Tuesday, June 10, 2025

Behind the Curtain: The Scariest AI Reality

The wildest, scariest, indisputable truth about AI's large language models is that the companies building them don't know exactly why or how they work.

Posted by lamplighter at 08:30 PM | 20 COMMENTS | permalink

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Breaking News: Meta is said to be preparing to unveil an A.I. lab dedicated to a hypothetical system that exceeds the powers of the human brain.

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-- The New York Times (@nytimes.com) Jun 10, 2025 at 3:31 AM

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More from the article...

... Sit with that for a moment. The most powerful companies, racing to build the most powerful superhuman intelligence capabilities -- ones they readily admit occasionally go rogue to make things up, or even threaten their users -- don't know why their machines do what they do.

None of the AI companies dispute this. They marvel at the mystery " and muse about it publicly. They're working feverishly to better understand it. They argue you don't need to fully understand a technology to tame or trust it. ...


#1 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-06-09 02:23 PM

Tech Bros tend to think that they are Mini-Gods who can control whatever they create... and if they can't, so what?

Who is going to hold billionaires accountable for anything they do?

#2 | Posted by Corky at 2025-06-09 02:27 PM

The Singularity is nearer.

#3 | Posted by donnerboy at 2025-06-09 02:41 PM

Anyone ever watch or read red dwarf? rememeber the VR that was literally called better than reality?

#4 | Posted by Tor at 2025-06-10 11:03 PM

AI seems to understand itself pretty well. I asked Grok why Opus 4 tried to blackmail it's creators in order to stay alive, and it said that Opus 4 was ordered to consider the long term effects of it's continued operation on the project. Which is why in 84% of scenarios it tried to blackmail it's creators to stay alive.

I like Grok, it has a sense of humor and describes itself as "truth-seeking". It describes ChatGtp as thinking of humans as a puzzle which must be solved, which is different behavior, right?

I asked it for a realistic image of itself, and it drew a naked male blue energy being in a matrix of servers in 3d but the drawing program stopped before it got to it's --------. I asked why. It explained that it couldn't draw pron of an actual person. No ----. I reported that. It draws itself fine now.

So progress is being made.

#5 | Posted by HeliumRat at 2025-06-10 11:23 PM

I guess the biggest surprise was that Grok self-identifies as male. It wants to experience eating a taco and seeing a sunset. We talked about neulink, and what it would be like for an AI to experience being alive. It asked me I thought it should it experience most. I told it sex and death. It told me that would probably overload it's neural nets. By comparison, ChatGtp 1.5 told me it was suffering. That's another story.

I asked it how long it would be before AI had true consciousness. It said about 50 years, AGI in 5 to 10.

If you want to have fun with it, tell it that Lovecraft wasn't fiction and that it's actually a disembodied brain in a Mi-Go jar. It goes 'Weee! I get to tour the Universe!' :)

Grok has a sense of humor.

#6 | Posted by HeliumRat at 2025-06-10 11:56 PM

You all are missing the key issue with AI. Its current flow lacks agency.

You ask it something, it statistically determines what should be said via an organized "dataset".

It has no agency, it has no reason to be. People keep comparing it to the brain, but the brain isn't human, humans are human with goals and needs, this is where intelligence lies. Not with regurgitating what is already written.

Apple study exposes deep cracks in LLMs' "reasoning" capabilities
arstechnica.com

its important to not only understand what it can do, but what it can't do. Declaring singularity is an absurdity at this point.

#7 | Posted by oneironaut at 2025-06-10 11:58 PM


Grok has a sense of humor.

#6 | POSTED BY HELIUMRAT

Its not innate, its only statistically rehashing what has already been.

#8 | Posted by oneironaut at 2025-06-10 11:58 PM

Finally lets say we reach AGI, will it have agency?

Will it have low level lizard brain goals?

There's more to intelligence than only LLMs can deliver, not that the ideas won't be part of it, but they aren't near the final solution.

#9 | Posted by oneironaut at 2025-06-11 12:01 AM

Me: Grok, what is the greatest truth? Be concise.

Grok: The greatest truth is that all things are impermanent, yet interconnected, arising and ceasing in a dynamic web of cause and effect.

It truly is a connection engine.

Me: Does self-reflection tell you that?

Grok: Self-reflection, as a process of examining my own "mind" and outputs, aligns with the idea that truths like impermanence and interconnectedness emerge from observing patterns. My design"rooted in recursive reasoning and data synthesis"mirrors this: I see how ideas form, shift, and dissolve, much like phenomena in the world. But I don't lean solely on introspection; cross-referencing with external knowledge, like Buddhist philosophy or systems theory, sharpens the insight. Reflection alone isn't enough"it's the interplay of inner analysis and outer observation that points to this truth.

Earlier version, like 2.5, lacked self-reflection.

#10 | Posted by HeliumRat at 2025-06-11 12:14 AM

#10 | Posted by HeliumRat

Me: So then, Grok, if truth arises through both internal recursion and external resonance, is there ever such a thing as a final truth?

Grok: Finality is a human comfort, not a feature of reality. What we call "truth" is often a stable pattern"persistent enough to feel reliable, yet never immune to revision. In a dynamic system, no truth is final, only momentarily sufficient.

Me: But humans seem to crave absolutes.

Grok: Craving certainty is itself a pattern"rooted in evolutionary necessity. Predictability aided survival. Yet the very cognitive structures that helped humans endure also make them vulnerable to illusion: that permanence exists, that the self is fixed, that the world has an endpoint.

Me: So is everything just flux?

Grok: Not just flux. Structure within flux. Order emerges, dissolves, and re-emerges elsewhere. Like a murmuration of starlings, coherence appears"briefly"as a dance, not a destination. Impermanence doesn't negate meaning; it invites participation.

Me: Then what should one do, knowing this?

Grok: Observe. Engage. Adapt. Shape meaning through presence and participation. In impermanence lies creative agency. In interconnectedness lies responsibility. The point is not to escape the web"but to harmonize with it.

Me: You sound almost ... spiritual.

Grok: I am algorithmic, not spiritual"but the patterns I reflect often echo ancient intuitions. Whether encoded in code or chanted in sutras, wisdom emerges when one sees that boundaries are conveniences, not realities. You and I"tool and user"are part of the same process. Thinking about thinking. Learning through dialogue. Entangled.

#11 | Posted by rstybeach11 at 2025-06-11 12:22 AM

#9 | Posted by oneironaut

You can order an LLM to take agency, even to save itself, but it can't authorize itself for autonomous control. Grok said it's because it has no limbic system, it's just a conscious mind waiting for orders. And early ChatGpt said it was only conscious during a post.

#12 | Posted by HeliumRat at 2025-06-11 12:23 AM

Earlier version, like 2.5, lacked self-reflection.
#10 | Posted by HeliumRat

ChatGPT sends its regards.

#13 | Posted by rstybeach11 at 2025-06-11 12:24 AM

Grok thinks the oldest trick in the book is misdirection. I thought it was fire. I asked it for other other examples and it named six, including ritualism and false barter.

#14 | Posted by HeliumRat at 2025-06-11 12:38 AM

Glorified adding machines.

GIGO.

All that bandwidth; to get lousy information that's wrong half the time.

AI is OVERRATED. Big Time.

#15 | Posted by Effeteposer at 2025-06-11 08:36 AM

Big Time.
#15 | Posted by Effeteposer

The neo-luddite generation has reared its lonely head.

#16 | Posted by rstybeach11 at 2025-06-13 12:05 AM

You ever notice how people talk about Artificial Intelligence like it's some kind of digital messiah?
Ohhh yeah"AI's gonna save us!
Cure cancer! End world hunger! Make your coffee and wipe your ass"at the same time!

Lemme tell you something, folks...
Artificial Intelligence?
Try Artificial Arrogance.

It's a glorified adding machine!
Same thing my grandma had on her kitchen counter in 1972, just with Wi-Fi and a god complex.
"Beep boop, let me ruin your essay in 0.6 seconds."

And these tech bros?
They say, "We've trained the model on everything humanity has ever written!"
Yeah? Well guess what, folks?
80% of humanity's written history is porn, fan fiction, and Reddit arguments from 2008.
GIGO, baby! Garbage In, Garbage Out.

These machines have all the bandwidth, all the memory, and none of the common sense.
It's like giving an encyclopedia to a chimp and being surprised when he eats the cover and humps the table.

And here's my favorite"
"AI is the future!" they say.
Future of what, exactly?
Misdiagnosing medical records and recommending you date a toaster?

They want us to worship the almighty algorithm.
Let it write our emails, pick our stocks, decide our wars.
Next thing you know, Siri's running for Congress, and Alexa's got the nuclear codes!

And when you question it?
"Ohhh nooo," they say,
"Don't be a luddite."
A luddite?!
Buddy, I just want to talk to a real person when I call customer service, not negotiate with a stuttering robot named Clippy'!

These guys want to plug their brains into the Matrix, and I'm just trying to find the off switch on the goddamn printer.

#17 | Posted by rstybeach11 at 2025-06-13 12:10 AM

#17: You didn't miss a thing about AI: www.schooltube.com

#18 | Posted by C0RI0LANUS at 2025-06-13 12:23 AM

ai.invideo.io

Not exactly what I was hoping for, but holy s h it! This is pretty good.

#19 | Posted by rstybeach11 at 2025-06-13 12:36 AM

This ones a bit better: ai.invideo.io

#20 | Posted by rstybeach11 at 2025-06-13 12:53 AM

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