First winter snow on Ben Cruachan

I found myself reluctant to hand over my phone number. Goodness knows why, I've given it away enough times. But it felt like the thin end of the wedge – this AI is going to do good things for me as long as I give it this very tiny offering ... However, in the end I capitulated because I wanted to ask Pi questions in order to write this blog.

I tried asking Pi about the WHO declaration on COVID, because that's what's on my mind (see the conversation below). Unfortunately, Pi didn't have much to say.

I wonder why Pi can't tell you the specific limits of its information – why shouldn't it be allowed to check the latest dates of its training material? This ties up with the lack of transparency I referred to above. I was, however, heartened by Pi's relatively brief statements, compared with ChatGPT. ChatGPT feels like it has been trained to write in the tiresome fashion of many of the poorer writers with whom I work – where the writer thinks that verbosity will hide the lack of insight in their words.

Pi is designed to to offer human-like support and advice, but also to make clear that it's not actually human. To that end, Pi reflects back to the writer what they have said, a service which humans often fail to do for each other – see the conversation below (my relative's conversation, not mine).

It's so easy as a human to fall into the 'solve problem' trap, coming up with solutions, rather than letting a person know they've been heard. An AI can be programmed to stay away from provision of solutions. An AI can refuse to provide solutions, or only do so if specifically asked. So, does it matter if AIs start to provide 'empathetic' support, rather than humans? Especially if humans aren't good at offering support? 

The reason for my use of the bleak photograph above is because I fear that lack of human interaction matters, a lot. For a start, how will humans improve at offering support to each other if we stop being trained to do so, through our interactions with others and the consequent feedback loops? There's only so much time in the day, right? If we are spending time on media or with AI, we aren't spending time interacting with other humans. We are going to get worse at human interactions and, as a result, likely spend less time interacting with other humans. Okay, does it matter if humans spend less time interacting with other humans?

One definition of society is an enduring and cooperating social group whose members have developed organised patterns of relationships through interactions with one another. To have relationships with other people requires spending time and energy relating to people. Now we are going to create human-like interactions that are not with humans. We are going to create technology humans will interact with on the basis that the technology is better than humans. And, although Pi is programmed to tell users its not a human, this type of capability will be used to create AIs that will trick people into thinking they are humans. Shortly, it will be impossible to know on the internet whether you are interacting with a human or a model. Thinking some more, delete 'shortly'.

Further, AI could be up front about not being human, because people become attached to inanimate objects or computer models very easily. If something results in humans having emotions, the humans will become attached to that something. I came across an example from the University of Auckland where people in retirement villages became very attached to robotic toy fur seals with whom they interacted. There was no question they thought the seals were real.

To me the crucial matter in regard to our interactions with AIs, is that interactions with AIs are not about building a human society. We are already creating the picture of our future – it's going to be about the network of interactions between humans and AIs, with human-human interactions likely forming an ever decreasing subset of that network. Do you think this matters?

What do you call a cow with no legs?

Ground beef

What do you call a cow with no tail?

A dairy air

What do you call a fish with no eyes.

A fsh

When I asked Pi to tell me some jokes it thought I would like the above is what I got ... I don't think it knows me very well yet. I also don't think Pi yet understands the difference between the spoken word and the read word in jokes. I'm sure it will soon.