Grok cannot detect AI content - defends Chinese propaganda

[KrisZ]

One can correlate anything to everything. It’s quite clear that books allowed mass sharing of ideas, theories, problems and solutions to the challenges the society was facing. The ottomans likely wanted to protect their status in their society, hence banned the printing press. The same could’ve just as easily happened in the west if it weren’t for toppling of some of the most powerful ruling dynasties.

The above articles are quite ignorant it seems of the renaissance era which pretty much laid the foundation for the science we know today. That era had the most high IQ people per population of any recorded history, one cannot lay it on the invention of the printing press.

Also, the industrial revolution brought uncontrolled capitalism with it, and turned farmers into factory workers. In fact children oftentimes had to slave away at the factories and mines along with their parents.

So if AI revolution is being compared to the industrial revolution, then it stands to reason things will get worse for an average person before they get better.

 

[JeffKeryk]

My response to points made in the thread regarding what the Enlightenment has to say about AI in the classroom: Adopting a Luddite/Ottoman mindset risks repeating the Enlightenment’s failures. Instead, America should follow England’s path of Enlightenment success: Embrace new technologies and reap their rewards.

Change is the only constant. You can do OK by taking the safe path, for quite awhile.
If you want more, you need to do something different.

Go big or go home.

 

[JeffKeryk]

One can correlate anything to everything. It’s quite clear that books allowed mass sharing of ideas, theories, problems and solutions to the challenges the society was facing. The ottomans likely wanted to protect their status in their society, hence banned the printing press. The same could’ve just as easily happened in the west if it weren’t for toppling of some of the most powerful ruling dynasties.

The above articles are quite ignorant it seems of the renaissance era which pretty much laid the foundation for the science we know today. That era had the most high IQ people per population of any recorded history, one cannot lay it on the invention of the printing press.

Also, the industrial revolution brought uncontrolled capitalism with it, and turned farmers into factory workers. In fact children oftentimes had to slave away at the factories and mines along with their parents.

So if AI revolution is being compared to the industrial revolution, then it stands to reason things will get worse for an average person before they get better.

Good points, but I think it's fair to add a few points... Kids worked on the farms as well; that's why we had summer vacation. New technology, products, etc (change) always generate winners and losers.

IMO, AI is the inflection point of our time; arguably of all time. There will be fundamental changes across business and our lives. Will there be mistakes? Heck yeah.

Importantly, America is the AI global leader in model research and implementation; China is a formidable opponent.

 

[KrisZ]

Good points, but I think it's fair to add a few points... Kids worked on the farms as well; that's why we had summer vacation. New technology, products, etc (change) always generate winners and losers.

IMO, AI is the inflection point of our time; arguably of all time. There will be fundamental changes across business and our lives. Will there be mistakes? Heck yeah.

Importantly, America is the AI global leader in model research and implementation; China is a formidable opponent.

I’m a farm boy and you cannot compare parents giving chores to their kids with working for a company. I’m pretty sure everyone that grew up on a farm will confirm this. Your parents will be a lot more lenient vs a boss.

Other than that I agree. AI will have lots of teething issues and I’m sure corporations will exploit it as much as they can before the regulations/laws catch up to the new reality.

 

[Jim Rogers]

One can correlate anything to everything.

Not legitimately, and specious correlation is difficult to publish in top journals.

The second paper was published in Journal of Economic History, which a quick impact score and journal ranking index search shows to be in the top quartile of journals in that field.

It’s quite clear that books allowed mass sharing of ideas, theories, problems and solutions to the challenges the society was facing. The ottomans likely wanted to protect their status in their society, hence banned the printing press. The same could’ve just as easily happened in the west if it weren’t for toppling of some of the most powerful ruling dynasties.

The point of the work was neither to judge why different societies made different choices, nor to speculate what might have happened had they made a different choice.

The above articles are quite ignorant it seems of the renaissance era which pretty much laid the foundation for the science we know today. That era had the most high IQ people per population of any recorded history, one cannot lay it on the invention of the printing press.

The authors of the Ottoman paper are Eltjo Buringh and Jan Luiten van Zanden (both of Utrecht University) and a quick check of their bios show:

Buringh
--Co-authored Charting the Rise of the West: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, 6th–18th Centuries (which spans medieval through Renaissance and early modern periods).
--Also published on church building and the economy during Europe’s “Age of the Cathedrals” (700–1500), which overlaps with late medieval into Renaissance transitions.

van Zanden
--Co-authored with Buringh on Rise of the West (see above).
--Has broader work on Dutch Republic economic acceleration (1585–1637), which is squarely in the Renaissance/early modern era.
--Is widely recognized for contributions to European economic history spanning medieval, Renaissance, and early modern periods.

Hard to make a case that they are "quite ignorant it seems of the renaissance era." In fact, they appear to be world-renown experts in that area.

Also, the industrial revolution brought uncontrolled capitalism with it, and turned farmers into factory workers. In fact children oftentimes had to slave away at the factories and mines along with their parents.

So if AI revolution is being compared to the industrial revolution, then it stands to reason things will get worse for an average person before they get better.

You could be right, but to my mind if avoidance of the AI future due of hypothetical growing pains is mainly supported by questioning the benefits of the Industrial Revolution based on a period of unfair labor practices, then I feel pretty good about supporting the U.S. being highly engaged in AI as its revolution dawns!

 

[Jim Rogers]

Change is the only constant. You can do OK by taking the safe path, for quite awhile.
If you want more, you need to do something different.

Go big or go home.

Yep-- at the fork in the road that was the Enlightenment-era dawn of the Industrial Revolution, England chose to go big, the Ottoman Empire chose to go home.

The repercussions of those decisions still reverberate today, some 300 years later.

When these generational forks in the road appear, making the right decision is critical, verging on existential.

And rarely is the right decision for a country to bury its head in the sand and choose the fork path that clings to the past.

 

[JeffKeryk]

And rarely is the right decision for a country to bury its head in the sand and choose the fork path that clings to the past.

Well said. That's history. Perhaps part of my conviction is living and working in Silicon Valley. Different, but effective, is how you win.
If you are not moving forward you are going backward and will be lost.

It's not about today and it's definitely not about yesterday. It's about tomorrow.

"AI is the biggest technological advance in my lifetime, and it’s more important than ever to get people to join the dialogue." Bill Gates

Gates Notes

 

[zzyzzx]

Check out

Hitler reacts to stupid AI responses​

On YouTube.

 

[KrisZ]

Not legitimately, and specious correlation is difficult to publish in top journals.

The second paper was published in Journal of Economic History, which a quick impact score and journal ranking index search shows to be in the top quartile of journals in that field.


The point of the work was neither to judge why different societies made different choices, nor to speculate what might have happened had they made a different choice.



The authors of the Ottoman paper are Eltjo Buringh and Jan Luiten van Zanden (both of Utrecht University) and a quick check of their bios show:

Buringh
--Co-authored Charting the Rise of the West: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, 6th–18th Centuries (which spans medieval through Renaissance and early modern periods).
--Also published on church building and the economy during Europe’s “Age of the Cathedrals” (700–1500), which overlaps with late medieval into Renaissance transitions.

van Zanden
--Co-authored with Buringh on Rise of the West (see above).
--Has broader work on Dutch Republic economic acceleration (1585–1637), which is squarely in the Renaissance/early modern era.
--Is widely recognized for contributions to European economic history spanning medieval, Renaissance, and early modern periods.

Hard to make a case that they are "quite ignorant it seems of the renaissance era." In fact, they appear to be world-renown experts in that area.



You could be right, but to my mind if avoidance of the AI future due of hypothetical growing pains is mainly supported by questioning the benefits of the Industrial Revolution based on a period of unfair labor practices, then I feel pretty good about supporting the U.S. being highly engaged in AI as its revolution dawns!

In those articles they drew a correlation between the adaptation of the printing press and high technological advancement while the articles were ignorant of the abnormally high concentration of super high IQ people of those eras, as well as the already more advanced European nations vs the ottoman empire. You had nations living in castles, villages and houses doing farming vs a an empire living mostly in tents and being hunters/scavengers. The technological gap was very wide well before the printing press showed up.

Whether the authors are ignorant of these facts or not is irrelevant to this conversation because the articles they publish were ignorant of these facts, likely on purpose, to bolster their conclusions. Perhaps that's enough for you to believe in their conclusions, but it is not for me.

 

[Jim Rogers]

In those articles they drew a correlation between the adaptation of the printing press and high technological advancement while the articles were ignorant of the abnormally high concentration of super high IQ people of those eras, as well as the already more advanced European nations vs the ottoman empire. You had nations living in castles, villages and houses doing farming vs a an empire living mostly in tents and being hunters/scavengers. The technological gap was very wide well before the printing press showed up.

Whether the authors are ignorant of these facts or not is irrelevant to this conversation because the articles they publish were ignorant of these facts, likely on purpose, to bolster their conclusions. Perhaps that's enough for you to believe in their conclusions, but it is not for me.

Understood.

I guess I'll just have to rely on Cambridge‑published ignorance—it’s all I’ve got to bring to the argument!

 

[MaximumMini]

Grok cannot detect AI content - defends Chinese propaganda​

AI is here to stay. The slow but steady progress of technology right up to our end (Fermi paradox)
Printing changed humanity
Radio changed humanity
Atomic energy changed humanity
Television changed humanity
Computers changed humanity
The Internet changed humanity
AI will change humanity. It will probably be used mostly to control populations.

What say you?

 

[PandaBear]

Grok is one of the more recent and least performing AI model out there. Elon had a late start and is therefore not doing so well. I don't think you can call someone incompetent defending CCP propaganda (that require quite a bit of capability).

It is just incompetent and has to resort to using erotic image to attract eyeballs.

I think the best since the last several days or a couple weeks is actually Gemini 3 Pro (or whatever Palantir has that's not public).

 

[buster]

AI is happening regardless of what anyone thinks.

 

[Pablo]

AI is happening regardless of what anyone thinks.

View attachment 311991

Who says it's "not happening"? Not me. I just disagree on the overhype and what it really is.

Something like examining scans? Machine will beat human, no surprise. Humans are weak and vulnerable.

 

[Owen Lucas]

AI will change humanity. It will probably be used mostly to control populations.

The models are already controlled when you ask certain questions. It will take a while for those in charge of the narrative to fine tune this but rest assured, it will be censored as well like MSM etc.

Either way, AI is not to the point yet that it can look at an image of a Chinese highway and determine it to be propaganda, but it will eventually. Maybe the higher power private models can do this, but for us plebeians, we get the basic tools.

 

[buster]

Who says it's "not happening"? Not me. I just disagree on the overhype and what it really is.

Something like examining scans? Machine will beat human, no surprise. Humans are weak and vulnerable.

I think it's just going to get better and better, at least that's what all the developers behind it are saying. Could be some hype, but I think some are buying into the hype when not realizing it's more than just grok and ChatGPT going on.

 

[Jim Rogers]

If one believes that a student in the social sciences inquiring about whether the ability to independently write papers represents existential crisis, then current developments in mathematics must be causing them to go off the deep end.

As a retired math professor, I can tell you that proof-writing is to math what text-writing is to the social sciences. And today, I ran into this thread (h/t again to MR). It shows a young mathematician using AI to create a new logic-based proof (superior to the existing brute-force proof) and then auto-formalizing it with AI.

This is further evidence that AI is gaining the capability to create sophisticated, original, and surprisingly clever mathematical proofs. I firmly believe it is just a matter of time (probably less than 10 years) until the whole field of mathematics will be utterly transformed.

In this new world, AI will come up with mathematical proofs at an astounding rate, and the sophistication of those proofs will literally be beyond immediate human comprehension.

Thus, in the new world of math research, no one will create new proofs; the whole field will be an exercise in trailing behind the cutting-edge AI results, trying to understand the proofs that are already established (rather than humans attempting to establish anything themselves).

And note that in the new "trailing-edge, trying to keep up" world of mathematics, the question will never be "is the proof correct?" but rather, "we can be sure it's correct, we just want to understand why it is correct (and mostly just for fun)!"

In such a world, how are we to justify teaching students how to create proofs? Other than the pure-math interests in understanding all the proofs that AI has created, what practical/applied use would there be for any student to learn how to do a complicated proof?

Would it be in the best interest of the U.S. education system to ignore this fundamental inflection point and simply insist that all (advanced) STEM students learn how to do proofs?

As someone who strongly questioned the reasoning for engineering students in the modern era to be forced to learn tedious, overly-complex, manual exact solutions to differential equations, I am now also seriously questioning the need for any student (other than those with a hobby-like interest in it) to learn proofs beyond a basic Intro to Analysis-type of class.

The lessons of the Enlightenment dictate this questioning, and as someone who values and understands Enlightenment wisdom, I'm not going to cling to the past just because it fits my comfort zone. I'm willing to accept the discomfort of the future and not hinder it based on my feelings.

Students are owed this from their professors.

 

[Rmay635703]

To me this is the real danger of AI and people putting any trust in it. Unless you made it yourself, you simply have no idea what "end goal" was programmed into the thing.

Just as disturbing…
The percentage of AMERICAN “posts” on social media (like X fbook, etc) that come from foreign people (SE Asia, Middle East, Africa). May be more than 95%.

This includes most popular social media leaders and “influencers” of popular supposedly local voices of certain American groups and movements.

Turns out Nigerians know what grinds rural Americans gears and tell them what they want to see and hear better than the domestic pontificators.

If you follow someone complaining about problems in America, you may find they actually have zero connection to the continent and have an AI Avatard.

Many monetized accounts pay a whopping $10 so only foreigners in economically depressed regions make the ai slop because it pays better than local options.

 

[JeffKeryk]

If one believes that a student in the social sciences inquiring about whether the ability to independently write papers represents existential crisis, then current developments in mathematics must be causing them to go off the deep end.

As a retired math professor, I can tell you that proof-writing is to math what text-writing is to the social sciences. And today, I ran into this thread (h/t again to MR). It shows a young mathematician using AI to create a new logic-based proof (superior to the existing brute-force proof) and then auto-formalizing it with AI.

This is further evidence that AI is gaining the capability to create sophisticated, original, and surprisingly clever mathematical proofs. I firmly believe it is just a matter of time (probably less than 10 years) until the whole field of mathematics will be utterly transformed.

In this new world, AI will come up with mathematical proofs at an astounding rate, and the sophistication of those proofs will literally be beyond immediate human comprehension.

Thus, in the new world of math research, no one will create new proofs; the whole field will be an exercise in trailing behind the cutting-edge AI results, trying to understand the proofs that are already established (rather than humans attempting to establish anything themselves).

And note that in the new "trailing-edge, trying to keep up" world of mathematics, the question will never be "is the proof correct?" but rather, "we can be sure it's correct, we just want to understand why it is correct (and mostly just for fun)!"

In such a world, how are we to justify teaching students how to create proofs? Other than the pure-math interests in understanding all the proofs that AI has created, what practical/applied use would there be for any student to learn how to do a complicated proof?

Would it be in the best interest of the U.S. education system to ignore this fundamental inflection point and simply insist that all (advanced) STEM students learn how to do proofs?

As someone who strongly questioned the reasoning for engineering students in the modern era to be forced to learn tedious, overly-complex, manual exact solutions to differential equations, I am now also seriously questioning the need for any student (other than those with a hobby-like interest in it) to learn proofs beyond a basic Intro to Analysis-type of class.

The lessons of the Enlightenment dictate this questioning, and as someone who values and understands Enlightenment wisdom, I'm not going to cling to the past just because it fits my comfort zone. I'm willing to accept the discomfort of the future and not hinder it based on my feelings.

Students are owed this from their professors.

This post is spot-on. When I was taking accounting, the professor advised us those who wanted to be accountants should not use calculators; they should add up the lists of numbers manually.

A very successful CEO once said, "I don't see the need for more than 10 or so Internet connections in my company."

Not so long ago, 65nm tech nodes were considered at, or close, to the physical limit.

For centuries our Milky Way Galaxy was thought to be the entire Universe.

Reluctance to change is human nature. I have learned, "He who hesitates is lost." Embrace change; it's coming.

 

[Jim Rogers]

This post is spot-on. When I was taking accounting, the professor advised us those who wanted to be accountants should not use calculators; they should add up the lists of numbers manually.

A very successful CEO once said, "I don't see the need for more than 10 or so Internet connections in my company."

Not so long ago, 65nm tech nodes were considered at, or close, to the physical limit.

For centuries our Milky Way Galaxy was thought to be the entire Universe.

I am a normal human being, and I have as much innate resistance to change as anyone.

I'm currently experiencing the typical dismay of aging where I'm getting that sinking feeling that all the personal development I've done, and all the "figuring out of life" that I've achieved, is all going to be for naught as the world is about to change rendering all that hard-won knowledge completely moot.

Of course I'm not happy about that, but one look at a list like the one you just presented reminds me that it's better to start over in the game of "figuring out life" than it is to insist that the world stop so I don't have to start over.

Reluctance to change is human nature. I have learned, "He who hesitates is lost." Embrace change; it's coming.

This is of course totally right, and it appears that you are having an easy time embracing it. Good on you!

I'm struggling to reach your plane, and it's not all that easy for me. But I'm determined to maintain the struggle to get there.

As you correctly stated, change is coming whether I like it or not, so it's important that I get over myself and acknowledge reality.

Your posts are always a significant boost for me in that effort.