ABrockwell @aebrockwell@qoto.org

Stop anthropomorphizing billionaires.

The “#AI” debate is highlighting the divide between people who prefer better-*sounding* answers and those who prefer better *answers.*

“#ArtificialIntelligence” #MachineLearning #ML #LLMs #ChatGPT #Copilot #Bing #Bard #OpenAI #Google #GitHub #GPT3 #GPT4

If you become a Supreme Court Justice and your spouse embarks on a new line of work collecting more than $1,000,000 a year from law firms doing business before the Court—that’s corruption.

https://www.businessinsider.com/jane-roberts-chief-justice-wife-10-million-commissions-2023-4

The 2023 Australian National Sheep Dog Trial Championship has been and gone, and I still haven't reviewed my photos. Life has been busy and sadly it's my photography that once again gets pushed to the wayside.

But I thought it was about time to treat myself, so I put a few minutes aside to edit a dog photo or two.

This year's championship was a lot of fun. I think my photography is getting better as a far higher percentage of my shots were in focus this time; those dogs are just too fast!

Luckily this fella was sitting still allowing me to get this great shot through the fence. Unfazed by my presence, he patiently waits for his turn with the sheep.

"Nobody cares about social media decentralization".

That sentence isn't new to me.

You know what? People have been telling me that for five years.

And for most of the time, they were right.

But I've been beating that drum non-stop, and haven't let up.

Now 16,656 follow me on Mastodon because they care enough about social media decentralization.

I'm not going to stop talking about it until the entire Internet cares about social media decentralization!

The problem with #AI tools isn't (yet) “oh shit, this thing can do what I do better than I can.”

The problem is “this thing can do what I do at a Barely Passable Dogshit level, it turns out that actually satisfies most people, and I'm having an existential crisis b/c (1) the time I've wasted overdelivering (2) I WANT to make good things and (3) I can't slack off NOW even if I wanted to, knowing this, because I can't produce barely passable dogshit as fast as the Thing can.”

#chatgpt

I want to be clear that what's happening to Rep. Zephyr is an attack on her First Amendment rights and the rights of her constituents.

The forces who are censuring her want us to go back to when rights were the domain of white male landowners. Generations of Americans fought for the constitution to apply to all of us. That project was never finished, but what we are seeing is an effort to attack the basic premise of equality under the law.

We need to fight with everything at our disposal.

This is first on Mastodon! Please boost this thread. It’s an important one.

Good morning to readers. Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.

Some career news: I’m leaving NPR as part of the layoffs that dramatically reduced the company’s workforce.

I’ve decided to go back into Ukraine to keep reporting.

But this time, alone.

Not the odds, but the stakes.

That's my shorthand for the organizing principle we most need in journalists covering the 2024 campaign. Not who has what chances of winning, but the consequences for American democracy. Not the odds, but the stakes.

This report from the Washington Post is getting there. Have a read of it and tell me if you see what I mean. https://wapo.st/41yXOmI [Gift link, no paywall]

#journalism #USpol #journalists

There’s a lot of talk about the harm social media does to society, but I’d argue that mainstream media is a FAR larger problem.

Fox News may be the biggest example, but there’s a rot in the entire news media complex and as usual it comes down to money. Journalism has increasingly being replaced with “narratives” and both-sides rhetoric, chasing after clicks and views and advertising dollars.

This is how fascism takes root in the 21st century, through late stage capitalism

Has anyone else who uses #Mastodon as their main social media platform noticed a far lower level of personal stress?

After several months I feel almost like I’ve moved to a much, much better neighborhood with really great neighbors.

Personally, I am still concerned with lots of socioeconomic, environmental, and other issues the world faces, but I feel far less stressed about them.

It’s just better in so many ways.

#SocialMedia #MentalHealth

Anyone who codes regularly will understand that coding is NOT “boring work”. It is engrossing. It is creative.

Having #ChatGPT do it for you is not an improvement. It is only an improvement if one doesn’t know how to code in the first place. For those folks, tread carefully!

My thoughts on “ It’s Not the End of Work. It’s the End of Boring Work”:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/22/opinion/jobs-ai-chatgpt.html

Not gonna lie gang, Elon may have accidentally created the perfect Twitter.

With the help of a single chrome extension that blocks all verified users, he has unwittingly developed a way for all the people you don't want to see to self-select into your block list.

Instantly all the nazis and right wingers and Elon fans and racists have blocked themselves on my behalf, as well as all advertisements.

Twitter is actually pretty rad now that people have shadowblocked themselves.

@Popehat

Dominion was responsible for saving Dominion
And we the people are responsible for saving democracy

@CarveHerName Katherine's own retelling of the day is fascinating https://kathrineswitzer.com/1967-boston-marathon-the-real-story/

@mcnado

Stop Treating AI Models Like People!

No, they haven’t decided to teach themselves anything, they don’t love you back, and they still aren’t even a little bit sentient.

Sasha Luccioni and I have had enough of this nonsense & discuss in a joint essay:

https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/stop-treating-ai-models-like-people

Quote from article: Once the Nazis took power they banned books, outlawed drag shows and homosexuality, changed school curricula to remove mention of their atrocities in WWI, and rewrote election laws so they’d never again lose an election.

My thoughts: A whole bunch of people, myself included, started pointing out parallels between the Trump-era GOP and the Nazis well before he was elected. We were accused of employing hyperbole, and told to "give him a chance."

Well, just call me Cassandra ... because here we are.

Just. Like. I. Said. We. Would. Be.

https://open.substack.com/pub/thomhartmann/p/whats-behind-the-gops-war-against?r=1ekuyr&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

"Chatbots" on company websites are basically useless and clueless, and that's nothing new.

But don't you worry, soon they will all be integrated with ChatGPT. This will not make them less useless and clueless, but they will gain the ability to authoritatively gaslight you as well!

Progress!