Would you mind redacting your quotes of the transcript, so that people can instead enjoy the episode in context? I was intentionally vague about the parts you’ve chosen to excerpt or talk about, specifically not to ruin people’s enjoyment of the episode. (Also, reading a transcript is a very different experience than the actual episode, lacking as it does the timing, expressions, and body language that suggest what the show’s makers want us to think.)
It also seems to me that you are not interpreting the quotes particularly charitably. For example, when I saw the episode, I interpreted “can’t be accounted for” as shorthand for “emergent behavior we didn’t explicitly ask for”, not “AI is magic”. Likewise, while Mason implies that hostility is inevitable, his reward-channel takeover explanation grounds this presumption in at least one example of how an AI would come to display behavior humans would interpret as “hostile”. I took this as shorthand for “there are lots of ways you can end up with a bad result from AI”, not “AI is hostile and this is just one example.”
Bella is not actually presented as a hostile creature who maliciously kills its creator. Heck, Bella is mostly made to seem less anthropomorphic than even Siri or Google Now! (Despite the creepy-doll choice of avatar.) The implication by Bella’s co-creator that Bella might have decided to “alter a variable” by killing someone doesn’t imply what a human would consider hostility. Sociopathic amorality, perhaps, but not hostility.
And while Holmes at times seems to be operating from a “true AI = magic” perspective, I also interpreted the episode as making fun of him for having this perspective, such as his pointless attempts at a Turing test that Bella essentially failed hard at in the first 30 seconds. One thing you might miss if you’re not a regular of the show, is that one of Holmes’ character quirks is going off on these obsessive digressions that don’t always work out the way he insists they will. (Unlike the literary Sherlock, this Holmes is often wrong, even about things he states his absolute certainty about… and Watson’s role is often to prod his thinking into more productive channels.)
Anyway, his extended “testing” of Bella, and the subsequent remark from Watson to Kitty about using a fire extinguisher on him if he starts hitting things, is a strong signal that we are expected to humor his pointless obsession, as all the people around him are thoroughly unimpressed by Bella right away, and don’t need to spend hours questioning it to “prove” it’s not “really” intelligent.
Is it possible for somebody to view the episode through their existing trope-filled worldview and not learn anything? Sure. But I don’t think it would’ve been practical to cover the entire inferential distance in just the “A” story of a 44-minute murder mystery TV show, so I applaud the writers for actually giving it a shot, and the artful choices made to simplify their presentation without dumbing things down to the point of being actually wrong, or committing any of the usual howling blunders. For a show intended purely as entertainment, they did a better job of translating the ideas than many journalists do.
OTOH, perhaps it’s an illusion of transparency on my part, and only someone already exposed to the bigger picture would be able to grasp any of it from what was put in the show, and the average person will not in fact see anything differently after watching it. But even if that is the case, I think the show’s makers still deserve credit—and lots of praise—just for trying.
Can people PLEASE stop editing their posts in response to other posts, and not mentioning the edit in the original post? It’s rather irritating to read an exchange along these lines:
Person A: blah blah blah
Person B: I don’t think you should say “yadda yadda yadda”
Person A: You’re right. I’ve edited my post.
Now I have no idea to what extent pjeby’s criticism was directed at the post that I actually read, versus at the original post.
I for one am grateful, as I have no real desire to watch the entire episode or season or whatever pjeby thinks counts as a faithful enjoyment of the context.
The episode basically stands on its own, though some B-plots will fly over your head without the rest of the season in context. (My friends joke that the B-plots so far this season are the world’s most intelligent soap opera.)
I enjoyed the episode also. The show is consistently solid, which is quite impressive—I don’t think there’s been an episode that’s really low quality. The peaks aren’t very high, but there are no valleys to speak of...
There a laughable P vs. NP-themed episode in a previous season in which mathematicians use their proof to hack computers, but other than that the episode was watchable.
Other than the tacit assumption in that episode that a resolution to P v. NP would necessarily be P=NP, that episode seemed on the money to me. The uses they mentioned for crypto that could be broken with a fast NP-solver are all real things.
I only watched the episode last weekend, and I enjoyed it very much, except for the part where they’re discussing the ways AIs can conclude it’s in their best interest to kill us and they’re having that conversation in front of Bella, which struck me as a particularly stupid thing to do.
Would you mind redacting your quotes of the transcript, so that people can instead enjoy the episode in context? I was intentionally vague about the parts you’ve chosen to excerpt or talk about, specifically not to ruin people’s enjoyment of the episode. (Also, reading a transcript is a very different experience than the actual episode, lacking as it does the timing, expressions, and body language that suggest what the show’s makers want us to think.)
It also seems to me that you are not interpreting the quotes particularly charitably. For example, when I saw the episode, I interpreted “can’t be accounted for” as shorthand for “emergent behavior we didn’t explicitly ask for”, not “AI is magic”. Likewise, while Mason implies that hostility is inevitable, his reward-channel takeover explanation grounds this presumption in at least one example of how an AI would come to display behavior humans would interpret as “hostile”. I took this as shorthand for “there are lots of ways you can end up with a bad result from AI”, not “AI is hostile and this is just one example.”
Bella is not actually presented as a hostile creature who maliciously kills its creator. Heck, Bella is mostly made to seem less anthropomorphic than even Siri or Google Now! (Despite the creepy-doll choice of avatar.) The implication by Bella’s co-creator that Bella might have decided to “alter a variable” by killing someone doesn’t imply what a human would consider hostility. Sociopathic amorality, perhaps, but not hostility.
And while Holmes at times seems to be operating from a “true AI = magic” perspective, I also interpreted the episode as making fun of him for having this perspective, such as his pointless attempts at a Turing test that Bella essentially failed hard at in the first 30 seconds. One thing you might miss if you’re not a regular of the show, is that one of Holmes’ character quirks is going off on these obsessive digressions that don’t always work out the way he insists they will. (Unlike the literary Sherlock, this Holmes is often wrong, even about things he states his absolute certainty about… and Watson’s role is often to prod his thinking into more productive channels.)
Anyway, his extended “testing” of Bella, and the subsequent remark from Watson to Kitty about using a fire extinguisher on him if he starts hitting things, is a strong signal that we are expected to humor his pointless obsession, as all the people around him are thoroughly unimpressed by Bella right away, and don’t need to spend hours questioning it to “prove” it’s not “really” intelligent.
Is it possible for somebody to view the episode through their existing trope-filled worldview and not learn anything? Sure. But I don’t think it would’ve been practical to cover the entire inferential distance in just the “A” story of a 44-minute murder mystery TV show, so I applaud the writers for actually giving it a shot, and the artful choices made to simplify their presentation without dumbing things down to the point of being actually wrong, or committing any of the usual howling blunders. For a show intended purely as entertainment, they did a better job of translating the ideas than many journalists do.
OTOH, perhaps it’s an illusion of transparency on my part, and only someone already exposed to the bigger picture would be able to grasp any of it from what was put in the show, and the average person will not in fact see anything differently after watching it. But even if that is the case, I think the show’s makers still deserve credit—and lots of praise—just for trying.
I’ve edited my post a bit in response to your concerns. I don’t think I should redact all the quotes, though.
Can people PLEASE stop editing their posts in response to other posts, and not mentioning the edit in the original post? It’s rather irritating to read an exchange along these lines:
Person A: blah blah blah Person B: I don’t think you should say “yadda yadda yadda” Person A: You’re right. I’ve edited my post.
Now I have no idea to what extent pjeby’s criticism was directed at the post that I actually read, versus at the original post.
I for one am grateful, as I have no real desire to watch the entire episode or season or whatever pjeby thinks counts as a faithful enjoyment of the context.
The episode basically stands on its own, though some B-plots will fly over your head without the rest of the season in context. (My friends joke that the B-plots so far this season are the world’s most intelligent soap opera.)
I enjoyed the episode also. The show is consistently solid, which is quite impressive—I don’t think there’s been an episode that’s really low quality. The peaks aren’t very high, but there are no valleys to speak of...
There a laughable P vs. NP-themed episode in a previous season in which mathematicians use their proof to hack computers, but other than that the episode was watchable.
Other than the tacit assumption in that episode that a resolution to P v. NP would necessarily be P=NP, that episode seemed on the money to me. The uses they mentioned for crypto that could be broken with a fast NP-solver are all real things.
I only watched the episode last weekend, and I enjoyed it very much, except for the part where they’re discussing the ways AIs can conclude it’s in their best interest to kill us and they’re having that conversation in front of Bella, which struck me as a particularly stupid thing to do.