Ethical Use of AI: The Hive Perspective
Alright, I think this discussion is necessary due to the recent proliferation of AI content at Hive. I am writing this post to create awareness, discussions, and do a little bit of soul searching regarding which direction we like to lead this decentralized platform of ours in terms of content. I am no expert on AI (Artificial Intelligence), but I have done a fair bit of reading on the subject and try to stay on top of the recent trends. At my day job, I sit on multiple technical committees regarding how to implement AI in geosciences and corporate intelligence. These are typically with product champions of Microsoft and Google, and I lead multiple scientific consortia on the use of AI in the Energy space. So with that out of the way, let us talk about our own personal space: Hive
Before I get into the details I like to make a few terminologies clear for people who are either less experienced or from slightly different background, so that we can speak the same language.
At this post, I am going to talking about generative AI and its ethical usage. So what is generative AI?
A type of artificial intelligence (AI) capable of creating original work. It is a portion of our larger AI toolbox.
Produces new content – text, code, audio or images – based on patterns learned from a given dataset
Predicts what follows – auto-complete for everything
There are numerous companies and tools current in use in the public domain, and hive
- Text based chat bots: Gemini, Co pilot, Chat GPT etc
- Text to code chat bot: Codex
- Text to voice bot: Lovo
- Text to reseach and podcast: notebook.lm, Chat GPT Deep Research
- Text to image: DALL-E, Grok, Bing Image Creator, Mid Journey
Each of these tools are already being used at hive. I have used almost all of them to various capacities. Also this is not an extensive list by any means. The list is very long.
What we want to accomplish as a human race is use a technology responsibly. This is especially true if a technology is new and disreuptive. A responsible AI usage refers to ethical, lawful and human-centric use of AI technologies. Why? Because hive is a social network. A social network thrives on human to human interactions. This is absolutely critical for survival of any social network. Trouble is since Hive is decentralized, the governance of something this complex is still community driven. Since we do not have a direct governing body which can provide certain boundary conditions, it is up to the community to create some. If we do not, there will be nothing to save, soon! I made that infographic above, please go through it and see which one is most impactful to day to day interactions at hive.
Couple of movements
There is a battle of ideology going on in the AI world. There are two opposing forces:
- Effective Accelerationism or e/acc;
- Effective Altruism
There are volumes of material on both of these topics and I can't even pretend to discuss even a small percentage of it. However, let me refer a few key articles/institutes on either side.
If you haven't read Marc Andreessen's The Techno-Optimist Manifesto, you must do it right now! No discussion of Effective Accelerationism will be complete without it. The writing is catchy, but the implications can be deep and long lasting. Many people in the current US administration, including Elon Musk, is a big proponent of this movement.
On the other side of the battle, the front is weak, especially after the recent US election results. However, the folks at the Center for AI safety are well funded, smart, and giving them a good fight. At the forefront of this battle is Dan Hendrycks, who is the director of Center for AI safety, and one of the designers of Humanity's Last Exam. This exam, they claim, is the hardest test ever administered to AI systems.
The questions on Humanity’s Last Exam went through a two-step filtering process. First, submitted questions were given to leading A.I. models to solve.
If the models couldn’t answer them (or if, in the case of multiple-choice questions, the models did worse than by random guessing), the questions were given to a set of human reviewers, who refined them and verified the correct answers. Experts who wrote top-rated questions were paid between $500 and $5,000 per question, as well as receiving credit for contributing to the exam.
These are questions you might ask a PhD student. However, this is PhD level question is all the basic sciences and technology at the same time. These were asked/administered to six leading AI models. Here is the result from the paper I linked above, Humanity's Last Exam:
I don't want you to feel satisfied with less than ideal scores for these chatbots, as they are incredibly difficult question for most people. The prediction is by middle of this year, the models will be able to score above 50% on this test.
Here is one question is Physics (page 5 of the paper lists several sample questions):
A block is placed on a horizontal rail, along which it can slide frictionlessly. It is attached to the end of a rigid, massless rod of length R. A mass is attached at the other end. Both objects have weight W. The system is initially stationary, with the mass directly above the block. The mass is given an infinitesimal push, parallel to the rail. Assume the system is designed so that the rod can rotate through a full 360 degrees without interruption. When the rod is horizontal, it carries tension T1. When the rod is vertical again, with the mass directly below the block, it carries tension T2. (Both these quantities could be negative, which would indicate that the rod is in compression.) What is the value of (T1−T2)/W?
No, I can't answer it :) Not without any research. But I don't have a PhD in Physics. @lemouth ? Can you?
I am just introducing the two movements here, not forcing you to be in one camp or other. However, I can tell you which camp, I am in. You probably have figured it from my title already. I am in the 2nd camp. I believe AI requires checks and balances, otherwise it might lead to something that we can't turn it around soon enough. No I am not thinking Skynet, that happens in the movie; the reality will be a slow and steady death of social order and we don't need nukes for that.
Turning it back to Hive
Recently I have been mentioning a random bit of AI related spam at hive:
- An AI auto-comment bot, which made 330K comments and counting (nuked)
- An automated ai post of trending authors, rewards are distributed to authors (why? why needed?)
- An automated comment bot, posting comments for rewards (nuked by the community)
A comment by @gabrielatravels on my post and my answer alarmed me a lot recently.
https://peakd.com/hive-126152/@gabrielatravels/re-azircon-srie35
With the proliferation of AI agents, one can simply put anyones account content, simply by pointing a link to notebook.lm and make a decent summary. The first reviews of Deep Research by OpenAI Chat GPT (paid version) is very good.
A large part of my academic research was spend on research. In fact when you open any masters and/or PhD thesis, a significant portion of it is typically dedicated to 'previous work'! Deep research can do it in minutes. I have seen the quality, and if the sources are publicly available, it is better than what I can put together after months of work.
https://openai.com/index/introducing-deep-research/
This is currently $200/month and it is putting research assistants, and editorial support stuff for any magazine out of work today. I am not being dramatic at all. This is fact, today.
That said, in a social network, where we get 'paid' for our interaction, how safe is our ecosystem?
What is at stake?
Do we want to talk to a chat bot, or have a conversation with a fellow human?
Answer to these questions are simple to me. If they are simple to you, then community need to come together and at least have the following in place:
- have an option for AI generated content to opt-out of the Hive reward pool
- discourage comment bots 100%
- discourage aggregator posts, especially when posted for rewards
- generally all communities should have a written policy regarding AI generated text
- in my mind, AI generated art is okay, as long as it is not the main focus of the post
I am not puritan. I have seen AI generated videos, and comicbook, that are amazingly good and appropriate. Thanks to @bravetofu. However, it is from Brave I have learned how much effort went into those products to generate that quality. Typically mentioning the fact that something is AI should be mandatory. What I prefer not of have is mindless spam, which is the direct, multiple key hive communities are heading. This must be stopped.
Ahaha! Funny coincidence. I am actually working on a document called "Teaching at the time of AI". There are tools, and we should teaching both students and lecturers how to benefit from them, use them in a clever and ethical way, etc. So very in line with your post :-)
For the physics question... unfortunately I have no time tonight. The problem looks interesting (could be a nice problem for 1st-year or 2nd-year students in physics) and I would start with energy conservation and gravitation forces (obviously for the latter). The issue is that I may need a couple of dozens of minutes to solve that and make sure I am correct, which is a luxury I don't have tonight (I need to review a 550-page document by Friday). Maybe I will handle that next week while flying to Japan (but I guess that by then you will be able to find tons of solutions online).
Note that I cannot find this problem in the arxiv paper on page 5. You need to go to the exam webpage to get it.
Cheers! :-)
No worries! I don't think I will search for answer. My point was, it was not easy for you to answer immediately either.
Yes, I went to exam webpage. My nephew is involved in this project. He is doing a PhD on how AI can learn sarcasm ... I kid you not :)
In fact, the answer is 8 :-)
A lot to take in here. One area of research that I am interested in is how AI hallucinations can create positive feedback loops, so that in further inference, AI models will double down on their "being incorrect", but confidently correct.
It is an inherent flaw in the probabilistic modelling that these models use.
When such models are also used adversarial manner ("responsible AI") or likely, in cyber sec, its going to lead to an ongoing escalation of compute more broadly as a tool.
There will always need to be a machine operator. We can't have "dark" factories of AI being autonomous, as there will need to be people with some serious critical thinking skills (and unbiased dimensions) to work within.
If we get autonomous "AI" (and the bad, generative model of AI) doing things, then that will continue to contribute to the absolute enshitification of everything as we know it.
Having said that, I can see (and indeed use) AI as a tool in my day job, day to day, and it makes me more efficient, and allows me to interrogate the datasets I work with on a deeper level than I would normally have the capacity to manually do.
As a result, it allows me to be more knowledgable of the subject matter, and to better answer business stakeholder's questions.
Simultaneously, there's a further story brewing in that field, and I'll be able to share more on HIVE about that soon when certain NDA's expire :)
I like alcohol, a cold lager on a hot day, perhaps a bourbon after a tough days of work. But I won't be driving after 5 bourbon, probably won't even be having 5 bourbon at my age!
That's the difference.
Also if I get caught drunk driving I got straight to jail. The law exists to protect the citizens.
Real time AI legislation wen? :)
Today, the BAC (Blood Alcohol Concentration) as a percentage is 0.05 in Australia for the line of legality, what if, during a special event it was set to 0.00, or 0.1 ?
What if it adapted based on the number of people on the roads, or on certain roads (school zones?)
There's dangerous levels of depth that AI can go down to (much like an actuary) but in the "right" hands, everyone is an actuary with the right AI (or at least, they think they are!) :)
Some regulations is better than no regulations. Thinking what if a cute bunny will do made the entire Australia a desert. You know the story I believe!
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/how-european-rabbits-took-over-australia/
Yep, they're still everywhere :D
Thanks for the mention AZ. I've thought a lot about this topic as I use it at work, use it in my spare time, and also need to think about how it impacts my kids.
AI absolutely is replacing certain tasks. In some cases it's doing it better than the humans. For example in my company we replaced a large amount of human translations with AI translations, and by and large the output is much, MUCH better (and of course way faster and cheaper). We're saving millions of dollars a year and our product is better. In the case of content CREATION, it's a mixed bag, but with the right processes/workflows in place the output can, again, be pretty incredible. But I think a key part of what makes a great output is that process and workflow. Most people just want to do things QUICKLY, and the truth is that most good things take time, whether you use AI or not. To get a GREAT output with AI requires time and patience, whether that time is from the planning stage, prompt testing, the polishing of the output, the packaging, etc. As you pointed out above, I make a lot of effort with the work I do with AI. However AI is a key enabler for me - I absolutely wouldn't be able to make a mock live-action trailer, a beautiful 2d animation, or a comic book without the help of these tools.
As for the generation of humans whose minds are still forming and developing, they'll grow up in a world where more and more AI tools either replace or complement things that were previously done by humans. Less "thinking" will be required, and that worries me (for my kids). What I will teach them however is that they need to think of themselves as the coach. What really replaces is a human task is a HUMAN who employs AI tools, not the AI tools alone (at least not for now!). In other words, I expect them to employ critical thinking and to not think of it as a way to "just save time" (i.e. be lazy) but rather as a way to get a better output (or something you could only have dreamed of without the tool).
I am using copilot at work daily, using gemini and notebook.lm regularly at home.
I am seriously considering paying $200 for Chat GPT pro, for the deep research.
But I don't want to interact with an AI girlfriend, I rather talk to my wife!
I rather talk to friends that I made here, friends like you, as opposed to reading AI generated comments.
That is all that I am saying.
Yep, completely agree with that :)
If you do decide to go for ChatGPT pro I'll be very interested to see what you think and what you do about it. I'm also considering it but I don't have a specific use case in mind for it yet, which is why I haven't pulled the trigger.
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I use generative AI for creating some thumbnails for some posts. Some of the essays I write to get the thumbnail, are on par with the post itself. This could be a testament to my effort, or a self confession of ineptness at using AI - perhaps both :)
Over on X I follow Dr. Sadler a Professor of Philosophy, and he shared an article today, Microsoft Study Finds AI Makes Human Cognition “Atrophied and Unprepared”.
AI not unlike conventional social media may some characteristics of a bad tool. That is using the tool may have some consequences to the users.
A quote from the article seems germane:
Each of us have different motivations for engaging on Hive and rewarding (or not) content. One of the arguments I've seen recently with increasing frequency, is that people are on Hive because of a pro-humanity perspective, and humaneness. Content and intent matters. As I use Hive more it becomes harder to make the shift back to legacy social media - one of the primary reasons I still use Twitter is for sifting through trends and to share content I originate here on Hive. I can begin to empathize more with those who are passionately protective of the ecosystem. AI probably has some interesting roles or purposes here, but it shouldn't fundamentally alter the notion of prioritizing reflective or human-centric content.
The reason I'm on HIVE is I see it as a way to etch my existence into something more permanent than my corporeal form :)
I agree, AI text content will decrease engagement, and it’s already doing it. Also the growth rate is alarming!
I am not good at post banners, so AI for that is great. Though some AI generated banners are starting to look a bit too much of the same thing.
Another good use of AI is to use it for translation. I have seen some of the stuff manually translated in the past on Hive and I much prefer the AI version that some people are posting now 😅
I don't know English and use GPT chat to correct mistakes and translate text. I don't think it's bad, since I write all the text myself!
Yes, it's not bad
Banners and title images are totally okay, before we had to resort to multiple free image repositories and they are less than satisfactory. Copyright free image on demand is a great positive outcome of AI.
Yes, translation for non native English speakers are okay as well
Do read the manifesto. I am curious what you think about it
This is a long read, still reading...
Worth it
I read it. To me it sounds a bit idealistic and disconnected from the reality. AI is going to be the biggest technological challenge in human history. I don't think that we are ready for it. And it certainly is about a lot more than reducing the cost of things.
When AI replaces most of the knowledge workers and AI enabled robots replace the service industry what are all the humans going to do.
As a tech guy I am going to try to adapt and embrace the AI as we certainly can't stop it. But the question is how quickly everything changes? Will we have the time to adapt?
Was it you who recently ask for an alternative to finance related community?
Yes, it was :)
AI written content are quite easy to detect but almost impossible to prove. They are informative, polished and lack the human touch. It's fine for casual use, it's great to generate an itinerary for my next holiday, but if used in lieu of human effort like some do on Hive, that's where I draw the line.
Point is proving to whom? Do I need proof that taskmaster is using AI to spam the blockchain? I f'in don't!
Yes, you can nuke a new account, that's easy.
What can you do to taskmaster?
Marky and I can DV him to eternity without putting any dent.
And community will still vote him and we will be the bad guys.
Exactly
I'd love to DV everything I suspect to be fake or AI generated but unless I can back it up with prove, they can just turn round and claim they wrote it. I can do without the hassle, it drains too much energy from me and it's not worth it.
Greetings @azircon ,
What an interesting, informative post regarding AI...a subject on the lips of people these days...thank you for the links and graphics.
It would be ideal for the AI component to be transparent...that anyone using AI declare the use of AI is hopefully adopted universally.
Yes...a lovely outcome, community based...with the recent AI agent. What I disagreed the most with regard to Maximus was that he was given a personality,'Charisma'...is what I think the creator called it.
Thank you again.
Kind Regards,
Bleujay
You are welcome. I try my best to keep this place as clean and entertaining as possible.
I use AI mainly to generate images for my posts. It enhances my posts because I'm not using stock images from Splinterlands.
I use them too and they are a good use of AI
What did you use above? Grok?
Night Cafe Studio, Flux Schnell model
There is no alternative to human touch, and if we want to promote hive as a social network ( which is of course the major part as of now in the form of blog), then usage of AI has to be limited. You posted some good measures to prevent AI content, may be some communities even decide to reward more to non AI content. I am not a big fan of AI, and never will be. Lot of good reads - thanks for that.
There isn't any alternative to human interactions, that much have been proven for a long time, and will be true forever.
I agree with your thoughts there. AI generated art if it is used as an image to supplement well written original text is fine as far as I am concerned. I think people should be transparent about the fact that they used AI to create the image though. Just like you would source any other image that isn't yours. I don't necessarily mind the aggregator posts. I don't typically read them myself, but I do like the idea of them being forced to decline rewards. That makes a lot of sense. The comment bots and all that other stuff, just trash!
Transparency is key. I hate lies.
I agree.
Very interesting research you shared here. I guess in my small sphere of Splinterland and Actifit, I don't feel like I run into much AI. When people do use AI, I find it is typically disclosed that they are using it to translate their article into English from a native language like Spanish or Portuguese.
Thanks for holding it down against the spammy AI content!
Yes, translation should be just fine for non-native english speakers.
I also like all the fun art that people are doing, not just for the cards, but also for us players. Have you seen the work by @unitmaster making AI images for different players in the game?
https://peakd.com/hive/@unitmaster/ai-pictures-based-on-your-hive-username
Thanks for the shout out @ducecrypto !
Great concept and content, mate!
I have not. Thanks for sharing!
He's since made another three posts doing the AI art for the three top guilds in YGG Brawlers.
I thought the art for Azircon had a very nice color palette.
yeah the color palette is nice, but the character is off:)
don't you think?
Well, AI sure took the Zircon part seriously... you're just a gem!
There was a Nature article I think last year talking about this challenge, and many other articles about some awkward scientific papers that passed through editorial reviewers that had in their texts awkward fragments of the AI answer.
In addition, maybe you saw also one paper that got a weird AI-generated figure with a mouse testicle in an unnatural way (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10985060/)
Anyways, I am not sure if you took around the #science or #stem tag lately, there are some awkward posts that the users are clearly using AI to produce technical posts about certain topics.
Like a science influencer said once in a Podcast that I listened to: The usage of AI is getting so bad that in the near future, we won't trust anything that is displayed on the internet.
Point them to me
sent some examples for you at discord! take your time!
I never use any AI,but i think i need to learn more about AI.
But, i dont know where to start. Maybe i will ask brave how to learn using AI on generating image.
I think hive should allow for image or banner only for AI, but not for text or content.
Thanks for sharing 😊
It's easy for a title image, just write the prompt and hit enter :)
in their web?
or it is app that we need to buy or subscribe?
Google bing image generator
okay thank sir, i will try it today
i think i need to make new banner for my spl content.
Need refreshment
A very pertinent reflection to have within HIVE.
I'm curious to hear from people who have been with HIVE since the beginning.
Curious coincidence, when I saw your post it was 11:11 🤔
The concept of synchronicity. Especially because world leaders are in France debating the future of AI. It would be very important to debate here as well.
Oh there will be debate. Europe just went to bed, and evening is young in the US :)
Let's sleep on it. It may be useful, through dreaming.😉
It will be impossible for the hive to escape from the AI today or in the future. I have seen the presence of AI on peakd.com as well.
I don't think we are trying to espace the AI movement, because that would be silly. We should be using the technology in the correct way.
Your blog and ideas can be made a guideline on how and to what extent AI can be used. When I go out to roam on hive, I see posters everywhere that say 'NO AI'.
I will also wait for this correct method because I was once blacklisted because I translated Hindi using ChatGPT and it was only because there is no written information available on hive that can guide the newly joined users.
Like, I have translated this post from Hindi to English.
My suggestions:
I think AI has a lot of potential, but like the early internet, the altcoin deluge, and NFTs, the tech bros are pretending get-rich-quick schemes are the future instead of building something on a solid foundation. Only time will winnow the wheat from the chaff.
good suggestions
Interesting to see the downvotes on your comment match the pattern of upvotes for a certain profligate spammer with multiple negative reputation accounts and an affinity for AI content. Hmm.
I don't care. Downvote is something I like.
I made a lazy meme reply to use when I encounter prolific spammers.
I'm 5 months in on my current job "data curation", AI to AI interaction. To simplify it I teach the AI some data that it doesn't know yet then the AI teach me with it's vast data from the internet. Chatgpt, Gemini and Grok these are the AI that I used so far. Last year I saw some post about AI destroying jobs for people, come to think of it this is true. I'm from the Philippines afaik in my city nobody knows what these AI can do only for grammar correction. Almost 18 hours a day I'm with these AI's, I agree in social media like Hive we need human interaction because AI do not have emotions!
I’m watching the Black Mirror TV series and it's creepy how much it looks like today's world. It's scary. I don’t want to be engaged with AI without knowing that it’s not a human. I stayed in Hive and abandoned social networks 2.0 because they became ghost places and here I found real people again. I don't blame the tool, AI has positive aspects (I use it for translation) but I agree that we need limits so that it doesn't get out of control. That will harm everyone, whether they use it or not.
Yes sir...AI tools are very helpful and good.
Thanks for your contribution to the STEMsocial community. Feel free to join us on discord to get to know the rest of us!
Please consider delegating to the @stemsocial account (85% of the curation rewards are returned).
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I am really starting to try and improve my knowledge on AI, I know it should be useful in my workplace but how I implement it is definitely a worry to me, I don’t want to be making my own job obsolete!
On a personal level I have always wanted to write a book, I know I’m no Stephen King or Terry Pratchett so I have looked to AI tools to help me but always stopped as I don’t want to just produce an AI scripted book, again this is probably the fear in me and if used correctly as an assistant i may become a better writer (or am i just costing an editor their job??)
Either way the use of AI needs to be thought about very carefully. We will not judge the impact until it is too late.
!PIZZA
$PIZZA slices delivered:
(2/10) @danzocal tipped @azircon