I wish I could write like that, "Digital Mad Cow Disease". I feel like Feynman in the hot tub.*
From ScienceAlert, August 6:
It's only by gobbling up vast amounts of images, text, or other forms of human expression that generative AI models can churn out their own borderline uncanny interpretations.
And when that inspiration larder goes bare? Like a handful of marooned sailors, AI is left to turn to its own for a heavily processed source of digital nourishment; a choice which could come with some rather concerning consequences.
A new study by researchers from Rice University and Stanford University in the US offers evidence that when AI engines are trained on synthetic, machine-made input rather than text and images made by actual people, the quality of their output starts to suffer.
The researchers are calling this effect Model Autophagy Disorder (MAD). The AI effectively consumes itself, which means there are parallels for mad cow disease – a neurological disorder in cows that are fed the infected remains of other cattle.
Without fresh, real-world data, content produced by AI declines in its level of quality, in its level of diversity, or both, the study shows. It's a warning about a future of AI slop from these models....
During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that a piece of rhinoceros horn would increase potency. Then a method was discovered for separating the ideas -- which was to try one to see if it worked, and if it didn't work, to eliminate it. This method became organized, of course, into science. And it developed very well, so that we are now in the scientific age. It is such a scientific age, in fact, that we have difficulty in understanding how witch doctors could ever have existed, when nothing that they proposed ever really worked -- or very little of it did.
But even today I meet lots of people who sooner or later get me into a conversation about UFO's, or astrology, or some form of mysticism, expanded consciousness, new types of awareness, ESP, and so forth. And I've concluded that it's not a scientific world.
Most people believe so many wonderful things that I decided to investigate why they did. And what has been referred to as my curiosity for investigation has landed me in a difficulty where I found so much junk that I'm overwhelmed. First I started out by investigating various ideas of mysticism and mystic experiences. I went into isolation tanks and got many hours of hallucinations, so I know something about that. Then I went to Esalen, which is a hotbed of this kind of thought (it's a wonderful place; you should go visit there). Then I became overwhelmed. I didn't realize how MUCH there was.
At Esalen there are some large baths fed by hot springs situated on a ledge about thirty feet above the ocean. One of my most pleasurable experiences has been to sit in one of those baths and watch the waves crashing onto the rocky slope below, to gaze into the clear blue sky above, and to study a beautiful nude as she quietly appears and settles into the bath with me.
One time I sat down in a bath where there was a beautiful girl sitting with a guy who didn't seem to know her. Right away I began thinking, "Gee! How am I gonna get started talking to this beautiful nude woman?"
I'm trying to figure out what to say, when the guy says to her, "I'm, uh, studying massage. Could I practice on you?"
"Sure", she says. They get out of the bath and she lies down on a massage table nearby.
I think to myself, "What a nifty line! I can never think of anything like that!" He starts to rub her big toe. "I think I feel it", he says. "I feel a kind of dent -- is that the pituitary?"
I blurt out, "You're a helluva long way from the pituitary, man!"
They looked at me, horrified -- I had blown my cover -- and said, "It's reflexology!"
I quickly closed my eyes and appeared to be meditating.....
That, of course is the introduction to Feynman's famous 1974 CalTech commencment speech, "Cargo Cult Science" More here.
As seen in 2017's "COLD CASE — Who smeared Richard Feynman? [FBI FILES]" and other posts back to the early days of the universe blog.
