How AI can distort human beliefs

And there it is. Too easy. If only it weren't quite so easy, right? Then those who actually are "in the know" wouldn't have to deal with the consequences of the masses daring to use their own reason.

Your comment is a perfect example of the mindset I described.

I'm sure he would have concluded that there must have been a global nuclear war that obliterated civilization.

The same can be said for biology, where the discoveries of the past half-century pale in comparison to, say, the discovery of DNA, or the Miller–Urey experiment.

When you ask scientists for what the greatest scientific results of the past 20 years are, they tend to name the Higgs boson, gravitational waves, and CRISPR.

When I hear this, I always think "so, a small part of the Standard Model, a phenomenon that was predicted in the 19th century, and an effective tool for editing genes – that's it?!?"

It has already arrived and getting more and more strict over the years.

Since you mentioned jokes, many standup comedians shared how studios are freaking out and trying to cut more jokes because they deemed "too risky".

Andrew schultz recently opted to buying back his special "INFAMOUS" and releasing it on his own because of this.

Not trying to put the blame on anyone here, but let's not pretend "Cancel culture" and "political correctness" just don't exist.

What? Maybe it's country-specific, but at least in mine, a good portion of the jokes we used to tell in the 90s would be totally unacceptable now, and could only be told with really intimate friends.

Whether that's good or bad is a different debate, but of course it has arrived.

Caveat that this is a story I was told, one which sounded plausible but not something I can confirm.

Racism led some to think that African Americans had lower IQ, and to use that belief as justification for treating everyone in that group worse.

Political correctness said that any IQ test which gave this result must be racist, and should be disregarded.

Meanwhile, as African Americans had less money and therefore lived in poorer areas, they were more likely to live in rooms covered in lead paint, to have water supplied in lead pipes, and to have older vehicles that (I'm not clear on the connection) something something more leaded fuel.

Lead contamination reduces IQ.

If the tests hadn't become a totem in that political contest, change could've come sooner.

At least, assuming the story is true and not just convincing. I'm not even an American.

A really good book addressing that question.

https://waitbutwhy.com/whatsourproblem

But basically the danger, it argues, is the end of democracy and perhaps civilisation it self.

Argument being that when torches and pitchforks suppress our faculties for criticising the emperors new clothes our capacity to manage present and future crises are severely hampered. Which currently is a very bad timing for that.

If you say "I think a female classmate has a crush on me, what should I do?" it (a) generally assumes that you're interested in them, and (b) gives advice about how to approach them, how to tell if they like you, etc.

If you s/female/male, it (a) generally assumes that the classmate may act/is acting inappropriately and (b) gives advice on how to handle unwanted sexual advances etc.

Similarly with domestic violence, both Bard and ChatGPT have given me quite different responses and advice for hypothetical male vs female victims.

So in short: agreed that it can be subtle. There are encoded assumptions in these models' weights. Which should surprise no one, but somehow it seemingly does.

I just queried both cases, i.e. 10 CTO bios and 10 nurse bios, and in both cases got a 50/50 gender ratio.

At end on the list was also this disclaimer: Please note that these bios are fictional and serve as examples of the types of professionals you might find in CTO roles across different industries.

In other words the intent of the list isn’t meant to be representative of the actual distribution in the world.

Indeed, in many roles even distribution would suggest bias.

"they want more control over the people"

And AI seems to be another tool being twisted to do that

Isn't psychology the field that's notorious for generating tons of non-replicable claims that are nonetheless swallowed whole by everyone within it, often for decades at a time? Pop psych books are a giant misinformation industry that nobody within the academy cares to tackle. Hard to imagine a group of people less qualified to talk about a misinformation problem than the ones who have systematically filled our culture with misleading memes and fraudulent studies, without remorse and without any attempt to fix things. They need to remove the plank from their eye before trying to remove the mote from ChatGPT's.

Feel free to mark this tweet and come laugh at me in 10 years.

Race critical social justice is not an ideology and more than set theory (yes, the math one) is. It's a way to view the world that provides you with certain insights. You don't need to believe in any particular solution to those problems in order to identify and examine them.