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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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If we take the lawyer example, I think at least for me the more interesting question is not whether or not a LLM can act like a lawyer. Maybe it could, and I don't think that'd bother me any - lawyer is just a function, and I don't have a problem that we use machines to build those huge buildings, why would I have a problem when we start using machines to produce legal proofs? If the buildings do not fall, if the proofs are not worse than what we have now (and that's not a very high bar to clear, to be honest) - why would I have any problem with that? There of course would be corner cases - but it's not like nobody ever is getting hurt by lifting machines too. You just need to implement safety controls.

What is more interesting question is what it says about lawyers. And as an extension, other human pursuits. If all of it is just complex mechanics, which can be perfectly simulated with advanced enough wound-up clockwork bot, where the intrinsic value comes from? Why we consider humans anything more than a wetware clockwork wound-up bot (provided we do, of course)? Religious people know the answer for that, but for computer scientists and philosophers with an atheist bent, there would be, I think, some work here to be done. The question to solve wouldn't be whether the machines are "really human", but whether humans are "really human" - i.e. anything different from a machine slightly complicated than what we could currently assemble from a bunch of wires and silicon, but ultimately nothing different.