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How do we know that everyone on the internet isn't just a bot?

I mean, there might be a secret AI technology that is so advanced to the point that it can mimic a real human, make posts and comments that looks like its written by a human and even intentionally doing speling mistakes to simulate human errors. How do we know that such AI hasn’t already infiltrated the internet and everything that you see is posted by this AI? If such AI actually exists, it’s probably so advanced that it almost never fails barring rare situations where there is an unexpected errrrrrrrrrorrrrrrrrrrr…

[Error: The program “Human_Simulation_AI” is unresponsive]

nottheengineer ,

We don’t know and there’s basically no way to know for sure.

Welcome to the new internet.

saint ,
@saint@group.lt avatar

we don’t. also check this out - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism

Atheran ,

That’s a leap if I ever saw one. I could ask the same question and substitute AI with god or aliens and I’d be ridiculed by the tech community and with good reason.

And you don’t need to take it much further to fall into the holographic universe principle or the simulation hypothesis and for those there are big discussions to be had in science communities.

To be clear, nothing stops you or me, or anyone for that matter from assuming so, but down that road the only answer I can think of is that nothing matters and might as well lay down and die.

curiosityLynx ,

Not just that, but you can go further and go with Boltzmann Brain. It's a philosophical dead end.

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

How do you know everyone IRL isn’t an NPC because this is just a simulation?

jesterraiin ,
@jesterraiin@lemmy.world avatar

Because such a massive simulation without players serves no purpose that’d justify the waste of the resources needed to run it.

0x4E4F ,
@0x4E4F@lemmy.fmhy.ml avatar

Maybe it’s someone’s sick fun… or an experiment.

jesterraiin , (edited )
@jesterraiin@lemmy.world avatar

If someone is both capable and willing to spend such massive amount of effort for such an experiment, he already has all the answers the experiment might provide. It’s like thinking NASA would create massive telescope and place it on an orbit, just to point it at Earth and record how cats hunt.

Same with fun. Whoever possesses enough resources to waste them on “fun” alone, already has the access to way more interesting pleasures. It’s like thinking Jeff Bezos is going to buy a private island and buy a luxury bunker there, for the purpose of torturing cockroaches.

0x4E4F ,
@0x4E4F@lemmy.fmhy.ml avatar

I never said any of this might not be true, I just said what if. The experiment idea seems more plausable to me. And why not make an experiment, as you said, if they’re that advanced, making this experiment would be a piece of cake to them, like us making experiments with ants or bees.

jesterraiin ,
@jesterraiin@lemmy.world avatar

I simply observed that logic dictates such an experiment obsolete.

Whoever has all the technology, resources and skills to conduct such a massive test, already has all the answers the experiment might provide. Beings capable of conducting such a test definitely have better questions to answer.

olorin99 ,
@olorin99@kbin.social avatar

Maybe they're just mice trying to find the question to life the universe and everything.

jesterraiin ,
@jesterraiin@lemmy.world avatar

I know where my towel is, but again: the effort it takes to create and maintain such a simulation belongs to order so high, it no longer cares about such trivialities.

catreadingabook ,
@catreadingabook@kbin.social avatar

It could still theoretically be that our reality is some kind of entertainment. For example, people enjoy playing The Sims. There are still active communities for the older versions even though there are newer, more engaging games out there. And more generally, some people prefer old games even though their computers have like 1000x the processing power needed to run it.

If the reality we experience is a simulation, it could be for similar motivations, the hardware would be sophisticated but still a user will run whatever they prefer on it.

jesterraiin ,
@jesterraiin@lemmy.world avatar

We enjoy watching SIMS and playing video games, because our reality is too bleak and dark. It’s a form of escapism, mostly.

Civilization that could create and sustain such a massive and complicated simulation as our reality, already knows ways to make the life interesting enough that it makes any form of SIMS-like entertainment obsolete.

speck ,

I saw a movie or, probably, an anime with this theme in the last year. People discover they are a simulation, manage to breach through to this race that is just lost in viewing virtual space. Wreck shit, go back.

drumdonuttea ,
@drumdonuttea@kbin.social avatar

@speck

Expelled from Paradise?

speck ,

That wasn't it. Damn it. I'm trying not to get pulled into figuring this out, but my brain is of the opinion that there's no better use if my sleep time lol. I'll see if it comes back to mind

emptyother ,
@emptyother@lemmy.world avatar

I prefer The Thirteenth Floor. 1999 scifi noir.

spoilerA person from 1937 finding out their world is a vr simulation in running on a 1999 computer. Then the 1999 people finding out their world is a vr simulator too, running on a 2024 computer.

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

In a way, this is also how Sausage Party ends.

NotAPenguin ,

If it's a simulation your imagination and understanding of the world (simulation) is limited and you have no idea how resource intensive it would be to run, perhaps we're a kids toy for some being

jesterraiin ,
@jesterraiin@lemmy.world avatar

Again: the resources, the effort needed to create and sustain such a massive simulation just for fun, belong to civilization of so high advancement, that it renders the idea impossible.

Beings being able to do it would be able to bypass any stage of infancy or childhood, because it’d be obsolete and pointless for them.

NotAPenguin ,

...?

If it's a simulation all the laws of physics and so on that you're basing these theories on might not even exist outside the simulation.

jesterraiin ,
@jesterraiin@lemmy.world avatar

You can’t simulate a massive environment so alien to your own that they have nothing in common. You could answer “of course I can”, but all your arguments for that would be Russel’s Teapot.

scribs ,
@scribs@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

how do you know the motives of something like that enough to know what’s pointless?

jesterraiin ,
@jesterraiin@lemmy.world avatar

Because that’s how evolution works in intelligent species, or at least should - it leaves behind everything that’s no longer needed.

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

We, human beings, can simulate worlds more complicated than the real one. It doesn’t have to be like The Matrix. It could be like Dwarf Fortress. We wouldn’t know if we are the simulation because it would always seem real and complex to us, even if all the creatures running the simulation see are numbers/text.

jesterraiin ,
@jesterraiin@lemmy.world avatar

We, human beings, can simulate worlds more complicated than the real one.

No, we can’t.

We can’t even simulate less complicated worlds, but so alien that they follow entirely different “natural laws” to our own.

Dwarf Fortress

Dwarf Fortress is ridiculously primitive in comparison to our reality.

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

I’ve “played” plenty of simulations that are just things that run entirely on their own without a player input aside from the starting parameters. Chiefly being the one aptly named “The Game of Life.”

jesterraiin ,
@jesterraiin@lemmy.world avatar

These are highly primitive and limited simulations, that follow basic patterns and can’t evolve much.

Ours is a reality complicated, vast and chaotic. They can’t be compared.

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

I wasn’t comparing them… I was pointing out how simulations don’t need “players.” 🙄

jesterraiin ,
@jesterraiin@lemmy.world avatar

You said you “played” simulations. I pointed out that what you were playing can’t be compared to the complexity of our reality and therefore does not constitute a plausible argument.

Just for the sake of clarity: I’m not attacking you, it’s just that what we can simulate and observe can’t be used as an argument in discussion concerning our reality. It’s apples & oranges. We operate on entirely different level of complexity to whatever we may simulate.

Zerlyna ,
@Zerlyna@lemmy.world avatar

Take the blue pill and find out!

Basilisk ,

The last time I took the blue pill I didn’t care if it was a bot or not, I wanted to fuck it.

lvxferre ,
@lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

Ah, the dead internet “theory”? Ultimately, it doesn’t matter.

Let’s pretend that you’re the last human on the internet, and everyone else (including me) is a bot. This means that at least some bots pass the Turing test with flying colours; they’re undistinguishable from human beings and do the exact same sort of smart and dumb shit that humans do. Is there any real difference between “this is a human being, I’ll treat them as such” vs. “this is a bot, but it behaves like a human being and I need to treat it as a human being”?

jesterraiin ,
@jesterraiin@lemmy.world avatar

Turing test isn’t any good to discern a human from a bot, since many real people wouldn’t pass it.

lvxferre ,
@lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

We can simply treat those “real people” as bots, problem solved. :-)

But serious now: the point is that, if it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, then you treat it like a duck. Or in this case like a human.

jesterraiin ,
@jesterraiin@lemmy.world avatar

I made an observation that Turing test is too flawed a tool to be any reliable. If you want to find out who is who, you need something better, more like Voight-Kampff…

lvxferre ,
@lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

Sure. The test itself doesn’t matter that much, contextually speaking; just that you have some way to distinguish between humans and bots, and yet the internet would be filled with bots that pass as humans.

I guess that the RL equivalent of the Voight-Kampff would be trolling? We have no access to respiration or heart rate across the internet (and if we had, it could be counterfeit), but humans would react differently to being trolled than bots would. Unless the bots are so advanced that they react to trolling the same as we do, and show angry words in response.

jesterraiin ,
@jesterraiin@lemmy.world avatar

I guess that the RL equivalent of the Voight-Kampff would be trolling? (…)

Interesting. I didn’t think about it, but pushing correct buttons and observation of the reactions might indeed be good foundation for some “humanity” test.

You may be onto something, man. Good job! 👏

pruwybn ,
@pruwybn@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Well it would definitely matter at least for practical purposes, like if you wanted to meet up with somebody.

Deestan ,

This is a good answer, because it prevents the dehumanization trap that these theories fall into:

Basically, the belief that some beings don’t have “souls”, and don’t have to be treated with conscience.

The “we are in a simulation” conspiracy fans toy with an idea of NPC that is horrifying: That some humans are just acting like humans very convincingly, but they are just thin shells that don’t really really feel pain or happiness. Whatever you do to them can’t be morally wrong.

It is also similar to how some religions have ideas that people can have their soul taken by Satan and are just demonic possession vessels here to corrupt us. They behave very much like humans but do not be tricked!

Europeans used to think Africans had no souls, they were just animals that were very good at imitating human behavior.

These thoughts are all extremely strong tools for any fascist movement needing some vague excuse to commit atrocities to their opponents and scapegoats.

breadsmasher ,
@breadsmasher@lemmy.world avatar

Looks like the bot @001100010010 is becoming self aware.

Shut it down. Lets try again

TheFeatureCreature ,
@TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world avatar

Beep boop beep

jesterraiin ,
@jesterraiin@lemmy.world avatar

Bots have limitations. They avoid certain specific topics, or answer in very vague way.

Also, some of us met in real-space, soooo…

Cyyy ,

do we? or do we only REMEMBER doing it? ;)…

jesterraiin ,
@jesterraiin@lemmy.world avatar

We do. Because there are many physical proofs of our meetings.

Cyyy , (edited )

are there? i sit here in front of my computer, no person anywhere. also not a single sign of a person being here except me. for all we know we could be a boltzmann brain imaging our past life and we will be gone in a few se

jesterraiin ,
@jesterraiin@lemmy.world avatar

Yes, they are there. For example: I’m just about to go for a walk and I will see the same markings I made with my friend some 12 years ago, in the same spot.

Cyyy ,

what tells you that you are currently not in a dream and the whole reality is just created that way? and before you read this text right now, there existed nothing because you just got created with fake memory’s right now (boltzman brain)? :p

(sorry, i know this goes too far now and i should stop. so i will now :D)

jesterraiin ,
@jesterraiin@lemmy.world avatar

It’s ok, questions imply the revision of personal viewpoint, so they are very welcomed.

Anyway: each and everyone of us interacts with the world around us, changes it, even if these are small changes. These changes can be observed, confirmed by many other inhabitants of this world, and they often evolve when we no longer pay attention to them, or forget about them. We often learn about things we did in the past, that became something else, were important for someone else, and so on and so forth.

The typical example might be that we left some apple somewhere, visited the place years later only to find a small apple tree growing there.

This suggests that the reality around us is persistent and it works even when we don’t observe it, according to laws and rules we might be oblivious to. As such, it can’t be a mere dream.

Let’s say that all those memories are implanted. Ok, but since these memories are implanted into many different inhabitants of this reality, and not just “these memories”, but their variations, including the evolutions I’ve been talking about, it’d mean, that there’s some big, huge enterprise tasked with keeping “the storyline” intact.

Imagine the energy needed to do just that, the amount of operators and administrators that’d have to pay attention to every scratch you make on a wall, every stone you move, every tree you plant, consciously or not…

RightHandOfIkaros ,

Ha! That’s what the government wants you to think. What actually happened was

MajorHavoc ,

Yeah, I can speak out on this just fine,

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

Text bots have been able to pass a Turing test and be indisguinshable from a human for a long time. They had chat bots that could trick you into thinking they were real people, that college kids made just for fun on IRC and even in games back in the 90’s.

These rules that ChatGPT imposes so it doesn’t create something someone may find harmful are relatively new. And there’s no law saying they need to be there.

jesterraiin ,
@jesterraiin@lemmy.world avatar

Turing test isn’t and never was a good way to discern a human from a bot, since many real people wouldn’t pass it. It has been criticized from day 1 and today it’s nothing more than peculiarity.

Check this thread for “Turing” - we already discussed it and some people provided very interesting alternatives to it.

FaizalR ,
@FaizalR@kbin.social avatar

@001100010010 CAPTCHA?

uglytruck ,

Ironically to train AI.

skuxdeluxe ,

You described the philosophical notion of "solipsism". Philosophers have been pondering the question for centuries. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy has more: https://iep.utm.edu/solipsis/

ji59 ,

Here is great video about Dead internet theory which is exactly about most of the users being bots https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WB5grLMXkU

Hamartiogonic , (edited )
@Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz avatar

Look into the research of Large Language Models (LLMs). Even the latest and greatest model has some issues that come up under rigorous testing. For example, GPT-4 (the one used by Bing) fails miserably if you ask: “How many words will there be in your next answer?”

You can spot an older LLM by asking about relationships that require some understanding of the real world. For example: “I found a shirt under the car, but it was wet. Which one was wet?” GPT-4 knows enough about the world that it makes more sense if the shirt was wet, but older models would have failed this question. With every new LLM, there are always some issues, so look up what they are.

Tom Scott made an interesting video about what the situation was 3 years ago. Obviously, LLMs are a fast moving target right now, so that video aged like milk.

CAPSLOCKFTW ,

That quickly boils down to “How do we know anything?” and the answer to that is “We don’t”. When you think hard enough about anything you can come up with an explanation why what we think to onow and believe is wrong. To get around that irl you can employ different tactics. For example, you can check how plausible sonething is. How many assumptions do you have to make for a theory? Usually, more assumptions means less plausible. And you can ask yourself " why does it matter? What would it change for me?" and the answer is most likely it doesn’t and nothing.

curiosityLynx ,

Well, we do know 1 thing without making at least one leap of faith, courtesy of Descartes:
If nothing existed, there wouldn't be anything to have these thoughts. Therefore, since I'm thinking, there must be something that exists, and at least part of that is me. It might be an algorithm, a boltzman brain, some weird universe of thought, whatever. I might even be this singular thought and what I assume to be my memories and nothing else exists. But I know I exist in some kind of way.

Beyond that, you need to make assumptions, like whether reality is logical, whether your senses and and memories have any relation to reality, and so on and so forth. It makes sense to assume these assumptions are correct, but you can't know or prove they are true without relying on other assumptions that you can't know or prove independently either. Heck, without assuming that reality is logical, the concept of a proof doesn't even exist. You can choose to reject those assumptions, but that's a useless philosophical deadend.

curiosityLynx ,

Which is why someone answering "Believing is what you do in church, we're in the business of knowing!" to a sentence like "I believe I've seen this before" annoys me a bit, since you can't know anything useful without believing a bunch of stuff first. If someone's going to be pedantic about that choice of words, so can I.

Chariotwheel ,

I've met some people from the internet and confirmed their humanity.

MajorHavoc ,

That’s exactly what a bot would say, though…

r00ty Admin ,
r00ty avatar

If you've not made an AI bot version of yourself to post stuff online, what are you even doing with your life?

MajorHavoc ,

Agreed. There’s even free software to do it. There’s no excuse not to, now.

This comment brought to you by FreeBots4U. Buy our new soda.

r00ty Admin ,
r00ty avatar

Ah, you're on the free plan.

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