So long story short someone I know is losing their mind over ai and keeps mailing me bits of things they are asking a chatbot about. (End of world, ai solving the economic and ecological problems of the world etc its batshit. ) They asked me what this "code" is. To me, its bullshit and meaningless.

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[–] 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Worth saying - don't fall into humanising it with terms like "on purpose"

It doesn't do anything 'on purpose' because it has no human volition.

What it does is provide statistically plausible continuation for given input.

If your friend is someone who is prone to conspiracy theories and wants to know the 'truth' and is demanding incessantly from the AI they want the deep secrets and want to see 'the programming code' or whatever else they imagine might exist then the plauasible response is to give it - by which of course I mean completely fabricate it.

This is obviously what makes chatbots so insidious because they are a feedback mechanism for any bias you feed in. If your friend is already paranoid in nature, then talking to AI will only make their paranoia even worse.

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