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Pope Francis has died

(www.reuters.com)
916 points phillipharris | 4 comments | 21 Apr 25 08:00 UTC | HN request time: 0.745s | source
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jimmcslim ◴[21 Apr 25 11:47 UTC] No.43750835[source]▶
The Vatican published an interesting document on AI [1], which attributes a number of quotes to Pope Francis:

* As Pope Francis noted, the machine “makes a technical choice among several possibilities based either on well-defined criteria or on statistical inferences. Human beings, however, not only choose, but in their hearts are capable of deciding."

* In light of this, the use of AI, as Pope Francis said, must be “accompanied by an ethic inspired by a vision of the common good, an ethic of freedom, responsibility, and fraternity, capable of fostering the full development of people in relation to others and to the whole of creation.”

* As Pope Francis observes, “in this age of artificial intelligence, we cannot forget that poetry and love are necessary to save our humanity.”

* As Pope Francis observes, “the very use of the word ‘intelligence’” in connection with AI “can prove misleading”

[1] https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/docu...

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timeon ◴[21 Apr 25 13:27 UTC] No.43751790[source]▶
> * As Pope Francis observes, “the very use of the word ‘intelligence’” in connection with AI “can prove misleading”

Yes, LLMs are more about knowledge than intelligence. AK rather than AI.

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diggan ◴[21 Apr 25 13:35 UTC] No.43751865[source]▶
Illustrating perfectly how wide this conversation really is, as we don't even have consensus about what "knowledge" means :)
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moralestapia ◴[21 Apr 25 13:50 UTC] No.43752007[source]▶
We do!

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/knowledg...

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diggan ◴[21 Apr 25 13:56 UTC] No.43752074[source]▶
The Cambridge Dictionary has its own internal consensus, true, but there are so many more ways people understand that specific word :)

Wikipedia even has it's own page with some of the various definitions people use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_knowledge

Then we have implicit/explicit knowledge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_and_explicit_knowledg...) where some people assume one of them when they say "knowledge", others refer to the other.

In fact, there is an entire scientific field to understanding what "knowledge" actually is/means: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology

So yeah, it isn't as simple as looking it up in a dictionary, unfortunately.

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moralestapia[dead post] ◴[21 Apr 25 16:03 UTC] No.43753488[source]▶
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1. karaterobot ◴[21 Apr 25 16:41 UTC] No.43753880[source]▶
> At some point you will understand that you will never have absolute and complete axioms from which to build everything on [1], and you have to work with what you have.

To have hardware that displays blue, and code that manipulates blue, you must have a very clear and unambiguous definition of what blue means. Notice I did not say correct, only clear and unambiguous. Your whole point seems to be that words mean what a native speaker of the language understands them to mean, which is useful in linguistics and in the editing or dictionaries, but the context of this discussion is the representation of some concept in symbols that a computer can process, which is a different thing. Indeed, it's possible that the difference between code and 'vibes' will have to be in some way addressed by those very definitions of knowledge and intelligence, so I think these are relevant questions that can't be hand-waved away.

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2. lanstin ◴[21 Apr 25 18:47 UTC] No.43755145[source]▶
I feel a little blue. Does your code understand that? Can the code function properly in civilization without that understanding?
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3. karaterobot ◴[21 Apr 25 19:05 UTC] No.43755323[source]▶
The code will function, in the sense of executing, whether the underlying concepts are sufficiently well-understood or not. Considering the ramifications of that statement might lead you to seeing why people want to understand what they're building before they build it.

I gave you the benefit of the doubt that you were asking questions in good faith, but I'm not sure that's true anymore, so good luck.

4. collingreen ◴[22 Apr 25 02:18 UTC] No.43758519[source]▶
Da ba di da ba dah, my friend.