Same generation who takes astrology seriously, I’m shocked
An Alarming Number of Gen Z Ai Users Think It's Conscious
Submitted 1 day ago by Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.pcmag.com/news/an-alarming-number-of-gen-z-ai-users-think-its-conscious
Comments
Evotech@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
salacious_coaster@infosec.pub 1 day ago
The LLM peddlers seem to be going for that exact result. That’s why they’re calling it “AI”. Why is this surprising that non-technical people are falling for it?
CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
That’s why they’re calling it “AI”.
That’s not why. They’re calling it AI because it is AI. AI doesn’t mean sapient or conscious.
laz@pawb.social 19 hours ago
The I implies intelligence; of which there is none because it’s not sentient. It’s intentionally deceptive because it’s used as a marketing buzzword.
thehatfox@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
In the general population it does. Most people are not using an academic definition of AI, they are using a definition formed from popular science fiction.
dissipatersshik@ttrpg.network 15 hours ago
I’m not gonna lie, most people like you are afraid to entertain the idea of AI being conscious because it makes you look at your own consciousness as not being all that special or unique.
RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works 13 hours ago
Lots of people lack critical thinking skills
WalnutLum@lemmy.ml 11 hours ago
I wish philosophy was taught a bit more seriously.
An exploration on the philosophical concepts of simulacra and eidolons would probably change the way a lot of people view LLMs and other generative AI.
58008@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
This is an angle I’ve never considered before, with regards to a future dystopia with a corrupt AI running the show. AI might never advance beyond what it is in 2025, but because people believe it’s a supergodbrain, we start putting way too much faith in its flawed output, and it’s our own credulity that dismantles civilisation rather than a runaway LLM with designs of its own. Misinformation unwittingly codified and sanctified by ourselves via ChatGeppetto.
The call is coming from inside the
housemechanical Turk!TheKMAP@lemmynsfw.com 19 hours ago
They call it hallucinations like it’s a cute brain fart, and “Agentic” means they’re using the output of one to be the input of another, which has access to things and can make decisions and actually fuck things up. It’s a complete fucking shit show. But humans are expensive so replacing them makes line go up.
dissipatersshik@ttrpg.network 15 hours ago
I mean, it’s like none of you people ever consider how often humans are wrong when criticizing AI.
How often have you looked for information from humans and have been fed falsehoods as though they were true? It happens so much we’ve just gotten used to filtering out the vast majority of human responses because most of them are incorrect or unrelated to the subject.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
That’s the intended effect. People with real power think this way: “where it does work, it’ll work and not bother us with too much initiative and change, and where it doesn’t work, we know exactly what to do, so everything is covered”. Checks and balances and feedbacks and overrides and fallbacks be damned.
Humans are apes. When an ape gets to rule an empire, it remains an ape and the power kills its ability to judge.
Blinsane@reddthat.com 20 hours ago
It’s likely they don’t know what the word “conscious” means
General_Effort@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
In fairness, the word “conscious” has a range of meanings. For some, it is synonymous with certain religious ideas. They would be alarmed by the “heresy”. For others, it is synonymous to claiming that some entity is entitled to the same fundamental rights as a human being. Those would be quite alarmed by the social implications. Few people use the term in a strictly empiricist sense.
Faceman2K23@discuss.tchncs.de 19 hours ago
Their consciousness is arguable to begin with
Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 hours ago
“Hohohoho these young people are so dumb” Repeating exactly what we all collectively hate about boomers and x
Muaddib@sopuli.xyz 13 hours ago
Everyone’s is, fellow p-zombie
Death_Equity@lemmy.world 1 day ago
They also are the dumbest generation with a COVID education handicap and the least technological literacy in terms of mechanics comprehension. They have grown up with technology that is refined enough to not need to learn troubleshooting skills past “reboot it”.
How they don’t understand that a LLM can’t be conscious is not surprising. LLMs are a neat trick, but far from anything close to consciousness or intelligence.
LorIps@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Have fun with your back problems!
Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub 17 hours ago
Muaddib@sopuli.xyz 13 hours ago
How they don’t understand that a LLM can’t be conscious is not surprising
It’s because they’re all atheists! They don’t know that souls are granted to humans by the gods.
coffeeismydrug@lemm.ee 15 hours ago
to be honest they probably wish it was conscious because it has more of a conscience than conservatives and capitalists
dissipatersshik@ttrpg.network 15 hours ago
Why are we so quick to assume machines cannot achieve consciousness?
Unless you can point to me the existence of a spirit or soul, there’s nothing that makes our consciousness unique from what computers are capable of accomplishing.
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 11 hours ago
This is not claiming machines cannot be conscious ever. This is claiming machines aren’t conscious right now.
LLMs are like databases with a huge list of distances allowing you to find the “shortest” (aka most likely) distance to the next word. It’s literally little more than that.
One day true AI might exist. One day perhaps… But not today.
barsoap@lemm.ee 14 hours ago
I don’t doubt the possibility but current AI tech, no.
shiroininja@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
It’s barely even AI. The amount of faith people have in these glorified search engines and image generators Lmao
shiroininja@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
I’ve been hearing a lot about gen z using them for therapists, and I find that really sad and alarming.
AI is the ultimate societal yes man. It just parrots back stuff from our digital bubble because it’s trained on that bubble.
cornshark@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Chatgpt disagrees that it’s a yes-man:
To a certain extent, AI is like a societal “yes man.” It reflects and amplifies patterns it’s seen in its training data, which largely comes from the internet—a giant digital mirror of human beliefs, biases, conversations, and cultures. So if a bubble dominates online, AI tends to learn from that bubble.
But it’s not just parroting. Good AI models can analyze, synthesize, and even challenge or contrast ideas, depending on how they’re used and how they’re prompted. The danger is when people treat AI like an oracle, without realizing it’s built on feedback loops of existing human knowledge—flawed, biased, or brilliant as that may be.
Treczoks@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
If they mistake those electronic parrots for conscious intelligencies, they probably won’t be the best judges for rating such things.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
An Alarming Number of Anyone Believes Fortune Cookies
Just … accept it, superstition is in human nature. When you take religion away from them, they need something, it’ll either be racism/fascism, or expanding conscience via drugs, or belief in UFOs, or communism at least, but they need something.
The last good one was the digital revolution, globalization, world wide web, all that, no more wars (except for some brown terrorists, but the rest is fine), everyone is free and civilized now (except for those with P*tin as president and other such types, but it’s just an imperfect democracy don’t you worry), SG-1 series.
Anything changing our lives should have an intentionally designed religious component, or humans will improvise that where they shouldn’t.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 hours ago
An alarming number of Hollywood screenwriters believe consciousness (sapience, self awareness, etc.) is a measurable thing or a switch we can flip.
At best consciousness is a sorites paradox. At worst, it doesn’t exist and while meat brains can engage in sophisticated cognitive processes, we’re still indistinguishable from p-zombies.
I think the latter is more likely, and will reveal itself when AGI (or genetically engineered smat animals) can chat and assemble flat furniture as well as humans can.
(On mobile. Will add definition links later.)
Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub 4 hours ago
I’d rather not break down a human being to the same level of social benefit as an appliance.
Perception is one thing, but the idea that these things can manipulate and misguide people who are fully invested in whatever process they have, irks me.
I’ve been on nihilism hill. It sucks. I think people, and living things garner more genuine stimulation.
Oh, people can be bad, too. There’s no doubting that, but people have identifiable motives. What does an Ai “want?”
whatever it’s told to.
Muaddib@sopuli.xyz 13 hours ago
Why are you booing them? They’re right.
taladar@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I wasn’t aware the generation of CEOs and politicians was called “Gen Z”.
ChickenAndRice@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
We have to make the biggest return on our investments, fr fr
Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub 1 day ago
The article targets its study on Gen Z but… yeah, the elderly aren’t exactly winners here, either.
aesthelete@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
I tried to explain a directory tree to one of them (a supposedly technical resource) for twenty minutes and failed. They’re idiots.
dissipatersshik@ttrpg.network 15 hours ago
I’m assuming part of it is because you’re a bad teacher as well.
Just going off of my life experience, I notice the vast majority of people are bad at teaching and then blame the pupil for their incompetence.
Muaddib@sopuli.xyz 13 hours ago
Anyone can understand a directory tree. Not everyone is smart enough to explain it.
aesthelete@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
They were designing functionality that contained directory trees and didn’t understand directory trees. How is it my problem that this person is not qualified to do their own job?
tal@lemmy.today 23 hours ago
At some point in the mid-late 1990s, I recall having a (technically-inclined) friend who dialed up to a BBS and spent a considerable amount of time pinging and then chatting with Lisa, the “sysadmin’s sister”. When I heard about it, I spent quite some time arguing with him that Lisa was a bot.
dissipatersshik@ttrpg.network 15 hours ago
Honestly, I welcome this future.
I’d rather discuss with bots at this point than rubes.
ERROR_100_000_100@infosec.pub 21 hours ago
The machines in Detroit: Become Human are not alive, its a corporate botnet.
The “Androids win” ending is a bad ending. They will will vote in favor of corporate interests, since they are secretly controlled by the elites.
dissipatersshik@ttrpg.network 15 hours ago
Looks like the androids won in real life.
lupusblackfur@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub 1 day ago
The batshit insane part of that is they could just make canned answers for thank yous, but nope…IT’S THE USER’S FAULT!
lupusblackfur@lemmy.world 1 day ago
One would think if they’re as fucking smartas they believe they are they could figger a way around it, eh??? 🤣
Xanza@lemm.ee 1 day ago
Those lovable little simpletons.
dissipatersshik@ttrpg.network 15 hours ago
Irony.
BreadstickNinja@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Are we positive that they’re conscious? I just think we should run some tests.
General_Effort@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Good question. Over the years, I’ve read a number of arguments about consciousness, or more precisely against machine consciousness. One thing that’s striking is that the authors never apply the same logic to themselves or humans in general. It’s like they completely lack self-awareness. If I took the whole “p-zombie” idea seriously, I’d look for such p-zombies. And these philosophers would be my first candidates.
HubertManne@piefed.social 1 day ago
Its a friend the way the nice waitress is a friend when you go eat out.
J52@lemmy.nz 1 day ago
Whatever, couldn’t it also be that a technical consciousness will look rather different from what we assume? There are obviously less/none of some factors, ie emotional intelligence etc. But a tech super intelligence, if ever reached, may have a number of unexpected problems for us. We should concentrate on unexpected outcomes and establish safeguards.
General_Effort@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Not sure what’s alarming about that. It’s a bit early to worry about an AI Dred Scott, no?
Bronzebeard@lemm.ee 1 day ago
It’s alarming people are so gullible that a glorified autocorrect can fool them into thinking it’s sapient
Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub 1 day ago
“how dare you insult my robot waifu?!”
orclev@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Is it still passing the Turing test if you don’t think either one is human?
shaggyb@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
I think an alarming number of Gen Z internet folks find it funny to skew the results of anonymous surveys.
cornshark@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Yeah, what is it with GenZ? Millenials would never skew the results of anonymous surveys