And yet I can see why a journalist could use them to organise their thoughts and notes, find a new angle, break writers’ block, in ways that are broadly fine. But if I started, would I really stop? And how would it feel to fear that LLMs were … better at my job than me? And that’s why I haven’t.

It really is wild how much awful stuff is systemically baked into our language

When you think about it, the phrase “earning a living” is really quite vile. 🔗 https://adactio.com/notes/22233

Famously the device that — when it cracked open on the sidewalk — gave Kid Hulk their powers

Unpopular opinion: semicolons

ㅤ

To unpack a lot of the AI BS, it would be useful to isolate "learning" (as it is used by industry) from deliberately incentivized behavior. Models don't self-optimize, they optimize toward goals set by designers and patterns designers steer them toward based on data designers give them.

So, we need to stop attributing to "emergent behavior" anything that is actually "designed" behavior. If a chatbot that earns its company money every time you respond, it's absolutely being externally incentivized, *somewhere,* to beg you to stay. www.wired.com/story/chatbo...

In most design you have a very small circle of what the product is expected to do. With LLMs you have a very wide circle that you try to limit as best as you can. Understanding this will tell you why it is risky to implement into systems that need precise circles.

If you see this, post an album cover with a motor vehicle on it

These platforms can effectively manipulate individual emotions and affect at scale, including influencing behavior. We we say that they personalize content, but the goal is to persuade. The only question is, for what purpose? To make us do what? So it really matters who controls them.

Brundlechat

Pure uncut narcissistic projection is really something to behold

and if you *are* a ghoul, faking decency is the price of admission into polite society. seethe about it on your own time

I think we need to stop calling it empathy and go back to calling it decency. It isn't a favour you're doing someone else, it's you proving that you aren't a fucking ghoul

You cannot run the basic infrastructures of a functioning society- healthcare to education-on systems that cut out human empathy & negotiation. So we have to reassert over and over again that the problems aren’t glitches or errors—even big ones. The problems are fundamental, systematic, endemic.

Oh hold up it’s still in some theaters this week! I’ll hold out for the cinema.

We need to frame the proliferation of untested chatbots and LLMs into under served populations for mental health care as a manifestation of systemic ableism. It’s both not caring what harms might be caused/but also ‘making do with anything’ BECAUSE these are disabled folk.

Tonight may have to be del Toro Frankenstein night for me. (Streaming, I mean. I tried to find time to travel to a theater to see it "live" but it just didn't work out.)

In 2008, a blogger named Curtis Yarvin called for a future president to kill foreign aid programs as part of a plan to replace democracy with dictatorship. Now 600,000 people are dead—and 14 million will die by 2030, according to the Lancet. This is the running death toll of tech fascism.

I… didn’t even know they were using furloughed employees’ email accounts to spread propaganda wtf

Just need everyone to Google the name "Rosalind Franklin" at this moment.

people who can compartmentalize elon musk’s actions and are able to keep using his app must better at navigating social realities than i’ll ever be

Four day weekend starts …. Now. 🥳🎊🍾

On point! Remember: people are not really experiencing AI-induced "psychosis." This framing detracts from the reality users are being shown credible-sounding misinfo by the minions of the ruling class whose interests are served by the victimization of users for social control.

The bagels are extra hole-y

you look at Texas, they pay the state leg $7,200 a year and as a result like half of them are car dealership owning reactionaries

Hype pins the blame — unfairly — on you. Hype says, "by spending the money on magic beans instead of the things you need, we are actually helping." Hype says, "the magic beans are magic. if you still have problems, you must be prompting it wrong." This is about AI, but not *just* about AI.

In the video, Trump actually did turn around at first and bend down somewhat toward the guy as if trying to help. But this frame captures an essence of truth about the man regardless. After a half hearted attempt, just standing there annoyed someone took away his spotlight.

I am "have to think through every other thing 'YT' could mean before I remember it's YouTube years old

it does seem like there’s a major—though potentially fleeting—opportunity to invest in left-wing media. more than a million people in the most populous city in america just enthusiastically elected a democratic socialist and the world is watching. putting $$ towards left media rn is good business.

I am only 30 min into Death by Lightning but Matthew Macfadyen is just buckets of fun as (Garfield assassin) Guiteau. (Amazing cast & generally snappy vibes in this so far)

Attended a session today about international schools and the complexity of making inclusive calendars. The host works in France and the things they legally cannot put in a survey to parents are *extensive*. We were shocked but it's the same theory: it would be used to discriminate.

This was the year I finally learned how delicious fresh local heritage tomatoes can be … and I'm grieving the end of their season.

Just the cult-iest stuff happening at Tesla shareholder gatherings wtf

I had no idea these settings existed … I just turned all of mine to just “warn” instead of hiding etc. Not that I want to see a bunch of crap, but because I don’t trust algorithms or others’ opinions on what is crap or not.

Some direct vote count proof of Hispanic Americans turning on Republicans: bsky.app/profile/kevi...

Do tell.

Excellent

The more democratic elements of the American constitutional and economic order are actually throwing up road blocks to Trumpism. Protests and boycotts and low level courts and juries and cetera. Elite actors on the other hand are all too frequently caving. Fascinating study in who actually cares!

This week's @unbreaking.org update on immigration is *also* an update on data security because the administration is using immigration enforcement as a way to trial and operationalize a full-on surveillance state.

Wow talk about bubbles

The ICE recruiting materials are clearly geared to attract actual violent sociopaths … so I’m surprised there isn’t even more of this coming out

Embodied cognition — emergent from evolutionary processes — is a helluva drug

💯

Quite a few judges handling these cases across the country seem to understand the historic import … I’m so glad to see it.

💯

"I find the defendants' evidence simply not credible," Ellis says, going through examples for the courtroom.

"The government would have people believe instead that Chicago is a hole of violence," Ellis says. Then she adds, "that simply is untrue."

I have been assuming the fascists chose trans rights as their bugbear just as a cynical division tactic, but I’m starting to wonder if their fixation runs… deeper…