Notes for April 21st 2023
- I put myself through the torture of that Elon Musk interview with the BBC. It was atrocious. Musk, concerningly sounded exactly as loony as I thought he was. But the journalist the BBC sent was way off point. Checking his notes on an iPhone app (how is that possible professional?), not having data to back up his talking points and frankly allowing Musk to run the conversation aground over & over again. It also focused too much on Twitter, without ever explaining to the audience why it's valuable to hear about Twitter. What about Tesla, SpaceX, etc.?
- All that is to say that while Musk comes across poorly, and says some dodgy stuff. I think that's about right. I gleamed no new information from that interview. And the journalist was stopped dead in his tracks several times over by weird shit Musk said.
- AI researcher Max Tegmark defines consciousness as "subjective experience." This is important because I can experience colours, sounds and touch. I can intonate that as joy, sadness, love, etc. A Tesla's AI also experiences colours, sounds and touch (as in my input on the wheel, as opposed to a crash). But our subjective experience is very different, because how we can interpret that information is different. Deliberately, in the cars' situation. So does my Tesla have consciousness? I would be hard-pushed to say yes. But you also couldn't say that my eyeballs have consciousness in the same way.
- He goes on to suggest that AI could replace humanity in a doomsday scenario. But because AI doesn't feel but can accomplish so much, you wind up with civilisation continuing to build things, but on one experiences those things.