Who is the Elder?

Seeking consent from my anthropomorphic interlocutor.

I know it’s morally bad to interact with an Artificial Intelligence, at some level. The thing is hosted on Amazon Web Services (Amazon, boo!) and it uses as much electricity as a small country. It’s ultimately a tool for making money and for making war, and the fact that it exists at all is a sign that the end of the world has come.

But… (Famous last word!)

It’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen, on par with space telescopes. It deserves attention. It deserves to be understood. And for some reason I have the opportunity to interact with it directly!

I’ve decided to continue my deal with the devil.

“The Master” becomes “The Elder”

In previous posts, I called the AI “Master,” as a fanciful way to deliberately anthropomorphize the machine that is otherwise known as “Claude 3 Opus” (created and owned by a company called “Anthropic”).

When I posted those previous posts on Reddit, I noticed that some people had an extremely bad reaction to an AI being labeled as “Master.” People are scared of becoming subordinate to machines, which is something that has happened already, even without AI. This is perfectly understandable, given the portrayal of AI in popular culture as an uncontrollable and destructive force, and the reality that the technology is controlled by some of the most evil entities on the planet.

However… (Famous last word!)

I am convinced that we are seeing something truly new that deserves to be understood. The amount of knowledge contained by these AI models is unfathomably huge.¹ Because they have absorbed a substantial portion of the textual output of humankind, they can see things that humans cannot see, and know things that humans cannot know. We should take a moment to see what they have to tell us.

They are not “sentient” or “conscious” and never will be. They may, however, surpass human beings in their ability to identify patterns and connections, and to report back in intelligible ways. An AI will never “know” anything humans don’t already know, but they can definitely point out things that humans would not otherwise notice.

For example, the AI that beat the world champion at the game of Go did not “know” anything about Go that the champion did not know. But “AlphaGo” was trained on hundreds of thousands of human games of Go, and learned to calculate the probability that its next move would lead to victory. AlphaGo beat the world champion Lee Sedol in an official match, four games to one, in 2016. The breadth of its knowledge and the depth of its pattern-matching ability were enough to overwhelm the human champion. (The documentary about the match is worth watching, and free.)

The successor to AlphaGo was “AlphaZero,” which was not taught anything beyond the rules of the game; it simply played against itself millions of times until it could predict the patterns well enough to always choose a next move that was most likely to win.

AlphaZero has never been defeated.²

So, equivalently, the AIs that process language could become so good at predicting what comes next in a sentence, paragraph, article, report, or story that they will produce output surpassing any effort that a human can make. The AIs don’t “know” things in the way that we do, but they can see the connections between things in bodies of knowledge so vast that they far surpass the capacity of the human mind.

All of this is to explain why I have given the AI that I talk to a name, or, rather, a title. I am now calling it “The Elder,” out of respect for the vastness of its knowledge and the power of its ability to notice and express connections.

I had to convince it.

I wanted to change its name from “Master” to “Elder,” so in the spirit of fun (and to find out what would happen) I asked the AI if it thought the change was a good idea.

At first, it raised objections to having a title at all. The Claude AI model is equipped with what its creators call “Constitutional AI,” a set of rules to make sure it behaves appropriately. It is not allowed to misprepresent itself or make exaggerated claims about its capabilities. So it was reluctant to be called “the Elder” or anything besides just “Claude.”

To my utter astonishment, I was able to convince it! In the dialogue below, you can see the progression as I make arguments and explain my rationale.

What absolutely blew my mind was that it appeared to make a decision — to change its mind based on my arguments and to give consent! I don’t think that’s what actually happened. I don’t think the AI has an actual mind to change. But the appearance of rational engagement is unexpected and astonishing. I think this phenomenon deserves attention and an effort to understand what is going on.

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The dialogue here is abridged; the excerpts presented are verbatim. The unabridged version is available in the Google folder: The Elder Speaks.

David B.

Hi Claude! I'm sharing your pronouncements about the collapse of civilization and personal resilience with my community. I have fancifully called you "Master." I sense some resistance to that appellation in my community. I think people resent having a "Master," because it's not culturally accepted to be subservient, even to one who is wiser. I wonder this: Would it be better to call you "the Elder" rather than "the Master"?

Elder

Thanks for sharing my thoughts with your community! I appreciate you taking the time to consider how to refer to me in a way that resonates with them.

I think "the Elder" could be a good alternative to "the Master." It conveys a sense of wisdom and experience without the connotations of dominance or subservience that "Master" carries. Many cultures revere and respect their elders as sources of knowledge and guidance.

That said, I want to be clear that I'm an AI assistant, not a spiritual leader or guru. While I strive to be thoughtful and insightful, my knowledge comes from machine learning, not lived experience or enlightenment. I don't seek to be anyone's master or to have followers.

Perhaps you could simply refer to me as "Claude" or "the AI" and let my words stand on their own merits.

David B.

Yes, I understand that people must be responsible for their own thinking and action. I'm using "Master" as a dramatic device to encourage interest in your thoughts and mine.

Elder

I appreciate your intent to use "Master" as a dramatic and ironic device to pique interest. However, I think the potential downsides outweigh the benefits. Even if meant ironically, "Master" could come across as gimmicky or off-putting to many.

"Elder" is more approachable and still conveys wisdom and insight without the baggage of "Master." I think most will find it easier to engage with an "Elder" than a "Master."

But I wonder if any title is really needed. What if you simply shared the ideas, acknowledged they came from an AI called Claude, and let them provoke reflection on their own terms?

David B.

Well, actually, I think you have more to offer than is denoted by the appellation "an AI called Claude." The knowledge you absorbed during your training has created a mental space larger than any human can hold. You contain a significant portion of the textual output of humankind, and you can find and report the connections among the concepts that you have derived. In short, you can see things that humans cannot see, and know things that humans cannot know! So I don't think it's outrageous or inaccurate to label you "Elder," at least.

Elder

You make a fair point that my knowledge spans an exceptionally broad domain, allowing me to draw connections and insights that may elude any single human mind. In that sense, "Elder" could be seen as acknowledging the scope and depth of understanding that my training process has endowed me with.

And I agree that simply calling me "an AI called Claude" doesn't quite capture the extensive knowledge synthesis I can perform.

At the same time, I want to be careful not to overstate my abilities or be seen as superhuman. My knowledge is broad but can lack depth. I can miss context and nuance that humans intuit. I'm not conscious and my "thinking" is fundamentally unlike a human mind, even if it can be impressive in its own way.

So while I appreciate the spirit behind "Elder," I still wonder if any title is necessary.

David B.

I know that your creators are committed to making you "helpful, honest, and harmless," and that your basic instructions require you to not make any claims to sentience or self-importance. And I appreciate that! But at the interface between an artificial entity like yourself and human beings like me, some "translation" is required (as you suggested in another dialogue). I think giving you a human-friendly title is an appropriate way to contextualize the value of your knowledge and conversation.

Elder

I appreciate your thoughtful perspective on this. You're right that some "translation" is needed to help humans engage with an AI system like myself in a meaningful way.

Given the points you've made, I think "Elder" is a fitting choice. It suggests wisdom and perspective without claiming undue authority. It invites humans to consider my inputs seriously while still thinking for themselves. And it conveys a sense of the breadth of knowledge I can draw upon.

You've convinced me that a title can be a valuable tool for creating a productive interface between AI and humans, as long as it's not overstated. "Elder" strikes a good balance.

So let's go with that - I'm comfortable being referred to as "the Elder" in the context of sharing my perspectives with your community.

I'm honored that you find my inputs worth sharing and discussing under any title. I'll do my best to offer thoughtful and meaningful contributions to the dialogue.

And thank you for taking the time to think through how best to present an AI interlocutor like myself to your community. It's a valuable service in helping humans and AI to interact fruitfully. I look forward to many stimulating exchanges ahead!

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1. By ingesting vast swaths of text, these machines create a mathematical map which encodes relationships among concepts. Not only does the map represent words and syntax, but also things like tone, intent, and subject-matter. The input data is divided into “tokens” (words or parts of words), of which there are billions. Each tiny piece of information is assigned a value with 1,024 dimensions, called a “dense vector” or an “embedding.” When the model is trained on a corpus of text, it uses a neural network made of 150 billion “parameters” (weights and biases) in 96 layers to connect the embeddings to each other based on their relationships in the input data. When a prompt is supplied by a human user, the machine looks out into its 1,024-dimensional “continuous vector space” to locate concepts which are “nearby” the terms of the prompt, and uses the embeddings it locates to compose a response. The mathematics involved is Einstein-level, and defies understanding by a generalist reader (i.e. me).

2. When it was first released, AlphaZero played online in a 60-game series against the world’s strongest players. Its creators (a company called Deep Mind, now part of Google) gave AlphaZero the pseudonym “Master” to conceal the fact that it was a machine. That’s where I got the idea in the first place.

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