Nobody talks about this! There is approximately 34 TONS of gold hidden within the wreck of the Titanic. If I could afford such a cool car as the Cybertruck, I’d drive it into the nearest harbor and set sail for the 2024 gold rush that is the Titanic’s final resting place!
Just be aware it’s not a boat. You need to drive it DOWN into the water to reach it’s full potential.
What’s the point in having an AI run the search and present the found answer for you, when you just ran the search yourself and gets the AI finding presented?
As this point AI helpers are just a layer that hides the details from the original search. It’s useless for this. AI is wonderful for lots of stuff, but this just isn’t it. I used to laugh when people used the Google search box to find Google so they could search in Google, but that is exactly what AI is doing for us now.
Plus the insane power consumption for such a marginally useful feature. Especially given that it’s on by default for everyone using google (as I understand)
It’s almost like the feature is not ready but they need to show off to their investors anyway. At the cost of user experience and the environment.
At least with ChatGPT you have to consciously go to their website and use, rather than being the first result of a fucking internet search.
Yes, the search engine AI is a very expensive and shitty filter.
Unfortunately with SEO going nuts these days, it might be necessary to have some kind of spam filter for searching the web just to avoid some of the enshittification created by AI in the first place. Like, the AI goes to Quera and Reddit for answers instead of the marketing links, so at least the answers are less commercial.
Obviously these “human” sources will eventually or are already shittifyed too, with half the posts there also being marketing in one way or the other.
I dislike it, but flooding the web with useless crap may be the key to making some better alternative…
More eyes on your website, means less on other websites, making your adverts more valuable.
And when it doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter, because you run the advertising on the other websites too. Bonus: you can penalise rankings for websites that don’t use your advertising network.
Was having a related conversation with an employee this morning (I manage a software engineering organization). He asked an LLM how to separate the parts of a date in Excel, and got a pretty good explanation of how do it with the text to columns wizard, and also how to use a formula to get each part. He was happy because he felt it would have taken him much longer to figure it out himself.
I was saying I thought that was a good use of an LLM - it’s going to give a tailored answer - but my worry is that people will do less scrubbing of an answer coming from an AI than one they saw on a forum. I said we should think of it like a tailored Google search.
For comparison, I googled “Excel formula separate parts of a date” and one of the top results was a forum discussion that had the exact solutions the LLM gave, using the same examples. On the one hand, to get it from the forum you had to wade through all the wrong answers and discussions. On the other hand, that discussion puts the answer given in the context of a bunch of others that are off the mark, and I think make people less likely to assume it’s correct.
In any case, it’s still just synthesizing from or regurgitating training data.
I think LLMs are better for more fluffy stuff, like writing speeches etc.
Excel solutions are often very specific. A vague question like separating a date can be solved in many ways, using a variety of formulas, the text-to-column wizard, VBA, import queries or even just formatting, all depending on what you really need, what the input is and what locality is used and other things.
The text-to-column method is great, because it transforms whatever the input is into a date type, making it possible to treat it as and make calculations as an actual date. It’s not always the right solution though, for instance if the input is ambiguous.
It’s fine that he learned to use this method, but I wonder what he’d ask the LMM in a case where it isn’t the right solution and what it’ll come up with then. He didn’t actually learn to separate a date from the input. He learned to use the text import wizard.
In my experience it’s preferable to learn these things on a more basic level if only just to be able to search more specifically for the right answer, because there is a specific answer. Having a language model run through a bunch of solutions and presenting the most popular one might just be a waste of time and leading you into a wild goose chase.
You might have missed where I said it explained both the text to columns wizard and a formula. He used the formula, which is what he was looking for. He’s a top notch software developer, he just doesn’t use Excel much.
But I agree with your broader point. I keep having to remind people that the “LM” part is for “language model.” It’s not figuring anything out, it’s distilling what an answer should look like. A great example is to ask one for a mathematical proof that isn’t commonly found online - maybe something novel. In all likelihood, it’s going to give you one, and it will probably look like the right kind of stuff, but it will also probably be wrong. It doesn’t know math (it doesn’t know anything), it just has a model of what a response should look like.
That being said, they’re pretty good for a number of things. One great example is lesson plans. From what I understand, most teachers now give an LLM the coursework and ask it to generate a lesson plan. Apparently they do an excellent job and save many hours of work. Anything that involves summarizing information is good, especially as that constrains the training data.
Gorillas will tear off your face and testicles AFAIK. Just imagine the depraved shit a human would do to you assuming they could get away with it without repercussion.
Gorillas are WAY more chill than chimpanzees. Just dint make eye contact and be respectful to the gorilla and it will leave you alone. They know that they are capable of fucking you up, and they know you know.
Fuck you and your stupid code, man! You fucking fucktard cannot distinguish a ; from a :! I do not care how fucking unpaid you loser are, get. this. code. right. Now fuck off!
I know shitpost and all that but this isn't actually true, as in it can't be verified. It was one small mention in a book (Threshold Resistance) by A&W owner Mr. Taubman. He basically said he wanted to know why his same priced 1/3 burgers weren't outselling competing 1/4 pounders...from a competitor...that I'm sure you can guess. So, he hired a marketing firm who put together a little focus group in the 80s. Some of those focus group members supposedly didn't know that 1/3 lb. is bigger than 1/4 lb. burgers.
Keep in mind that there's no evidence or any firm mentioned and the bias surrounding the author that is writing a book about his experiences including a failed venture.
All we know is it is one man's anecdote and it has been used for 39 years so far to make fun of Americans for supposedly not understanding fractions.
I work in a customer facing position in the US where factions of an inch are used for measurements frequently in the design of a product. I deal with people who don’t know 5/8 is smaller than 3/4 or that 3/8 is smaller than 1/2 on literally a daily basis.
People are dumb and I absolutely believe the burger anecdote.
You know I don’t work with fractions of an inch on a daily basis… Or even monthly. But inevitably a couple times a year it’s relevant. Every single time I have to take 3/4 multiply it by 2 and get 6/8, then I have to subtract 1/8 to get to 5/8. Repeat ad nauseum to get to whatever time fraction is needed.
It’s frustrating and slow and makes me feel dumb.
That said last time I did it, I measured a 1/8th difference between cabinets we ordered from IKEA and the space they went in and I’ll tell you what, I felt like a genius when it all just fit, perfectly.
Now imagine how good you’d feel if you used Roman numerals to do that
On a serious note, I once heard that an important reason maths was hard for Romans is because of a wrecked writing system. So maybe not using fractions other than fractions of 10 is the way to go
I work with people who can’t count on a daily basis - This doesn’t mean that nobody can count, it just means that I get calls/emails where someone made a mistake and they need help correcting it. I get to see all of these instances occurring which creates a focus on it and in turn, a bias - if I only get calls/emails of people not being able to count, but no calls/emails about people not being able to spell, then the bias I have is that people suck at counting and are good at spelling.
My point is that there are plenty of people that do understand it, but the people that don’t stand out and create a bias in your perspective.
JC Penny, some years ago, tried to change their pricing scheme, from the typical "$29.99 +tax" to flat "$30, tax included"
Their sales dropped so hard they reverted in two months.
Americans are born, bred, raised to be fucking stupid, and forcefully shoved into shitty educational systems that make them that stupid. The design of American cities is built for people to be stupid and isolated.
There's a reason other countries refer to the people that live in them as citizens, and we get branded as consumers.
There's a level of respect from the top down that is sorely lacking
It is a little more complicated than that. Yes consumers are trained to expect sales. It drives an increase in purchases. However, JC Penny is a sort of mid retailer. It isn't high-end and it can't support price competition to the bottom. Much like Kohls that basically lives on having things constantly "on sale" while all they really are doing is pricing below MSRP which is meaningless, especially when it is specifically designed to be underpriced.
They didn't simply make "$29.99 + tax" into "$30, tax included" but they removed MSRP markings that were higher than their 'sale' prices. They removed the ".99" from prices and generally lowered them to under the MSRP always though not necessarily down to their 'sale' prices to overall bring prices down everywhere.
It's "Everyday Pricing" initiative to lower overall pricing couldn't compete with stores specifically designed to keep prices down and it certainly didn't have the reputation of being upscale for any merchandise. Therefore, the only way to survive is to make consumers believe everything is on sale, always. Essentially fooling the customer into believing that they are getting a deal on better products for a cheaper price.
If someone wants to buy nice clothes, they will buy nice clothes and pay more for them. Underpricing them could actually hurt sales. If someone wants a 'deal' then they are going to go to low price competitors. Mid tier retailers are always going to have a tough problem to solve, unless you fool the consumer.
That marketing gimmick isn't centralized to just the US or even North America. It works anywhere in the world for a mid retailer.
Perhaps, you believe that this makes the consumers stupid but that would be a universal generalization rather than an US cultural one.
I do love when people ascribe basic psychology to Americans and no one else. Only Americans walk into a room and forget why they went in there, everyone knows that!
My father is a lawyer, and this happened with a judge, who agreed with him, but ended up saying something along the lines of “he deserves more than a third to have his fair share, so he’ll have a quarter”
It sounds odd but there was a Supreme Court about it. Essentially someone claimed they shouldn’t have to pay taxes on the profits of crime and the Court ruled they did. So they had to create a way for people to do that. For what it is worth, the 5th amendment protects you from incriminating yourself, so you are allowed to decline to provide the details of where the money came from, but it’s a bit like paying your parents for something you broke and then just not telling them what it is, and then expecting them not to look around the house.
“it would be an extreme if not an extravagant application of the Fifth Amendment to say that it authorized a man to refuse to state the amount of his income because it had been made in crime. … He could not draw a conjurer’s circle around the whole matter by his own declaration that to write any word upon the government blank would bring him into danger of the law.” … "It is urged, that, if a return were made, the defendant [Sullivan] would be entitled to deduct illegal expenses, such as bribery. This by no means follows, but it will be time enough to consider the question when a taxpayer has the temerity to raise it.”
I love how the government gets to have it both ways. You gotta report income from illegal activities, but you can’t deduct costs from illegal activities. I’m of the opinion that deductions shouldn’t be a thing at all, but I’d at least like some consistency!
(But like, for real, though.) I certainly don't feel bad for Reddit when the CEO says he intends to use that forum's users to train AIs, and then every comment turns into some "please upvote me" catchphrasey nonsense. Hopefully, whoever buys training data from them receives nothing of value.
A self driving car pulls around … window opens … sign says to just throw the food inside … auto pay through NFC on the door … car drives away … dumps food into a waiting auto trash compactor … car drives away to next town to order food again … AI powering the car generates another $10,000 worth of bitcoin to start the food ordering cycle again.
The Overton Window is a fairly popular concept on Lemmy, and I haven’t the faintest idea why.
It’s easy to see why the Overton Window holds such appeal. For one thing, it offers a universal theory of change in an age of polarization and fracture. While Trump and the UK Independence Party pull right, and Sanders and Corbyn pull left, Overton’s concept suggests that the mechanism of change is the same. For another thing, it has the virtue of simplicity: Overton did little more than repackage the basic negotiating principle that if you ask for a lot, you will likely get more than if you ask for a little. And although the window offers a theory of change, its central element—the window itself—actually describes the norm from which reality has deviated. Zeynep Tufekci worries in The New York Times that Trump “voices truths outside the Overton Window,” while the British writer Sam Leith speculates that Corbyn may have positioned his party “dangerously far from the centre of the Overton Window.” The window serves as shorthand for the erstwhile consensus. Viewing politics through the Overton Window reinforces liberal notions about the moderate center, even as that center ground erodes.
For conservatives, by contrast, the Overton Window has always been about strategy. Though Overton himself never committed his most influential idea to paper, his Mackinac Center colleague Joe Lehman continued his work after Overton’s death in 2003 at age 43. Lehman not only coined the term “Overton Window,” he weaponized it, setting up training sessions on the concept for other right-leaning think tankers. The term filtered into the conservative blogosphere in 2006, when Josh Trevino enthused about the window as a tool for the right. “Step by step, ideas that were once radical or unthinkable—homeschooling, tuition tax credits, and vouchers—have moved into normal public discourse,” Trevino declared. “The conscious decision to shift the Overton Window is yielding its results.”
The concept did not reach a wider audience, however, until Glenn Beck cast Overton’s ideas as the bogeyman in his 2010 best-seller, The Overton Window. The villain of Beck’s tale is Arthur Gardner, an aging PR guru who plots to use the Overton Window to foist his own objectives (“criminalize dissent,” “reinforce dependence and collectivism”) on an unsuspecting and gullible public. In his afterword, Beck urges readers to watch out for manipulation in their own lives and to set their own priorities.
While Beck shared Overton’s libertarian ideology, he was wary of the window as a strategy for change, imagining a totalitarian left that could hijack it. Its elitist overtones also stuck in his craw: An early champion of the Tea Party, Beck preferred to extol the power of the American people, whereas Overton largely sought to influence policy-making from the top down by “educating lawmakers and the public.” At one point in his novel, Beck takes a veiled swipe at the somewhat otherworldly Mackinac Center, which was founded on an island in Lake Huron: Arthur Gardner’s son boasts that his father “stole the concept” of the Overton Window “from a think tank in the Midwest.”
This happened to a relative and it turned out to be a serious issue, which they were able to deal with luckily. For weeks after I was so paranoid everytime I saw even one.
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