Ben Taylor @VoxDei@qoto.org
Software Engineer, Trade Unionist, Gamer, Geek, Dad. Lives in Devon
Joined Nov 2022
Ben Taylor
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Your reminder that I've written a book on the business risks of generative AI. "The Intelligence Illusion"
https://illusion.baldurbjarnason.com/
Stuff I cover (not exhaustive):
- AGI is not happening any time soon.
- AGI and anthropomorphism will cripple your ability to think clearly about AI
- The AI industry has a long history of snake oil and fraud
- These models copy more than you think
- Hallucinations are still a thing and aren't going away.
- AI "reasoning" is quite broken
- Security is a shit show
Ben Taylor
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Surveillance marketers are changing how they track you online, so we’re joining forces with Consumer Reports to investigate.
If you have a Facebook account (even if it’s inactive), help us uncover what info companies are gathering and sharing about you. https://themarkup.org/pixel-hunt/2023/08/02/help-us-investigate-surveillance-marketing-using-facebook-data
@ravenonthill @cstross @FeralRobots @xriskology I always figured this applied equally to heaven. Nobody who wants to live anywhere "for eternity" has considered just how long eternity is, even if you consider it equivalent to merely the lifetime of the universe.
Ben Taylor
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@drandrewv2 True. Though https://xkcd.com/844 is also true. ;-)
Ben Taylor
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This is the most wildly irresponsible government decision I can remember.
The Tories serve only the interests of those who profit from the destruction of our world.
@luke I have a commands.txt in my home directory where I copy the commands exactly like this that I always want and never remember...
Ben Taylor
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Time for this week's geothread, a dose of #geoeducation rather than #geoweirdness
Today we thought we'd cover a common geocoding use case: extracting the coordinates from images 📸 and geocoding the location the image was taken.
1/n
Ben Taylor
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Ben Taylor
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So we woke late last night to the sound of Madame Harriet, one of our #cat overlords here at our current #UK housesit, making kind of noise that any cat person will immediately recognise as "I am walking through the house with a present for you. Get ready for entrails. Yay entrails!"
We promptly turned on the light to see her sitting on the end of our bed with one of my socks in her mouth and was proudly declaring she'd killed it for us. The sock looked decidedly dead. If it could have entrails, they would have been on show. She obviously understood how to murder a sock with both skill and panache.
We thanked her for her services to the Society for Making Sure There Is Only Ever One Sock In Any Pair Left After A Week and went back to sleep.
Some time later, I woke to the feeling of something running up my leg. It was small, scratchy and definitely not my imagination.
On reflex, I whipped off the duvet and froze when I saw a very alive mouse hunched down against my knee.
Swearing, meowing, bellowing and roaring ensued but I can safely report that mouse, humans and cat are all still living, with mouse relocated to garden. No sign of entrails at all.
Meanwhile Madame Harriet kept my sock in her mouth the entire time, obviously not wanting anything to do with a ghastly mouse when she had her trophy sock to hand.
I now need a nap. A long, mouse free nap.
The saga continues...
Ben Taylor
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This week, I went over to Bluesky and asked people who'd left Mastodon why they left, and lots of people told me. I grabbed the replies and crunched them and wrote up a summary. I think it's really interesting and often kind of wrenching.
https://erinkissane.com/mastodon-is-easy-and-fun-except-when-it-isnt
@drandrewv2 Ahhh, see, the "questioner" made the basic error of not starting with the accepted etiquette of "More a comment than a question, but..."
@SheepOverboard Well, yes, but that just shows schools have an unacceptable radical left bias. They should be teaching alternative facts.
(Ahem)
@dungeons See, now if we'd bought the hand-axe we wouldn't be having to improvise on a ranged attack...
Ben Taylor
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For those of you who wanted the full history of how Musk lost control of X during the X/Confinity merger, @every were kind enough to commission me to write it.
Come for the Microsoft vs Linux internal war. Stay for the boardroom coup launched during the Sydney Olympics... #technology #history https://every.to/p/twitter-s-future-is-a-return-to-elon-musk-s-past
@ncweaver As the article mentions though, Google has a track record of just killing off any service that isn't quite working right this instant (which is quite a lot of them). I can entirely believe that it was just Waymo's turn for the hammer to fall, without that necessarily indicating that the tech is impossible to get right.
(I mean, I think actual fully autonomous get-in-and-tell-the-thing-to-take-me-to-the-other-side-of-the-continent driverless vehicles are some way off yet. But I do think we'll get there.)
I wonder. At some point, deliberately raising your emissions will be regarded as a crime on a par with genocide. Because it is genocide, it's just slow and the responsibility is shared. I wonder at what point we will see the first threats to declare war if a country wilfully refuses to cut its GHG emissions.
Note that I do not doubt this will happen. Just when and who.
Ben Taylor
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I regret to inform you all that the Wombles have been moved on from Wimbledon Common by the Metropolitan Police exercising their powers under §60E of the Police, Justice and Public Order Act 1994, as amended by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. Great Uncle Bulgaria refused to leave when requested to do so by a duly appointed constable, and is currently serving a 10 week sentence in HMP Wandsworth.
@cstross Funny, that's the second time today the Basilisk has come up. Read a Guardian article earlier (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jul/22/pro-extinctionis-longtermim-effective-altruism-human-extinction-emile-torres) that was essentially one side of a very silly philosophical willy-waving contest.
The article didn't mention the Basilisk, but it *did* mention Yudkowsky a number of times. Which reminded me of the Basilisk and sent me off on my usual how-does-any-smart-person-swallow-this-crap grumble to myself.
Ben Taylor
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When those of us who work on CO₂ removal (CDR) meet, it’s apparent that no one wants to do this and no one thinks it’s easy.
It’s far easier and cheaper to stop emitting CO₂.
The fact that some of the smartest people I know decide to work on CDR signals our desperation.
Software Engineer, Trade Unionist, Gamer, Geek, Dad. Lives in Devon
Joined Nov 2022
