Recent posts by users in this instance
Cults have charismatic leaders whose dictates are followed more or less unquestioningly. Who's the "never AI" leader?
Sorry but this part of your post doesn't pass a smell test.
While the linked post's/article's warning is specifically about the upcoming US midterm elections, I think its reasoning is more broadly applicable. Observing that current AI dovetails perfectly with the MAGA political project, it applies also to the rhetoric about the inevitability of AI. That, too, stems from a limitless authoritarian impulse and represents an attempt to impose a particular will on all of us. The various forms of defeatism accompanying such rhetoric, which includes the different flavors of AI doomerism, serve only to help such authoritarians achieve their goals.
This view also highlights that there is no middle ground, no compromise, with LLM proponents. Like MAGA, they have no limits themselves, which they repeatedly express openly. How could they possibly compromise?
#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLMs #Agents #Anthropic #OpenAI #MAGA #doom #tech #dev
The linked post takes this in a different direction, but I wanted to linger on how remarkable it is that folks aiming to boost LLMs reach for "it can reduce bureaucracy". In health care, the LLM is imagined to simplify all the complexities of submitting an insurance claim, for instance. In government services, the LLM is imagined to help people navigate otherwise-impenetrable rules and regulations. We're meant to welcome the introduction of LLM-based AI into these spheres because of how irritating red tape is, and how LLMs are expected, by these folks, to cut through all that.
I would have thought it's obvious that adding another layer of mediation on top of an excessively-mediated system would be expected to worsen the problems caused by excessive mediation. Not solve them. What LLMs really solve in these contexts is the scrutability problem. It's like someone reading Kafka's The Trial and declaring "we need more of that everywhere".
#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLM #HealthCare #GovernmentServices
#dev #tech #web #CloudFlare #SecurityTheater #WhatIsTheHuman
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CloudFlare "human verification" widget, with a "verification failed" error.
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A LinkedIn profile card for a Fred Nietzsche, Managing Partner at ABG International. Unfortunately there is no profile picture set so we cannot see if he has the mustache.
For what it's worth, the reason I clocked it right away as being like criti-hype, or criti-hype adjacent, is the repeated submerging of human agency in the abstract. They suggest "AI" led to a 42% increase in submissions, and continue "The rise in AI-generated writing accounts for nearly all of these trends.". No, the human authors choosing to use AI tools led to this increase. They could have said "Increased use of AI in writing" and achieved the word count without hiding the human authors. You see? The agency of the authors is submerged, which is a clue I always look for. Again: "AI-generated writing in reviews has also increased, and is characterized by lower writing quality and less topical diversity than human-generated writing." No, reviewers choosing to use AI tools in their review writing has increased. This sentence uses the passive voice, suggesting AI just happens and there is no human choice involved. It also hands you a false "AI-generated writing vs. human-generated writing" dichotomy. Both of these submerge human agency.
The numbers are clearly interesting and good to know. I'm not objecting to studying these things.
A concluding hot take: software developers should not have majority say over software-centric communities involving significant numbers of non-developers. I don't know how realistic that is but there are many perverse incentives involved.
One of the things I like about Havens is she makes connections with TESCREAL and other garbage views. It seems to me there's a common core to all this stuff and it smells bad.
Stephen Jay Gould calls its (evolutionary psychology's) ideas and their proponents “foolish,” “fatuous,” “pathetic,” “egregiously simplistic,” and some twenty-five synonyms for “fanatical.”Chef's kiss. No notes.
I don't know about rationalists but Pinker's been in with and loudly defending far-right race essentialists like Steven Sailer since at least 1999. He was part of Martin Nowak's disgraced PED institute at Harvard that was funded by Epstein (briefly posted about that here: https://buc.ci/abucci/p/1789821173.773727 ). And so on.
From the linked article:
Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics (PED, yes, PED), where Pinker was a regular, closed ignominiously in 2021.It was closed because its founder, Martin Nowak, was funded by Epstein and allowed Epstein a private office where he could do whatever it is he did there. Harvard had harsh words about all of this and it is a disgraceful stain on Nowak's career (to put it mildly).
Pinker has, from relatively early in his academic career, associated with and supported race scientists. Keira Havens wrote a remarkable series, "Box or Rocks", on Medium that, among many other things, dissects Pinker's associations with and defenses of race scientists, biological essentialists, and associated villains. It's well worth reading in full starting here: https://medium.com/@Keira_Havens/box-of-rocks-b8aec0c8710e . Part 1 does not refer to Pinker but later parts do.
From part 2:
Charles Murray dedicated a book to a billionaire that collects Nazi memorabilia, right there on page 5, and claims brotherhood with him in another. A researcher in Denmark asked 140 people, including Richard Spencer, for help when his institution sanctioned him for using falsified data in a publication called “Decay of the West.” Spencer didn’t respond that I know of, but Stephen Pinker (sic) did — twice.Part 3 gets into Pinker's infamous public debate with Stephen Jay Gould, who handed Pinker his ass and arguably ushered in the intellectual end of evolutionary psychology. It also has a rap sheet starting in 1999 of some of the bad actors and organizations Pinker has defended or been involved with.
Pinker has spent his life defending those who would rank humans from best to worst, obscuring the origins and conclusions of their ideas just enough to weave them into our conversations and assumptions. At no point in his journey has he reconsidered his commitment to the bit.A lot of folks use the word "fascism" to describe this belief in biological essentialism that Pinker has spent his career defending and popularizing. Whatever you choose to call it, it's not surprising that people who love his books and thought turn out to be toxic.
Executives working on AI at Microsoft and OpenAI admitted what its critics have been saying all along: Large language models are predatory pieces of technology that have been built on what a Microsoft executive called “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions,” and the “largest theft of labor in human history.” An internal Microsoft document said generative AI products have created a “doom loop” that is killing “the entire web.”Nice reporting from @jasonkoebler@mastodon.social https://www.404media.co/doom-loop-openai-and-microsoft-admits-llms-are-destroying-the-web-and-built-on-theft/
#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLM #OpenAI #Microsoft #web #IP #labor #theft
uniquely able to be correct about topics removed from daily experienceI wonder if they are uniquely able to be correct about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
I certainly trust them to be correct about factual questionsFactual questions, like those that are enmeshed with daily experience, which is what we tend to mean when we refer to "facts". Is he really trying to say "I trust them to be correct about questions concerning daily experience because they have specialized minds that are uniquely able to be correct about topics removed from daily experience."
He thinks we're all living in a giant sudoku puzzle, where we can "be correct" or "be incorrect" and we can know the difference and it's all tidy and easy (if you have a uniquely specialized mind). I suppose that sums up rationalists generally.
I think the language "it will fall" is telling. AI is laying siege to your silly little math and computer science problems. Once it's done it'll move on and ________. It's fascinating that there are people who think like this about a computer program.
(*) I know the US has always had deep issues with racism and intolerance, and has always been warmongering. Nonetheless I think 9/11 represents a phase shift.