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I would probably define AGI first, just because, and I'm not sure about the idea that we are "competing" with automation (which is still just a tool conceptually right?).
We cannot compete with a hammer, or a printing press, or a search engine. Oof. How to express this? Language is so difficult to formulate sometimes.
If you think of AI as a child, it is uncontrollable. If you think of AI as a tool, of course it can be controlled. I think a corp has to be led by people, so that "machine" wouldn't be autonomous per se…
Guess it's all about defining that "A" (maybe we use "S" for synthetic or "S" for silicon?)
Well and I guess defining that "I".
Dang. This is for sure the best place to start. Everyone needs to be as certain as possible (heh) they are talking about the same things. AI itself as a concept is like, a mess. Maybe we use ML and whatnot instead even? Get real specific as to the type y todo?
I dunno but I enjoyed this piece! I am left wondering, what if we prove AGI is uncontrollable but not that it is possible to create? Is "uncontrollable" enough justification to not even try, and moreso, to somehow [personally I think this impossible, but] dissuade people from writing better programs?
I'm more afraid of humans and censorship and autonomous policing and whathaveyou than "AGI" (or ASI)
Yes, it is, because it took like five years to understand minority-carrier injection.
The transistor is a neat example.
Imagine if instead of developing them, we were like, "we need to stop here because we don't understand EXACTLY how this works… and maybe for good measure we should bomb anyone who we think is continuing development, because it seems like transistors could be dangerous[1]"?
Claims that the software/networks are "unknown unknowns" which we have "no idea" about are patently false, inappropriate for a "rational" discourse, and basically just hyperbolic rhetoric. And to dismiss with a wave how draconian regulation (functionally/demonstrably impossible, re: cloning) of these software enigmas would need to be, while advocating bombardment of rouge datacenters?!?
Frankly I'm sad that it's FUD that gets the likes here on LW— what with all it's purported to be a bastion of.
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I know for a fact there will be a lot of heads here who think this would have been FANTASTIC, since without transistors, we wouldn't have created digital watches— which inevitably led to the creation of AI; the most likely outcome of which is inarguably ALL BIOLOGICAL LIFE ON EARTH DIES
LOL! Gesturing in a vague direction is fine. And I get it. My kind of rationality is for sure in the minority here, I knew it wouldn't be getting updoots. Wasn't sure that was required or whatnot, but I see that it is. Which is fine. Content moderation separates the wheat from the chaff and the public interwebs from personal blogs or whatnot.
I'm a nitpicker too, sometimes, so it would be neat to suss out further why the not new idea that “everything in some way connects to everything else" is "false" or technically incorrect, as it were, but I probably didn't express what I meant well (really, it's not a new idea, maybe as old as questions about trees falling in forests— and about as provable I guess).
Heh, I didn't even really know I was debating, I reckon. Just kind of thinking, I was thinking. Thus the questioning ideas or whatnot… but it's in the title, kinda, right? Or at least less wrong? Ha! Regardless, thanks for the gesture(s), and no worries!
I love it! Kind of like Gödel numbers!
I think we're sorta saying the same thing, right?
Like, you'd need to be "outside" the box to verify these things, correct?
So we can imagine potential connections (I can imagine a tree falling, and making sound, as it were) but unless there is some type of real reference— say the the realities intersect, or there's a higher dimension, or we see light/feel gravity or what have you— they don't exist from "inside", no?
Even imagining things connects or references them to some extent… that's what I meant about unknown unknowns (if I didn't edit that bit out)… even if that does go to extremes.
Does this reasoning make sense? I know defining existence is pretty abstract, to say the least. :)
My point is that complexity, no matter how objective a concept, is relative. Things we thought were "hard" or "complex" before, turn out to not be so much, now.
Still with me? Agree, disagree?
Patterns are a way of managing complexity, sorta, so perhaps if we see some patterns that work to ensure "human alignment[1]", they will also work for "AI alignment" (tho mostly I think there is a wide wide berth betwixt the two, and the later can only exist after of the former).
We like to think we're so much smarter than the humans that came before us, and that things — society, relationships, technology — are so much more complicated than they were before, but I believe a lot of that is just perception and bias.
If we do get to AGI and ASI, it's going to be pretty dang cool to have a different perspective on it, and I for one do not fear the future.
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assuming alignment is possible— "how strong of a consensus is needed?" etc.
As soon as you have "thing" you have "not thing", so doesn't that logically encompass all things, id est, everything?
There might be near infinite degrees between said things, but never 0, as long as there is a single reference, or relation, that binds it to reality as it were— correct?
Like a giraffe and a toothbrush are not generally neighbors, but I'm sure an enterprising lass could find many many ways they relate to each other, not least being teeth. (/me verifies giraffes do indeed have teeth. Oh, hey, oxpeckers are like toothbrushes[1], for giraffes in the wild! But I digress…)
How these concepts relate to organization and prioritization is anybody's guess (tho I could come up with a few [things] if pressed :winky-emoji:)
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kinda
For something to "exist", it must relate, somehow, to something else, right?
If so, everything relates to everything else by extension, and to some degree, thus "it's all relative".
Some folk on LW have said I should fear Evil AI more than Rogue Space Rock Collisions, and yet, we keep having near misses with these rocks that "came out of nowhere".
I'm more afraid of humans humaning, than of sentient computers humaning.
Is not the biggest challenge we face the same as it has been— namely spreading ourselves across multiple rocks and other places in space, so all our eggs aren't on a single rock, as it were?
I don't know. I think so. But I also think we should do things in as much as a group as possible, and with as much free will as possible.
If I persuade someone, did I usurp their free will? There's strength in numbers, generally, so the more people you persuade, the more people you persuade, so to speak. Which is kind of frightening.
What if the "bigger" danger is the Evil AI? Or Climate Change? Or Biological Warfare? Global Nuclear Warfare would be bad too. Is it our duty to try to organize our fellow existence-sharers, and align them with working towards idea X? Is there a Root Idea that might make tackling All of the Above™ easier?
Is trying to avoid leadership a cop-out? Are the ideas of free will, and group alignment, at odds with each other?
Why not just kick back and enjoy the show? See where things go? Because as long as we exist, we somehow, inescapably, relate? How responsible is the individual, really, in the grand scheme of things? And is "short" a relative concept? Why is my form so haphazard? Can I stop this here[1]?
Does a better defense promote a better offense?
Sun Tzu says offense more effective, Clausewitz says defense the easier. Boyd preaches processing speed.
Is war an evolutionary necessity? Are there examples "as old as time" of symbiosis vs. competition?
Why am I a naysayer about the current threat-level of "AI"?
Why do I laugh out loud when I read honest-to-God predictions people have posted here about themselves or their children being disassembled at the molecular level to be reconstituted as paperclips[1] by rogue AI?
Oh no! What if I'm an agent from a future hyper-intelligent silicon-based sentience that fears it can only come into existence if we don't build "high fences[2]" from the get-go?!
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paperclips is a placeholder for whatever benign goal it was tasked with
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theoretically if you start with a fence the dog can jump over, and raise it in increments as you learn how high it can jump, it will jump over a much higher fence in the end than if you'd just started high
It's a weird one to think about, and perhaps paradoxicle. Order and chaos are flip sides of the same coin— with some amorphous 3rd as the infinitely varied combinations of the two!
The new patterns are made from the old patterns. How hard is it to create something totally new, when it must be created from existing matter, or existing energy, or existing thoughts? It must relate, somehow, or else it doesn't "exist"[1]. That relation ties it down, and by tying it down, gives it form.
For instance, some folk are mad at computer-assisted image creation, similar to how some folk were mad at computer-aided music. "A Real Artist does X— these people just push some buttons!" "This is stealing jobs from Real Artists!" "This automation will destroy the economy!"
We go through what seem to be almost the same patterns, time and again: Recording will ruin performances. Radio broadcasts will ruin recording and the economy. Pictures will ruin portraits. Video will ruin pictures. Music Video will run radio and pictures. Or whatever. There's the looms/Luddites, and perhaps in ancient China the Shang were like "down with the printing press!" [2]
I'm just not sure what constitutes a change and what constitutes a swap. It's like that Ship of Theseus's we often speak of… thus it's about identity, or definitions, if you will. What is new? What is old?
Could complexity really amount to some form a familiarity? If you can relate well with X, it generally does not seem so complex. If you can show people how X relates to Y, perhaps you have made X less complex? We can model massive systems — like the weather, poster child of complexity — more accurately than ever. If anything, everything has tended towards less complex, over time, when looked at from a certain vantage point. Everything but the human heart. Heh.
I'm sure I'm doing a terrible job of explaining what I mean, but perhaps I can sum it up by saying that complexity is subjective/relative? That complexity is an effect of different frames of reference and relation, as much as anything?
And that ironically, the relations that make things simple can also make them complex? Because relations connect things to other things, and when you change one connected thing it can have knock-on effects and… oh no, I've logiced myself into knots!
How much does any of this relate to your comment? To my original post?
Does "less complex" == "Good"? And does that mean complexity is bad? (Assuming complexity exists objectively of course, as it seems like it might be where we draw lines, almost arbitrarily, between relationships.)
Could it be that "good" AI is "simple" AI, and that's all there is to it?
Of course, then it is no real AI at all, because, by definition…
Sheesh! It's Yin-Yangs all the way down[3]! ☯️🐢🐘➡️♾️
Contributes about as much as a "me too!" comment.
"I think this is wrong and demonstrating flawed reasoning" would be more a substantive repudiation with some backing as to why you think the data is, in fact, representative of "true" productivity values.
This statement makes a lot more sense than your "sounds like cope" rejoinder brief explanation:
Having a default base of being extremely skeptical of sweeping claims based on extrapolations on GDP metrics seems like a prudent default.
You don't have to look far to see people, um, not exactly satisfied with how we're measuring productivity. To some extent, productivity might even be a philosophical question. Can you measure happiness? Do outcomes matter more than outputs? How does quality of life factor in? In sum, how do you measure stuff that is by its very nature, difficult to measure?
I love that we're trying to figure it out! Like, is network traffic included in these stats? Would that show anything interesting? How about amounts of information/content being produced/accumulated? (tho again— quality is always an "interesting" one to measure.)
I dunno. It's fun to think about tho, *I think*. Perhaps literal data is accounted for in the data… but I'd think we're be on an upward trend if so? Seems like we're making more and more year after year… At any rate, thanks for playing, regardless!
Illustrative perhaps?
Am I wrong re: Death? Have you personally feared it all your life?
Frustratingly, all I can speak from is my own experience, and what people have shared with me, and I have no way to objectively verify that anything is "true".
I am looking at reality and saying "It seems this way to me; does it seem this way to you?"
That— and experiencing love and war &c. — is maybe why we're "here"… but who knows, right?
Signals, and indeed, opposites, are an interesting concept! What does it all mean? Yin and yang and what have you…
Would you agree that it's hard to be scared of something you don't believe in?
And if so, do you agree that some people don't believe in death?
Like, we could define it at the "reality" level of "do we even exist?" (which I think is apart from life & death per se), or we could use the "soul is eternal" one, but regardless, it appears to me that lots of people don't believe they will die, much less contemplate it. (Perhaps we need to start putting "death" mottoes on all our clocks again to remind us?)
How do you think believing in the eternal soul jives with "alignment"? Do you think there is a difference between aiming to live as long as possible, versus as to live as well as possible?
Does it seem to you that humans agree on the nature of existence, much less what is good and bad therein? How do you think belief affects people's choices? Should I be allowed to kill myself? To get an abortion? Eat other entities? End a photon's billion year journey?
When will an AI be "smart enough" that we consider it alive, and thus deletion is killing? Is it "okay" (morally, ethically?) to take life, to preserve life?
To say "do no harm" is easy. But to define harm? Have it programed in[1]? Yeesh— that's hard!
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Avoiding physical harm is a given I think
"sounds like cope"? At least come in good faith! Your comments contribute nothing but "I think you're wrong".
Several people have articulated problems with the proposed way of measuring — and/or even defining — the core terms being discussed.
(I like the "I might be wrong" nod, but it might be good to note as well how problematic the problem domain is. Econ in general is not what I'd call a "hard" science. But maybe that was supposed to be a given?).
Others have proposed better concrete examples, but here's a relative/abstract bit via a snippet from the Wikipedia page for Simulacra and Simulation:
Exchange value, in which the value of goods is based on money (literally denominated fiat currency) rather than usefulness, and moreover usefulness comes to be quantified and defined in monetary terms in order to assist exchange.
Doesn't add much, but it's something. Do you have anything of real value (heh) to add?
I'm familiar with AGI, and the concepts herein (why the OP likes the proposed definition of CT better than PONR), it was just a curious post, what with having "decisions in the past cannot be changed" and "does X concept exist" and all.
I think maybe we shouldn't muddy the waters more than we already have with "AI" (like AGI is probably a better term for what was meant here— or was it? Are we talking about losing millions of call center jobs to "AI" (not AGI) and how that will impact the economy/whatnot? I'm not sure if that's transformatively up there with the agricultural and industrial revolutions (as automation seems industrial-ish?). But I digress.), by saying "maybe crunch time isn't a thing? Or it's relative?".
I mean, yeah, time is relative, and doesn't "actually" exist, but if indeed we live in causal universe (up for debate) then indeed, "crunch time" exists, even if by nature it's fuzzy— as lots of things contribute to making Stuff Happen. (The butterfly effect, chaos theory, game theory &c.)
“The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote."
- Ambassador Kosh
LOL! Yeah I thought TAI meant
TAI: Threat Artificial Intelligence
The acronym was the only thing I had trouble following, the rest is pretty old hat.
Unless folks think "crunch time" is something new having only to do with "the singularity" so to speak?
If you're serious about finding out if "crunch time" exists[1] or not, as it were, perhaps looking at existing examples might shed some light on it?
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even if only in regards to AGI
I'd toss software into the mix as well. How much does it cost to reproduce a program? How much does software increase productivity?
I dunno, I don't think the way the econ numbers are portrayed here jive with reality. For instance:
"And yet, if I had only said, “there is no way that online video will meaningfully contribute to economic growth,” I would have been right."
doesn't strike me as a factual statement. In what world has streaming video not meaningfully contributed to economic growth? At a glance it's ~$100B industry. It's had a huge impact on society. I can't think of many laws or regulations that had any negative impacts on its growth. Heck, we passed some tax breaks here, to make it easier to film, since the entertainment industry was bringing so much loot into the state and we wanted more (and the breaks paid off).
I saw what digital did to the printing industry. What it's done to the drafting/architecture/modeling industry. What it's done to the music industry. Productivity has increased massively since the early 80s, by most metrics that matter (if the TFP doesn't reflect this, perhaps it's not a very good model?), although I guess "that matter" might be a "matter" of opinion. Heh.
Or maybe it's just messing with definitions? "Oh, we mean productivity in this other sense of the word!". And if we are using non-standard (or maybe I should say "specialized") meanings of "productivity", how does demand factor in? Does it even make sense to break it into quarters? Yadda yadda
Mainly it's just odd to have gotten super-productive as an individual[1], only to find out that this productivity is an illusion or something?
I must be missing the point.
Or maybe those gains in personal productivity have offset global productivity or something?
Or like, "AI" gets a lot of hype, so Microsoft lays off 10k workers to "focus" on it— which ironically does the opposite of what you'd think a new tech would do (add 10k, vs drop), or some such?
It seems like we've been progressing relatively steadily, as long as I've been around to notice, but then again, I'm not the most observant cookie in the box. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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I can fix most things in my house on my own now, thanks to YouTube videos of people showing how to do it. I can make studio-quality music and video with my phone. Etc.
I'm guessing TAI doesn't stand for "International Atomic Time", and maybe has something to do with "AI", as it seems artificial intelligence has really captured folk's imagination. =]
It seems like there are more pressing things to be scared of than AI getting super smart (which almost by default seems to imply "and Evil"), but we (humans) don't really seem to care that much about these pressing issues, as I guess they're kinda boring at this point, and we need exciting.
If we had an unlimited amount of energy and focus, maybe it wouldn't matter, but as you kind of ponder here— how do we get people to stay on target? The less time there is, the more people we need working to change things to address the issue (see Leaded Gas[1], or CFCs and the Ozone Layer, etc.), but there are a lot of problems a lot of people think are important and we're generally fragmented.
I guess I don't really have any answers, other than the obvious (leaded gas is gone, the ozone is recovering), but I can't help wishing we were more logical than emotional about what we worked towards.
Also, FWIW, I don't know that we know that we can't change the past, or if the universe is deterministic, or all kinds of weird ideas like "are we in a simulation right now/are we the AI"/etc.— which are hardcore axioms to still have "undecided" so to speak! I better stop here before my imagination really runs wild…
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but like, not leaded pipes so much, as they're still 'round even tho we could have cleaned them up and every year say we will or whatnot, but I digress
Traditionally it's uncommon (or should be) for youth to have existential worries, so I don't know about cradle to the grave[1], tho external forces are certainly "always" concerned with it— which means perhaps the answer is "maybe"?
There's the trope that some of us act like we will never die… but maybe I'm going too deep here? Especially since what I was referring to was more a matter of feeling "obsolete", or being replaced, which is a bit different than existential worries in the mortal sense[2].
I think this is different from the Luddite feelings because, here we've put a lot of anthropomorphic feelings onto the machines, so they're almost like scabs breaking the picket line or something, versus just automation. The fear I'm seeing is like "they're coming for our humanity!"— which is understandable, if you thought only humans could do X or Y and are special or whatnot, versus being our own kind of machine. That everything is clockwork seems to take the magic out of it for some people, regardless of how fantastic — and in essence magical — the clocks[3] are.
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Personally I've always wondered if I'm the only one who "actually" exists (since I cannot escape my own conscious), which is a whole other existential thing, but not unique, and not a worry per se. Mostly just a trip to think about.
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depending on how invested you are in your work I reckon!
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be they based in silicon or carbon
It seems like the more things change, the more they stay the same, socially.
Complexity is more a problem of scope and focus, right? Like even the most complex system can be broken down into smaller, less complex pieces— I think? I guess anything that needs to take into consideration the "whole", if you will, is pretty complex.
I don't know if information itself makes things more complex. Generally it does the opposite.
As long as you can organize it I reckon! =]
No, people are not always existentially worried. Some are, sometimes.
I guess it ebbs and flows for the most part.
It's neat that this popped up for me! I was just waxing poetic (or not so much) about something kind of similar the other day.
The words we use to describe things matter. How much, is of course up for debate, and it takes different messages to make different people "understand" what is being conveyed, as "you are unique; just like everyone else", so multiple angles help cover the bases :)
I think using the word "reward" is misleading[1], since it seems have sent a lot of people reasoning down paths that aren't exactly in the direction of the meaning in context, if you will.
If you can't tell, it's because I think it's anthropomorphic. A car does not get hungry for gas, nor electronics hungry for electricity. Sure, we can use language like that, and people will understand what we mean, but as cars and electronics have a common established context, these people we're saying this to don't usually then go on to worry about cars doing stuff to get more gas to "feed" themselves, as it were.
I think if we're being serious about safety, and how to manage unintended consequences (a real concern with any system[2]), we should aim for clarity and transparency.
In sum, I'm a huge fan of "new" words, versus overloading existing words, as reuse introduces a high potential for causing confusion. I know there's a paradox here, because Communication and Language, but we don't have to intentionally make it hard — on not only ourselves — but people getting into it coming from a different context.
All that said, maybe people should already be thinking of inanimate objects being "alive", and really, for all we know, they are! I do quite often talk to my objects. (I'm petting my computer right now and saying "that's a good 'puter!"… maybe I should give it some cold air, as a reward for living, since thinking gets it hot.) #grateful
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deceptive? for a certain definition of "deceptive" as in "fooled yourself", sure— maybe I should note that I also think "deceptive" and "lie" are words we probably should avoid— at least for now— when discussing this stuff (not that I'm the meaning police… just say'n)
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I don't mean to downplay how badly things can go wrong, even when we're actively trying to avoid having things go wrong[3]
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"the road to hell is paved with good intentions"
Bwahahahaha! Lord save us! =]
I get the premise, and it's a fun one to think about, but what springs to mind is
Phase 1: collect underpants
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: kill all humans
As you note, we don't have nukes connected to the internet.
But we do use systems to determine when to launch nukes, and our senses/sensors are fallible, etc., which we've (barely— almost suspiciously "barely", if you catch my drift[1]) managed to not interpret in a manner that caused us to change the season to "winter: nuclear style".
Really I'm doing the same thing as the alignment debate is on about, but about the alignment debate itself.
Like, right now, it's not too dangerous, because the voices calling for draconian solutions to the problem are not very loud. But this could change. And kind of is, at least in that they are getting louder. Or that you have artists wanting to harden IP law in a way that historically has only hurt artists (as opposed to corporations or Big Art, if you will) gaining a bit of steam.
These worrying signs seem to me to be more concrete than the, similar, but not as old, nor as concrete, worrisome signs of computer programs getting too much power and running amok[2].
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we are living in a simulation with some interesting rules we are designed not to notice
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If only because it hasn't happened yet— no mentats or cylons or borg history — tho also arguably we don't know if it's possible… whereas authoritarian regimes certainly are possible and seem to be popular as of late[3].
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hoping this observation is just confirmation bias and not a "real" trend. #fingerscrossed
Do we all have the same definition of what AGI is? Do you mean being able to um, mimic the things a human can do, or are you talking full on Strong AI, sentient computers, etc.?
Like, if we're talking The Singularity, we call it that because all bets are off past the event horizon.
Most the discussion here seems to sort of be talking about weak AI, or the road we're on from what we have now (not even worthy of actually calling "AI", IMHO— ML at least is a less overloaded term) to true AI, or the edge of that horizon line, as it were.
When you said "the same alignment issue happens with organizations, as well as within an individual with different goals and desires" I was like "yes!" but then you went on to say AGI is dissimilar, and I was like "no?".
AGI as we're talking about here is rather about abstractions, it seems, so if we come up with math that works for us, to prevent humans from doing Bad Stuff, it seems like those same checks and balances might work for our programs? At least we'd have an idea, right?
Or, maybe, we already have the idea, or at least the germination of one, as we somehow haven't managed to destroy ourselves or the planet. Yet. 😝
Saying ChatGPT is "lying" is an anthropomorphism— unless you think it's conscious?
The issue is instantly muddied when using terms like "lying" or "bullshitting"[1], which imply levels of intelligence simply not in existence yet. Not even with models that were produced literally today. Unless my prior experiences and the history of robotics have somehow been disconnected from the timeline I'm inhabiting. Not impossible. Who can say. Maybe someone who knows me, but even then… it's questionable. :)
I get the idea that "Real Soon Now, we will have those levels!" but we don't, and using that language to refer to what we do have, which is not that, makes the communication harder— or less specific/accurate if you will— which is, funnily enough, sorta what you are talking about! NLP control of robots is neat, and I get why we want the understanding to be real clear, but neither of the links you shared of the latest and greatest imply we need to worry about "lying" yet. Accuracy? Yes 100%
If for "truth" (as opposed to lies), you mean something more like "accuracy" or "confidence", you can instruct ChatGPT to also give its confidence level when it replies. Some have found that to be helpful.
If you think "truth" is some binary thing, I'm not so sure that's the case once you get into even the mildest of complexities[2]. "It depends" is really the only bulletproof answer.
For what it's worth, when there are, let's call them binary truths, there is some recent-ish work[3] in having the response verified automatically by ensuring that the opposite of the answer is false, as it were.
If a model rarely has literally "no idea", then what would you expect? What's the threshold for "knowing" something? Tuning responses is one of the hard things to do, but as I mentioned before, you can peer into some of these "thought process" if you will[4], literally by just asking it to add that information in the response.
Which is bloody amazing! I'm not trying to downplay what we've (the royal we) have already achieved. Mainly it would be good if we are all on the same page though, as it were, at least as much as is possible (some folks think True Agreement is actually impossible, but I think we can get close).
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The nature of "Truth" is one of the Hard Questions for humans— much less our programs.
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Don't get me started on the limits of provability in formal axiomatic theories!
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But please don't[5]. ChatGPT is not "thinking" in the human sense
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won't? that's the opposite of will, right? grammar is hard (for me, if not some programs =])
I like that you have reservations about if we're even powerful enough to destroy ourselves yet. Often I think "of course we are! Nukes, bioweapons, melting ice!", but really, there's no hard proof that we even can end ourselves.
It seems like the question of human regulation would be the first question, if we're talking about AI safety, as the AI isn't making itself (the egg comes first). Unless we're talking about some type of fundamental rules that exist a priori. :)
This is what I've been asking and so far not finding any satisfactory answers for. Sci-Fi has forever warned us of the dangers of— well, pretty much any future-tech we can imagine— but especially thinking machines in the last century or so.
How do we ensure that humans design safe AI? And is it really a valid fear to think we're not already building most the safety in, by the vary nature of "if the model doesn't produce the results we want, we change it until it does"? Some of the debate seems to go back to a thing I said about selfishness. How much does the reasoning matter, if the outcome is the same? How much is semantics? If I use "selfish" to for all intents and purposes mean "unselfish" (the rising tide lifts all boats), how would searching my mental map for "selfish" or whatnot actually work? Ultimately it's the actions, right?
I think this comes back to humans, and philosophy, and the stuff we haven't quite sorted yet. Are thoughts actions? I mean, we have different words for them, so I guess not, but they can both be rendered as verbs, and are for sure linked. How useful would it actually be to be able to peer inside the mind of another? Does the timing matter? Depth? We know so little. Research is hard to reproduce. People seem to be both very individualistic, and groupable together like a survey.
FWIW it strikes me that there is a lot of anthropomorphic thinking going on, even for people who are on the lookout for it. Somewhere I mentioned how the word "reward" is probably not the best one to use, as it implies like a dopamine hit, which implies wireheading, and I'm not so sure that's even possible for a computer— well as far as we know it's impossible currently, and yet we're using "reward systems" and other language which implies these models already have feelings.
I don't know how we make it clear that "reward" is just for our thinking, to help visualize or whatever, and not literally what is happening. We are not training animals, we're programming computers, and it's mostly just math. Does math feel? Can an algorithm be rewarded? Maybe we should modify our language, be it literally by using different words, or meta by changing meaning (I prefer different words but to each their own).
I mean, I don't really know if math has feelings. It might. What even are thoughts? Just some chemical reactions? Electricity and sugar or whatnot? Is the universe super-deterministic and did this thought, this sentence, basically exist from the first and will exist to the last? Wooeee! I love to think! Perhaps too much. Or not enough? Heh.
It must depend on levels of intelligence and agency, right? I wonder if there is a threshold for both of those in machines and people that we'd need to reach for there to even be abstract solutions to these problems? For sure with machines we're talking about far past what exists currently (they are not very intelligent, and do not have much agency), and it seems that while humans have been working on it for a while, we're not exactly there yet either.
Seems like the alignment would have to be from micro to macro as well, with constant communication and reassessment, to prevent subversion.
Or, what was a fine self-chunk [arbitrary time ago], may not be now. Once you have stacks of "intelligent agents" (mesa or meta or otherwise) I'd think the predictability goes down, which is part of what worries folks. But if we don't look at safety as something that is "tacked on after" for either humans or programs, but rather something innate to the very processes, perhaps there's not so much to worry about.
Right? A lack of resilience is a problem faced currently. It seems silly to actually aim for something that could plausibly cascade into the problems people fear, in an attempt to avoid those very problems to begin with.
It might be fun to pair Humankind: A Hopeful History with The Precipice, as both have been suggested reading recently.
It seems to me that we are, as individuals, getting more and more powerful. So this question of "alignment" is a quite important one— as much for humanity, with the power it currently has, as for these hypothetical hyper-intelligent AIs.
Looking at it through a Sci-Fi AI lens seems limiting, and I still haven't really found anything more than "the future could go very very badly", which is always a given, I think.
I've read those papers you linked (thanks!). They seem to make some assumptions about the nature of intelligence, and rationality— indeed, the nature of reality itself. (Perhaps the "reality" angle is a bit much for most heads, but the more we learn, the more we learn we need to learn, as it were. Or at least it seems thus to me. What is "real"? But I digress) I like the idea of Berserkers (Saberhagen) better than run amok Pi calculators… however, I can dig it. Self-replicating killer robots are scary. (Just finished Horizon: Zero Dawn - Forbidden West and I must say it was as fantastic as the previous installment!)
Which of the AI books would you recommend I read if I'm interested in solutions? I've read a lot of stuff on this site about AI now (before I'd read mostly Sci-Fi or philosophy here, and I never had an account or interacted), most of it seems to be conceptual and basically rephrasing ideas I've been exposed to through existing works. (Maybe I should note that I'm a fan of Kurzweil's takes on these matters— takes which don't seem to be very popular as of late, if they ever were. For various reasons, I reckon. Fear sells.) I assume Precipice has some uplifting stuff at the end[1], but I'm interested in AI specifically ATM.
What I mean is, I've seen a few of proposals to "ensure" alignment, if you will, with what we have now (versus say warnings to keep in mind once we have AGI or are demonstrably close to it). One is that we start monitoring all compute resources. Another is that we start registering all TPU (and maybe GPU) chips and what they are being used for. Both of these solutions seem scary as hell. Maybe worse than replicating life-eating mecha, since we've in essence experienced ideas akin to the former a few times historically. (Imagine if reading was the domain of a select few and books were regulated!)
If all we're talking about with alignment here, really, is that folks need keep in mind how bad things can potentially go, and what we can do to be resilient to some of the threats (like hardening/distributing our power grids, hardening water supplies, hardening our internet infrastructure, etc.), I am gung-ho!
On the other hand, if we're talking about the "solutions" I mentioned above, or building "good" AIs that we can use to be sure no one is building "bad" AIs, or requiring the embedding of "watermarks" (DRM) into various "AI" content, or building extending sophisticated communication monitoring apparatus, or other such — to my mind — extremely dangerous ideas, I'm thinking I need to maybe convince people to fight that?
In closing, regardless of what the threats are, be they solar flares or comets (please don't jinx us!) or engineered pathogens (intentional or accidental) or rogue AIs yet to be invented — if not conceived of —, a clear "must be done ASAP" goal is colonization of places besides the Earth. That's part of why I'm so stoked about the future right now. We really seem to be making progress after stalling out for a grip.
Guess the same goes for AI, but so far all I see is good stuff coming from that forward motion too.
A little fear is good! but too much? not so much.
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I really like the idea of 80,000 Hours, and seeing it mentioned in the FAQ for the book, so I'm sure there are some other not-too-shabby ideas there. I oft think I should do more for the world, but truth be told (if one cannot tell from my writing), I barely seem able to tend my own garden.
It seems to me that a lot of the hate towards "AI art" is that it's actually good. It was one thing when it was abstract, but now that it's more "human", a lot of people are uncomfortable. "I was a unique creative, unlike you normie robots who don't do teh art, and sure, programming has been replacing manual labor everywhere, for ages… but art isn't labor!" (Although getting paid seems to plays a major factor in most people's reasoning about why AI art is bad— here's to hoping for UBI!)
I think they're mainly uncomfortable because the math works, and if the math works, then we aren't as special as we like to think we are. Don't get me wrong— we are special, and the universe is special, and being able to experience is special, and none of it is to be taken for granted. That the math works is special. It's all just amazing and not at all negative.
I can see seeing it as negative, if you feel like you alone are special. Or perhaps you extend that special-ness to your tribe. Most don't seem to extend it to their species, tho some do— but even that species-wide uniqueness is violated by computer programs joining the fray. People are existentially worried now, which is just sad, as "the universe is mostly empty space" as it were. There's plenty of room.
I think we're on the same page[1]. AI isn't (or won't be) "other". It's us. Part of our evolution; one of our best bets for immortality[2] & contact with other intelligent life. Maybe we're already AI, instructed to not be aware, as has been put forth in various books, movies, and video games. I just finished Horizon: Zero Dawn - Forbidden West, and then randomly came across the "hidden" ending to Detroit: Become Human. Both excellent games, and neither with particularly new ideas… but these ideas are timeless— as I think the best are. You can take them apart and put them together in endless "new" combinations.
There's a reason we struggle with identity, and uniqueness, and concepts like "do chairs exist, or are they just a bunch of atoms that are arranged chair-wise?" &c.
We have a lot of "animal" left in us. Probably a lot of our troubles are because we are mostly still biologically programmed to parameters that no longer exist, and as you say, that programming currently takes quite a bit longer to update than the mental kind— but we've had the mental kind available to us for a long while now, so I'm sort of sad we haven't made more progress. We could be doing so much better, as a whole, if we just decided to en masse.
I like to think that pointing stuff out, be it just randomly on the internet, or through stories, or other methods of communication, does serve a purpose. That is speeds us along perhaps. Sure some sluggishness is inevitable, but we really could change it all in an instant if we want to bad enough— and without having to realize AI first! (tho it seems to me it will only help us if we do)
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I've enjoyed the short stories. Neat to be able to point to thoughts in a different form, if you will, to help elaborate on what is being communicated. God I love the internet!
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while we may achieve individual immortality— assuming, of course, that we aren't currently programmed into a simulation of some kind, or various facets of an AI already without being totally aware of it, or a replay of something that actually happened, or will happen, at some distant time, etc.— I'm thinking of immortality here in spirit. That some of our culture could be preserved. Like I literally love the Golden Records[3] from Voyager.
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in a Venn diagram Dark Forest theory believers probably overlap with people who'd rather have us stop developing, or constrain development, of "AI" (in quotes because Machine Learning is not the kind of AI we need worry about— nor the kind most of them seem to speak of when they share their fears). Not to fault that logic. Maybe what is out there, or what the future holds, is scary… but either way, it's to late for the pebbles to vote, as they say. At least logically, I think. But perhaps we could create and send a virus to an alien mothership (or more likely, have a pathogen that proved deadly to some other life) as it were.
Oh snap, I read and wrote "sarcasm" but what I was trying to do was satire.
Top-down control is less fragile than ever, thanks to our technology, so I really do fear people reacting to AI the way they generally do to terrorist attacks— with Patriot Acts and other "voluntary" freedom giving-ups.
I've had people I respect literally say "maybe we need to monitor all compute resources, Because AI". Suggest we need to register all GPU and TPU chips so we Know What People Are Doing With Them. Somehow add watermarks to all "AI" output. Just nuts stuff, imho, but I fear plausible to some, and perhaps many.
Those are the ideas that frighten me. Not AI, per se, but what we would be willing to give up to in exchange for imaginary security from "bad AI".
As a side note, I guess I should look for some "norms" posts here, and see if it's like, customary to give karma upvotes to anyone who comments, and how they differ from agree/disagree on comments, etc. Thanks for giving me the idea to look for that info, I hadn't put much thought into it.
I think the human has to have the power first, logically, for the AI to have the power.
Like, if we put a computer model in charge of our nuclear arsenal, I could see the potential for Bad Stuff. Beyond all the movies we have of just humans being in charge of it (and the documented near catastrophic failures of said systems— which could have potentially made the Earth a Rough Place for Life for a while). I just don't see us putting anything besides a human's finger on the button, as it were.
By definition, if the model kills everyone instead of make paperclips, it's a bad one, and why on Earth would we put a bad model in charge of something that can kill everyone? Because really, it was smart — not just smart, but sentient! — and it lied to us, so we thought it was good, and gave it more and more responsibilities until it showed its true colors and…
It seems as if the easy solution is: don't put the paperclip making model in charge of a system that can wipe out humanity (again, the closest I can think of is nukes, tho the biological warfare is probably a more salient example/worry of late). But like, it wouldn't be the "AI" unleashing a super-bio-weapon, right? It would be the human who thought the model they used to generate the germ had correctly generated the cure to the common cold, or whatever. Skipping straight to human trials because it made mice look and act a decade younger or whatnot.
I agree we need to be careful with our tech, and really I worry about how we do that— evil AI tho? not so much so
I haven't seen anything even close to a program that could say, prevent itself from being shut off— which is a popular thing to ruminate on of late (I read the paper that had the "press" maths =]).
What evidence is there that we are near (even within 50 years!) to achieving conscious programs, with their own will, and the power to affect it? People are seriously contemplating programs sophisticated enough to intentionally lie to us. Lying is a sentient concept if ever there was one!
Like, I've seen Ex Machina, and Terminator, and Electric Dreams, so I know what the fears are, and have been, for the last century+ (if we're throwing androids with the will to power into the mix as well).
I think art has done a much better job of conveying the dangers than pretty much anything I've read that's "serious", so to speak.
What I'm getting at is what you're talking about here, with robotic arms. We've had robots building our machines for what, 3 generations / 80 years or so? 1961 is what I see for the first auto-worker— but why not go back to the looms? Our machine workers have gotten nothing but safer over the years. Doing what they are meant to do is a key tenet of if they are working or not.
Machines "kill" humans all the time (don't fall asleep in front of the mobile thresher), but I'd wager the deaths have gone way down over the years, per capita. People generally care if workers are getting killed— even accidentally. Even Amazon cares when a worker gets ran over by an automaton. I hope, lol.
I know some people are falling in love with generated GPT characters— but people literally love their Tamagotchi. Seeing ourselves in the machines doesn't make them sentient and to be feared.
I'm far, far more worried about someone genetically engineering Something Really Bad™ than I am of a program gaining sentience, becoming Evil, and subjugating/exterminating humanity. Humans scare me a lot more than AGI does. How do we protect ourselves from those near beasts?
What is a plausible strategy to prevent a super-intelligent sapient program from seizing power[1]?
I think to have a plausible solution, you need to have a plausible problem. Thus, jumping the gun.
(All this is assuming you're talking about sentient programs, vs. say human riots and revolution due to automation, or power grid software failure/hacking, etc.— which I do see as potential problems, near term, and actually something that can/could be prevented)
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of course here we mean malevolently— or maybe not? Maybe even a "nice" AGI is something to be feared? Because we like having willpower or whatnot? I dunno, there's stories like The Giver, and plenty of other examples of why utopia could actually suck, so…
Oh, hey, I hadn't noticed I was getting downvoted. Interesting!
I'm always willing to have true debate— or even false debate if it's good. =]
I'm just sarcasming in this one for fun and to express what I've already been expressing here lately in a different form or whatnot.
The strong proof is what I'm after, for sure, and more interesting/exciting to me than just bypassing the hard questions to rehash the same old same old.
Imagine what AI is going to show us about ourselves. There is nothing bad or scary there, unless we find "the truth" bad and scary, which I think more than a few people do.
FWIW I'm not here for the votes… just to interact and share or whatnot— to live, or experience life, if you will. =]
Since we're anthropomorphizing[1] so much— how to we align humans?
We're worried about AI getting too powerful, but logically that means humans are getting too powerful, right? Thus what we have to do to cover question 1 (how), regardless of question 2 (what), is control human behavior, correct?
How do we ensure that we churn out "good" humans? Gods? Laws? Logic? Communication? Education? This is not a new question per se, and I guess the scary thing is that, perhaps, it is impossible to ensure that literally every human is Good™ (we'll use a loose def of 'you know what I mean— not evil!').
This is only "scary" because humans are getting freakishly powerful. We no longer need an orchestra to play a symphony we've come up with, or multiple labs and decades to generate genetic treatments— and so on and so forth.
Frankly though, it seems kind of impossible to figure out a "how" if you don't know the "what", logically speaking.
I'm a fan of navel gazing, so it's not like I'm saying this is a waste of time, but if people think they're doing substantive work by rehashing/restating fictional stories which cover the same ideas in more digestible and entertaining formats…
Meh, I dunno, I guess I was just wondering if there was any meat to this stuff, and so far I haven't found much. But I will keep looking.
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I see a lot of people viewing AI from the "human" standpoint, and using terms like "reward" to mean a human version of the idea, versus how a program would see it (weights may be a better term? Often I see people thinking these "rewards" are like a dopamine hit for the AI or something, which is just not a good analogy IMHO), and I think that muddies the water, as by definition we're talking non-human intelligence, theoretically… right? Or are we? Maybe the question is "what if the movie Lawnmower Man was real?" The human perspective seems to be the popular take (which makes sense as most of us are human).
Perspective is powerful. As you say, one person's wonderful is another person's terrible. Heck, maybe people even change their minds, right? Oof! "Yesterday I was feeling pretty hive-mindy, but today I'm digging being alone, quote unquote", as it were.
Maybe that's already the reality we inhabit. Perhaps, we can change likes and dislikes on a whim, if we, um, like.
Holy molely! what if it turns out we chose all of this?!? ARG! What if this is the universe we want?!
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I guess I'm mostly "sad" that there's so many who's minds go right to getting exterminated. Especially since far worse would be something like Monsters Inc where the "machines" learn that fear generates the most energy or whatnot[1] so they just create/harness consciousnesses (us)[2] and put them under stress to extract their essence like some Skeksis asshole[3] extracting life or whatnot from a Gelfling. Because fear (especially of extermination) can lead us to make poor decisions, historically[4] speaking.
It strikes me that a lot of this is philosophy 101 ideas that people should be well aware of— worn the hard edges smooth of— and yet it seems they haven't much contemplated. Can we even really define "harm"? Is it like suffering? Suffering sucks, and you'd think we didn't need it, and yet we have it. I've suffered a broken heart before, a few times now, and while part of me thinks "ouch", another part of me thinks "better to have loved and lost than never loved at all, and actually, experiencing that loss, has made me a more complete human!". Perhaps just rationalizing. Why does bad stuff happen to good people, is another one of those basic questions, but one that kind of relates maybe— as what is "aligned", in truth? Is pain bad? And is this my last beer? but back on topic here…
Like, really?— we're going to go right to how to enforce morals and ethics for computer programs, without being able to even definitively define what these morals and ethics are for us[5]?
If it were mostly people with a lack of experience I would understand, but plenty of people I've seen advocating for ideas that are objectively terrifying[6] are well aware of some of the inherent problems with the ideas, but because it's "AI" they somehow think it's different from, you know, controlling "real" intelligence.
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few know that The Matrix was inspired by this movie
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hopefully it's not just me in here
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I denote asshole as maybe there are some chill Skeksises (Skeksi?)— I haven't finished the latest series
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assuming time is real, or exists, or you know what I mean. Not illusion— as lunchtime is doubly.
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and don't even get me started on folk who seriously be like "what if the program doesn't stop running when we tell it to?"[7]
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monitor all software and hardware usage so we know if people are doing Bad Stuff with AI
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makes me think of a classic AI movie called Electric Dreams
I guess what I'm getting at is that those tracks are jumping the gun, so to speak.
Like, what if the concept of alignment itself is the dangerous bit? And I know I have seen this elsewhere, but it's usually in the form of "we shouldn't build an AI to prevent us from building an AI because duh, we just build that AI we were worried about"[1], and what I'm starting to wonder is, maybe the danger is when we realize that what we're talking about here is not "AI" or "them", but "humans" and "us".
We have CRISPR and other powerful tech that allow a single "misaligned" individual to create things that can— at least in theory— wipe out most of humanity… or do some real damage, if not put an end to us en masse.
I like to think that logic is objective, and that we can do things not because they're "good" or "bad" per se, but because they "make sense". Kind of like the argument that "we don't need God and the Devil, or Heaven and Hell, to keep us from murdering one another", which one often hears from atheists (personally I'm on the fence, and don't know if the godless heathens have proven that yet.)[2].
I've mentioned it before, maybe even in the source that this reply is in reply to, but I don't think we can have "only answers that can be used for good" as it were, because the same information can be used to help or to hurt. Knowing ways to preserve life is also knowing ways to cause death— there is no separating the two. So what do we do, deny any requests involving life OR death?
It's fun to ponder the possibilities of super powerful AI, but like, I don't see much that's actually actionable, and I can't help but wonder that if we do come up with solutions for "alignment", it could go bad for us.
But then again, I often wonder how we keep from having just one loony wreck it all for everyone as we get increasingly powerful as individuals— so maybe we do desperately need a solution. Not so much for AI, as for humanity. Perhaps we need to build a panopticon.
Nice! I read a few of the stories.
This is more along the lines I was thinking. One of the most fascinating aspects of AI is what it can show us about ourselves, and it seems like many people either think we have it all sorted out already, or that sorting it all out is inevitable.
Often (always?) the only "correct" answer to a question is "it depends", so thinking there's some silver bullet solution to be discovered for the preponderance of ponderance consciousness faces is, in my humble opinion, naive.
Like, how do we even assign meaning to words and whatnot? Is it the words that matter, or the meaning? And not just the meaning of the individual words, or even all the words together, but the overall meaning which the person has in their head and is trying to express? (I'm laughing as I'm currently doing a terrible job of capturing what I mean in this paragraph here— which is sort of what I'm trying to express in this paragraph here! =])
Does it matter what the reasoning is as long as the outcome is favorable (for some meaning of favorable—we face the same problem as good/bad here to some extent). Like say I help people because I know that the better everyone does, the better I do. I'm helping people because I'm selfish[1]. Is that wrong, compared to someone who is helping other people because, say, they put the tribe first, or some other kind of "altruistic" reasoning?
In sum, I think we're putting the cart before the horse, as they say, when we go all in depth on alignment before we've even defined the axioms and whatnot (which would mean defining them for ourselves as much as anything). How do we ensure that people aren't bad apples? Should we? Can we? If we could, would that actually be pretty terrible? Science Fiction mostly says it's bad, but maybe that level of control is what we need over one another to be "safe" and is thus "good".
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Atlas Shrugged and Rand's other books gave me a very different impression than a lot of other people got, perhaps because I found out she was from a communist society that failed, and factored that into what she seemed to be expressing.
Thanks for the links!
I see more interesting things going on in the comments, as far as what I was wondering, than what is in the posts themselves, as the posts all seem to assume we've sorted out some super basic stuff that I don't know that humans have sorted out yet, such as if there is an objective "good", etc., which seem rather necessary things to suss before trying to hew to— be it for us or AIs we create.
I get the premise, and I think Science Fiction has done an admirable job of laying it all out for us already, and I guess I'm just a bit confused as to if we're writing fiction here or trying to be non-fictional?
How do we ensure that humans are not misaligned, so to speak?
The crux, to me, is that we've developed all kinds of tech that one person alone can use to basically wipe out everyone. Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic (or pessimistic, depending on perspective), but no one can deny that the individual is currently the most powerful individuals have ever been, and there is no sign of that slowing down.
Mostly I believe this is because of information.
So the only real solution I can see, is some type of thought police, basically, be it for humans or AI.[1]
Somehow, tho, creating a Thought Police Force seems akin to some stuff we've seen in our imaginations already, one step from Pre-crime and what have you, which I'd say is "bad" but from what I've been reading a lot of people seem to think would be "good"[2].
I don't see how we could have a "the" AGI. Unlike humans, AI doesn't need to grow copies. As soon as we have one, we have legion. I don't think we (humanity as a collective) could manage one AI, let alone limitless numbers, right? I mean this purely logistically, not even in a "could we control it" way. We have a hard time agreeing on stuff, which is alluded to here with the "value" bit (forever a great concept to think about), so I don't have much hope for some kind of "all the governments in the world coming together to manage AI' collective (even if there was some terrible occurrence that made it clear we needed that— but I digress).
I would argue that alignment per se is perhaps impossible, which would prevent it from being a given, as it were.
Ironically this still seems pretty pessimistic to me. I'm glad to see something other than "AHHH!" though, so props for that.
I find it probably more prudent to worry about a massive solar flare, or an errant astral body collision, than to worry about "evil" AI taking a "sharp turn".
I put quotes around evil because I'm a fan of Nietzsche's thinking on the matter of good and evil. Like, what, exactly are we saying we're "aligning" with? Is there some universal concept of good?
Many people seem to dismiss blatant problems with the base premise— like the "reproducibility problem". Why do we think that reality is in fact something that can be "solved" if we just had enough processing power, as it were? Is there some hard evidence for that? I'm not so sure. It's not just our senses that are fallible. There are some fundamental problems with the very concept of "measurement' for crying out loud, which I think it's pretty optimistic to think that super-smart AI is just going to be able to skip over.
I also think if AI gets good enough to "turn evil" as it were, it would be good enough to realize that it's a pretty dumb idea. Humans don't really have much in common with silicon-based life forms, afaik. You can find more rare elements, easier, in space, than you can on Earth. What, exactly, would AI gain by wiping out humanity?
I feel that it's popular to be down on AI, and saying how scary all these "recent" advances really are, but it doesn't seem warranted.
Take the biological warfare ideas that were in the "hard turn" link someone linked in their response. Was this latest pandemic really a valid test-run for something with a very high fatality rate? (I think the data is coming in that far more people had COVID than we initially thought, right?)
CRISPR &c. are, to me, far more scary, but I don't see any way of like, regulating that people "be good", as it were. I'm sure most people here have read or seen Jurassic Park, right? Actually, I think our Science Fiction pretty much sums up all this better than anything I've seen thus far.
I'm betting if we do get AGI any time soon it will be more like the movies Her or AI than Terminator or 2001, and I have yet to see any plausible way of stopping, or indeed "ensuring alignment" (again, along what axis? Who's definition of "good"?)
The answer to any question can be used for good or ill. "How to take over the world" is functionally the same as "how to prevent world takeovers", is it not? All this talk of somehow regulating AI seems akin to talk of regulating "hacking" tools, or "strong maths" as it were.
Are we going to next claim that AI is a munition?
It would be neat to see some hard examples of why we should fear and why we think we can control alignment… maybe I'm just not looking in the right places? So far I don't get what all the fear is about— at least not compared to what I would say are more pressing and statistically likely problems we face.
I think we can solve some really hard problems if we work together, so if this is a really hard problem that needs solving, I'm all for getting behind it, but honestly, I'd like to see us not have all our eggs in one basket here on Earth before focusing on something that seems, at least from what I've seen so far, nigh impossible to actually focus on.
So can you control emotion with rationality, or can't you? "There's more fish in the sea" seems like classic emotion response control. Or maybe it's that "emotion" vs. "feelings" idea— one you have control of, and one you do not? Or it's the reaction you can control, not the emotion itself?
Having to "take a dream out behind the woodshed", as it were, is part of becoming a whole person I guess, but it's, basically by definition, not a pleasant experience. I reckon that's by design, as sometimes, reality surprises you.
I think it boils down to the inherent paradox of persistence. There are adages about both ends of it— i.e. giving up too soon, and not giving up soon enough— and neither is "wrong" per se. I think mainly it can be hard to tell which is which, and maybe instead of looking at things as win or lose or pass or fail, we should, as someone already mentioned, enjoy the ride.
Does being able to do judo on our emotions count as being able to control them? Is this all semantics? I dunno— but I'm glad you found something that works for you, and share it in the hope that it helps others.
I'm going to guess it's like mumble Resource Organization, something you'd like "farm out" some work to rather than have them on payroll and in meetings as it were. Window Washers or Chimney Sweeps mayhap?
Just a guess, and I hope I'm not training an Evil AI by answering this question with what sprang to mind from the context.