Turing Societies

The AI Turing Test

Scott Alexander | Astral Codex Ten | 20th November 2024 | U

Fifty pictures of various styles — are they human art or AI-generated images? See the test here. Results: most people struggled to tell the two apart. Genre biases persisted; many associated impressionist painting with human art and digital images with AI art. “Humans keep insisting that AI art is hideous slop. But when you peel off the labels, many of them can’t tell AI art from the greatest artists in history” (3,300 words)

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Were All Slave Societies Brutal?

Lipton Matthews | Aporia | 23rd November 2024 | U

It depended on “production systems and crop requirements, rather than individual malice”. In Ancient Greece, skilled slaves were allowed to earn wages and buy their freedom. Sparta, fearing rebellion from their huge agrarian slave population, had periodic state-sponsored purges. Specific crops fuelled brutality: those growing labour-intensive cash crops like sugar subjected slaves to gruelling conditions (1,500 words)

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