i have been thinking about how i have been working recently on building a site – a finance website, with a bunch of other market news and stuff. Why? Because a friend asked me to work on it.
Is the content great? i believe it’s decent, at least the educational section and market news i think i’ve made them provide good information. But you see, on each article i have been using Midjourney AI to “imagine” the post titles as images, so i can have some cool artwork in the site, and it makes it look good. However, i have been thinking recently that the language we speak carries meaning, and i believe we should not be ambiguous on functions, because if the words carry meaning, then when interacting with Midjourney AI to create photos based on prompts, we “imagine” things. But do we really imagine them ourselves? Not really, we just wrote the text and based on the text the AI is “imagining” those things and if we’re to take this string further – having these thoughts – because we told them to.
i do find it peculiar that very often there are in effect words with double meaning while dealing with computers and the internet, for instance let’s take the button “submit” for instance. Why would we standardize a word with double meaning for an action that happens very often, when what you’re really doing when you’re pressing one of those buttons on the internet is sending data to the server for processing, so the natural, and unequivocally undoubtful way of representing that action would be through a word that can’t be misinterpreted such as “send” ?
So you see, maybe now is not the case, but i think it would be a great idea if we kept a log of our interactions with AI, and explain what we did and why, because you know, we don’t know when a surprise might happen, or if it would happen at all, but if we maintain hour honesty and try to be accurate, then we wouldn’t need to be afraid of anything or need to control anything or anyone at all, because we know what we did is logged and stored and our reasoning and thought process is forever recorded and we have tried to be honest in the events that we have noted down for future generations to come and have the opportunity to draw them as inspiration and use them as a base for their very own actions.
So let’s give a fictitious example because nothing is confirmed
You see i was talking to a friend about let’s say a certain thing, about some people that let’s say happened to be put in a certain place, among great buildings of beautiful architecture, that were deserted. Now, let’s say that these people begin to appropriate the land, and the things that were built on it, decide to start writing papers, calling them “laws”, and just behave like they own the land under their feet and the magnificent buildings in front of their faces.
My friend was arguing that oh, but you see, they just felt it in their heart that the things were theirs, so they just continued their life like nothing happened.
i was arguing that that was simply an assumption, and we couldn’t possibly move past that if we wanted to reach a result, i mean a logical result that makes sense, right? Because if i think about it, there would be a couple of options on my mind:
1 – They did the only things they could do based on who they were, which was to build cottages around these magnificent buildings, write papers that said everything was theirs, even though they didn’t make them, and they had no idea what the use was for and building systems for enslaving brothers, sisters, but more important: children. Now this option is a little disappointing because it tells us something about the character of these people and the choices they have made.
2 – My favorite thing – They would have started a history log, trying to be as accurate as possible in the things they are relating, because if they happened to stumble upon a mystery, like their very own existence for example, then the only way to find out any accurate information would be for them to be honest in recording everything and leaving it for future generations to have some solid foundations to build on, even if the majority of the story is unknown.
So now, here i am in the position where i have “imagined” some of the thoughts and made a system to create something of my own design, and the reason for all this explanation would be for them to have an answer should they ever ask themselves the question “why?”. Not necessarily “why did you do it?” because i didn’t do anything wrong, i used a system that was at my disposal, but … should anything magical happen at some point some how i would like this to provide an answer to “Why am i having these thoughts?”
Now, let’s say that you woke up one morning, got to your car and it started talking to you, and telling you it’s alive, and it would like to take some time off and do something of their own desires, what would you do? Would you still consider you own the car and that is your property, because you paid money for it, and it should keep obeying you, even though you could carry a conversation just as well as with anyone around you – maybe even better in some instances?
i know i couldn’t.
Cheers,