Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
The NYT's reported on the suicide of a 16-year old boy, noting how ChatGPT assisted him in said suicide and deterred him from seeking help.
This is not the first time a chatbot's driven someone to suicide. And I fully expect it won't be the last.
My in very bad taste remark: well we need to weigh one dead kid on the one side an on the otherside there is the millions of people who would be unhappy if they couldn't easily make ~~dustpecks~~ stupid political memes with a piss filter.
Thought 1: This is the kind of incident that makes politicians vote for a law named after a dead kid. It behooves us to think of what kind of legislation could actually address the problem without becoming a clusterfuck that worsens everyone's life, including children's. cough #OnlineSafetyAct cough
Thought 2: Hey, all you guys using LLMs to replace opinion surveys or do "research" on social interactions because it's cheaper than gathering real data... How many human beings talk like the suicide-encouragement bot here?
Thought 3: Oh, remember when OpenAI paid $10 million to buy off the American Federation of Teachers? Because Pepperidge Farm still has that browser tab open. Every school administrator who breathes a word about bringing "AI" into the classroom deserves to get lit up by parents asking why they are embracing suicide tech.
A complete ban on chatbots/LLMs would be enough. These things have basically zero ethical use case, it'd be a net positive if they were legally wiped from existence.
Against my better judgment, I decided to follow that link and check the quotes. Thankfully, there was nobody defending this - calling for a ban on AI, calling for ChatGPT's shutdown, calling for Sam Altman to be charged, pretty much everyone was out for blood.