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fsmacolyte

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Michael Cohen cites AI-generated court cases in his defense (www.theverge.com)

Michael Cohen, the former lawyer for Donald Trump, admitted to citing fake, AI-generated court cases in a legal document that wound up in front of a federal judge, as reported earlier by The New York Times. A filing unsealed on Friday says Cohen used Google’s Bard to perform research after mistaking it for “a super-charged...

fsmacolyte ,

Funny how “self awareness” has two meanings here. It’s the essence of what makes humans the smartest animals, but the problem you’re referring to—lack of self reflection—is one of the most common problems amongst people today. Common sense ain’t so common.

fsmacolyte ,

Like most popular social media sites, you usually won’t see very valuable discussion in the comments, at least in my experience. It’s mostly for people to post news, research, and so on, and follow the big names or organizations in their field.

Most of the valuable information is diffused via posts but I do put a bit of time and effort into trying to filter out all the crap posts like memes, the faux inspirational stuff, self-aggrandizing nonsense, etc.

fsmacolyte ,

So let me get this straight. You’re saying that a member of clergy should be allowed to hear an adult say, “I molested that child last week” and not have to report it?

Is that what you are saying? I want to hear it from you straight.

fsmacolyte ,

Okay, and if it happened years ago but the victim is now 14 instead of 6 and they’re still in the same environment as their abuser?

“Giving (potential) victimizers a line of support via organized religion to try to help them not commit sex crimes against children (in the future, or again)” is not a good argument because it has been shown time and time again that religious institutions cannot be trusted to reliably take the correct course of action and be accountable. That is the role of the government and law enforcement. It is unacceptable to put the feelings of adults over the safety of children and other victims, and organized religions have a tendency to protect those with power and influence over protecting the vulnerable.

fsmacolyte ,

Yeah I don’t care. I’m not here to make exceptions for pedophiles and abusers.

'Morale is at an all-time low': Ex-Googler writes scathing latter slamming layoffs and 'eroded' culture (www.businessinsider.com)

‘Morale is at an all-time low’: Ex-Googler writes scathing latter slamming layoffs and ‘eroded’ culture::An ex-Googler wrote a 1,500-word letter criticizing the firm and CEO Sundar Pichai’s lack of “visionary leadership.”

fsmacolyte ,

Sure, in the short term. I’ve switched to DDG and I’m not getting another Pixel when I need a new phone, and hoards of tech savvy people are feeling the same way. Dissatisfaction is causing them to lose customers and talent.

Eventually, they’ll start feeling it in their bottom line. And by then it might be too late to change course.

fsmacolyte ,

I recognize that my intrusive thoughts are my own, but this term existing is helpful because: 1) some people incorrectly believe that thoughts imply a desired outcome, and this term helps explain and describe that this isn’t always the case and 2) it’s a meaningful and useful way of categorizing these types of thoughts for the purposes of psychology, psychiatry, understanding ourselves better, etc.

In cases like severe OCD, classifying intrusive thoughts as such could help someone understand and cope with disturbing thoughts and develop subsequent coping mechanisms. Not everyone’s the same and some terms can be helpful.

fsmacolyte ,

what in particular shows that Gary Marcus is uniformed? I dislike him because he’s dogmatic and petty but I haven’t seen a specific thing he’s been wrong about, but I’d love examples.

AI companies have all kinds of arguments against paying for copyrighted content (www.theverge.com)

AI companies have all kinds of arguments against paying for copyrighted content::The companies building generative AI tools like ChatGPT say updated copyright laws could interfere with their ability to train capable AI models. Here are comments from OpenAI, StabilityAI, Meta, Google, Microsoft and more.

fsmacolyte ,

Intent is part of it as well. If you have too many people who want to use your service, you’re not being attacked, you have an actual shortage of ability to service requests and need to adjust accordingly.

fsmacolyte ,

The best ones can literally write pretty good code, and explain any concept on the Internet to you that you ask them to. If you don’t understand a specific thing about their explanation, they can add onto their explanation, and they can respond in the style you want (explain as if I’m ten, explain as if I’m an undergrad, etc).

I use it literally every day for work in a somewhat niche field. I don’t really agree that it’s a “parlor trick”.

fsmacolyte ,

I’m going to use those things as answer machines and you can’t stop me.

Jokes aside, I always validate what chatbots tell me, not even just important things. I use GPT-4 for work and 90% of the time it can show me how to use very specific functions in complex ways, but yesterday (for the first time in awhile) it made up a function that didn’t exist. To its credit, I said, “Are you sure about [function]?” and it said, “I’m sorry, I got confused. That function doesn’t exist. However, look into X, Y, Z for further resources” and I did and they were the correct things to look into.

fsmacolyte ,

I was kind of with you until saying they’re “being a fucking idiot.”

Encouraging someone to help out? Great.

Browbeating someone for voicing the viewpoint or experience a lot of users are facing? We can do better than that.

fsmacolyte ,

Fascinating that people with stutters can be helped by practicing speaking with speech jammers.

It makes me think about how ADHD medication will make people without ADHD more distractible while it’ll help focus people with it.

fsmacolyte ,

John Wayne Gacy is really unhappy with this feature.

fsmacolyte ,

I’ve often looked out of a 20th story window at pedestrians and thought, “They have no idea someone is looking at them right now,” and then I always wonder how many times that has happened to me.

That must happen to people all the time who visit that church.

fsmacolyte ,

Old-school AI systems from way back in the day called Expert Systems were just a crapload of IF statements. There’s never been a concrete agreed-upon definition of AI because there’s never been an agreed-upon definition of the word Intelligence.

fsmacolyte , (edited )

The free version gets things wrong a bunch. It’s impressive how good GPT-4 is. Human brains are still a million times better in almost every way (they cost a few dollars of energy to operate per day, for example) but it’s really hard to believe how capable the state of the art of LLMs is until you’ve tried it.

You’re right about one thing though. Humans are able to know things, and to know when we don’t know things. Current LLMs (transformer-based architecture) simply can’t do that yet.

X, formerly Twitter, faces 2,200 arbitration cases and filing fees over $3 million (www.nbcnews.com)

X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, is facing 2,200 arbitration cases that ex-employees filed after Elon Musk took over the company, slashed headcount, and made other sweeping changes there. The filing fees alone for that volume of cases could amount to $3.5 million....

fsmacolyte ,

Look, I found your original point interesting, but if there was a major upset in the microwave industry, then that would belong in the technology section of a news site too.

Lemmy probably feels like Reddit when it first started, all warm cuddly and friendly to newcomers eager to discuss and collaborate around central topics.

I joined reddit on the tailwind, so it was all echo chamber, we hate newcomers, gatekeeping, automod frenzy, too many rulebreakers, too many rules, etc I could be wrong, but thats what I imagine it used to be like.

fsmacolyte ,

I think the fundamental question is, as the Fediverse gets more popular, then how will servers get paid for? Here are some possibilities I see for how Fediverse hosting could work at scale:

  • Surviving off donations alone: Possible but in my estimation unlikely, and it could veer into the territory of big donors having a controlling stake or exerting their interests.
  • Instances limiting number of users to what they can afford: This would require the network of instances process to really work well.
  • Big instances selling advertisements: Without oversight or moral commitment, this could easily go towards creepy personal data collection.
  • Crowdsourcing the costs: This would require transparency and fundraising or some other model
  • Hosts financing the operation in other ways: This could also easily get into creepy data collection practices or other dark patterns.

I hope we come up with some process or plan for avoiding the pitfalls and forging an honest and community-integrating way forward.

fsmacolyte ,

When one side is suspiciously quiet or supportive about legislation that’s against their publicly stated goals, it’s because they secretly want it too.

Plant diversity in urban green spaces led to sevenfold increase in insect species, study finds (www.theguardian.com)

The benefits of urban greening initiatives are increasingly well documented: they can help mitigate the effects of urban heating, and improve physical health and mental wellbeing. And even small greening actions in cities can significantly improve local biodiversity, new research suggests....

fsmacolyte ,

I wonder if planting 73 different kinds of ferns would have this benefit, or if they have to be very different kinds of plants.

fsmacolyte ,

So then why was Meta trying to get Threads to be on the Fediverse? Of course they’re aware of any potential threats, no matter how small.

fsmacolyte ,

The threat is a new sustainable community that’s sheltered from advertising that people could leave Factbook/Instagram/whatever and go to.

ChatGPT generates cancer treatment plans that are full of errors — Study finds that ChatGPT provided false information when asked to design cancer treatment plans (www.businessinsider.com)

ChatGPT generates cancer treatment plans that are full of errors — Study finds that ChatGPT provided false information when asked to design cancer treatment plans::Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital found that cancer treatment plans generated by OpenAI’s revolutionary chatbot were full of errors.

fsmacolyte ,

It’s possible to build intelligent AI

What does intelligent AI that we can currently build look like?

fsmacolyte ,

Recent papers have shown that LLMs build internal world models but about a topic as niche and complicated as cancer treatment, a chatbot based on GPT-3.5 be woefully ill-equipped to do any kind of proper reasoning.

fsmacolyte ,

I haven’t heard of cognitive schema assimilation. That sounds interesting. It sounds like it might fall prey to challenges we’ve had with symbolic AI in the past though.

fsmacolyte ,

I mean, on the ChatGPT site there’s literally a disclaimer along the bottom saying it’s able to say things that aren’t true…

fsmacolyte ,

I feel like I remember them being there since January of this year, which is when I started playing with ChatGPT, but I could be mistaken.

First U.S. nuclear reactor built from scratch in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia (www.nbcnews.com)

First U.S. nuclear reactor built from scratch in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia::ATLANTA — A new reactor at a nuclear power plant in Georgia has entered commercial operation, becoming the first new American reactor built from scratch in decades.

fsmacolyte , (edited )

It looks like it!

Looks like the only completed Gen 3 nuclear reactors are in Asia, at Kashiwazaki (Japan), Kori (South Korea), Yangjiang, Fangchenggang, Tianwan (China), and Kudankulam (India).

Edit: I missed the Gen III+ part of that Wikipedia page. The other currently operation or under construction Gen 3+ reactors are in Sanmen, Shidao Bay, Taishan (China), Novovoronezh II, Leningrad II, Kursk (Russia), Akkuyu (Turkey), Rooppur (Bangladesh).

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