Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.
For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community
Look what they did to Notepad. Shut the fuck up. This is Notepad. You are not welcome here. Oh yeah "Let me use Copilot for Notepad". "I'm going to sign into my account for Notepad". What the fuck are you talking about. It's Notepad.
I should never have to open the settings in Notepad. Reason being: it's Notepad. God fuckin damn I hate the computer.
https://bsky.app/profile/iainnd.bsky.social/post/3lxdvmkua4227
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
Someone tried Adobe's new Generative Fill "feature" (just the latest development in Adobe's infatuation with AI) with the prompt "take this elf lady out of the scene", and the results were...interesting:
There's also an option to rate whatever the fill gets you, which I can absolutely see being used to sabotage the "feature".
@BlueMonday1984 I was experimenting with generative fill and asked it to remove a person from a scene and "make the background yellow". It made the person Chinese. No fucking joke.
Putting the “manic pixie” in manic pixie dream girl
Watch till end the third option made me choke on my drink it was way too funny
Please turn the elf lady into elf Grimes
Lesswronger reads about Orcas the first time in their life. Decided that training them to become smarter than humans is now the next important step.
(I'm very very far from an orca expert - basically everything I know about them I learned today.)
They made several posts about it, and just the opening bits are funny. I obv didn't read any of them an only looked at the opening statements. I will produce a quote from each.
It is currently plausible (~~352115%~~[1]23%) to me that average orcas have at least as high potential for being great scientists as the greatest human scientists, modulo their motivation for doing science[2].
Yes, the weird percentage is in the text, the [1] footnote says 15%, no idea why they can't edit their text normally.
(For speed of writing, I mostly don't cite references. Feel free to ask me in the comments for references for some claims.)
Context: I think there’s a ~17% chance that average orcas are >=+6std intelligent.
And from the last article, two lines as a treat:
TLDR: I now think it’s <1% likely that average orcas are >=+6std intelligent.
(I now think the relevant question is rather whether orcas might be >=+4std intelligent, since that might be enough for superhuman wisdom and thinking techniques to accumulate through generations, but I think it’s only 2% probable. (Still decently likely that they are near human level smart though.))
(Nice of the person to think of the orcas btw, just wish it was more preservation than 'how can we make these animals help us out).
E: apparently "An alternative approach to superbabies" is also about orcas, they just no longer stand behind it.
Can someone please look into this?
Larry Niven had a fixed idea about cetacean intelligence, and it showed up in mass-audience SF like Star Trek IV.
The story below is another example of really creepy things being done in the name of science in the postwar era.
Gotta be trolling.
Somebody on LW also thought so, and they replied they are 100% serious. Which still could be trolling. Lot of effort for no payoff however. Personally I think this person is just very young. I can get a teenager going all in on this. (a teenager being this much into IQ stuff is pretty bad tbh).
there's having a favourite animal, then there's whatever this is
The last time someone looked into this it was with dolphins, did not go well, lead to more human-dolphin sex than communication, and ended in a dolphin suicide.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/08/the-dolphin-who-loved-me
All I need to know about HDI (human-dolphin interaction) (read: fuckin) is covered in many episodes of my favorite podcast Doughboys
That story mentions Carl Sagan but omits the detail that Peter the dolphin propositioned him. (It's in the William Poundstone biography, IIRC.)
They're trying to be John Lilly, but with orcas and even more ketamine
I haven’t clicked on any links here yet, this sounds like a bit, but because it’s LW I have to assume bad faith and that this is real.
E: lol real. Why wouldn’t they go for apes lol
Finally, after years of research, we have managed to connect the smartest Orca to a text-to-speech device! What great wisdom will those superinteligent creatures bestow on us? How can we solve our world's problems?
Eat the rich.
... What?
Like take your billionaires, right, roast them and then eat their flesh. Burn their yachts too. We can help.
Sadly, the orcas go after sailing boats not the big motorized yachts, less eat the rich and more eat the upper middle class.
That's because we haven't helped them achieve their full potential
FInally read the wikipedia page on orcas an hour ago, and boy do I have plans, let me start the wiki.
Textbook case of anthropomorphisation from The Guardian, trying to posit that AI systems are capable of feeling pain.
You want my unsolicited opinion, machines cannot feel pain/emotion, only imitate it, and the rise of LLMs have made this crystal clear. Much like with being creative or making art, feeling genuine emotion is the exclusive domain of human/animal minds.
It's so bizarre to see AI get the benefit of a superposition of states where we all admit that these are not machines capable of thought, yet at the same time go through these stupid exercises where we pretend that they are.
