“Artificial intelligence” (#AI) is the wrong term for the many services for which the term is being used. These are not generating intelligence. They are generating text or images or music—that is, information.
But it's not real information. It's ersatz* information. So when you hear "artificial intelligence,” I suggest that you substitute “ersatz information.”
—
*pseudo, fake, synthetic, spurious
Meta is deploying chatbots powered by AI to impersonate humans in its discussion groups. The chatbots make stuff up—that is their nature. One invents a nonexistent child. Another pretends to have nonexistent merchandise. It shouldn’t be necessary to explain how vile and poisonous this is, but Casey Fiesler spells it out:
#Meta #AI
The nostr:npub12qk0z30huc65uzv0e8uvfzz6qtpfgp7hmkcvav7azsxj9x9laffs828srs was ready for the verdict.
The turn to fascism in America isn’t coming just (or even primarily) from crazed fanatics. It’s coming from well funded “think tanks” full of well dressed and well fed pseudoscholars who imagine themselves to be reasonable and mannerly. https://journa.host/@w7voa/112124274481988039
Reporters should be asking every Republican official tonight: Do you support Trump’s plan to free the thousand violent criminals who have been convicted in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol?
This story should be leading the New York Times right now, and every other US newspaper. It’s not, because they think, well, Trump’s crazy, that’s not news.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/12/trump-january-6-pardons
Nearly a thousand violent criminals have been convicted by judges and juries of their peers of rioting, assaulting law-enforcement officers, attacking federal buildings with firearms, and other felonies in connection with the January 6 insurrection.
The Republican candidate for president says that they are “hostages” and that one of his first acts will be to set them all free.
To me this seems like important news.
This story should be leading the New York Times right now, and every other US newspaper. It’s not, because they think, well, Trump’s crazy, that’s not news.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/12/trump-january-6-pardons
It seems to me the key sentence in the SEC’s #bitcoin ruling today is this:
“Bitcoin is primarily a speculative, volatile asset that’s also used for illicit activity including ransomware,[4] money laundering,[5] sanction evasion,[6] and terrorist financing.[7]” https://journa.host/@w7voa/111734109726584015
“The days when the financial fortunes of books depended upon the colloquial support of influential people in a small Society are past; neither publishers nor authors as a class have any relation to Society at all … That personal intercourse between publishers and the miscellaneous race of authors has, I am told, long since ceased.”
H. G. Wells
nostr:npub1uxz060za0sz7uzncy45jcksak2lr9wks0hrgug54cvpm9ma8agkqs35ma4 To me the scariest part is the planned “polling” of prospective jurors. Can you imagine an army of MAGA thugs fanning out through DC to “question” people about being on a Trump jury?
nostr:npub1v2sycpx32th4h4aude3jq4g0kgj0p2t5062059l0fx0vcn8njs8spcmqq5 Wow. It’s all catching up to him.
Now comes the petty tyrant, wielding his tiny whip on behalf of America’s overlords.
#Musk
https://theintercept.com/2023/09/15/uaw-strike-twitter-verification-elon-musk/
American extremists go on the attack against … libraries and librarians. Teachers and books.
Let’s retire the term “culture war.” This is an emergency.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/09/15/american-library-association-book-bans/
By prioritizing workers and the middle class, Biden has created the best economy in decades—for everyone. “Inflation is low, unemployment is low and there’s virtually no hint of a recession. But many Americans, according to surveys, are convinced the economy is terrible.”
How do journalists explain this paradox? Either it’s an unfathomable mystery, or it’s Biden’s poor messaging.
The obvious explanation—that journalists are failing at THEIR job—escapes them.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/15/trump-biden-mainstream-politics-news-coverage
“Twitter never has and never will be a vehicle for democratic expression. It is a privately held corporation that monetizes human expression and algorithmically maximizes its distribution for profit, and what turns out to be most profitable is sowing social, cultural, and political division. Its participants are a very tiny, skewed slice of humanity that has American journalism in a choke hold.”
Jill Lepore clear-eyed about Musk and (his cozy biographer).
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/09/18/elon-musk-walter-isaacson-book-review
At this point EVERYBODY needs to sue Fox News. For one thing, they’ve shown they don’t have a leg to stand on. For another, we’ve all been damaged, more than we even know.
Josh Marshall (is he really not in the fediverse yet?) declares the antiabortion movement dead.
“Movements that can’t make positive arguments for their favored positions, even to friendly audiences, cease to be political movements properly understood and become something more like rearguard actions. They seek to use inertia, incumbency and stratagems to hold on to gains and do their best to avoid fights on the open ground of public opinion.”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/newsletter/vol-2-no-71-the-end-of-the-pro-life-movement
nostr:npub1traay5jdde50ps7y3mqdullw29a0pncqsg9vy637c8x7uyrwnvsq0wnpqw nostr:npub1juyh2l587qygmuupdjqr6wj300k6g7m0utnn9jtxr2wdf25qh90s7svh5e "Hallucination" has become a term of art,. Personally, I'm fine with it as long as we recognize -- as the term obscures -- that chat AI *always* hallucinates, for the reason you say. It's just that more often than not, its hallucinations turn out to be true.
nostr:npub1j5a6tz6a2ttelsdzdl3lnpqq2q8hyfluz0c7kpgntt548q7f5snsrhp848 nostr:npub1juyh2l587qygmuupdjqr6wj300k6g7m0utnn9jtxr2wdf25qh90s7svh5e I know it’s a term of art, and I hate it. Exactly for the reason you say: it obscures the fact that the LLMs are detached from reality always and by design. It is meant to suggest that this is abnormal or exceptional behavior.
nostr:npub1e0a6n84krygh2qc3ajptu4fa4ma0qy53acz8smsyhztgxljxkghsureww0 I believe this is for you.
