FriendOfDeSoto

I don’t think the author likes mastodon dot social…

I couldn’t get through all of this blog post because it’s repeating the same point 500 times. I get the theoretical threat scenario they are painting; what’s missing are the receipts. Is moderation on that instance actually getting worse? Have we talked with admins on the record how they don’t dare defederate from that alleged wretched hive of scum and villainy? And two other angles are missing: (1) a name brand instance might be a good starting point on the fediverse. It’s still better than Xwitter. And (2) people are not donating enough to their instances, who are then run on dedication and held together by duct tape. The fear of having one’s instance shut down because the admin is out of money and duct tape makes people gravitate towards the bigger instances.

I’m not opposed to recommending people to find other, smaller instances - that is a good idea. It’s just this blog post reads more like a hit piece.

I don’t hate so-called AI per se. I see great use cases for people with disabilities. There are promising signs of it improving medical diagnoses (under properly tested conditions). I think even in my life I will learn to use some of the tools. Eventually. I try to avoid it right now as much as I can.

I hate the people peddling so-called AI as the solution to all problems, including already solved problems. I hate the mad rush on it because it risks negating all the positive greenhouse emission savings we have managed to get done. It will probably incur a greater water debt, i.e. more drinking water future generations will be forced to desalinate if they want to live. And it will make the next computing device you want to buy mad expensive because of the RAM shortage. I hate that this rush is a bubble that may not burst but drives prices up.

If I understand this correctly, what they need is an AI that can also drink a lot of beer! Solving two problems in one fell swoop. But where is Silicon Valley on this front? Nowhere. Sad!

This is sign that Google is worried that a market of 500 million people could decide to move away from the US tech giants. Very worried, judging by this flimsy fear-driven argument. Good.

I sympathize with your point of view here. I feel like that ship has sailed though. Messaging is the preferred means. That ship is not coming back any more.

Email is not well protected unless you and everybody communicating with you is taking extras precautions. Signal is E2E encrypted, WhatsApp also but owned by Meta so barf, Telegram’s encryption status is complicated but probably better than plain email. There is a privacy advantage.

I treat instant messages that have the content of an email as such. I’ll reply in my own time. Just because I got it instantly doesn’t mean I need to act on it right away. I have some groups and contacts muted and have set quiet hours on my phone for evenings and nights. My advice is to look for ways to manage the stress you feel about this. That could mean going off the chat apps all together but I think you can also tweak settings and your behavior.

Two factors play into this. 1) This hype has been around long enough to have planned, built, and put online new data centers. So the bottlenecks some providers had in the early days have widened already. And 2) they need capacity for training more than using the models.

Background: it is already forbidden for members of the state parliament to display written or symbolic political messages on their clothing while working on the premises. There was a case where a member wore a shirt displaying something from the late Mr. Kirk - you may guess what side of the political spectrum he is on. He was reprimanded and fully covered the shirt under his suit jacket. But later images circulated from that day that showed the written message on the shirt while he was wearing his jacket on the premises; those images were apparently doctored by “AI.” As a result parliament will add wording to their house rules banning such manipulation, threatening to suspend MPs who are violating this new rule.

I initially suspected this state assembly banned this for the whole state but it just applies to MPs. Nevertheless they claim to be the first to introduce such rules.

Just to translate this headline: “State assembly in Baden-Wuerthemberg (Southwest Germany) prohibits any “AI” fakes in connection with what is taking place at its public meetings” (i.e. committees and plenar sessions)

(Annotations) by me; didn’t read the article yet. please see summary in the reply.

Astin’s “major warning” is a summary of all already known and articulated concerns surrounding the introduction of so-called AI in the entertainment industry. The only thing I personally learned from reading this is that he is the president of the union.

You’d be surprised how many people don’t take the time to read a long article like that but will have a quick glance at the comments.

Again, our proposal isn’t that we should cover all of this land in solar panels, or that it could easily power the world on its own. We don’t account for the fact that we’d need energy storage and other options to make sure that power is available where and when it’s needed (not just when the sun is shining).

This is a thought experiment more than a plan.

To be fair to the lad, he didn’t peddle his wares. He just says if there isn’t a European strategy to develop their own models it is very likely that Europe would run on Chinese made ones that are more open source, whereas American ones become increasingly closed source and expensive to license. Now, that’s his prediction and I don’t really believe him. But this article at least doesn’t make it seem he wrapped his doom and gloom prediction in a Gemini sales pitch.

They would have to try fighting it on non-trademark grounds. However, being able to point at having been awarded one afterwards may carry some weight there as well. My impression is that their strategy doesn’t rest on this alone.

The strategy behind this is also to be able to sue after the fact to get a cut of whatever was created from stuff that ought to have been protected but wasn’t. It’s not just a clip of him doing triple alrights that he applied for TM for. There is also one of him sitting down, one of him standing up. They tried to cover a whole spread of sora et. al. generated bullshit. It’s an interesting strategy that is only necessary because the law on the books lags behind the developments in image or video generation. It may not work at all but it’ll be a success if they win one case with this.

Jenson Huang is doing a lot of damage there.

In terms of how this is reported, at what point does this become streisanding by proxy? I think anything from the Melon deserves to be scrutinized and called out for missteps and mistakes. At this point, I personally don’t mind if the media is overly critical about any of that because of his behavior. And what I’m reading about Grok is terrible and makes me glad I left Twitter after he bought it. At the same time, these “put X in a bikini” headlines must be drawing creeps towards Grok in droves. It’s ideal marketing to get them interested. Maybe there isn’t a way to shine the necessary light on this that doesn’t also attract the moths. I just think in about ten years’ time we will get a lot of “I started undressing people against their will on Grok and then got hooked” defenses in court rooms. And I wonder if there would’ve been a way to report on it without causing more harm at the same time.

I wish you nothing but THE BEST, both in your private life and professionally.

ChatGPT, the trustworthy platform that’s never leaked a chat and beyond that is in the news with nothing but glorious success and not a foot set wrong, no pending lawsuits? What harm could there be? Punch your ticket and hop onto the loony train.

It’s a good bellwether. If you connect all these apps and upload your actual medical records to ChatGPT, we know that you are clinically insane.

I would say it shows signs of both. It’s a financial bubble built on top of at least a partial scam. And what will be left behind after a possible crash will be more useful than Theranos. Some of this LLM stuff is really useful, e.g. if you’re blind or dyslexic or need Alexa to understand you. The image and video generators less so but we will get to use of the stuff that takes advantage of those as well. I think the comparison with the railway pioneers of old is more apt. They built up the network that others profited of and got rich. Until they were blasted out of the sky by airplanes.