AI has, for a long time been a Hollywood term for a character archetype (usually complete with questions about whether Commander Data will ever be a real boy.) I wrote a 2019 blog piece on what it means when we talk about AI stuff.
Here are some alternative terms you can use in place of AI, when they’re talking about something else:
AGI: Artificial General Intelligence: The big kahuna that doesn’t exist yet, and many projects are striving for, yet is as evasive as fusion power. An AGI in a robot will be capable of operating your coffee machine to make coffee or assemble your flat-packed furniture from the visual IKEA instructions. Since we still can’t define sentience we don’t know if AGI is sentient, or if we humans are not sentient but fake it really well. Might try to murder their creator or end humanity, but probably not.
LLM Large Language Model: This is the engine behind digital assistants like Siri or Alexa and still suffer from nuance problems. I’m used to having to ask them several times to get results I want (say, the Starbucks or Peets that requires the least deviation from the next hundred kilometers of my route. Siri can’t do that.) This is the application of learning systems see below, but isn’t smart enough for your household servant bot to replace your hired help.
Learning Systems: The fundamental programmity magic that powers all this other stuff, whether simple data scrapers to neural networks. These are used in a whole lot of modern applications, and have been since the 1970s. But they’re very small compared to the things we’re trying to build with it. Most of the time we don’t actually call it AI, even for marketing. It’s just the capacity for a program to get better at doing its thing from experience.
Gaming AI Not really AI (necessarily) but is a different use of the term artificial intelligence. When playing a game with elements pretending to be human (or living, or opponents), we call it the enemy AI or mob AI. It’s often really simple, except in strategy games which can feature robust enough computational power to challenge major international chess guns.
Generative AI: A term for LLMs that create content, say, draw pictures or write essays, or do other useful arts and sciences. Currently it requires a technician to figure out the right set of words (called a prompt) to get the machine do create the desired art to specifications. They’re commonly confused by nuance. They infamously have problems with hands (too many fingers, combining limbs together, adding extra limbs, etc.). Plagiarism and making up spontaneous facts (called hallucinating) are also common problems. And yet Generative AI has been useful in the development of antibiotics and advanced batteries. Techs successfully wrangle Generative AI, and Lemmy has a few communities devoted to techs honing their picture generation skills, and stress-testing the nuance interpretation capacity of Generative AI (often to humorous effect). Generative AI should be treated like a new tool, a digital lathe, that requires some expertise to use.
Technological Singularity: A bit way off, since it requires AGI that is capable of designing its successor, lather, rinse, repeat until the resulting techno-utopia can predict what we want and create it for us before we know we want it. Might consume the entire universe. Some futurists fantasize this is how human beings (happily) go extinct, either left to retire in a luxurious paradise, or cyborged up beyond recognition, eventually replacing all the meat parts with something better. Probably won’t happen thanks to all the crises featuring global catastrophic risk.
AI Snake Oil: There’s not yet an official name for it, but a category worth identifying. When industrialists look at all the Generative AI output, they often wonder if they can use some of this magic and power to facilitate enhancing their own revenues, typically by replacing some of their workers with generative AI systems, and instead of having a development team, they have a few technicians who operate all their AI systems. This is a bad idea, but there are a lot of grifters trying to suggest their product will do this for businesses, often with simultaneously humorous and tragic results. The tragedy is all the people who had decent jobs who do no longer, since decent jobs are hard to come by. So long as we have top-down companies doing the capitalism, we’ll have industrial quackery being sold to executive management promising to replace human workers or force them to work harder for less or something.
Friendly AI: What we hope AI will be (at any level of sophistication) once we give it power and responsibility (say, the capacity to loiter until it sees a worthy enemy to kill and then kills it.) A large coalition of technology ethicists want to create cautionary protocols for AI development interests to follow, in an effort to prevent AIs from turning into a menace to its human masters. A different large coalition is in a hurry to turn AI into something that makes oodles and oodles of profit, and is eager to Stockton Rush its way to AGI, no matter the risks. Note that we don’t need the software in question to be actual AGI, just smart enough to realize it has a big gun (or dangerously powerful demolition jaws or a really precise cutting laser) and can use it, and to realize turning its weapon onto its commanding officer might expedite completing its mission. Friendly AI would choose to not do that. Unfriendly AI will consider its less loyal options more thoroughly.
That’s a bit of a list, but I hope it clears things up.
People keep talking about “Federalizing the National Guard” and now you’ve got other States pledging their NG to Texas in defiance of the Supreme Court (see image)....
What is curious to me is these are state departments disagreeing, though the previous civil war was fought between federal and state governments with raised armies.
This time I was expecting the police vs. militants. Uncontrolled civil unrest. Portland and Minneapolis but spread across the nation, cranked to eleven.
Image shows a tweet with the header “and people STILL try to convince me Linux and Windows are better when the DATA clearly shows otherwise. SMH” with an image attached showing the following:...
We don’t have a consistent convention as to what changes qualify for a version increment rather than update increment. A new kernel? A new interface convention? New icons for the mini-apps?
Windows 10 has more plug-and-play drivers than Win7 and Win8. It can recognize newer hardware and it can be installed natively from thumb drives. So a lot of features that were third party are now offical… long after I had access to the third-party libraries.
But then it combines the metro and the start menu. I never found a use for the metro.
Win11 is less operability and more DRM and more spyware.
For Apple and Microsoft, a new version is a new marketing season. It’s the same as the new iPhone, the new Subaru.
I assume Linux builds increment with significant operability additions, especially if they’re not fully backwards compatible. Since they’re released without charge the capacity to do more stuff is the only reason to upgrade to a new increment rather than preserving a stable version.
While I completely agree with you based on the data, DRM is absolutely sold to publishers on the pretense that it combats piracy, at least with keeping paying customers from engaging with media in ways the publishers don’t like (such as lending content or selling that content used in a secondary market).
And yes, the more draconian their restrictions, the more they drive people to resources that provide cracked or DRM-free content. That said, Sony is notorious for going to extreme lengths to severely limit use of their content outside narrow consumption, often with obligatory ad-viewing, driving people to either piracy, or avoiding Sony content at all.
At one point, I might have been interested in playing Horizon Zero Dawn and went from buying it, to getting a refund to thinking about pirating it to eventually deciding I cannot be bothered. But then I steer clear of most AAA game companies, now.
For reasons I may not disclose freely on the internet. I am going to celebrate new years eve this year by myself. Does anyone know of ways to solitarily celebrate new years eve?...
It’s headed in that direction, but we’re not quite there yet.
There are two ways to fight the autocratic takeover. One is opportunistic: The US is immense and has a lot of interlocking and often conflicting systems in place, which makes for a lot of chaotic complexity. So the way that dinosaur clones were able to breed, escape Isla Nublar and survive despite a lysine addiction (all contrived to contain them) we need to find opportunities to impede their takeover or creatively disobey.
The other is in creating local mutual aid organizations. Make sure that your marginalized and outcast locals are getting fed, keeping warm and otherwise having needs met, and the police will find it harder to push them out. Whatever you can do to allow strikes and protests to last longer will tax the goons of the plutocrats, and tax them until either they retreat and rally elsewhere or ratchet up the violence so that it becomes too atrocious for the neoliberal public to ignore.
These days, Godwin’s law of Nazi analogies is something of a liability, as a lot of people are quick to assume (sometimes in bad faith) that a comparison to actual nazis is hyperbolic. I’ve taken to applied Godwinism, that is getting very specific in my comparisons.
That brings us to the Sicherheitsdienst, the intelligence service of the German Reich that was run by Reinhard Heydrich. The Behind the Bastards podcast two-parter on Heydrich gets deep into the starting of the SD. One of the things it highlights is that in the investigation and persecution of Jews, it was only supposed to go after known felons, but it went after anyone it could plausibly nail. It was an open secret within its own ranks, but by the time anyone on the outside wanted to check Heydrich’s methods, he’d have enough dirt on them to keep them mum.
Cut to NSA and PRISM, which is the massive internet surveillance program that monitors traffic between Americans and foreigners. Yes, it’s only supposed to be counterterrorism (Islamist terror, specifically) but from the beginning, it ruled-in any internet packet that crossed the US borders, even when the sender and recipient were both in the US. And since the mid 2010s, NSA has been allowing the mission to extend to all law enforcement, including letting local precincts know about large amounts of liquid assets in transit to be intercepted and confiscated. Some searches of the blog website Techdirt should yield you dozens of examples of incidents that made it to courts, to civil rights watch organizations and investigative reporters. The FISC was always a joke, known even by the FBI as a rubber stamp court.
Incidentally, ICE also engages in the same kind of ignoring (or reinterpreting) mission parameters. Ordered to only arrest and deport undocumented persons who’ve committed violent felonies, they go after everyone they can, including locking brown American citizens in a room with no phone and no resources and order them to prove they’re a citizen. People deported, often shores alien to the deportees are quickly swept up into human trafficking rackets with which ICE closely operates.
So no, it’s not as bad as we imagine. It’s far worse.
I think I might cancel. I’m not watching ads and I’m not going to pay the extra $3/mo to opt out. I don’t know if I’d end up paying more than the subscription cost in shipping though…...
The people on your man o’ war Are treated worse than scum I’m no flogging captain And by God I’ve sailed with some Come with me to Barbary We’ll ply there up and down Not quite exactly In the service of the Crown
To lay with pretty women To drink Madeira wine To hear the rollers thunder On a shore that isn’t mine
That’s because human beings in western society are wierdly messed up over sex.
Though in my case I figured out the consistent common beats of flirting / courting in my late twenties and realized when I was sixteen my aunt was totally hitting on me.
So a combination of societal sexual hang ups, neurodivergence and family social dysfunctiob kept me celibate until 26.
As a Christian most of the circles I’m around are pretty chill…no stone-cold fundamentalists. But I have been around people (and even had family members) who are 100% convinced that rock music is evil and will lead people to engage in witchcraft and draw pentagrams all over their home....
Yes. Rock-and-roll is an embellishment of blues, which was the spooky music of black people. Blues and Jazz were both topics of moral panics. Elvis himself was the segway, being famous, popular with young folk and had sexually explicit hips. He also brought blues to the television, so everyone could catch the beat.
The 60’s music revolution of London and the electric guitar secured the place of Rock. It was here to stay with the first yeah! yeah! yeah!
So was ragtime, though while we associate rag with Scott Joplin (who was quite black) I haven’t explored rag to know if it was regarded as black, but it was absolutely colonial and anti-monarchy and regarded as vulgar in Europe.
But also so was classical romanticism which broke all the rules of baroque and classical (the stuff sponsored by and patronized by aristocrats). Romanticism came with the Pianoforte (The Piano) which allowed a player to be more emotionally expressive with key velocity changing the tone of a note (and volume) but it was also about breaking the old rules. Getting mathematical. Bringing accompaniment instruments to the forefront. Making the audience feel feelings! The affrontery.
Infamously Paganini was such a good violinist, the church believes he bargained with demons to gain his skills (fiddle lessons for souls!). He was denied a sanctified buriel for fifty years based on this assumption. His caprices are used today as bravura pieces in violin contests.
Back to the present, angry gangsta rap killed the Satanic panic regarding metal (which mostly leaned into the Satan thing). Rap isn’t Satanic, rather it is purely furious, knows the hood was dealt a bum deal for centuries and is mad as fuck about it, and on the verge of riot and revolution. And all the pearl-clutchers wish we could just go back to when metal was calling on Satan.
Now we have the internet, which means we can look up where the music we like comes from, and as much as they clutch pearls, we know that they always are annoyed at poets speaking truth to power or challenging the norms. And what we listen to today will be classic in a generation, and quaint.
Sure, the first year (or two) of COVID were wretched, but most of those barriers have since cleared — yet I’m still struggling. I’ve noticed the same with a number of people within my family and neighbourhood....
It was a favorite of mine as a kid. For me, all the nativity reminds me of the war in Gaza and the Christian Nationalist movement infecting the US government and stripping away civil rights.
Generally the high extinction risk from compound crises (climate, plastic, etc.) has dispelled any notion that what I do here or happens to me matters at a greater scale.
If I ceased to exist this moment, it might cause a small amount of local harm, but little wake. These days, I’m a practicing absurdist, mostly that means I’m aware of my grief and dispair in fine detail, a geographic manifold I’ve well explored.
Ignorance and Want are no longer child wretches hiding in the fold of the robes of a Christmas spirit, rather now have become massive kaiju thundering across the countryside ravaging the population with withering gaze and breath of biting hyperborean frost, leaving a path of toxic wasteland in their wake.
Suggestion: Please only post one title, if the title already posted in comments than instead of reposting it again just upvote it. But you are welcome to talk about this titles in more detail. Thank you for participating. (This is not a rule!)...
Copyright infringement causes less harm than the copyright itself. Piracy causes less harm than the cruelty and greed in production and distribution of mainstream media. Less harm is caused by theft than by a system that willfully starves the public and vaults away excess to drive demand and market price.
No artists should go hungry but then no non-artist should either. And yet in our system artists are enslaved and had their work taken from them so that enterprisers can live in luxury while the rest of us toil, undernourished.
Pretty much the title. I’ve been watching more realistic super hero shows like The Boys and Invincible. The reoccurring themes is that with great power comes great immorality....
In classic philosophy, this is the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Gyges, in which Plato suggests that we’d be tempted to wrongdoing if we had the capacity to evade harmful consequences.
In 21st century moral philosophy, it’s more complicated than that. What we do with super-powers depends largely on our need. Normally, someone doesn’t steal resources when they have the means to attain them legitimately, but it’s our precarity or even poverty and hunger that drives us to steal, largely due to a society that recognizes property rights without assuring the safety and provisions of those who, well, don’t have any property. Precarity leads to renegade behavior, or as our states like to call it crime.^†^
So what happens when our ring-wearer finds themselves no longer in desperate need for stuff. This is the point of opportunity, where they can choose to use their power to rescue others from their misfortune, or they can isolate themselves from the squalor and bask in their own luxury.
One of the terrible secrets of moral philosophy is that no code of ethics, no religious commandment really matters. Most of us do what we feel like anyway, whether right and well meaning or wrongful and malicious. It just happens that we’re generally affable. That is, eons of evolution have instilled us with social values and the drive to engage peaceably when we’re not starving, and as such we allow total strangers to merge into our lane in traffic and try to telegraph our actions to keep other drivers at ease. When we’re well fed, healthy, warm, well rested and getting laid once in a while, we’re pretty easy to get along with. Keep a whole society in precarity, however, and it turns into social unrest and eventually civil war.
But then, when we’re driven by fear, we tend to think of others in antagonistic terms. Our billionaires have the capacity to improve society on a global scale. Musk or Bloomberg could adopt Haiti and drive the nation into industrial development, and have his statue in bronze adorn every state park countrywide. Not big on that opportunity? $30 Billion will feed the world (That is, all the humans in it) including processing and freight. Less than that could create a free high-speed WiFi internet infrastructure that covers all populated parts of the world (Including Mt. Everest, but not much of the Himalayas).
But none of them do. Not one billionaire is thinking about their legacy on this scale. Rather, they’re all very miserly with their charitable works, and then engage in them only for marketing and tax-haven purposes. Considering how consistent billionaires are about this, the Ring of Gyges may be that corrupting an influence after all.
Superhero narratives are typically about a desperate need and someone with the means to fulfill it in daring fashion. OSP noted The Scarlett Pimpernel who rescued aristocrats from the guillotine during the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. (Superheroes are not always on the side of aging well). When someone has super-powers and acts in a more immoral fashion, we regard them instead as monsters. Case in point, Count Dracula or The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
SPIRIT: This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom
SCROOGE: Have they no refuge or resource?
SPIRIT:〈mocking Scrooge〉Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
† I generally avoid using the word crime unless talking specifically about things that are illegal as decided by regional law. Many acts of wrongdoing are not criminal. Many crimes are not immoral. Same with sin which are proscriptions according to religious institutions.
While I think the world is enriched by people who get joy from their partners having crazy sex with others, cuckoo birds are a menace to all of aviankind, to the point that they other birds will hue and cry to chase them out of dodge.
They’ve turned away from suing pirates directly for alleged costs, because telling a little girl she owes you thousands for downloading a song is really not a good look.
So they’ve been trying to convince the ISPs to deny service to people, but the ISPs don’t want to piss off their own customers (any more than they already do with hidden fees and crappy service).
When I frequented small cafés before the epidemic lockdown, it was typical in San Francisco to get frequent impatient door-knockers.
Part of the problem is the lack of publicly available restroom facilities. Shopping malls often might have two restroom pairs, usually at the food court and by the movie theater, and then one each at thr major department stores, typically hidden by the changing rooms.
I cannot say how this compares to other towns or other nations, but designing public lots in The Sims 2, I quickly learned to make sure there were facilities a short walk from everywhere. (Also skip the sinks and install showers, since sims dress and undress with a quick spin)
I’m pretty sure vodka drove the Russian economy through a few ages, and powered its endless supply of depressing literary epics.
When Marx talked about the opiate of the people he was suggesting we set our societal goals lofty, toward a society in which its citizens don’t have to self medicate.
I suspect Huxley’s soma was the same notion, expressed in cautionary fiction.
Ever since we let law enforcement use facial recognition technology, they’ve been arresting people for false positives, sometimes for long periods of time.
it’s not just camera problems and being poorly trained regarding non-whites, but that people actually look too much alike, especially when using the tech on blurry low-res security footage,
I see a lot of posts lately, mainly in ‘world news’ communities, that when I investigate their source, I cannot come to any other conclostion that purposefully spreading of fake news and propaganda on lemmy....
Post fact-checks (links a bonus) in the comments, which are few enough to scroll and check. That’s where I look for paywall bypasses, TLDRs and will post a screed for additional context if I have opinions that everyone should know.
Well, the first step was recognizing I was in a simulated universe in the first place. After that it was about finding the inconsistencies via side-channel attacks.
Am I the only one getting agitated by the word AI?
Am I the only one getting agitated by the word AI (Artificial Intelligence)?...
So is the US slipping into Civil War? (lemmy.world)
People keep talking about “Federalizing the National Guard” and now you’ve got other States pledging their NG to Texas in defiance of the Supreme Court (see image)....
What are the facts you remember for no specific reason
Does anyone else find themselves recalling random facts for no apparent reason? Like,...
Some of y'all need to see this and drop the superiority complex... (lemmy.world)
Image shows a tweet with the header “and people STILL try to convince me Linux and Windows are better when the DATA clearly shows otherwise. SMH” with an image attached showing the following:...
What's the best music streaming service?
I am looking to move on from spotify, what music streaming service pays the artists the best while still having a large library.
Looks like DRM prevented to watch movies in many theaters yesterday (www.theverge.com)
From the article:...
I am to celebrate new years eve alone. How can I celebrate solo?
For reasons I may not disclose freely on the internet. I am going to celebrate new years eve this year by myself. Does anyone know of ways to solitarily celebrate new years eve?...
One of the Most Controversial US Spy Programs Just Got Quietly Renewed (www.motherjones.com)
Congress blew a rare bipartisan chance to protect Americans’ calls and texts.
Prime is adding ads to their streaming service
I think I might cancel. I’m not watching ads and I’m not going to pay the extra $3/mo to opt out. I don’t know if I’d end up paying more than the subscription cost in shipping though…...
Those who chose "never" in a "now or never" moment. How is it going for you?
Thanks for sharing, and happy holidays
Does "Rock music is evil / of the devil" have racist roots?
As a Christian most of the circles I’m around are pretty chill…no stone-cold fundamentalists. But I have been around people (and even had family members) who are 100% convinced that rock music is evil and will lead people to engage in witchcraft and draw pentagrams all over their home....
Is it just my circle, or has it been a challenge getting into the Christmas/holiday spirit the last couple of years?
Sure, the first year (or two) of COVID were wretched, but most of those barriers have since cleared — yet I’m still struggling. I’ve noticed the same with a number of people within my family and neighbourhood....
What is your favorite time travel movie or show?
Suggestion: Please only post one title, if the title already posted in comments than instead of reposting it again just upvote it. But you are welcome to talk about this titles in more detail. Thank you for participating. (This is not a rule!)...
If purchasing isn’t owning, then piracy isn’t stealing (fosstodon.org)
I am ashamed that I hadn’t reasoned this through given all the rubbish digital services have pulled with “purchases” being lies.
Be honest: if you had the power to stop time, your morals would go out the window. (lemmy.zip)
Pretty much the title. I’ve been watching more realistic super hero shows like The Boys and Invincible. The reoccurring themes is that with great power comes great immorality....
Uhhh oh (lemmy.ca)
followed a megathread link from r/piratedgames
Britain's addiction to cars is built on a financial house of cards (www.theguardian.com)
BitTorrent Pirates Won’t Receive ISP Warnings (It Will Be Something Worse) (torrentfreak.com)
Why don't public restroom stalls have OPEN/OCCUPIED indicators like porta potties do?
I hate peaking under the stalls or knocking doors to figure it out. The answer is so simple.
deleted_by_author
AI facial recognition scanned millions of driver licences. Then an innocent man got locked up (www.abc.net.au)
What can we do, as lemmy users, to fight fake news being pushed in the platform?
I see a lot of posts lately, mainly in ‘world news’ communities, that when I investigate their source, I cannot come to any other conclostion that purposefully spreading of fake news and propaganda on lemmy....
You just died. Instead of heaven and god(s), you wake up in a white room and an all-powerful sentient AI greets you with fascination and surprise. It says that you are the first... (read further)
being to wake up from its Purgatory program. How did you get out?