I read this article a few months ago that I found quite interesting: Original link Unpaywalled link
The manufacturer in this blames the DEA, and whilst I don’t trust a pharmaceutical company to do anything other than ruthlessly maximise profits, in this case I’m inclined to believe this depiction of the DEA as the overly persnickety bad guy (because I have even less reason to trust the DEA)
Yeah, I’m super salty about the hype because if I had to pick one side or the other, I’d be on team “AI is worthless”, but that’s just because I’d rather try convincing a bunch of skeptics that when used wisely, AI/ML can be super useful, than to try talk some sense into the AI fanatics. It’s a shame though, because I feel like the longer the bubble takes to pop, the more harm actual AI research will receive
Eh, it depends on what we count as “AI”. I’m in a field where machine learning has been a thing for years, and there’s been a huge amount of progress in the last couple of years[1]. However, it’s exhausting that so much is being rebranded as “AI”, because the people holding the purse strings aren’t necessarily the same scientists who are sick of the hype.
[1] I didn’t get into the more computational side of things until 2021 or so, but if I had to point to a catalyst for this progress, I’d say that the transformer mechanism outlined in the 2017 paper “Attention is all you need”, by Google scientists.
The words it chooses to capitalise is funny. For all the training on online stuff, it doesn’t get that it should be calling you a fucking IDIOT for even asking such a BASIC question about grilled cheese!
I personally don’t have nearly as much of a problem with that than I do with Reddit making AI deals. I’m still not keen on the idea of having anything I interact with being scraped for training AI, but aside from only interacting in closed wall spaces that I or someone I trust controls, I can’t change that. That’a not great for actually interacting with the world though, so it seems that I need to accept that scraping is going to happen. Given that, I’d definitely rather be on Lemmy than Reddit.
And this way, who knows, maybe we’re on our way to the almost utopian “open digital commons”
I was talking to a friend recently about this. They studied medieval English and aren’t especially techy, besides being a Millennial with techy friends; I said that merely knowing and using the term LLM correctly puts their AI knowledge above the vast majority of people (including a decent chunk of people trying to make a quick buck off of AI hype)
I was learning python as a wee scientist in training, and my variables were beyond dreadful. I tried naming a list “list” and the interpreter told me I couldn’t, so I opted for “listy”. When I needed to name a new list but listy was taken, I’d often resort to “listyy”.
Scientists who work with computers without having much (if any) targeted training on how to code can write the most horrendous programs.
That’s a really cool idea actually. I knew a guy who used to install viruses for fun on a separate machine that wasn’t networked. I bet a more creative person than I could probably figure out a fun learning activity for kids using a “disposable” system
Comment that I’m adding on a couple of friends’. One lives in Norway, one lived in India. They told me that both of these places have an issue with accessing media and other digital goods legitimately, often finding themselves willing but unable to pay for something (I was surprised to hear this about Norway — my friend speculates that Norway is small enough that it might simply be forgotten about when big media companies negotiate rights). They both said that VPNs and piracy are way more normalised in their home countries, because it was either that, or miss out on loads of stuff.
Feel it’s useful and important to highlight that the degree to which piracy is normalised depends on where you are.
Ah, you must have access to the same internet library that my Dad used whenever I’d give him my iPod and a list of music, and he’d return it to me full of music. I don’t remember when I realised that he was pirating stuff, probably about the time that I started pirating stuff.
I’m not sure. I don’t plan on having kids, so this is a purely theoretical question that I won’t have to answer in practice, but I think I probably would, at least to some degree.
I had a pretty iconically millennial childhood when it comes to tech; I remember my mum being on the phone to the internet people and asked “he’s offering me an unlimited packaged for [money] extra. Is that good, do we need that?”, to which my brother and and I vigorously nodded. We were young enough we didn’t know shit, but unlimited sounded good and we weren’t paying the bills. My mum probably realised we didn’t know what unlimited Vs metered internet meant in practice, and opted for unlimited as the safe option, because if she felt the need to ask her children for advice, she wouldn’t be great at managing a metred connection. That’s the context in which I grew up and is why I’m as techy as I am today.
I learned the hard way, and whilst I don’t think that’s necessarily the best way to learn, I don’t know how one might teach people how to recognise which “download” button to press, and when a dodgy looking site is actually dodgy. It’s like internet street smarts, but what that means has changed since I was a kid, and I don’t necessarily know how I’d teach that beyond the basics, like installing adblockers and other common sense things.
I reluctantly agree with you. Though I think the reluctance is just because there’s something in me that’s viscerally offended by the concept of time itself (probably the ADHD)
I learned about this a while ago and meant to check it out, but forgot to. Thanks for the reminder!
I agree. I’ve been trying to move towards open source software for ideological reasons, and I’m astounded by how much my quality of life has been improved. I end up sounding like an evangelist for software that I love because I’m so shocked it’s not more well known.
“analyse your scan for content to suggest a file name”
That’s a ‘Yikes’ from me
Yeah, that’s my sense too, as someone within low-level academia. Bibliometrics and other attempts to quantify research output have been big in the last few decades, but I think that they have made the problem worse if anything.
It’s especially messy when we consider the kind of progress and contribution that Nobel prizes can’t account for, like education and outreach. I really like how Dr Fatima explores this in her video How Science Pretends to be Meritocratic(duration: 37:04)
Ha, I didn’t get it, but now I do. That is quite a funny joke now you’ve explained it. Comedy is indeed hard
I agree, this is great. I really liked:
“Most user interfaces are terrible. When people make mistakes it’s usually the fault of the interface. You’ve forgotten how many ways you’ve learned to adapt to bad interfaces.”
and
"Whenever they start to blame themselves, respond by blaming the computer. Then keep on blaming the computer, no matter how many times it takes, in a calm, authoritative tone of voice. If you need to show off, show off your ability to criticize bad design. "
I honestly find it impressive how Reddit continues to find new ways to enshittify the platform
You’ve got to be careful with rolling your eyes, because the parallelism of the two eyes means that the eye roll can be twice as powerful ^1
(1) If measured against the silly baseline of a single eyeroll