This is the most powerful line of your entire brilliant piece: "I think we’re going to discover that it’s impossible for a machine to replicate human intelligence if that machine lacks any experience in the world in which humans exist." The question boils down to this, I guess: Can we replicate human experience with inputted knowledge alone? My answer: I think not, for the human experience requires EMBODIMENT. This is precisely what you're getting at in your article.
That's exactly what I've been saying for a couple years now. "AI" as presently known *does not live in the real world.* It can't parse the very idea of truth or reality. All texts, images, etc., are equivalent heaps of data, and there is nothing else.
Good point and raises for me the image of a future in which people have so removed themselves from society to where they interact more with machines than they do people. It’s already happening of course but as it spreads, the machine/human experience will merge and AI’s disadvantage will diminish.
OMG. This is terrible and crazy. I am trying to teach my kids that just because you Google a thing and find an answer, this does not mean it is correct. I am also trying, with far less success, to convince the average adult I encounter that this does not constitute "research." I fear the arrival of general artificial intelligence may arrive not so much because the machines get smarter but because the humans get more stupid.
My husband Peco and our daughter discussed exactly the same issue yesterday evening. They both noted that, not only did the AI chatbot offer up wrong answers, but seems to also have developed gaslighting skills. When asked why it provided the incorrect answers (to French grammar questions, findings of research papers, etc.), it painly denied ever having produced the original output.
The question is how many people will bother to fact-check an AI chatbot….
Here was my recent query: “What did Raúl Esparza think of the “tick, tick…BOOM!” movie?”
ChatGPT’s reply: Raúl Esparza, who famously played Jonathan Larson in the 2001 *tick, tick… BOOM!* stage revival, had positive things to say about the *tick, tick… BOOM!* movie adaptation directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda. He appreciated how the film captured Larson's spirit and the emotional core of the piece. Esparza has mentioned in interviews that the film was deeply moving for him, especially seeing Larson's life and work reach an even wider audience through cinema.
He also expressed admiration for Andrew Garfield’s performance, recognizing the depth and sensitivity Garfield brought to the role of Larson. Overall, Esparza saw the movie as a beautiful tribute that honored Larson's legacy and conveyed the same urgency and passion that he experienced performing the show on stage.
If you want, I can try to find specific quotes or moments where he talked about it!
Me: Yes, give me some direct quotes from Esparza.
ChatGPT: I couldn't find any direct quotes from Raúl Esparza regarding the tick, tick… BOOM! movie adaptation directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda. While Esparza has spoken extensively about his experiences with the stage production and its significance, there doesn't appear to be public commentary from him specifically about the film. If you're interested, I can share some of his insights on the stage version or provide information from other individuals connected to the film.
Inspired by Will Self's walk to Heathrow Airport, I thought I'd attempt to plan a route to my local airport, and tried using AI, just to see what it would throw out. The roads it suggested using included major highways with no footpaths at all. The unembodied AI did not seem to grasp that someone travelling on foot wouldn't want to share the path with vehicles hurtling along at 80 kph. If I wanted to avoid becoming roadkill, I had to be explicit about that. What's more, the AI didn't suggest any sort of cross-country adventure, i.e., going where there are no marked paths, which is also quite telling.
To answer your question, yes. In Sgt Pepper's, the song "Good Morning, Good Morning" John Lennon says "It's time for tea and 'Meet the Wife'" "Meet the Wife" was an old BBC sitcom.
Brave's AI Leo already knows about your experiment and answers correctly, if more briefly, citing you. Your post is also the top seach result for those eords in Brave.
Ha! Righteous! Although please note that I never said that "none of their songs contain references to television or TV shows." So Leo's still spreading falsehoods.
Ooh, good catch re never having said "none of their songs contain references to television or TV shows." I did not notice. Which reinforces how much discernment the truly wise use of AI will demand.
I got a more nuanced reply from Deepseek, the much-talked about LLM from a country that Beatles never visited:
### Key Takeaway:
While the word "television" never appears in their lyrics, The Beatles engaged with TV as a medium (e.g., *Our World*), critiqued media culture, and inspired countless TV tributes. Their relationship with television was more about **impact** than direct lyrical mentions.
The last few decades of techno-optimism will eventually lead to a diminished human mind that is in awe of falsehood and failed promises. The bizarre experience of trying to explain something you understand deeply to someone and almost like a reflex they grab their device, google and show you the answer as if it's the word of God.
I asked the "Deep Research" thing on ChatGPT the same question. In its deep dive, it read your piece, but didn't comment. It found there were no or virtually no references to TV in Beatles songs, which is interesting, considering they commented a lot in their lyrics on the common aspects of daily life of the time, and of course bcs their television appearances were such a large part of their life throughout their run. But it is easy to answer: TV itself, watching it, just wasn't on their radar - simply not part of their life in the formative early years. They didn't have it growing up in post-war Liverpool, because no one but the wealthy did, and certainly didn't spend their days in front of the goggle-box, but instead spent every spare moment developing their social network, and their musical work, from the earliest possible age. I think George Harrison was playing guitar to a professional level by the time he was 15. The next generation - me, as GenX, born of parents almost exactly the same age as each of the B's - certainly did spend our spare time watching TV, and we were the first generation, I think, to have our cultural personalities formed by it. Saturday Morning Cartoons, After-School Specials, Star Trek on at 6pm every week day... Coming home from school to the empty apartment, letting ourselves in, getting a bowl of cereal and watching TV until our single mothers came home... That's a GenX thing.
This is the most powerful line of your entire brilliant piece: "I think we’re going to discover that it’s impossible for a machine to replicate human intelligence if that machine lacks any experience in the world in which humans exist." The question boils down to this, I guess: Can we replicate human experience with inputted knowledge alone? My answer: I think not, for the human experience requires EMBODIMENT. This is precisely what you're getting at in your article.
That's exactly what I've been saying for a couple years now. "AI" as presently known *does not live in the real world.* It can't parse the very idea of truth or reality. All texts, images, etc., are equivalent heaps of data, and there is nothing else.
Good point and raises for me the image of a future in which people have so removed themselves from society to where they interact more with machines than they do people. It’s already happening of course but as it spreads, the machine/human experience will merge and AI’s disadvantage will diminish.
OMG. This is terrible and crazy. I am trying to teach my kids that just because you Google a thing and find an answer, this does not mean it is correct. I am also trying, with far less success, to convince the average adult I encounter that this does not constitute "research." I fear the arrival of general artificial intelligence may arrive not so much because the machines get smarter but because the humans get more stupid.
My husband Peco and our daughter discussed exactly the same issue yesterday evening. They both noted that, not only did the AI chatbot offer up wrong answers, but seems to also have developed gaslighting skills. When asked why it provided the incorrect answers (to French grammar questions, findings of research papers, etc.), it painly denied ever having produced the original output.
The question is how many people will bother to fact-check an AI chatbot….
ChatGPT does the same thing.
Here was my recent query: “What did Raúl Esparza think of the “tick, tick…BOOM!” movie?”
ChatGPT’s reply: Raúl Esparza, who famously played Jonathan Larson in the 2001 *tick, tick… BOOM!* stage revival, had positive things to say about the *tick, tick… BOOM!* movie adaptation directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda. He appreciated how the film captured Larson's spirit and the emotional core of the piece. Esparza has mentioned in interviews that the film was deeply moving for him, especially seeing Larson's life and work reach an even wider audience through cinema.
He also expressed admiration for Andrew Garfield’s performance, recognizing the depth and sensitivity Garfield brought to the role of Larson. Overall, Esparza saw the movie as a beautiful tribute that honored Larson's legacy and conveyed the same urgency and passion that he experienced performing the show on stage.
If you want, I can try to find specific quotes or moments where he talked about it!
Me: Yes, give me some direct quotes from Esparza.
ChatGPT: I couldn't find any direct quotes from Raúl Esparza regarding the tick, tick… BOOM! movie adaptation directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda. While Esparza has spoken extensively about his experiences with the stage production and its significance, there doesn't appear to be public commentary from him specifically about the film. If you're interested, I can share some of his insights on the stage version or provide information from other individuals connected to the film.
Inspired by Will Self's walk to Heathrow Airport, I thought I'd attempt to plan a route to my local airport, and tried using AI, just to see what it would throw out. The roads it suggested using included major highways with no footpaths at all. The unembodied AI did not seem to grasp that someone travelling on foot wouldn't want to share the path with vehicles hurtling along at 80 kph. If I wanted to avoid becoming roadkill, I had to be explicit about that. What's more, the AI didn't suggest any sort of cross-country adventure, i.e., going where there are no marked paths, which is also quite telling.
To answer your question, yes. In Sgt Pepper's, the song "Good Morning, Good Morning" John Lennon says "It's time for tea and 'Meet the Wife'" "Meet the Wife" was an old BBC sitcom.
Humans ftw.
Brave's AI Leo already knows about your experiment and answers correctly, if more briefly, citing you. Your post is also the top seach result for those eords in Brave.
https://search.brave.com/search?q=Did+the+Beatles+ever+mention+television+in+their+songs%3F&source=android&summary=1&conversation=9e3371d2494071000ea83a
Ha! Righteous! Although please note that I never said that "none of their songs contain references to television or TV shows." So Leo's still spreading falsehoods.
Ooh, good catch re never having said "none of their songs contain references to television or TV shows." I did not notice. Which reinforces how much discernment the truly wise use of AI will demand.
I'm not a conspiracist, but this all feels so sinister. Like an attack on truth itself
I got a more nuanced reply from Deepseek, the much-talked about LLM from a country that Beatles never visited:
### Key Takeaway:
While the word "television" never appears in their lyrics, The Beatles engaged with TV as a medium (e.g., *Our World*), critiqued media culture, and inspired countless TV tributes. Their relationship with television was more about **impact** than direct lyrical mentions.
The last few decades of techno-optimism will eventually lead to a diminished human mind that is in awe of falsehood and failed promises. The bizarre experience of trying to explain something you understand deeply to someone and almost like a reflex they grab their device, google and show you the answer as if it's the word of God.
Thank you for this insight.
I asked the "Deep Research" thing on ChatGPT the same question. In its deep dive, it read your piece, but didn't comment. It found there were no or virtually no references to TV in Beatles songs, which is interesting, considering they commented a lot in their lyrics on the common aspects of daily life of the time, and of course bcs their television appearances were such a large part of their life throughout their run. But it is easy to answer: TV itself, watching it, just wasn't on their radar - simply not part of their life in the formative early years. They didn't have it growing up in post-war Liverpool, because no one but the wealthy did, and certainly didn't spend their days in front of the goggle-box, but instead spent every spare moment developing their social network, and their musical work, from the earliest possible age. I think George Harrison was playing guitar to a professional level by the time he was 15. The next generation - me, as GenX, born of parents almost exactly the same age as each of the B's - certainly did spend our spare time watching TV, and we were the first generation, I think, to have our cultural personalities formed by it. Saturday Morning Cartoons, After-School Specials, Star Trek on at 6pm every week day... Coming home from school to the empty apartment, letting ourselves in, getting a bowl of cereal and watching TV until our single mothers came home... That's a GenX thing.