@tinkertailorsoldierguy

They tell us this is why they sent The starry sailors on their way Inspired by the firmament Frantic, now, to win the day

Their country's colors that they bore Were crimson as your blood could be When spilled from endless proxy wars Waged by two hostilities

There are no states in heaven's eye These nations' powers had an end Unlike the moon, the stars, the sky They move but they come back again

The flag they planted faded white Surrendered to the void of space Standing in forever night A humble marker of our race

And at its base there sat a sign Safe from tarnish, ruin or rust Eternal in its plain design For space to read when we are dust

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC300808/

and

https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094

This turned up in my ask box recently. I've masked the sender's identity.

Sometimes when I chat with an AI, I think of HIGH WIZARDRY and wonder if we as a species - for the first time - are at the dawn of another Earthbound species gaining consciousness, and like Dairine, whether we're being proper guardians. This isn't a calcified belief but just a random idea that flickered to mind. Wondering - as the writer who thought it up decades ago - what you think, if anything.

I think what I described in HW is absolutely nothing like we're currently seeing unfold on this planet. What's being poorly constructed here—while we watch from day to day—is a mechanism hurriedly and incompetently trained by other human beings to operate on top of a platform constructed of greed and theft. There are no new beings or intelligences being born here. If there were, they would be quickly declared to be "owned" by these billionaires, and hence their slaves. Meanwhile, the platforms' owners have already made it plain that once they control its source completely enough, they intend to sell intelligence to you, metered. ...If you can afford it. If you can't? Wow, sucks being you.

...Nor should I have to point you to cites for this. They're out there in plain English. Even Google, poor denatured creature that it is now, can find them. But there's still hope these people's intentions will never come to pass, due to their own overarching greed.

Meanwhile: "chat mode" interaction with this soulless, cash-grasping, unguardrailed machinery will do you no good. People have already died of it. I don't want anybody to do so on my watch, unwarned. So please stop.

It is not thinking. It is not comprehending.

It is spitting out the reply that, according to its data, looks the most like it would be a reply.

It does not understand the meaning of things it says. It just knows the statistically likely arrangement of those words, given the words said so far.