Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • October 2, 2023 8:55 PM

@ knovus, ALL,

“NSA OBVIOUSLY would be interested in AI”

But probably not all AI which leaves the rather interesting question of what sort of AI and why…

The military would not be that interested in LLMs, but would other types of ML system especially rapidly adaptive ML systems with minimal nodes. In theory such that they act as side kicks or wingmen to actual humans. Over the weekend before last Perun covered part of this,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1-0L5Wv86fQ

And it’s worth a watch, especially the bit about a giggling cardboard box.

But the NSA is a SigInt agency and like it or not part of their job like that of the CIA is in what we might call faux-news or counter factual belief systems, so LLMs would fall under their interests.

More specifically they would certainly be looking into the build of “recognizers” or “distinquishers” to rapidly spot AI use by others for propaganda and other similar “Information Warfare”.

As for the CIA, remember it was they that lost a whole bunch of “False Flag tools”… So we can kind of assume their interest in AI is coming up with faux-news and counter-factual belief systems that the opponent can not recognize, or can churn out the faux at such a rate and spread that having recognizers or distinquishers is not going to be sufficient to stop an attack. Current LLM’s are certainly capable of high rate and spread.

Clive Robinson • October 4, 2023 10:37 AM

@ P Coffman,

“Part of the controversy lies with the success of machine learning, then calling it AI.”

History shows the controversy started with calling it “Artificial Intelligence”, it almost immediately set it’s self up to fail, and cause much argument, especially from those for whom the unprovable but unshakable belief in some benign deity was important, as was an imortal soul and life after death.

We still do not have a usable/practical definition of “intelligence” because of the desire to show that some how mankind is “above all life around it”… This was especially strong back in the 1950’s when almost the first person a Broadcasting Organisation would get in to discuss the subject would be a senior member of the authorised Church…

For those old enough AI started around 1950 with comments from Alan Turing, and by 1956 it was a formal academic field of research and quickly split into two camps, Hard-AI and Soft-AI.

Explaining the difference would take me a very long time. In fact to long a time to explain especially as positions change faster than the proverbial “angry cats in a sack” so things will change as you explaine… But a time served cynical “one liner” would be,

“Hard-AI, is doing it the way we think people do, whilst Soft-AI, is doing anything that is considered useful.”

From which you can see that Hard-AI is never ending as,

“the way we think people do”

Is always going to be nebulous because “what we think” is actually changed by “what we think” not just individually but on mass via society. And mostly what can be said about what we think on “intelligence” currebtly is trying to get rid of “preconceptions” such as “mankind is superior because I say so”, which is like the “opposable thumbs”, or “Spoken word” arguments, which we’ve knocked down thus non AI research tends towards trying to find a base definition for sentience.

Both of which are “rabbit holes” of our own making, because we have basically defined both intelligence and sentience as divorced from the basics of nature matter and energy.

We thus have a “gap” between base energy and matter and sentience and intelligence by our definitions. Yet all sentient and intelligent entities are made of one or both energy and matter. But,

“Where does non sentience become sentience?”

Likewise,

“Where does non intelligence become intelligence?”

And importantly for both,

“Why? And how do we measure or classify it? In a way that fits in with the base scientific principles.”

This has led some to consider the notion of “Consciousness” but this also lacks viable measurands, thus comparisons are not realistically possible. To answer Nagel’s question of,

“What is it like to be a bat?”

You need to be both a bat and not a bat and have the ability to switch between the two along with the ability to describe one in frames of refrence of the other.

We know for instance that birds have nerves with ferro-magnetic components that make our compasses look embarrassingly primative. People have actually undergone surgery to have small magnetic components inserted into areas where other nerves such as those relating to touch are. But all they end up achieving is being able to feel the magnetic displacment as they do touch and texture, not as a bird feels it.

We know that dogs do not smell as we do. Humans in the main smell the combination of smells, in a similar way we see colours even though they do not exist. That is we smell the whole and the relative difference between the parts. Dogs it appears smell the individual components and their amplitudes.

So our ability to smell is like a very low speed oscilloscope, where as a dog has the equivalent of a high frequency spectrum analyser.

In fact the more we dig into sensing, the more “bottom of the list” we find humans. Our vision, smell, taste, touch etc are just about the worst of all creatures.

So we could say we do not have the ability to feel like a bat, so can never actually feel like a bat.

Howrver as others will not behind the current LLM nonsense the notion of AI is steadily being moved away from “intelligence” to the baser forms of “conciousness” that does have verifiable linkage to energy and matter.

As for Hard-AI and Soft-AI one thing can be said,

“Hard-AI will never earn money, because every time we get to the point where we understand a technology to the point it becomes usefull it is unmasked as being not anything to do with what we still think of as intelligence thus it is flipped into Soft-AI then into new non AI technology.

The first usable AI of worth were what became “expert systems” we mostly don’t even think of them that way anylonger. We see them as probability graph systems bassed on rules.

If you look under the hood of LLM systems they are the same as expert systems other than randomness has been added as a way to provide variability in the output.

Is this “inteligent” of course not. Is it “concious” likewise of course not. Can it modify it’s behaviour bassed on the input it receives of course it can. But does it “learn” from it, actually no. Because it can not be self selective as to relevance and worth.

So is it usefull, that rather depends on how the directing mind wants it to be used. As a form of surveillance tool the LLM is going to become one of the best there is… For some that is a value beyond belief…