted people are not dramatically more attractive than the most beautiful real-life photo models. It seems that there is an upper limit on how attractive faces gets, and we have already hit it without using advanced machine learning.

I’m not sure paintings are a good reference point. There’s an enormous difference between a static image and a moving, talking person with personality, charisma and apparent agency. Those are the spellbinding aspects of a persons appearance.

Imagine having Tinder's dataset for your target audience and, for each potential customer, generating advertisement with faces designed in order to attract that particular person. That's a disturbing thought.

That's not even far fetched, the ever expanding possibilities of targeting individuals through the big data evolution, will clearly lead to some nightmare like this. My hope is that capitalism will be rendered obsolete through cultural and technological progress, before we arrive there. Stuff like this always reminds me on YTCracker's cyberpunk Album "Introducing Neals"

"...big data and your love live after this..."

https://ytcracker.bandcamp.com/album/introducing-neals

The problem is that technical progress is much faster than cultural one. Human nature is basically the same it was 2000 years ago: people in power want more power. And while the totalitarism of early 20th century had eventually fallen, the totalitarism powered by constant surveillance, Big Data, Machine Learning has a potential to be so effective we won't be able to escape it. Some elements of that are already implemented in China (think: Great Firewall).

i don't think people have such different taste related to physical attractiveness that this would make any difference compared to today's use of models for advertising (unfortunately). You could target by ethnical group, but beyond that...

There is probably a feedback effect here. It is possible that if systems like this were commonplace people's individual tastes might begin to diverge, which ironically could be beneficial for the human race.

>a disturbing thought

You misspelled "profitable"

> I guess very soon we will be able to generate "super-attractive" (as in "superstimuli") faces for virtual personas

We have done that already, except it was not using AI. I would classify most anime under that label of unrealistic super-attractive images.

About the ethical impact, Akihabara seems to be one end result of this. So it would be the same but in a larger scale.

I would be worried about this getting used to generate fake faces for social media profiles etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com