Dave5

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Tag: bullshit tech

  • AI #48: Exponentials in Geometry

    The biggest event of the week was the Sleeper Agents paper from Anthropic. I expect that to inform our thoughts for a while to come, and to lay foundation for additional work. We also had the first third of the IMO solved at almost gold metal level by DeepMind, discovering that math competition geometry is…

  • ‘It hasn’t delivered’: The spectacular failure of self-checkout technology

    Self-checkout is one of those consensual hallucinations that you see in tech a lot. People see a leader implement it and then follow like sheep… “no one gets fired for buying IBM”. In the US these machines can lead to really dire legal trouble if you get pinged for theft. “It hasn’t delivered anything that…

  • Musical Interlude: NEW MODEL ARMY – I DID NOTHING WRONG

    As a result of the recent ITV dramatisation, the UK Post Office Scandal is finally front page news in our country. But this monstrous tale of corporate arrogance and cruelty has actually been going on for years. ‘I Did Nothing Wrong’ is from our new album ‘Unbroken’, which will be released on Jan 26th, but…

  • OPENAI QUIETLY DELETES BAN ON USING CHATGPT FOR “MILITARY AND WARFARE”

    I use Chat GPT daily as a software engineer and love it… but this gets a HARD FUCK NO. Up until January 10, OpenAI’s “usage policies” page included a ban on “activity that has high risk of physical harm, including,” specifically, “weapons development” and “military and warfare.” That plainly worded prohibition against military applications would seemingly rule…

  • The Cult of Mac

    Apple’s most valuable intangible asset isn’t its patents or copyrights – it’s an army of people who believe that using products from a $2.89 trillion multinational makes them members of an oppressed religious minority whose identity is coterminal with the interests of Apple’s shareholders.

  • AI “Completes” Keith Haring’s Unfinished Painting and Controversy Erupts

    “The A.I.-generated image doesn’t appear to be faithful to Haring’s style, which often included images of human figures,” writes Julia Binswanger at Smithsonian.com. “These kinds of figures are visible in Haring’s original piece, but the image generator wasn’t able to replicate them.” The algorithmically filled-in Unfinished Painting may be without aesthetic or intellectual interest in itself, but consider…

  • Pluralistic: The REAL AI automation threat to workers (11 Jan 2024)

    Here’s a supreme irony: nearly all of the beneficial applications for AI require that AI be used to help workers, not replace them, which is absolutely not how AI is used in the workplace. An AI that helps radiologists by giving them a second opinion might help them find tumors on x-rays, but that’s a tool that reduces the…

  • The airplane blowout came from our rotten Big Tech economy

    So we see that “growth at any cost” doesn’t just apply to tech companies. The surveillance state, and the expanding powers of the government to spy on its citizens, is another runaway problem. Meantime we are all but forced to use Big Tech software that spies on us, with no way for us to decline…

  • Paula Vennells: Ex-Post Office boss handing back CBE over IT scandal

    Class + IT == Toxic. The UK are about to unleash Palantir on their public health system… I predict that in 4 years we’ll see an event that makes the Post Office affair look just and kind. Former Post Office boss Paula Vennells is handing back her CBE with immediate effect after facing mounting pressure…

  • Pluralistic: Kelly and Zach Weinersmith’s “A City On Mars” (09 Jan 2024)

    the Weinersmiths aren’t anti-space. They aren’t even anti-space-settlement. Rather, they argue that the path to space-based scientific breakthroughs, exploration of our solar system, and a deeper understanding of our moral standing in a vast universe cannot start with space settlements. Landing people on the Moon or Mars any time soon is a stunt – a…