timelets

AI [mis-]alignment amplifies human alignment problem:

Right now, workers are potentially training AI how to make them obsolete. And they often don’t realize it.

The kind of AI used by companies, called an enterprise AI system, can capture everything you do at work and use that information to train itself. These systems can record your interactions within the platform—the prompts you write, the documents you create, the queries you run.

In other words, the company can potentially track—and claim ownership of—every keystroke you make within the system, every idea you document there, every tool you build using that platform.

This dynamic may fundamentally change the relationship between employer and employee. The stakes are so high and so urgent that both sides are rushing to position (or protect) themselves. Executives are rapidly implementing enterprise AI systems, seeking productivity gains and competitive advantage—and they often aren’t disclosing the implications for job security and privacy. Meanwhile, at least some employees are secretly adopting personal AI tools, sometimes violating corporate policies, so that their employers can’t capture everything they know and do.

Individual opt-out of AI is often impossible, so unions and professional associations need to pay attention. With collective bargaining, workers could demand transparency about the use of enterprise AI and demand fair compensation for the knowledge it gathers. Without collective power, individual employees will keep clicking “accept” on agreements that restructure their jobs simply because they have no alternative.

https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/ai-knowledge-capture-employees-a69a0e1c

Philosophical problems can frequently be solved by conceptual analysis or by transforming them into more differentiated versions. However, an additional and interesting strategy consists in attempting to also uncover their introspective roots. A careful inspection of these roots may help us to understand the intuitive force behind many bad arguments, a force that typically survives their rebuttal.

--- Thomas Metzinger, Being No One, 2004.

( Read more... )
However, this would require shifting incentives away from maximizing engagement and toward epistemic responsibility, which is difficult given current business models.

====
It would be an interesting challenge to come with up a technology and a business model that solves the problem.

Also related https://youtu.be/qlPHGnChhI4?si=03mDoaAYAFJnEfCE&t=4004

truth conditions (theoretical intentionality) vs satisfaction conditions (practical intentionality)

I keep coming back to this video about the relationship between (pre-)sheafs and cohomology. Here he says that "the number one technique in mathematics is turning any problem into a linear algebra problem.

More generally, Lawvere often talks about mapping geometry to algebra.

https://youtu.be/RPuWHN0BTio?si=U0h7YM-3GlcyvnS5&t=1890

D --> J <-- T ( c: D --> T is the solution to a choice problem, per Lawvere).

d: D --> J
e: T --> J
c: D --> T

This diagram is a regular Kan extension problem, with a cohomology twist, i.e. assigning values to both objects and arrows.

The great characteristic of the mathematical mind is its capacity for
dealing with abstractions; and for eliciting from them clear-cut
demonstrative trains of reasoning, entirely satisfactory so long as it
is those abstractions which you want to think about. The enormous
success of the scientific abstractions, yielding on the one hand
_matter_ with its _simple location_ in space and time, and on the other
hand _mind_, perceiving, suffering, reasoning, but not interfering, has
foisted onto philosophy the task of accepting them as the most concrete
rendering of fact.

Thereby, modern philosophy has been ruined.

-- Whitehead. Science ..., 1925

«Tрудные задачи» предшествуют не только браку, но и сирене царей, воцарению героя. Ниже мы увидим, что воцарение сопровождается умерщвление старого царя.
...
Причина насильственной замены старого царя новым кроется в том, что царь, который был одновременно жрецом, магом, от которого зависело благополучие полей и стад, при наступлении старости или незадолго до нее, как полагали, начинал терять свою магическую потенцию, что грозило бедствием всему народу. Поэтому он заменялся более сильным преемником.
Нам кажется, что фольклорный материал дает право на утверждeние, что этот преемник должен был дать доказательство своей магической силы, и что здесь также кроются корни «трудных задач».

-- В. Пропп. Исторические корни волшебной сказки.

The ask presented to a potential hero is to prove his magic powers by achieving humanly impossible.

A good checklist:

“... modules are task specific, problem specific, or opportunity specific as often as domain specific, if not more often. Still, ontology is a terrain that inferential modules typically exploit.”

--Dan Sperber. “The Enigma of Reason: A New Theory of Human Understanding.”

I guess, "task" here is synonymous to "routine."

As Vincent Wang reminded me, ChatGPT leapfrogged GPT3 in performance by introducing reinforcement learning (RL) to fine-tune its outputs as an interlocutor, and RL is the machine learning approach to “solving agency”. It is a form of agency never seen before, because it is successful and can “learn” and improve its behaviour without having to be intelligent to do so. It is a form of agency that is alien to any culture in any past, because humanity has always and everywhere seen this kind of agency — which is not that of a sea wave, which makes the difference, but can make nothing but that difference, without being able to “learn” to make a different or better difference —as a natural or even supernatural form of agency.
...

We have decoupled the ability to act successfully from the need to be intelligent, understand, reflect, consider or grasp anything. We have liberated agency from intelligence.

Luciano Floridi, 2023.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-023-00621-y

To make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible, commanding Secondary Belief, will probably require labour and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft.
...
A reason, more important, I think, than the inadequacy of stage-effects, is this: Drama has, of its very nature, already attempted a kind of bogus, or shall I say at least substitute, magic: the visible and audible presentation of imaginary men in a story. That is in itself an attempt to counterfeit the magician's wand.
...
if you prefer Drama to Literature (as many literary critics plainly do), or form your critical theories primarily from dramatic critics, or even from Drama, you are apt to misunderstand pure story-making, and to constrain it to the limitations of stage-plays. You are, for instance, likely to prefer characters, even the basest and dullest, to things. Very little about trees as trees can be got into a play.

J.R.R. Tolkien, Of Fairy Stories.

It's probably not a coincidence that flourishing of Fantasy in movies is happening alongside major technological advances in audio-video. Paradoxically, technology enables magic.

This paper considers some of the reasons why motivated students in suitable learning environments may fail to learn from competent teachers.

...the constructivist perspective that learning is a process of knowledge
construction in the mind of the learner (Pope 1982; von Glaserfeld 1989, Fensham, Gunstone &
White 1994), and assumes that we are concerned with ‘meaningful’ rather than ‘rote’ learning
(Ausubel 1961).

The primary distinction is between situations when the intended learning does not take place
because
(a) the learner can not make sense of the presented material in terms of existing ideas; or
(b) the learner interprets the new material in terms of existing, but alternative, ideas.
( Read more... )

Keith S. Taber, Homerton College, University of Cambridge, U.K. 2000.
https://science-education-research.com/downloads/publications/2001/Taber-2001-TheMismatchBetweenAssumedPriorKnowledge-AMV.pdf

...the simplicity of the perceptual judgment on which the setting up of the proof culminated is what made the difference and carried conviction. Pasteur was not stinting in the laboratory and outside in concentrating interest and discussion on a few extremely simple perceptual contrasts: ab sence/presence; before/after; living/dead; pure/impure.
...
even if the Pasteurians developed a biology in the laboratory, they did not practice a laboratory biology. They did not leave to others, as apparently happened in England, the job of using or applying their results, contenting themselves with "pure science."

--- BL, TPoF, 1993.

cf. AlphaGo.
( Read more... )

All unhappy Little Red Riding Hoods are alike, but every happy LRHH is happy in their own way.

All happy Cinderellas are alike, but every unhappy Cinderella is unhappy in their own way.

Basically, it's a Kan extension problem/solution.

A couple of good quotes about how a problem statement shapes its potential solution.
https://youtu.be/sje2AZOrww0?t=1051

( Read more... )

Watch on YouTube

"Pivoting requires gyroscopes,...

Machiavelli, thinking gyroscopically, advised his prince to be a lion and a fox, the former to frighten wolves, the latter to detect snares. Elizabeth went him one better by being lion, fox, and female, a combination the crafty Italian might have learned to appreciate. Philip was a grand lion, but he was only a lion. Such princes can through conscientiousness, Machiavelli warned, become trapped. For a wise ruler “cannot observe faith, nor should he, when such observance turns against him, and the causes that made him promise have been eliminated. . . . Nor does a prince ever lack legitimate causes to color his failure to observe faith.”

---- John Lewis Gaddis. “On Grand Strategy.”

This relates to the idea of a pivot space.

Let's suspending our moral judgement for a minute.
( Read more... )

( Read more... )
Is there a formal way to distinguish between checklists vs commandments? Checklists are more like probability distributions, while commandments are like laws, i.e. defined state transitions. Hard to say.

The sixth volume of the 1001 nights is wonderful. I expected the quality of stories to deteriorate from volume from volume but so far the opposite is the case.

...the Prince replied, “I have heard tell that a merchant at whose house certain guests once alighted sent his slave-girl to the market to buy a jar of clotted milk. So she bought it and set out on her return home; but on the way there passed over her a kite, holding and squeezing a serpent in its claws, and a drop of the serpent’s venom fell into the milk-jar, unknown of the girl. So, when she came back, the merchant took the milk from her and drank of it, he and his guests; but hardly had it settled in their stomachs when they all died. Now consider, O King, whose was the fault in this matter?”

-- the 603rd night.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/54525/54525-h/54525-h.htm#c172

This sounds like a Rapunzel story with a Trojan Horse twist:

A certain merchant, who was addicted to jealousy, had a wife that was a model of beauty and loveliness; and of the excess of his fear and jealousy of her, he would not abide with her in any town, but built her a pavilion without the city, apart from all other buildings. And he raised its height and strengthened its doors and provided them with curious locks; and when he had occasion to go into the city, he locked the doors and hung the keys about his neck....

So he called up one of his pages, who brought him ink-case[203] and paper and wrote her a letter, setting forth his condition for love of her. Then he set 168it on the pile-point of an arrow and shot it at the pavilion, and it fell in the garden, where the lady was then walking with her maidens...
...
came under the window and said to her, “Let me down a thread, that I may send thee this key; which do thou take and keep by thee.” So she let down a thread and he tied the key to it.
...
So the Prince returned to his palace and fixing the padlock, the key whereof he had given the lady, on a chest he had by him, entered therein. Then the Wazir locked it upon him and setting it on a mule, carried it to the pavilion of the merchant.

...

she hurried the Prince back into the chest, but, in her confusion, forgot to lock it. .... So they took up the box by the lid, whereupon it flew open and lo! the Prince was lying within. When the merchant saw him and knew him for the King’s son....

“Go in, thou, and take the King’s son; for none of us may lay hands on him.” So the Minister went in and taking the Prince, went away with him. As soon as they were gone, the merchant put away his wife and swore that he would never marry again.

-- 591st & 592nd nights. The King's Son and the Merchant's Wife.

--- https://www.gutenberg.org/files/54525/54525-h/54525-h.htm#c167

Jealousy, boredom, lust and deceit are punished here, with just one important exception — the Prince. He wins because in addition to being cunning and lustful he's also above the law. By comparison, in the Bath-sheba story, David was still the subject to Gods law, but only through the death of their first son. Moreover, their son Solomon inherited the kingdom through Bath-sheba scheming.

Profile

timelets

March 2026

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31

Syndicate

Page Summary

Style Credit

Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Mar. 4th, 2026 07:52 pm

Entries tagged with problem

(no subject)

Quote of the Day

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

Nabokov vs Tolstoy

(no subject)

(no subject)

Putin delenda est

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

Profile

March 2026

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags