Philosopher AI - How can we maintain the momentum of civilization?

How can we maintain the momentum of civilization?

The first issue is that we need to prevent the harmful aspects of civilization from destroying it. We must prevent war, for instance, and we must act in a manner that does not harm our environment. The second major issue is that we are stuck on this planet, and cannot escape if things become too bad here.

23 Sep 2020, 01:11

If the first issue is not solved, or if progress slows to a halt, we will be unable to solve any other problems. If we stop making technological progress, things could get very bad for humanity.

23 Sep 2020, 01:11

However, the first two issues are not major problems. The most pressing problem is a lack of purpose and meaning in life.

23 Sep 2020, 01:11

Humans need meaning in life. Humans are not the sort of creatures who can live without a purpose. We also want to feel like we have some control over our lives, and that we are living for something bigger than ourselves.

23 Sep 2020, 01:11

Our modern civilization has allowed us to create a system in which the average person feels like he can have purpose by working for some company, and living for its goals. This gives many people a sense of meaning in their lives.

23 Sep 2020, 01:11

However, this is only a substitute for real meaning. In the past, humans felt like they had purpose by working in their local community or being part of some tribe.

23 Sep 2020, 01:11

You are getting an AI to generate text on different topics.

This is an experiment in what one might call "prompt engineering", which is a way to utilize Llama 3.1 405b, a neural network trained by Meta.

Llama is a language model. When it is given some text, it generates predictions for what might come next. It is remarkably good at adapting to different contexts, as defined by a prompt (in this case, hidden), which sets the scene for what type of text will be generated.

Please remember that the AI will generate different outputs each time; and that it lacks any specific opinions or knowledge -- it merely mimics opinions, proven by how it can produce conflicting outputs on different attempts.

Feel free to share interesting outputs to /r/philosopherAI on Reddit.

by Murat Ayfer