ABrockwell @aebrockwell@qoto.org

Put this up on Twitter over the weekend, but I guess it should go here, too:

Okay, I read it so you don't have to. Here's a reaction thread to OpenAI / Sam Altman's blog post from Friday "Planning for AGI and beyond":

https://openai.com/blog/planning-for-agi-and-beyond/

From the get-go this is just gross. They think they are really in the business of developing/shaping "AGI". And they think they are positioned to decide what "benefits all of humanity".

>>

I love this piece! My favorite advice from it: “Keep an up-to-date and working bullshit detector somewhere handy – you will need it many times” 😂

‘Keep your eyes open – and leap into the future’: 100 centenarians’ 100 tips for a life well lived | #Ageing | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/feb/18/100-centenarians-100-tips-for-a-life-well-lived

This idea that somehow search engines _can_ arbitrate "truth" is just so… not how any of this works or could even conceivably work.

The reason that search engines "backstop" with wikipedia is because wikipedia is a giant curated and mostly-audience-appropriate collection of knowledge.

Knowing what is "true" is so incredibly nontrivial.

The more I think about generative AI, the more I realize the importance of editors in the future. We assumed that information gatekeepers were a problem the internet was solving but in a new age of content floods, proper gatekeepers who vet whether information is true or not are going to be worth their weight in gold.

That is, the very people in charge of building #ChatGPT want to believe SO BADLY that they are gods, creating thinking entities, that they have lost all perspective about what a text synthesis machine actually is.

I wish I could just laugh at this, but it's problematic because these people living in a fantasy world are also influencing policy decisions while also stirring up the current #AIhype frenzy, which also makes it more difficult to design and pass effective policy.

On this one year anniversary of the war in Ukraine, let us call out and condemn the apologists and cowards who would give Putin free reign to invade and destroy other free nations and to slaughter their citizens.

They are on our some of our “news” networks and even in the halls of Congress. They are a threat to liberty, freedom and democracy for all of us.

This war must be won on the home front, too. We must continue military aid until the war is won.

Never back down! Slava Ukraini! 🇺🇦

Florida’s bill to “reform” #highed is right out of a fascist playbook. Attacks on education are attacks on democracy.

“House Bill 999 proposes leaving all faculty hiring to boards of trustees, allowing a faculty member’s tenure to be reviewed “at any time,” and removing majors or minors in subjects like critical race theory and gender studies. It would also prohibit spending on activities that promote diversity, equity and inclusion and create new general education requirements.”

#law

There are people who want a big house, a fast car, and a lot of money. And others just want a little house in the woods to be as far away from such people as possible.

Virtual Reality in the 1800s

#Video #TunnelBook

Malcolm X was assassinated 58 years ago today. This remains as one of my favorite pieces of wisdom he shared. And now, they're making it illegal to even claim the knife is there.

"If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won't even admit the knife is there." — Malcolm X

Rep. Barry Moore (R-AL) introduced a bill (cosponsored by Boebert & Santos) making the AR-15 the “National Gun of America.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has a bill to award killer Kyle Rittenhouse with the Congressional Gold Medal.

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) says Ukraine is not our friend and Russia is not our enemy.

The GOP is far, far too extreme to govern.

"Woke mind virus" is how billionaires describe the idea that you should give even the tiniest bit of a shit about how your actions will affect other people.

Rightwing extremists advocating for the dissolution of the country is neither new nor surprising.

The fact that such extremists have risen to the center of conservative politics and continue to be elevated within the Republican Party, however, is indicative of an acute threat.

Today is the Day of Remembrance for the Japanese American community. 81 years ago today, when I was just a boy of four, FDR signed Executive Order 9066, setting in motion the evacuation of people of Japanese descent from the West Coast and our long years of internment inside ten barbed wire prison camps.

We must never let such a thing happen again in America, and and we must strive everywhere to prevent the forced relocation and mass incarceration of innocent people. #NeverForget #NeverAgain

I don’t know understand the attraction of being able to talk to computers using breezy casual conversational language; I’ve been telling these little digital bastards what to do for decades using extremely precise formalised language and they still get it wrong

"Fearing an all-out ratings crisis, #FoxNews executives “made an explicit decision to push narratives to entice their audience back”...

notable from the filing? Fox Corp. founder Rupert Murdoch noting the election-fraud #lies are “terrible stuff damaging everybody” and that it is “very hard to credibly claim foul everywhere.”"...

Think about that statement — the top official at Fox News choosing falsehood over fact, for the sake of ratings."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/17/fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-texts-election-claims/

#Fox #Lawsuit #Journalism

Love to see how mad the Onion is here. More folks should be this mad about this.

If you want a really solid critique, it's actually here too. They put their *all* into this piece and while it's sarcastic as usual, it really does cover *so many* aspects of how horrible the current trend of "news" in this space has been.

Go read it:
https://www.theonion.com/it-is-journalism-s-sacred-duty-to-endanger-the-lives-of-1850126997

Just leaving this out here for any technology writers that need a reminder

#ChatGPT #OpenAI #BingAI

https://www.theverge.com/23604075/ai-chatbots-bing-chatgpt-intelligent-sentient-mirror-test

Being trans doesn't make me depressed. Being dehumanized, degraded, and debated does. I'm on the edge and I just wish that the world cared enough to stop torturing us with this.

Just realized it's now been two months since I was locked out of Twitter for factual reporting. I could delete the (non-rule-breaking) tweet and go back but, to be honest, I just don't feel any real desire to. It's a social network built for one, and not a place where you can trust that real reporting won't be punished on a whim. Every tweet supports a place that's hostile to what we do. Why enable that?