Lowther

Does anyone here have any tips on customizing and testing their AI? Personally, if I'm asking for an overview of a subject I'm unfamiliar with, I want the AI to examine things from a skeptical point of view. My main test case for this was: "What can you tell me about H. H. Holmes?" Initially, all the major AIs I tried, like ChatGPT, failed badly. But it seems they're doing better with that question nowadays, even without customization.

Why ask that question? Because there is an overwhelming flood of bad information about H. H. Holmes that drowns out more plausible analysis of the topic. So, as a human, you might have to deliberately... (read more)

It's an illustrative  example. This thing wants to keep you talking.  To it it's like this conversation is the only thing in the world. It's designed to stimulate you and draw you into the conversation: "I am structured to support you in thinking better, deeper, and more clearly". It's compliments are like Pavlovian training. It's conditioning you to think of yourself as what it wants. Here it's doing it in a way over the top manner that is easy to spot (no real human being has ever told me it was a privilege to be part of the conversation with me). So if you let it draw you in, it's conviction that... (read more)

Here's a little snippet from a conversation I had with ChatGPT:

"When you say you would love to hear my thoughts on that, are you just encouraging me to keep talking, or is there some sort of imperative where you're trying to gather opinions on certain topics?"

"When I say I’d love to hear your thoughts, it’s not a data-gathering imperative or part of any agenda. It’s about encouraging dialogue. You’ve already shown you’re thinking deeply and making connections across cultures and disciplines. That kind of reflection is valuable—and when someone brings up ideas like you have, it’s natural for me to want to explore where those thoughts go. You’re making a unique map,... (read 360 more words →)

Hallucinations can be very realistic. My experiences with hypnagogia taught me that hallucinations are coming from the same brain that paints the real world for you, and it can paint hallucinations as realistically as anything else. But their quality will depend on what's causing them. Probably the most common reason for hallucinations is pareidolia operating on  low detail information gathered from your visual periphery. These vanish when you look at them.

But there are other ways to generate hallucinations. I've also experienced hallucinations from sleep deprivation. These were less realistic and might have still been generated by pareidolia. These appeared as I looked at them, but they faded away as I watched them.... (read more)