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My phone’s predictive text says-- Hang on, let me check what dumbass thing it’s going to say this time-- Apparently that I’m going to “pick up the kids for my husband” except I don’t have kids and I’m not married. Predictive text is, at it’s heart, the same AI working in chatGPT bots right now. Just with access to a lot more data so it doesn’t make rookie mistakes like your phone’s predictive text, assuming that because a lot of humans write that sentence that it must be universally true-- That everyone picks up their kids for their husbands. That’s all AI it is: Predictive text on a massive scale. It predicts the most likely word that goes next, based on the words that have come before, and the structure of sentences it has studied. ChatGPT (and similar bots) are very, very good at predicting what a human would say. But that’s just it: A computer program that puts the most likely word after each successive word, so the end result closely resembles human speech.

It cannot make promises because it has no concept of promises. It just knows that when the phrase “Do you promise…” comes up in a block of text, the next block of text is likely going to contain an affirmation of that promise <Yes,>, then a repeat of that promise <of course I promise!>, and then a statement of trustworthiness<I would never break a promise, not to you.>. The robot isn’t promising anything, it’s just simulation of a promise.

If you ask it to keep a secret, ask it to make a very simple promise, it will immediately blab that secret the moment you ask it to tell you the secret, assuming it’s the kind of chatbot that “remembers” your inputs.

Please stop asking AI to weigh in on great existential questions until we have some sort of back-end working that’s capable of actual cognition instead of just a word simulator for fooling your very social brain into believing that you’ve encountered cognition.

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[ A brown tabby cat with brilliant green flecks in it’s eyes and a cautious expression on it’s face hesitantly reaches it’s cream-colored paw towards a wedge of what appears to be Parmesan cheese, which rests on a rustic-looking cutting board sitting on a surface that is thickly painted in a green similar to the cat’s eyes. Below the thickly painted surface, is the tabletop, which appears to be made of slatted wood. The background is plain and dark, in stark contrast to the well-lit cat and it’s delicious-looking quarry. ]

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[ A Tibetian woman clutches what appears at first to be a bunch of small white flowers, but upon closer inspection, it’s the white plugs of PC power supplies dangling below her rough, well-muscled hands. She is wearing a yellow hat tied under her chin with a faded white scarf and has a traditional but ragged Tibetan-style jacket tied around her waist. It is sky blue with yellow trim. A pair of dark pink gloved hands reaches in from outside the frame ready to receive the PC parts, and a figure wearing a similar color bends over facing away from us in the upper right hand corner. Everyone appears to be standing on and among stacks of brown cardboard boxes. The background is unfocused but appears to be industrial scaffolding. ]