Post #4643353 · Elektrine

2026-08-30 14:53 UTC

I mostly agree with you, but AI cannot “act autonomously”. You prompt it, and it acts based off of that prompt. Have you ever used an Agent? Yes, these can act autonomously. At least as autonomous as a human being too. I act autonomously, but only because my parents, teachers, peers and so on “prompted” me with 22 years of education. I act autonomously based on all that I have observed and learned from other people in my life. If you put a newborn into an empty cell without any human interaction it won’t do much either. There have been experiments, and they just die. Autonomous doesn’t mean “wholely without input”. It means “continues its work without constant oversight and instruction”. You know, like when a human worker does a task autonomously, someone still hired that worker and gave them some basic instructions on what’s supposed to be done.

Replies (1)

@h0tbeef@lemmy.zip 2026-08-30 15:21

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.

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