FriendOfDeSoto

They killed Kenny?

I take your point. It’s just that any scenario you’re describing with so-called AI could have been done by a search engine already. The slop of yesteryear was SEO ranking articles and fake links to make the algorithm prioritize your site over others. Well poisoning is how PR agencies get troublesome celebs out of the headlines again. The list goes on.

I share your concerns about the black boxed nature of so-called AI and by extension their search engines. I’m not saying it isn’t a problem; it’s just not a new one. Up until now we have had companies in charge with a vested interest not to bend the flow of information too far from, let’s call it, the median truth. Now companies are letting models make these decisions and some humans afford these models more credibility than their common sense and that is all worrying to say the least. So I’m a worried as you are, it just started earlier for me.

All of these things would have been possible to restrict on good old Google searches. And they are enforced to varying degrees around the world to differing legal situations. You shouldn’t be able to search for child porn anywhere, swastika merch in Austria, insults of the king in Thailand, etc.

Search on Google mainly got worse because of Google. They made their results more shit to get you to click on follow ups, the dreaded page 2 of results for instance, where they could sell more ads.

I do agree that so-called AI search is more of a black box. Although the Googles and the Bings want you logged in to personalize the results, you can find a way to test their otherwise mostly obscured algorithms in a neutral setting. The models may not allow that and/or testing their metal may have yet to be invented. But they will replace search as we knew it.

The growing faith people have in whatever LLMs spit out (over old school searches) is very concerning. It’s like LLMs are the new Facebook conspiracies. Schools need to teach media literacy as its own subject. All people under 70 today should have to get a media drivers license.

Edit: And I didn’t even mention the “right to be forgotten.” That also exists in the EU.

This feels like an ad.

In no situation where weed is legal minors are allowed to buy it. I would be onboard on this propaganda train if all I saw on Netflix is 15yo’s getting high. Which I don’t see that much really.

Minors should not consume it. Minors have parents. Minors’ parents’ job it is to keep them away from that along with sniffing glue, tobacco, vaping, alcohol and eating laundry capsules, just to name a few dangers more.

The negative effects on brain development I read about were all linked to regular, if not heavy use. There is enough wiggle room for school/education and, once again, the parents to step in.

Idiocracy is happening anyway.

That’s unfair to microwave ovens because they have established uses, even in some fine dining establishments. So-called AI has none of that just yet.

The short answer is a court of law.

The long answer includes a reference to the location because a few countries do not list “escape from prison” as a crime in itself recognizing the human yearning to be free. So only incidental stuff would be interesting in a subsequent legal case, i.e. damage of property, threatening people with violence, etc. If you can manage to slip out in a laundry basket, you are okay. Andy Duphresne would be liable for the wall and sewage pipe he broke. (And committing fraud, of course.)

Yes, we are. Please stop masturbating. Thanks.

If you’re only looking at the tools everybody can get a hold of, I agree. I think if you look a bit further, you will find medical diagnostics that can hopefully top human detection scores and that’s worth pursuing as well.

I don’t see any good reason why the general public needs to have access to most of the models today. Most people just play around with it - and I don’t see the value there. When we get the final tally, we will have made the climate crisis worse and caused droughts with all the thirsty data center consumption. All so Alexa can remember what you said two queries ago and you can animate your childhood teddy in the Ghibli style.

I agree that women are still being objectified and that’s bad. I don’t agree with workers being dehumanized by being referred to as such. “Workers of the world, unite!” was a big rallying cry. For some people, it’s an identity-establishing part of life that they’re using manual labor and not fart into a desk chair all day. They take pride in being working class.

If by referring to a group of working folks is dehumanizing then we cannot talk about people like housekeepers, street sweepers, nurses, or engineers either. They’re people too. And I don’t see “people with job X” catching on in the language either.

Millions of peaches!

I’m not sure I agree with narcissism being on par with flanderization. One is a personality trait, if not a defect, and the other is lazy script writing. I sort of see where you are going with this but I’m not really onboard. Not all parents are narcissists, either.

The other thing is time. We all get set in our ways as we hurl around the sun time and time again. Everybody thinks they are enlightened enough to not become the stubborn weirdo, like mom or dad or the drunk uncle from Thanksgiving dinner. And everybody is wrong. You will too become a predictably dogmatic or a quirky person in one way or another. People will adapt around you. That’s neither narcism nor flanderization. That’s just life.

It is true that narcicists and abusers create an atmosphere, where their outrageous behavior gets ignored or swept under the carpet. I think it’s fair to say though that that involves more manipulation and strategic thinking on behalf of the a-hole. If somebody dismisses the abusive behavior as “that’s just Karen/Bob, they’re like that, you know” than that may present as flanderization on the surface but it’s not from a lack of script being written. The narcicist has succeeded in pulling the wool over their eyes. I guess that’s why bringing these terms together like this rubs me the wrong way.

I don’t have much to say about the points you’re making here. I have a feeling after we sit down and discuss this over coffee/a beer we will find out that we’re pretty much on the same page.

The only thing I want to point out though it that the term “enshitification” was coined for online platforms. It describes a business catering full hog to the needs of the users to create a following, then sell access to that following to other businesses, until both followers and b2b customers are locked in and get milked for every cent possible. From the user POV that’s when the service enshitifies DVD and the b2b customers are between a rock and a hard place. Your cable example follows a similar mechanic but since it is not online it is technically not enshitification as dumped into the world as a term by Corey Doctorow.

That’s just minor pedantry that you’re naturally free to ignore as well. As I said before, I don’t see us disagreeing on the overall point you’re making. Very eloquently, I might add.

Edited typo

Everybody is different, I suppose. I’ve seen people blossoming post retirement and falling into a hole. The level of enjoyment you felt for the work you did probably is an indicator of which end of the sliding scale you end up on.

What are you, as in you personally, doing about you feel? Learning to live with it, looking for a hobby, volunteer cause, part-time job? It might be presumptuous of me but I’m reading between the lines that you maybe want to continue feeling useful.

Why am I not surprised? I stopped having any trust in that platform when they killed 3rd party clients. I would suggest everyone to leave reddit and watch it implode from afar.

Yes, it stings. It’s a habit. You still have nice subs in there, communities that make you happy. But you’re fiddling as the ship sinks. That’s the metaphor, isn’t it?

You say data, and I say data. Let’s call the whole thing off.

We should all be using the name less. And I don’t mean Jesus, I mean the other one. Because as far as I know Christ wasn’t a raging, unapologetic pedophile.

We humans always underestimate the time it actually takes for a tech to change the world. We should travel in self-flying flying cars and on hoverboards already but we’re not.

The disseminators of so-called AI have a vested interest in making it seem it’s the magical solution to all our problems. The tech press seems to have had a good swig from the koolaid as well overall. We have such a warped perception of new tech, we always see it as magical beans. The internet will democratize the world - hasn’t happened; I think we’ve regressed actually as a planet. Fully self-drving cars will happen by 2020 - looks at calendar. Blockchain will revolutionize everything - it really only provided a way for fraudsters, ransomware dicks, and drug dealers to get paid. Now it’s so-called AI.

I think the history books will at some point summarize the introduction of so-called AI as OpenAI taking a gamble with half-baked tech, provoking its panicked competitors into a half-baked game of oneupmanship. We arrived at the plateau in the hockey stick graph in record time burning an incredible amount of resources, both fiscal and earthly. Despite massive influences on the labor market and creative industries, it turned out to be a fart in the wind because skynet happened a 100 years later. I’m guessing 100 so it’s probably much later.

If we needed everyone we want to name anything after was required to be a saint, we wouldn’t have anybody to name stuff after.

Churchill - the man who rose to lead his country through WW2 - was a big colonial killer in India before. Both the reformator Luther and the philosopher Kant were raging antisemites. A non-insignificant number of US founding fathers held slaves. Bill Clinton balanced the budget while molesting an intern (and allegedly worse). It’s rare that we already know the president is a sexual predator before he gets elected. Yet, there will be a probably very small library named after 47 if there isn’t one already. It’s probably the best library in the world!

History goes through many hands before it gets whittled to a generally agreed upon narrative. Churchill was lucky in real life. Daystromn was lucky in canon. And while sympathies may change over time, I’m not expecting a name change in trek Okinawa.

Normally, when somebody on the internet starts a question with “Am I the only one …?” my first reaction is to say no, of course not. This is the first time that I really need to question that conviction. I think you just might be the only one!