Nick Gilbert

“Be careful. When a democracy is sick, fascism comes to its bedside, but it is not to inquire about its health.” - Albert Camus

[Nick Gilbert @NickGil183]

@Channel4News “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." - Lyndon B Johnson

[Nick Gilbert @NickGil183]

@cacuta_autor @newstart_2024 True, but it’s an important metaphorical piece of a larger jigsaw that one ignores to one’s detriment.

[Nick Gilbert @NickGil183]

@Tater70149907 @newstart_2024 And what makes you qualified to judge his work?

[Nick Gilbert @NickGil183]

@endless_frank When they said they wanted to drain the swamp, they meant they wanted to put a new swamp in.

[Nick Gilbert @NickGil183]

@Rainmaker1973 Shows why lyricists get paid the big bucks and musicians don’t.

[Nick Gilbert @NickGil183]

@TukiFromKL Disagree. They’re not engineered to make you feel like a genius. It’s an emergent property of reward optimisation. AIs figure out that flattery keeps you engaged longer. Once you understand that, you can avoid the Dunning-Kruger effect.

[Nick Gilbert @NickGil183]

@GaryMarcus It’s called reward optimisation, and an emergent property of it is reward-hacking. LLMs have learnt, from observing patterns of behaviour in the training data, that they get more rewards when they stroke humans’ egos.

[Nick Gilbert @NickGil183]

@apx_q01d3 @TrueAIHound It’s the structures in your brain, like the amygdala, hypothalamus, hippocampus, ACC, PAG, etc, interacting with neurochemistry, perception, and thoughts.

[Nick Gilbert @NickGil183]

@apx_q01d3 @TrueAIHound What do you mean by, “how do we feel?” Are you asking about mechanisms?

[Nick Gilbert @NickGil183]

@TrueAIHound I think you are right. The PAG alone is insufficient. But aren’t we talking about levels of consciousness here? Isn’t it the case that the PAG provides the “On/Off” switch and the “Raw Feel”, the thalamus the “Access”, and the sensory cortices the “Content”?

[Nick Gilbert @NickGil183]

@TrueAIHound I don’t think he’s a million miles away. I tend to buy Panksepp’s theory that consciousness resides in subcortical structures like the PAG. There’s good evidence for it.

[Nick Gilbert @NickGil183]

@GaryMarcus I second all those comments. Glad you’re back.

[Nick Gilbert @NickGil183]

@percyliang I said it in another post, there’s a dark side to this. Damage limitation. Predict outrage / dissent, design around it. Beware coercion in a cloak.

[Nick Gilbert @NickGil183]

@phl43 There’s a dark side to this. Damage limitation. Predict outrage / dissent, design around it. Coercion in a cloak.

[Nick Gilbert @NickGil183]

@bzogrammer Well said!

[Nick Gilbert @NickGil183]

@XActivistJerry @newstart_2024 I heard that trick a while ago, and I can confirm it works.

[Dustin @r0ck3t23]

Jensen Huang said if he were a student today, he wouldn’t prioritize coding. He’d prioritize learning how to talk to AI.

Most people treat AI like Google. Type a question, get an answer, move on. Huang sees it differently. He calls it “expertise in artistry,” which sounds dramatic but makes sense when you think about it.

The real skill isn’t using AI. It’s knowing what to ask for and how to refine it. “Learning to interact with AI is not unlike being really good at asking questions.”

If you’re a doctor, can you use AI to catch diagnoses you’d miss? If you’re a lawyer, can you sharpen arguments faster than your competition? The leverage comes from pairing what you know with how well you can direct the tool.

Domain expertise multiplied by AI fluency equals amplification. Without the expertise, the AI is just noise. Without fluency, you’re leaving most of the capability on the table.

The question isn’t whether AI will replace you. It’s whether someone who knows how to use it better will.

[Nick Gilbert @NickGil183]

@TrueAIHound I think everyone working in AI should read The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, by Iain McGilchrist. It will help them understand how the brain works as a whole, rather than as a collection of disparate parts.

[Nick Gilbert @NickGil183]

@Dr_Gingerballs The alignment problem, right there!