Joined the Mayqueeze.

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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Is every scenario with so-called AI in it caused by humans? Sure. That’s not really my point though. It was humans who caused the dumb situation around private gun ownership that then eventually caused school shootings to be a thing schools need to prepare for. I would tolerate the use of so-called AI here under these dumb circumstances and moreover would tolerate a false positive like this. I feel similarly positive about the use of models in medicine - if and when it helps. Or as a tool for people with disabilities. Et cetera.

    Normally we lambast here very dumb applications of so-called AI. The ones that get lawyers in trouble, the ones that get forced into areas where it’s unnecessary, the ones that boil away drinking water senselessly, or that ask children for nudes, or - sadly - the ones that drive teenagers to suicide. We lambast all the peddlers of so-called AI with their dumb predictions about how their faulty products will revolutionize everything. That’s the spirit of “Fuck AI.” My point was this story is less in keeping with the spirit of “Fuck AI.” So-called AI might actually help to make a bad situation not get worse.





  • Is this really a case of fuck AI? To anybody outside the US this paragraph reads like fucking satire. From within, where kids learn how to crouch under desks, hide behind bullet proof whiteboards or something, and lock down better than the CIA this doesn’t really move the needle, does it? The trauma is already there with all the drills and is eternal, as is the 2nd amendment. And this is one area where you would prefer a false positive over a false negative. So for me this isn’t so much fuck AI as fuck every lawmaker of the US since the civil war.




  • It’s an assumption that many people will be unemployed and unemployable in other functions. So far, every big change (like the Industrial Revolution or the advent of computers in the workplace) have lead to temporary displacements, and the longer ago it happened violent side effects. But in the big picture, we have found ways to put the human resource back into the machine. Accountants were supposed to go extinct with the arrival of Microsoft Excel. But their numbers have increased because they can do more useful things with their time than doing the math. The assumption may be more fear mongering. (And it’s too early to tell if you ask me.)

    So I don’t think they will kill us off just yet because it isn’t entirely clear that we’re not needed. It’s also possible that so-called AI frees up people and resources that can be channeled into what are chronically underfunded professions today, like teaching or medical care. We have a tendency to think in Matrix or 1984 terms of the future when more positive outcomes exist.









  • I don’t think this is right-wing specific. You could probably draw similar conclusions coming from an Islamist angle. And this so-called AI is going to be next “frontier” is not all that clear to me yet. It’s a nebulous threat at this stage that starts with a lot of “imagine if” arguments. We don’t know yet. It’s worth paying attention. But we don’t know if HitLLMer chatbots are going to cause more damage than the concentration camp simulation games that preceded them.

    There is a good 15% of people who are drank the koolaid right-wing believers. I don’t think that number has changed much in the last century. The number that changes is how many of the less extreme or undecided people in the middle they can convince they’re right.

    The internet is only as regulated as the least regulating country on this planet. So all it takes is a tiny island nation or a principality left over in time to break the chain. It’s also conceivable (imagine if!) that a fine, upstanding citizen like Elon Musk uses the change he found in his couch cushions to circumvent any regulatory efforts anywhere to distribute otherwise regulated content via his private satellite network. The answer cannot be “let’s limit speech more.” The answer must be “fight back with truth and facts.” If asshole ideologists use all the digital tools available to spread their bullshit, we need to fund initiatives that counter that speech with the same tools.





  • While I think of all non-animated Trek shows, DS9 had the best first season, it still contains a lot of dogs. Move along home, anyone? My point is first seasons are rough. Discovery gets better in S2. I would watch it that far before you start SNW because it’s basically the backdoor pilot for that show.

    I don’t think a mutinous commander is that outrageous a plot line in a universe where Riker once had Q powers, Janeway had warp 10 lizard babies with her pilot, Sisko poisoning a planet’s atmosphere on purpose, or where a man like Jonathan Archer was made captain of anything.

    Is Disco the best Trek show? I don’t think so. I think overall it’s better than PIC though. So if you have suffered through that, you stand a good chance of being more delighted by Disco.