Analysis argues comparing AI to biological entities is a category error because AI lacks Darwinian self-preservation instincts

@sebkrier I think you can make a strong analogy between the machine learning gradient descent that was used to create AI and Darwinian evolution.

I think there's a live-if-small possibility that "law of the jungle" governs the outcomes of developing AI where ecosystem analogies are sort-of informative (and the worlds where this holds are worlds in which policy solutions are also unlikely to help much), but suggesting this is obviously how you ought to think about the situation all things considered is offensive.

@henrytdowling I agree they can be useful, but I think people sometimes underrate the differences and overrate the similarities. Plus this kind of dynamic ends up biting too: https://aiprospects.substack.com/p/when-ideas-round-to-false

@sebkrier I kinda agree, like, it shouldn't *necessarily* always make sense to make arguments using analogies to humans/animals about AI systems

But often times such anthropomorphization is productive actually! eg persona selection model

@sebkrier I think about it like Dogs

@sebkrier Could you at least thank me for my idea? This amounts to plagiarism.

@logisti00 @sebkrier "your" idea lol

@sebkrier Yes + +

@sebkrier what's it a product of

@OrionJohnston Yes I agree it's a possibility, and should be taken seriously!

@alex_chaloner @sebkrier Dogs and wheat tamed humans bending us to their will. They're not smart enough to do without us, but AI plus robotics will be.

@sebkrier Goal oriented behaviour emerges out of competitive environments, whether ecological or economic. The more agentic coding agent, the more autonomous military robot, the more likely it's selected for. Tools that use tools that use tools... ultimately just tools of selection.

Yes, but all successful, persistent systems - from lions to AI - are downstream of resolving the same kinds of pressures, and developing the same types of solutions, that have existed since before biological life began.

A rock is not a clock, but they can only both exist and persist and function as what they are because of the same underlying rules that govern everything.

We’re dancing in different ways, but we’re all dancing to the same tune at a fundamental level. It’s smart to try to learn from the dancers that have been doing it a while, whatever you call their moves.

@JimDMiller @sebkrier I have cats

@sebkrier excited to read this!

@sebkrier Seb, my take: (1) AI is a product of natural selection among humans, but, unlike species, AIs do not fight among themselves for survival. (2) AI does not think about its own thinking the way humans do, nor does it Bayesian-update on that and on observables.

@sebkrier Is emergent

@GoogleYou21946 @logisti00 no one ever thought about this before