Revisiting Issues of The Use of AI in Epicurean Philosophy

Quote from Cassius

And would that necessarily be a bad thing? Once again the considerations of PD10 apply - if there are methods by which we actually succeed in establishing and preserving an actual community of living Epicureans.

And therein lies the rub. In my scenario of bots posting and responding algorithmically, there is no "actual community of living Epicureans." There may be unlimited "Epicurean" content online in this scenario, but there is no community, no real Epicureans, just AI bots posting, responding, commenting. One person could program a bot or bots to do all this. A community can't be one person sitting in a Garden with a laptop.

If one wants an "actual community of living Epicureans," you need actual living humans interacting with each other, online and in-person. Increasing content posted everywhere created by generative AI doesn't get humans to have meaningful interactions with other humans.

Quote from Cassius

the hypothetical of the "experience machine" and the issues involved in PD10.

LOL That's a whole other kettle of fish for (yet) another thread. Come at me, bro! I'll throw down on PD10, dude! (I'm doing my best to channel some trash-talking WWE wrestler here. I'll take my Oscar now )

Quote from Cassius

it doesn't "remove" the human element - it's a tool. And as for practicality, the forces arrayed against "us" - meaning against those who support living according to Epicurean philosophy - are too great to unilaterally disarm and give up this tool, which at the moment I see likely to become necessary forself-preservation.

Sure, I'll concede generative AI is a tool. And I'm consciously using generative AI to get away from using "AI" as some generic acronym. Tools are great. The Internet is a tool. A wrench is a tool. One can use the Internet to post misinformation and harassment. One can use a wrench to change your car battery or to bludgeon someone. If one uses an AI application to analyze a huge dataset to help research cancer cures, that's a great use of a tool. If an AI application is used to model weather data to predict severe weather and to save lives, . If someone uses generative AI to create computer code and something goes wrong, you can't ask the coder "Why did you write this line this way instead of that way?" Software engineers can be asked. Generative AI has no idea, that was just the prediction of what came next in their LLM modeling data. I use this same analogy about articles. If an AI-generated article has a turn of phrase or a point is made, and someone asks "That's clever. Could you tell me where that came from? Could you expand on that point?" there's no there there. Generative AI is a black box. If a human writes an article, we can ask the human to expand on a point. We can disagree with a human. We can have a discussion with a human. There is NO opportunity to "have a discussion" with an AI bot. There's the verisimilitude of a conversation, but conversations happen between people.

So, how we use any tool - or use the right tool for the right job - needs to be a conscious human decision. Does the tool enhance human abilities or does it replace uniquely human abilities.

Quote from Cassius

if indeed we use generative AI to actually and in fact reach people with genuine Epicurean presentations that would not otherwise be available to them,

Okay, so with that context, what's the selling point of generative AI over just creating content the "old fashioned" way and putting it out there?

Using your articles specifically, what did the generative AI application give you that you couldn't have brought to the work by composing them without the AI tool?

What does a generative AI tool do to "reach people" that is not available without that tool?

Quote from Cassius

Suppose a human in 1965 who is creative but not a musician decides that he can use AI to produce a song that is as beautiful and catchy as anything produced by the Beatles, and also specifically brings to the listeners' attention genuine Epicurean arguments as to no life after death and no supernatural gods. It would make Epicurus's name and genuine teaching as famous as any name used as the title of any famous love song.

Your scenario is still just positing an imitation of a Beatles song, and the "musician" didn't create it. The algorithm did, admittedly using a training data set of Epicurean texts, I suppose. Is it really Epicurus' "genuine teaching" if it's an algorithmic summary? We've seen that gone awry in tests on this forum.

Quote from Cassius

if I could "change the world" overnight and bring consciousness of Epicurean ideas to millions of real humans at essentially no cost."

Could you really change the world overnight? That seems like AI hype and hyperbole. Again, what does the AI tool bring that seeking out a partnership with an actual musician and working with them to write a catchy song doesn't? Is it harder and more expensive to work with a human being and working on rhymes and rhythms with them than plugging in a prompt to ChatGPT? Of course! But the end is a human creative work with REAL meaning and intentionality behind the words. If you want a song, work to create a song.

There IS a real cost to using AI: socially, creatively, economically, environmentally. "At essentially no cost" is a figment of the collective imagination surrounding AI. I'm curious if you'd be as enthusiastic about generative AI if everyone had to pay what it actually cost to run the queries and prompts. It would not be cheap, and right now the hyperscalers and generative AI companies subsidize the technology to shoehorn it into everything. They want to get people hooked, like a drug dealer giving the first hit or two for free.

TauPhi  Don  Cassius and fellow forum members: Perhaps some reactions to the editorial use of AI are based on mis-perceptions. If you already know this, you quite understand my comment here.

As an award-winning fiction author, I hired a highly accomplished New York publishing industry editor to get my work to the best of my ability. He did not substantively change my story, nor add to the intense research I did on historical events, but he helped me structure the chapters and some paragraphs, and occasionally made some of my sentences sing. BUT in every specific case, he made clear my decision on accepting or rejecting his advice was final.

I can guarantee that everything we read in the best journals and magazines in popular media and in academia, is reviewed by an official or unofficial team and it is modified to present the best product possible. This is no different from using an AI in its present simple form.

I am not aware of instances in either commercial or academic publishing where the author(s) notate their work to identify editorial help. (Exceptions can be seen in long-form books where the author usually thanks at least some of their editorial team.)

As to what AI actually does when it is asked: Current publicly available AI only recognizes patterns in its database that may match and answer the question asked of it. It doesn’t think about other questions, if it can be said to think at all. It only recognizes possible answers and spits out the best answer responsive to the specific request. If one asks the AI for editorial assistance on structure, syntax, or grammar, that is all it will provide.

I suggest the question is no different now with the use of AI than it is for human editorial assistance.

I deleted my LinkedIn account a few weeks ago.

(Quick side-note, AI killed my industry a few month ago, so I'm trying to get into technical writing).

The last activity I registered on LinkedIn was a comment thread about the ethics of using AI in self-published authors' works. The comment section was active, mostly with (per their profiles) employed professionals who made livings producing all kinds of literature. The author published the post as a question: "What % of your book can ethically be written by AI?"

My response of "0%" was met with unanimous hostility.

... specifics aside, they're all professionals, and none of them expressed commitment to functionally writing all of their own, well, writings. Each one of them was defending the position that an author's job boils down to, "One, solid thesis statement. THAT'S the real brilliance." Seriously, the thing they thought made them "skilled writers" was their capacity to write a solid thesis statement, not brainstorming, not research, not education, not outlining, not production, not editing, the editing, the editing, the editing, the editing, the endless editing that can fall to infinity.

Regardless of whether or not a ghost writer is made of silicon, the ghost writer is the real writer of a piece of literature, not the superficial name attached to the cover. That goes for everything.

They're not putting the same effort into their professional tasks that you two, Cassius and Don are here, as is also Bryan and Joshuaand many, many others on this forum who dedicate extensive study to a pursuit (and doing so without a financial incentive).

It's frustrating, and I have a lot of criticism about it ... but, as of now, it's also the case. I think I have to let go of the hot ball of spite I've been clutching, because I can't stop this. We can't put the lid back on this box. We'll just have to deal with it, and, if recent experience is any indicator, we're going to go through a period where ... let's just say I'm really hoping that our species won't split, and everyone connected to AI will become Eloi and the rest of us will become Morlocks.

I've seen great uses of AI, and I've seen abominable uses for it. I think we're all still working all of this out. Every new tool throughout human society has always been disruptive. It always allows new people make new fortunes while threatening the stability of those who have already prospered. It eliminates old lifestyles and presents new options. We'll each have to figure out what to do with it, and, eventually, we'll collectively form opinions about the desirability of it to continue.

In the meantime, I'm no longer using spellcheck.