AI Is the Threat that Pres. Nelson Warned About

[Carborendum]

Quote

In coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost.

 -- Russel M Nelson

AI is becoming more and more prevalent.  More people are using it.  Search engines are now largely run by AI. We've already become dependent on them.  Recently, we had someone return to this board who depended on AI to question the sanity of a Prophet.  We've come to trust it.  Essentially, we've come to have faith in it.

I know.  Not everyone.  I'm hyperbolizing. 

I appreciate the many AI exchanges that @Vort has provided over the past year or so.  It reminds us that AI is not all-knowing.  We need to take everything it says with a grain of salt.  We need to remember that only the Holy Ghost can really allow us to discern between truth and error.

I believe that AI is the TOOL that will be used to separate the wheats and the tares in this generation -- especially those just now growing into adulthood.

I tend to believe my children are pretty smart.  They've been raised right.  They know the scriptures.  They know truth.  But the younger ones struggle with knowledge and learning because there isn't enough truth out there to recognize.  All they seem to hear is confusion and chaos.  If that is all they are familiar with, how can they recognize truth when they hear it?

We do our best to teach them the truth in our homes.  So, at least they get that.  I have no idea what they teach in Church on Sundays and on activity night.  And when they go to FSY???  I have no idea.  School is somewhat safe because they go to a private school that is based on LDS principles, and run by a nearly all-LDS faculty.  Yet I still feel like they aren't protected enough.  Really, I feel like they still don't recognize the truth.  They still don't know how to feel and recognize the Spirit.  I don't believe it is a flaw in them.  I see it as a problem with the world we live in today.

I find it interesting that the remainder of Pres. Nelson's address is not anything special.  It would fit into virtually any General Conference.  Indeed, I'd believe that most people have completely forgotten it.  Or at the least, they don't associate those parts with his warning.  But when coupled with his warning, the insight is profound.

What are you doing to teach your children to depend on the Spirit to help them recognize truth?

Edited Wednesday at 12:41 PM by Carborendum

[mikbone]

AI is just a tool.  The real problem is dis-information and outright lies.  It’s no wonder that lies are Lucifer’s tool of choice.

When I read Lehi’s dream and Nephi’s interpretation, I had the impression that the river was filthy due to lies and dis-information. When water comes from a natural spring or fountain, it is pure and clear, like the truth.  But the river becomes filthy due to the pollution.  The tree of life is no doubt nurtured by the river and it’s roots are powerful enough to filter out the filth and be strong and whole.

God is the source of all truth.  We have the Light of Christ and the Gift of the Holy Ghost to assist us to filter out the filth.  Everyone still has to drink.

Just look at the recent unpleasantness of the last election when we were told repeatedly about the brilliance of the Democratic leadership. It wasn’t challenging to wittiness Joe Biden’s dementia and Kamala Harris’s word salad nonsense.  It seemed obvious to many of us, yet a huge group of the population believed the lies and disinformation.  (I don’t think that Trump is the source of all truth either…)

We all have a portable water filter.  We just have to use it.  When people drink deeply from the river without using a filter they become poisoned. 

AI is just another source of water.  You still have to use your filter.  

It would be a huge mistake to assume that AI is a safe filter.

Edited Wednesday at 02:08 PM by mikbone

[NeuroTypical]

2 hours ago, Carborendum said:

What are you doing to teach your children to depend on the Spirit to help them recognize truth?

I show them examples of how good the lies are becoming, so they understand how important it is to vet things before you accept them.  Behold - any 12 year old can now create videos like this by just entering a prompt into Veo3:

 

 

[The Folk Prophet]

A.I. does not exist yet.

What we're living through is a big marketing lie.

[JohnsonJones]

9 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

I show them examples of how good the lies are becoming, so they understand how important it is to vet things before you accept them.  Behold - any 12 year old can now create videos like this by just entering a prompt into Veo3:

 

 

What did I just watch????

Why would people use AI to make something like this?  I had some kids watching behind me and they found it hilarious.  I made sure to tell them that the entire video was fake, but they already knew this apparently.

What a strange video.  

[LDSGator]

4 minutes ago, JohnsonJones said:

What did I just watch????

Why would people use AI to make something like this?  I had some kids watching behind me and they found it hilarious.  I made sure to tell them that the entire video was fake, but they already knew this apparently.

What a strange video.  

I’m with the kids. I thought it was hilarious.  
 

If someone tries these things in real life, chalk it up to natural selection and move on.  

[JohnsonJones]

12 hours ago, Carborendum said:

AI is becoming more and more prevalent.  More people are using it.  Search engines are now largely run by AI. We've already become dependent on them.  Recently, we had someone return to this board who depended on AI to question the sanity of a Prophet.  We've come to trust it.  Essentially, we've come to have faith in it.

I know.  Not everyone.  I'm hyperbolizing. 

I am not really a big fan of AI.

I'm glad I don't have to deal with it academically anymore (I am now...officially retired...finally).

I didn't have to worry about it as much because my testing tended to be old school (you go to the testing center, they give you a blue book, you write your mid-term and final in the blue book) for under graduates, and the graduate students are held to a higher standard than what you will get out of AI (I think).

I know some professors have had great difficulties with it.  Personally, if it was something that they could use AI for in my classes, I think due to requiring sources and references, they would need to do just as much work to do prompts and other inputs to get an accurate report as they would if they just did it themselves without the AI, that they would learn what was needed either way.

But AI is getting more complex and more advanced and I don't know if that would continue to work in the future.  Some already felt that it had surpassed what we could monitor already during my last year or two at the university.

It opens many ways for students to cheat, and that obviously is not what the Lord would probably want.

I personally dislike a LOT of the AI we are seeing today.  I want to turn it off of Google half the time I'm doing a search now as I would prefer the actual sources than a summation.

I don't want it in my PC (but I have no idea how to turn this copilot thing off), and don't want it on my phone.  It seems they want to put it everywhere, whether we want it or not.

I can see that many kids these days will probably only read the first thing on Google (which is the AI summary) and accept that rather than do further research.  With that type of mindset, with AI ideas or items getting more prevalent in every electronic device in our lives, I can see how these future adults and leaders could be easily duped into believing things without trying to look further than whatever the AI tells them to.

In that instance, I could see how important being led by the spirit may be in the future.  I don't know if this was the exact thing President Nelson was warning about (it could be part of it along with many other things) but I can definitely see how it could be.

Edited yesterday at 12:18 AM by JohnsonJones

[LDSGator]

I’m going to be really blunt here. If your child is unable to see the humor in this or worse, tries to lick uranium and drink from gasoline pumps, AI is the last thing you need to be concerned about. 

Edited yesterday at 12:29 AM by LDSGator

[NeuroTypical]

18 minutes ago, JohnsonJones said:

Why would people use AI to make something like this?

Google Veo3 is currently in some sort of early release mode, with folks getting their copy by documenting what they'll do with it - and "content creator" is one of the professions.   So, guessing at motivations, I'd guess that whoever made these videos is a fan of the tech and wanted to generate lots of likes and subscribes to their channel by making click-and-share-worthy videos.  A good way to do that is with a bit of shock value.

Yeah?  I mean, it also might have been a random marketing effort from the Veo3 people, trying to go viral and generate interest, or it might have just been a random user.  Either way, it's now insanely easy to make such things. 

Not sure if this is behind a paywall or not, but here you go: https://www.wsj.com/video/series/joanna-stern-personal-technology/we-made-this-film-with-ai-its-wild-and-slightly-terrifying/D17B233B-1E06-400D-9095-B5247306DD38?mod=article_inline

[NeuroTypical]

10 minutes ago, LDSGator said:

I’m going to be really blunt here. If your child is unable to see the humor in this or worse, tries to lick uranium and drink from gasoline pumps, AI is the last thing you need to be concerned about. 

I just came from 30 minutes of arguing with people about whether Trump was really shot in the ear or not.  There's endless millions upon millions of people, just in the US, who'll fall for quick fake vids.

Again, the main point isn't "nobody will believe someone licked uranium".  My main point is now it takes minutes for the layuser to come up with a strikingly convincing fake.

[LDSGator]

6 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

just came from 30 minutes of arguing with people about whether Trump was really shot in the ear or not. 

I understand that-to a degree. There are people who think 9/11 was an inside job, the moon landing never happened, and that eating organic food makes them healthier. If you want to live a happy life, make fun of them with your buddies instead of arguing with them.

Seriously-what’s the difference between people who deny the Trump shooting and those who think Bush flew the planes into the WTC via remote control?  

Edited yesterday at 12:45 AM by LDSGator

[LDSGator]

7 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

My main point is now it takes minutes for the layuser to come up with a strikingly convincing fake.

Fair enough. That’s why teaching kids how to think critically is so important. So they won’t fall for rubbish like this. 
 

I still think I’m right though. While we all get duped from time to time, if little Joey keeps falling for stuff like this, take the college savings fund and go on that trip to Maui. 

[Traveler]

What an interesting thread.  I started learning about AI over 50 years ago.  Of course, initially, the AI was rather primitive – at least by today standards.  I have watched changes I never thought possible and over the last 5 years things have taken a quantum leap. 

I was recently talking to my son that is a software engineer learning to apply AI in our current software environment.  For about 10 years he has worked for the same company, pushing previously developed software to expand capabilities.  One particular module he has worked with for his full 10 years making changes.  I know well this kind of problem.  In my day we called this spaghetti code.  Working with spaghetti code is one of software engineering’s greatest problems.  More than once in my past – I gave up and went through the very time-consuming effort to rewrite an entire module of spaghetti code.

Using a new AI algorithm purchased by my son’s company – he had the AI algorithm analyze the code and rewrite it one night as he left work.  By the next morning it was complete.  He added the new fetchers and had the AI algorithm reanalyze his work.   It made a simple change and for months the new module had performed exceptionally well – much better than expected.

The ramifications of this is staggering and far reaching.  Windows software is a nightmare.  Every software engineer knows this.  We all know that it was built on top of a very old open source “basic” software.  There are parts of windows that no one understands or dares to delete.  It is one of the reasons that your computer takes so long to perform simple tasks.   Currently any cleaver software engineer could decompile their Windows code then have AI analyze and rewrite the code and have a version of windows that they could forever maintain for themselves – or even market to their friends and family.

Rewriting their internet connection in such a manner that could make it impossible to hack into their system without knowing the specific locks and inceptions applied.   All this is currently in reach.

I have a sister-in-law that works with a company that specializes in medical imaging.  Already AI is greatly affecting their operations.  AI can read the images and see things no live expert can see.  It is possible to diagnose problems long before what could be done without AI.  Lives could be saved and the cost of medical care greatly reduced. 

I have a nephew that is a pharmacist.  The greatest problem in prescribing drugs is that combinations of drugs will interfere with each other and increase the probability of problem side effects.  My nephew tells me that already AI is predicting better results of interfering drugs than even testing is able to reveal because of all the possibilitiesand probabilities.   I rely on high blood pressure medication and my nephew tells me that most cold and flu medication will interfere with my blood pressure medications.   I can envision the day that I can supply AI with my prescriptions and other medical information and discover very quickly what over the counter stuff would be best specifically for me and whatever is ailing me at the time. 

As I read the scriptures, specifically concerning the last days – changes are inevitable.  Contrary to what it seems to me many are saying – we are outclassed trying to teach our children how to handle the changes.  We can protect them for a while but eventually they must learn for themselves how to address their spiritual gifts.  Since their spiritual gifts will often be different than our own – we cannot teach them all they need to know.  They must learn for themselves – as each of us have done – how to listen and identify the truth through the spirit.   If some of you face similar challenges as I do – you will quickly realize that how we as an individual, discerns the spirit is how everybody else must learn for themselves.  Our prophet has said on more than one occasion that we all must learn to rely on our own testimony through how the spirit communicates to us.

 

The Traveler

[JohnsonJones]

9 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

Google Veo3 is currently in some sort of early release mode, with folks getting their copy by documenting what they'll do with it - and "content creator" is one of the professions.   So, guessing at motivations, I'd guess that whoever made these videos is a fan of the tech and wanted to generate lots of likes and subscribes to their channel by making click-and-share-worthy videos.  A good way to do that is with a bit of shock value.

Yeah?  I mean, it also might have been a random marketing effort from the Veo3 people, trying to go viral and generate interest, or it might have just been a random user.  Either way, it's now insanely easy to make such things. 

Not sure if this is behind a paywall or not, but here you go: https://www.wsj.com/video/series/joanna-stern-personal-technology/we-made-this-film-with-ai-its-wild-and-slightly-terrifying/D17B233B-1E06-400D-9095-B5247306DD38?mod=article_inline

I was able to view it without paying the WSJ.  Not sure if it's due to this being my old work computer or not (it allows me access to certain sites and such), but I was able to view it.  Interesting video.