ABrockwell @aebrockwell@qoto.org

I posted a trascript of my conversation with ChatGPT, the best conversation anyone will ever have with an AI. https://smaldino.com/wp/how-many-potatoes-could-fit-in-a-pair-of-pants/

Let 2023 be the year of accountability.

WE DID IT! The Texas Observer will remain open!

Our board just voted to rescind both the layoffs and the closure. We'll have more news soon, but we believe this is the start of a very positive transformation at our publication—and you were a huge part of it. THANK YOU! You proved to the world that #TexasNeedsAnObserver!

https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-observer-no-layoffs-remains-open-board-vote/

#Fediverse #Mastodon #WeWin

I love how Barnes & Noble specifically promoted some of these "banned" books. Every library and bookstore should do this.

#fascism #books #ChildrensBooks #BookBanning #FightFascism

Now that ChatGPT had made solutions cheap, and disincentivized problem solving and creativity, how will we cultivate original thought?

Asimov dramatized the question in his novella Profession

https://www.inf.ufpr.br/renato/profession.html

#ChatGPT #creativity #education #Asimov

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
~ Isaac Asimov

Elon Musk seems relentlessly, comically hellbent to prove my point on the Myth of the Secret Genius. https://brianklaas.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-the-secret-genius

A photographer took a picture just as this couple threw ashes into a river.
He asked who it was.
As they answered their dog.
The photographer asked for permission to edit their photo and this was the result.

My colleague and coauthor Jevin West has been warning me for years about the mess that we would face as #GPT and other text-based generative AI matured.

I was not sufficiently concerned.

I just realized why.

I thought of them as tools for deception, and while they offered some advantages for creating disinformation at scale, human beings are quite adapt at creating bullshit on their own.

What I missed was that people would WANT to consult them, knowingly, despite all their issues.

Most folks I know who are worried about AI aren’t worried about these programs becoming self aware and oppressing us. That’s not a thing. We’re worried about all the ways these systems will ramp up existing inequalities and further obliterate our shared reality as human beings. That’s already happening.

Americans Tommie Smith (center) and and John Carlos (rear), and Australian Peter Norman (front) during the medal ceremony for the 200m dash at the 1968 Olympic games.

National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington DC.

'I have long argued that fact-checking is anachronistic and should be abolished in favor of much more aggressive reality-checking and gaslight-fighting in the main news columns.'

“Fact-checking” is a feeble, inadequate way to respond to racist, antisemitic incitement

https://presswatchers.org/2023/03/fact-checking-is-a-feeble-inadequate-way-to-respond-to-racist-antisemitic-incitement/

Recently here has been a lot of excitement around this paper by Piantadosi claiming that Chomsky's approach to language is now refuted by large language models (https://lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/007180). And I am quite sympathetic to this idea, so I decided to give it a read. But... am I the only only one to find this paper deeply flawed? (1/4)

Amazing how many brilliant scientists will look at an LLM "passing" a standardized test and think, "wow, this computer is very smart" and not "standardized tests are very bad at measuring intelligence"

@freemo it took me a long time to choose a server! I eventually gravitated to qoto because I liked the description of it, it sounded like a place that respected free speech and was populated by people who largely wanted to do good and discuss their academic work.

Seems like I made a good choice!

I wrote something. It’s abou #AI #ChatGPT and #BingChat replacing writers.

It’s not going to happen. Have a read if you have time. I included Bing’s amazing Cyberpunk story

https://significantbullet.co/ai-writing

Tons of names in my phone are "Kenny Landlord" or "Mike Electric" or "Pete Do Not Answer" and just realized this is how anglo surnames have always worked

#ChatGPT and the like aren’t even close to thinking.

“The tendency to view machines as people and become attached to them, combined with machines being developed with humanlike features, points to real risks of psychological entanglement with technology.”

https://theconversation.com/ai-isnt-close-to-becoming-sentient-the-real-danger-lies-in-how-easily-were-prone-to-anthropomorphize-it-200525

#AI #Technology

No, no, no, God damnit, Washington Post, this is not a "new normal." The point you should be making is just how abnormal this is. But instead you quite literally normalize the criminal running for president.
Trump campaign prepares for ‘new normal’: Running under indictment https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/21/trump-2024-ny-case-republicans/