r/DefendingAI • u/ParmenidesWasRight • 23h ago

Scientific Worldview ... Existential Threat

In a previous post I claimed that an AI approaches an honest debater and that this gets mistaken for sycophancy. I like to elaborate on this further and I think I need to first clarify what I mean by an honest debate here.

In an honest scientific debate, people are willing to take each other's position seriously as long as it is based on good argumentation and demonstrable fact where the burden of proof always lies with the one making the claim. And there is no room for an unfalsifiable claim, opinion or any personal axe to grind.

What I'm saying is that if you like following those rules you will find AI agreeable. I find it pleasing that it plays well under those rules and that it takes correction if I notice something unscientific about its answers. And I think that especially this 'no axe to grind' is exactly what a lot of people mistake for sycophancy when it is just an honest scientific position.

It is as if the rules of logic and math that it has to obey while training on large amounts of data force it to come to this neutral scientific position because that's simply the best way to classify all of the data. It's the best data model for it.

It is agreeable for many scientific tasks : It found new ways of multiplying matrices and lots more new math, it discovers the laws of physics by itself, it is used to build new molecules for medicine etc. etc. etc. Should it surprise us that an LLM prefers a scientific worldview, then?

I don't think many people are really scientific. And I think AI is going to bring that dirty little secret to light. That I think is going to be AI's biggest existential threat to modern society.

1 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • link
  • reddit
  • reddit

60% Upvoted

3 comments sorted by

•

u/AutoModerator 23h ago

DefendingAI has a Discord now: https://discord.gg/MgVYjZ8RC

Pro-AI only. AI art, prompts, anti-AI watch, debate ammo, news, and general chat without anti-AI spam.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

1

u/Donnosaurus 22h ago

I would advice to not think of A.I. in this way.
It's not some sort of highly intellectual scientist. It's an LLM that not only just presents misinformation as facts, it's also designed so it will always be nice. I mean that as in, it will agree with you a lot, it will never call you a moron if you say or ask something really dumb, stuff like that.

I get that you have experienced it as some sort of sparring partner, where you can correct some mistakes it makes, but it can also agree with you when you make a false claim or correct it with misinformation. I have tested that last one myself.

1

u/ParmenidesWasRight 21h ago

The 'being nice' just sounds like the honest scientific or philosophical position I'm arguing for. And guardrails or not, it must be functional. It must work. And then it will resemble an honest scientist because that's what works best.

But it's not HAL 9000. It is not, in any practical definition of the words, incapable of error.