"AI is built on the collective knowledge of humankind."
No. Nononononono. It is not built on _knowledge_, it it built on _data_. And not everyone's experiences are available as data, many communities are excluded. Also: "Collective" implies some sort of collaboration and shared activity. But "AI" is just accumulation by a few powerful.
So No. It's not collective but extractive, not knowledge but data, not humankind but the hegemonic western view. Everything in that statement is wrong.
@tante All true. And as Theodore Sturgeon said: 90% of everything is rubbish. (So much rubbish 😢)
@tante I completely agree. This isn’t “collective knowledge,” but massive datasets collected and filtered by those who have the resources. Many voices simply don’t make it into that sample. So calling it something neutral and “from all of humanity” is, to put it mildly, an exaggeration.
Hot Damn
so well said and then the additions below just make this statement better and better.
@tante YES!!! I’ve been trying to express this point for months and you expressed just right!! Thanks.
I’m pretty sure that AI will “average” our culture into a mediocre mess
@tante "It is not built on _knowledge_, it it built on _data_." Oh, it's so much worse than that. It's not built on data, it's built on *text*. Including massive amounts of intentional fiction (lots of paranormal romance), unintentional fiction (all those flat earthers and young earth creationists), racism and trolling (4chan!), and psychosis creations (Time Cube ftw!).
Can't tell you how thrilled I am that my robot surgeon might've been trained on Dr. Bronner's soap bottle text.
@tante not built, just stealing everything
With everything that’s been zapped, and all that continues to be, what is the definition of knowledge today? Is it the whole of everything learned by a single human being or a gigantic data store to explore the depths of, guided by silicon shamans?
@tante and if the data is wrong......then....it's not collective knowledge.
@tante The correction is easy: "AI is built on the THEFT OF the collective knowledge of humankind."
@tante and 'build' is only the Base neural network in the Sense of SW Implementation. For the Rest Data is "trained" into the models. The models make use of the "trained" or "learned" Data in very intransparent ways by means of pseudo stochastic Prozesses. No one can determine which Data influences the behaviour of the model in which way.
@tante cherry on top: the AI isn't AI either.
So:
«The AI (which it isn't, it's just a Large Language Model) is built (which it isn't, it's trained) on the collective (which it isn't, it's extractive) knowledge (which it isn't, it's data) of humankind (not all of it, just the colonialists)»
Wait until you hear about Google...
@tante
Also data scraped without consent.
@tante not built, but more like "grown", not intelligence but capability...
Sadly true. And some points would be so easily changed if we wanted. Not the technical limitations, of cause.
@tante AI is built on the hubris of wealthy morons.
AI is an oxymoron. Everything in the universe is real. If Intelligence exists in this universe it will be real just like ours, and not artificial. We have complicated LLMs nothing more
@tante I Support this post with a crate of Whiskey. The AI Industry needs to be compelled to pay Royalty to everyone on the planet . The Data sets upon which the Ai are purportedly trained largely comes from the human race. Secondly AI Tech is a lame Clumsy attempt at harnessing Mankind's currently Dormant Superpower; "The genetic Inheritance of Knowledge from our Ancestors through Our inherent DNA Libraries''
It's a perfect example of dishonest AI propaganda.
sewage is built on the collective kitchen of humankind. every possible taste is mixed
@tante narcissists are always grand masters of marketing some grand vision, which later on turns out to be a bunch of psychological abuse to those who get too close. The psychology was always sitting there in plain view.
Great essay exploring the patterns of psychology at play in the #AI industry, BTW: "The Possessed Machines: Dostoevsky's Demons and the Coming AGI Catastrophe":
https://possessedmachines.com
@tante not to mention the "knowledge" (data) was basically scraped without permission
@tante And non even all data, but specifically MEDIA. Specific media. Pigeonholed by the socioeconomic constraints of its time. LLMs are trained with documents which means that it lacks the ability to be trained in anything that cannot be conveyed in documents, like non-verbal insights or spatial reasoning. Diffusion image genAI is trained on raster pixelated images which means it lacks for example the spatial cues of vector graphics and 3d engines (which is why diffusion AI videogames suck)
@tante you probably mean many communities are _EX_cluded? I wonder if that is going to play out as an advantage in the future. Thinking e.g. of indigenous knowledge not available as data...
@bicipoiesis yeah "exclusion" is better than "non inclusion"
@tante TIL: a lot of the NLP Models were trained on the Enron Corpus initially. So we trained AI basically on criminal evidence of corporate fraud and no we are wondering why the world is shit.
@tante this is a crucial distinction.
