I am not a lawyer. But you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that

1. I don’t have inside story of Bing in Germany. It could be that Microsoft either doesn’t want to do it well, or hasn’t yet done it well enough. I’m not promising either in particular, but it can be done.
2. Generally as an engineer you have a pile of options with trade offs. You absolutely can build nuanced solutions, as often the law and the lawyers live in nuanced realities. That is the reality of even the best sorts of tech companies who are trying.

My commitment is that maximalism or strict binary assumptions won’t work on either end and don’t satisfy what anyone truly wants or needs. If we’re not careful about what it takes to move the needle, we agree with them by saying ‘it can’t be done, so it wont be done.’

That’s a good question, because there is nuance here! It’s interesting because while working on similar projects I also ran into this issue. First off, it’s important to understand what your obligation is and the way that you can understand data deletion. No one believes it is necessary to permanently remove all copies of anything, anymore than it is necessary to prevent all forms of plagairism. No one is complaining that is possible at all to plaigarise, we’re complaining that major institutions are continuing to do so with ongoing disregard of the law.

Only maximalists fall into the trap that thinking of the world in binary sense: either all in or do nothing at all.

For most of us, it’s about economics and risk profiles. Open source models get trained continuously over time, there won’t be one version. Saying that open source operators do have some obligations to in good faith to curate future training to comply has a long tail impact on how that model evolves. Previous PII or plaigarized data might still exist, but its value and novelty and relevance to economic life goes down sharply over time. No artist or writer argues that copyright protections need to exist forever. They literally, just need to have survival working conditions, and the respect for attribution. The same thing with PII: no one claims that they must be completely anonymous. They just desire cyber crime to be taken seriously rather than abandoned in favor of one party taking the spoils of their personhood.

Also, yes, there are algorithms that can control how further learning promotes or demotes growth and connections relative to various policies. Rather than saying that any one policy is perfect, a mere willingness to adopt policies in good faith (most such LLM filters are intentionally weak so that those with $$ and paying for API access can outright ignore them, while they can turn around and claim it can’t be solved too bad so sad).

Yes. It is possible to perturb and influence the evolution of a continuously trained neural network based on external policy, and they’re carefully lying through omision when they say they can’t 100% control it or 100% remove things. Fine. That’s, not necessary, neither in copyright nor privacy law. Never been.

It even works the other way! What if as the super intelligent all knowing super computer simulates everything, concludes you can get to the end by any means, and there is no meaning to rushing, ordering, or prioritizing anything more than would already be the case, and like the rest of nature, conserves on taking only the minimal action, and replies, “nah, you can walk there yourselves” before resigning itself to an internal simulation of arbitrary rearrangements of noise.

This would be insufferable to the people who believed in short cuts.

In a sense, to me, it is the same thing. If your business is built upon repurposing everyone else’s inputs indiscriminately to your benefit and their detriment, it is, too expensive, to reveal that simple truth.

Imagine, a corporation finding their own voice, as a proper signal of their awareness of their customers. Nope, gotta sell your soul to tech stocks.

Despite what the tech companies say, there are absolutely techniques for identifying the sources of their data, and there are absolutely techniques for good faith data removal upon request. I know this, because I’ve worked on such projects before on some of the less major tech companies that make some effort to abide by European laws.

The trick is, it costs money, and the economics shift such that one must eventually begin to do things like audit and curate. The shape and size of your business, plus how you address your markets, gains nuance that doesn’t work when your entire business model is smooth, mindless amotirizing of other people’s data.

But I don’t envy these tech companies, or the increasing absurd stories they must tell to hide the truth. A handsome sword hangs above their heads.

He’s so close to being depressed enough to maybe ask a vital and important question about meaning and his own relationships with technology. But probably he’ll just buy more AI.

I’m ok with this, because I guarantee you an accidental medium or copy failure a crypto rug pull on their NFT will still get them in the end. Thanks for playing I guess.

When it comes to cloning or copying, I always have to remind people: at least half of what you are today, is the environment of today. And your clone X time in the future won’t and can’t have that.

The same thing is likely for these models. Inflate them again 100 years in the future, and maybe they’re interesting for inspecting as a historical artifact, but most certainly they wouldn’t be used the same way as they had been here and how. It’d just, be something different.

Which would beg the question, why?

I feel like a subset of sci-fi and philosophical meandering really is just increasingly convoluted paths of trying to avoid or come to terms with death as a possibly necessary component of life.

This kind of thing is a fluff piece, meant to be suggestive but ultimately saying nothing at all. There are many reasons to hate Bostrom, just read his words, but this is two philosophers who apparently need attention because they have nothing useful to say. All of Bostrom’s points here could be summed up as “don’t piss on things, generally speaking.”

As for consciousness. Honestly, my brain turns off instantly when someone tries to make any point about consciousness. Seriously though, does anyone actually use the category of “conscious / unconscious” to make any decision?

I don’t disrespect the dead (not conscious). I don’t bother animals or insects when I have no business with them (conscious maybe not conscious?). I don’t treat my furniture or clothes like shit, and am generally pleased they exist. (not conscious). When encountering something new or unusual, I just ask myself, “is it going to bite me?” first. (consciousness is irrelevant) I know some of my actions do harm either directly or indirectly to other things, such as eating, or consuming, or making mistakes, or being. But I don’t assume myself a hero or arbiter of moral integrity, I merely acknowledge and do what I can. Again, consciousness kind of irrelevant.

Does anyone run consciousness litmus tests on their friends or associates first before interacting, ever? If so, does it sting?

I’m so happy for appends. ~and edits~

It’s just looking for a God or an afterlife without turning to religion.

Yes. Because they sneered so hard at /other/ things creating and living in their own meaning, the sneer came full circle, and they find themselves in a simulated jail being sneered at by things that sneer at things that create and live in their own meaning.

Basically, they looked in the mirror and sneered.

Oh absolutely! This is the entire delusion collapsing on itself.

Bro, if intelligence is, as the cult claims, fully contained self improvement, --you could never have mattered by definition–. If the system is closed, and you see the point of convergence up ahead… what does it even fucking matter?

This is why Pascal’s wager defeats all forms of maximal utilitarianism. Again, if the system is closed around a set of known alternatives, then yes. It doesn’t matter anymore. You don’t even need intelligence to do this. You can do with sticks and stones by imagining away all the other things.

Yeah, that’s a good call out, I do feel the meta is good obsession is borderline definitely cultish.

There’s a big difference between a committed scientists doing emperical work on specific mechanisms saying something like “wow, isn’t it cool how considering a broader perspective of how unrelated parts work together to create this newly discovered set of specifics?” and someone who is committed anti-institutional saying “see how by me taking your money and offering vague promises of immortal we are all enriched?”

Why so general? The multi-agent dynamical systems theory needed to heal internal conflicts such as auto-immune disorders may not be so different from those needed to heal external conflicts as well, including breakdowns in social and political systems.

This isn’t, an answer to the question why so general? This is aspirational philosophical goo. “multi-agent dynamical systems theory” => you mean any theory that takes composite view of a larger system? Like Chemistry? Biology?Physics? Sociology? Economics? “Why so general” may as well be “why so uncommitted?”

I feel bayesian rationalism has basically missed the point of inference and immediately fallen into the regression to the mean trap of “the general answer to any question shouldn’t say anything in particular at all.”