this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2026
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Sharp rise in incidents of AI escaping users’ control, research finds (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 1 day ago by LadyButterfly@reddthat.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] h0tbeef@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

Ok, this is actually just making me depressed at this point.

You really only see your own autonomy as equivalent with a computer programs?

Autonomous actually means “having the right of power or self government” which is not true of AI, or “undertaken or carried on without outside control”, which is also not true of AI.

Power on your computer, load up your fully trained AI, and then wait for it to act without your direction. Did anything happen? No, because a human filled with information and experiences and feelings is actually WAY different than a computer program filled with data.

For example, I did not prompt you to come on Lemmy and vocally fellate technofascists and their fuckware, you chose to do that of your own volition. That’s autonomy. The computer program won’t do that unless you direct it to.

Edit - Just to be clear, because you’re not the only one pointing to “agents” as a sign of autonomy/intelligence/sentience -> An agent is literally a computer program that you prompt, which then talks to an LLM, and then does what the LLM tells it to do. It’s not acting autonomously, it’s following directions from the next-word-predictor machine, and those directions are built off of your original prompt.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Load up a fresh baby, and then wait for it to act without your direction. Did anything happen? No?

You are angry, and in your anger you are confusing terms. Let's start from the beginning, ok?

Autonomy is not intelligence is not sentience. Saying that AI does things is not technofaschist.

Btw, if you have to resort to offensive language and strawmen that generally means you don't have arguments.

So, let me educate you a little bit so that you can participate in the discussion:

  • Autonomy: This term means that something can make decisions that go beyond the initial instruction. Yes, a dishwasher that has the ability to sense how dirty the wash water is and can shorten or lengthen the cleaning cycle based on that has a certain degree of autonomy. Autonomy isn't a binary yes/no term, instead it's a scale from no autonomy (a hammer) to very high autonomy (an adult living alone in the woods).
    • Claiming a computer program has no autonomy at all means you don't understand the term.
    • Claiming that autonomy means that it works without any interaction at all, not even an initial prompt means you don't understand the term.
    • Claiming that autonomy means that an AI is human-like or anything like that also means you don't understand the term.
  • Sentience: This just means that a thing has some sensors with which it can sense the environment and can form some kind of memories based on that. Every single animal is sentient. Probably mosty plants are too. A smart dishwasher that collects statistics and adjusts the washing cycle based on that is probably sentient too.
    • Claiming that sentience means something is human-like means you don't understand the term.
  • Intelligence: This term is so vague and badly defined that we can't even determine if a human is actually intelligent or not, let alone animals or computer programs.

All of these terms are nothingburgers. None of these terms mean that anything is human-like. It literally doesn't matter whether an AI fulfills any of these terms by anyone's definition.

[–] h0tbeef@lemmy.zip 1 points 42 minutes ago

I’m not angry, you’re projecting, lmao

The emotion I’m experiencing in all of these AI threads is disbelief and disappointment.

It’s not a baby anymore once you’ve fed all of the training data into it. It’s not really a great metaphor.

All of the words that you’re saying are “vague” are actually extremely well defined. Check it out. https://www.merriam-webster.com/