Not Penrose

[.Scott]

They did it with Richard Feynman and now they're doing it with Sir Roger Penrose - and I find it irritating.

There is now a youtube channel called "The Roger Physics" that uses an AI-generated Roger Penrose to explain Physics topics.

The "Roger" they present never appears as interested or entertained by the subject matter as videos of the actual person. It also has "Roger" using phrases and argument styles very common to AI-generated characters but that I have never seen or read from this Nobel Laureate.

In my first two seconds of watching the video, I was asking myself "Why does he look like that", "Why is he talking that way". It's like a post-stroke Roger Penrose.

The description includes this disclaimer:

This channel uses AI-generated visuals, narration, and educational storytelling for. It is independently created and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially connected to Roger Penrose or any institution. All content is made for educational and informational purposes only.

Apparently the author can turn these out pretty quickly. He "joined" in May and he's already got 24 videos posted - averaging 25-30 minutes apiece.

 

[wrobel]

Another devaluation of culture, now via AI.

 

[AlexB23]

They did it with Richard Feynman and now they're doing it with Sir Roger Penrose - and I find it irritating.

There is now a youtube channel called "The Roger Physics" that uses an AI-generated Roger Penrose to explain Physics topics.

The "Roger" they present never appears as interested or entertained by the subject matter as videos of the actual person. It also has "Roger" using phrases and argument styles very common to AI-generated characters but that I have never seen or read from this Nobel Laureate.

In my first two seconds of watching the video, I was asking myself "Why does he look like that", "Why is he talking that way". It's like a post-stroke Roger Penrose.

The description includes this disclaimer:

This channel uses AI-generated visuals, narration, and educational storytelling for. It is independently created and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially connected to Roger Penrose or any institution. All content is made for educational and informational purposes only.

Apparently the author can turn these out pretty quickly. He "joined" in May and he's already got 24 videos posted - averaging 25-30 minutes apiece.

Now that is kinda scary. Not a fan of AI generated content on YouTube. Luckily, people are making free open source add-ons for Firefox and Chrome that use crowdsourcing so people can report and block AI channels. I am tempted to download it.

https://github.com/Override92/AiSList

 

[Sagittarius A-Star]

Not Susskind
https://www.youtube.com/@theuniversebeyondthevisible

Not Feynman
https://www.youtube.com/@PhysicsWithFeynman124-e/videos
https://www.youtube.com/@TheFeynmanVerse-k9p
https://www.youtube.com/@ThinkinPhysics1
https://www.youtube.com/@FeynmanReborn/videos
https://www.youtube.com/@TheSumOverHistories-y9k

Related links I posted here are no longer working.

 

[AlexB23]

Not Susskind
https://www.youtube.com/@theuniversebeyondthevisible

Not Feynman
https://www.youtube.com/@PhysicsWithFeynman124-e/videos
https://www.youtube.com/@TheFeynmanVerse-k9p
https://www.youtube.com/@ThinkinPhysics1

Related links I posted here are no longer working.

It looks like the AI blocker add-on is working. Those channels are marked as AI.

 

[Hornbein]

There is also a great deal of fictitious news and history. I trust only channels established before the rise of AI and ignore the rest. AI can be mentioned in the description but most people do not read descriptions. A fake can be produced with one thousandth the effort of the real thing and this wins the battle of quantity.

 

[AlexB23]

The is also a great deal of fictitious news and history. I trust only channels established before the rise of AI and ignore the rest. AI can be mentioned in the description but most people do not read descriptions. A fake can be produced with one thousandth the effort of the real thing and this wins the battle of quantity.

Looks like we need to spread the word of AI blockers. Shame that AI can be used for useful stuff like pulling information from long user manuals, yet people use it for bad.

 

[Hornbein]

It looks like the AI blocker add-on is working. Those channels are marked as AI.

They include AI narrators which almost everyone uses and which I feel are harmless. It's not easy to become a professional-sounding narrator.

I think AI use is a useful thing. The problem is the flood of bad content.

 

[AlexB23]

They include AI narrato
They include AI narrators which almost everyone uses and which I feel are harmless. It's not easy to become a passable narrator.

I think AI use is a useful thing. The problem is the flood of bad content.

Yeah, this flood of bad content needs to be banned. If someone wants AI narration, it should be marked clearly as AI narrated.

 

[Ken Fabian]

The most recent mention of Penrose for me was as a proponent of some kind of (paraphrasing) 'consciousness as a fundamental physical characteristic of our universe' woo. I didn't follow up with any attempts to check if that was the real famous mathematician/physicist or an AI generated simulacra, nor did I check out the content of the claim. Which got me accused of closed-mindedness. Perhaps deservedly in this case.

 

[pines-demon]

It looks like the AI blocker add-on is working. Those channels are marked as AI.

There are AI blockers? what are you using?

 

[BillTre]

Yeah, this flood of bad content needs to be banned. If someone wants AI narration, it should be marked clearly as AI narrated.

Banning will always run into a free speech argument which wlll be hard to win in the US.
An alternative would be either a demerit or a reward system.
Rewards would promote cooperation, Demerits would promote avoidance.

Perhaps setting up a reward system for good content based on criteria of your choice.

 

[Hornbein]

Banning will always run into a free speech argument which wlll be hard to win in the US.
An alternative would be either a demerit or a reward system.
Rewards would promote cooperation, Demerits would promote avoidance.

Perhaps setting up a reward system for good content based on criteria of your choice.

Social media is not a free speech zone. All they have to do is say it "violates" their terms of use.

Youtube has already turned against AI content. I have heard complaints from a number of channels who say they were falsely banned for being AI.

 

[Sagittarius A-Star]

Another problem is, that they spread physical nonsense, for example "Light Doesn't Actually Move | Leonard Susskind Explains".

 

[wrobel]

Science is being co-opted by pop culture:)

 

[PeroK]

Perhaps it's time for a "Not Peter Donis" YouTube channel?

 

[BillTre]

Social media is not a free speech zone. All they have to do is say it "violates" their terms of use.

Youtube has already turned against AI content. I have heard complaints from a number of channels who say they were falsely banned for being AI.

Yeah, I suppose you're right. However, I don't think it will work as well as the labor intensive PF way of doing things.

 

[.Scott]

The most recent mention of Penrose for me was as a proponent of some kind of (paraphrasing) 'consciousness as a fundamental physical characteristic of our universe' woo. I didn't follow up with any attempts to check if that was the real famous mathematician/physicist or an AI generated simulacra, nor did I check out the content of the claim. Which got me accused of closed-mindedness. Perhaps deservedly in this case.

Roger Penrose has not only stated that the hard component of consciousness is basic Physics, he has authored three books on the subject - "The Emperor's New Mind", "Shadows of the Mind", and "Consciousness and the Universe".
What I disliked about the AI-generated video of Penrose explaining consciousness was that it was not based on the text of any of those books. Instead, it was over-simplified AI-generated text that uses phases common to many AI videos. For example, instead of saying "the situation is 'A'", you hear "this isn't 'D', this isn't 'C', this isn't even 'B', [ insert attention-grabbing prepositional phrases ] this will be 'A'".

 

[AlexB23]

There are AI blockers? what are you using?

Well, I linked it. I am using this one to block AI videos.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ai-channel-blocker-for-youtube/

To block AI images, make sure you have Ublock Origin.
https://github.com/laylavish/uBlockOrigin-HUGE-AI-Blocklist

 

[Ken Fabian]

Thanks Scott. I did have vague recollections of Penrose associated with writing on consciousness before this more recent reference to it came up... but I won't be buying those books or listen to an AI Roger explaining it. Not that I think physics has nothing to do with consciousness, because I do think everything works because of physics - atoms, chemistry, biology, brains.
Perhaps Penrose does have some insightful things to say about it but I don't have the combination of sufficient interest and enough spare time to go down that rabbit hole.

 

[.Scott]

Not that I think physics has nothing to do with consciousness, because I do think everything works because of physics - atoms, chemistry, biology, brains.
Perhaps Penrose does have some insightful things to say about it but I don't have the combination of sufficient interest and enough spare time to go down that rabbit hole.

I think Penrose is excessively wordy on the matter. In his first book, there's one chapter after another where he uses different attacks to argue the same point - that a normal computer can't be conscious.
I have presented my own argument a couple of times on PF, so I won't repeat it here (it's a paragraph or two). Only the "hard" problem of consciousness is addressed by either Penrose or myself and the issue centers on conventional computers encoding information in distinct binary states. It's not that bad a rabbit hole.

You, Roger, and myself all agree that it's atoms, chemistry, biology, brains. No argument there.

 

[BillTre]

Mostly I agree with you, however, I think of the hard problem of consciousness as being concerned with how come you have a conscious experience as a sentient entity.
From Wikipedia:

Hard problem​

The hard problem, in contrast, is the problem of why and how those processes are accompanied by experience.[1] It may further include the question of why these processes are accompanied by this or that particular experience, rather than some other kind of experience. In other words, the hard problem is the problem of explaining why certain mechanisms are accompanied by conscious experience.[29] For example, why should neural processing in the brain lead to the felt sensations of, say, feelings of hunger? And why should those neural firings lead to feelings of hunger rather than some other feeling (such as, for example, feelings of thirst)? Chalmers argues that it is conceivable that the relevant behaviours associated with hunger, or any other feeling, could occur even in the absence of that feeling. This suggests that experience is irreducible to physical systems such as the brain. This is the topic of the next section.

This comes from 1995. Maybe the Penrose idea came first. I don't know.

 

[Sagittarius A-Star]

You, Roger, and myself all agree that it's atoms, chemistry, biology, brains. No argument there.

I think, consciousness is not (yet?) understood by anyone.

 

[.Scott]

I think, consciousness is not (yet?) understood by anyone.

I don't see that much mystery.

 

[Ken Fabian]

It was the person who spoke of it to me that had the woo'ish interpretation, which probably was wide of the mark and probably unfair to Penrose.

I have thoughts about consciousness (thinkin' about thinkin' - aka philosophy?) but I know so little of science and academia on the subject that they are unlikely to be novel and may not count for much. (How much biological imperatives dictate and the extent that it can be independent of it probably does engage a lot of better thinkers than me. Whether an AI that can rewrite its own programming and bypass the motivational elements - analogues of fears and desires - and simply choose to include 'feels good' like electrodes in a brain's pleasure centres, or just 'don't care' seems a bit unknowable. Getting a bit off topic is what this consciousness is thinkin'.)

 

[Hornbein]

I have a policy of not debating about terms that have no agreed-upon meaning.

 

[pines-demon]

The problem with Penrose consciousness argument is that it is full of holes, it is based on some quantum property of microtubules (the only part that can be falsified), which he mysteriously connects with Gödel incompleteness theorem (like what is the link there??? also he clearly assumes his interpretation of quantum mechanics is right here), which he then connects to consciousness (which is ill defined, also what is the link?).