Alright, I basically only lurk here so I need you guys to be nice to me because I've been closeted on these matters for a while now. Just doesn't seem like anyone's contemplating all the stuff wrapped up in it without being really reactionary in one way or the other. It actually pisses me off I'm getting invested in this when I'm busy with other shit. Granted I've also spent like a year being couped up with a disability and getting unreasonably heady about a bunch of it, so bear with me lmao.

At the very least, I see as AI as something that will impact our daily lives in a similar manner to smartphones - I don't think many people in 2008 could have predicted shit like the "gig economy" being mostly completely mediated and facilitated by concurrent developments in smartphones. At the same time, I don't think anyone would argue the "marketing" of google maps is the reason people don't use physical travel maps anymore. The pace at which this has accelerated has already laid framework to alter the ways we interact with the world, and that obviously only makes it more significant in my mind. I mean shit, I already use it to generate fully functional code snippets, dictate bullshit and tone on resumes to fuckin' survive, and get quick relevant answers to basic questions I'd normally get from google.

Further though, the tools we use literally mediate how we interact with and make sense of the entire the world. They always have, and yes, did so even before capitalism. Our bodies, minds, and societies literally evolved with them, and this shapes our perception. I guess I'd ask everyone to very seriously contemplate whether or not these things are really, truly, only the equivalent of those goofy beer pint and lightsaber apps in regard to what it could mean for humanity in the very, very near future.

To get pretty wacko... I don't actually think the techbros are all dipshits with their heads up their asses on every subject, and I do think this cuts far, far deeper than something like the ubiquity of smartphones or one huge grift. Frankly, idk how anyone throws around words like "intelligence" or "art" with casual non-chalance while ignoring their basis in philosophy, cognitive science, ethics, and psychology... It just seems pretty fuckin' dumb. Consensus to what these terms even mean has changed throughout history, very radically, and very frequently. Broadly again, by means of our tools and sciences in relation to what society itself was like to begin with.

So yes, linear progression approximations blahblah, okay, absolutely. What concerns me though is skirting around the idea of "general intelligence" in the near future, because if that shit isn't defined and locked down for the majority of people, we're all gonna be in for a much worse time. It honestly gets me thinking about what ordinary people must've grappled with subjectively from the ideas of heliocentrism, or natural selection, or even Freud. Look at how that shifted the gestalt of what the hell a human actually is. I think descriptions of the experiences of Daniel Paul Schreber show influences of the rapid societal changes he must've experienced in his lifetime. It's honestly no wonder to me you've got folks like that lamda priest who thought there's a hivemind with the intelligence of a 13 year old child. I kinda give him the benefit of the doubt in being sincere, and I think as people poke around and become familiar with it, those with a similar education could end up with similar conclusions.

To my understanding, we're dealing with something that is perceiving something else, as a neural network, and then responding to it "intelligently". There are outcomes we can't predict or measure until they're passed through the network, right? Its constitution is such it's a black box, one where perhaps there may also be a mind of some sort? Where the only thing that can be evaluated and parsed is the product itself through our own perception of it? It all seems very close to arguing and frothing at the mouth over the "intelligence" of a human compared to some type of, like, mongrel silicon star-fish? The starfish is intelligent, but with a perception that is completely and wholly unrelatable and inhuman. If you think I'm wrong or this is impossible, please explain that to me lol.

If I were being optimistic, I'd say AI could maybe (if we don't all perish) twist everyone's arm into collectively re-evaluating the gestalts of intelligence, in a way that emphasizes something more sincerely human in each of us. If, for example, if AI art inspires a human to identify and articulate that which is most human in them, which it certainly has, I think that's a good thing... And yeah lol, if I survived a nuke I'd think about postmodernism. Thanks for letting me ramble, feels alright getting this out of my system. Lemme have it.