Dave T-W @davoloid@qoto.org
- Location
- Mostly London
- Pronouns (plz)
- he/him
Just another worried little citizen of this modern-day Pompeii. Techie at UCL, working on Process Automation with MS Power Platform. Scatterbrain, interested in education, languages, Space and lots of disparate things. sorry.
Keeping my space toots at @astrodad as an experiment in self-moderation :)
*Background banner is a photo Yorkshire flag in blue and white, in front of a classic bell tent, in a field of similar tents at a festival.
Joined Oct 2022
Dave T-W
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This is funny, but also actually a really bad sign for general enshittification of the web. The most alarming detail here is that Amazon is actually promoting the use of LLMs to create fake ad copy.
Dave T-W
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@Maxton it appears to work with German (https://cooked.wiki/new?url=http%3A%2F%2Femmikochteinfach.de%2Fklassische-rinderroulade%2F) and French (https://cooked.wiki/new?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.marmiton.org%2Frecettes%2Frecette_quiche-roquefort-et-poireaux_16147.aspx) recipies as well!
Dave T-W
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well said, I would add "any more"
it´s what you build when you are used to receiving a service instead of doing the work yourself.
those services show a complete lack of understanding in the value of the work.
Dave T-W
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Level 1 : the issue is that current tech world is dominated by kids doing a tantrum.
Level 2 : is the issue with the current patriarchal society that takes for granted women's work without never compensating ot as it should, hence believing all of this caring work should be done for free, hence targeting very low fees for substitute services.
Dave T-W
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Uber is what you build when your mum won't give you rides
Door dash is what you build when your mum won't cook your dinner
ChatGPT is what you build when your mum won't do your homework
Dave T-W
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An electrician had to cut a hole in our drywall and instead of just patching it up, my wife decided to make a little scene with miniatures embedded in the wall. 😂🖼️🤯
Dave T-W
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The role of human curators is not just to select and present content but to imbue the digital landscape with a sense of reliability and authenticity that only human insight can provide. In an age where technology can easily mislead or overwhelm, trusting in human curation becomes not a preference but a necessity for preserving the quality of the information that shapes our understanding of the world.
https://joanwestenberg.com/blog/curation-is-the-last-best-hope-of-intelligent-discourse
Event better - tried the same query via #microsoft #Copilot, which said "Can't find anyone who worked on both. Have a look at IMDB yourself." Well that told this lazy sack of meat who's boss. 5/5 (end)
So I tried again:
"Compare the cast and crew for the TV shows "The Americans" and "For All Mankind". List the individuals who have worked on both shows and their roles on each."
Result: Same BS answer, in a 2 point list format. Didn't even recognise the cast members that were in both.
"While there might be other individuals who have worked behind the scenes on both shows, these are two prominent figures who have contributed significantly to both "The Americans" and "For All Mankind.""
4/n
Claiming that Joel Weisberg (The Americans) and Ronald D Moore (FAM) worked on each others' shows, despite no record of this being the case, ChatGPT conitnued:
"These individuals brought their expertise from "The Americans" to contribute to the development and production of "For All Mankind," enriching the storytelling and execution of the series."
3/n
So my initial query was:
Which members of the "For All Mankind" production team also worked on the TV show "The Americans"? Include writers, directors, producers, casting directors, cinematography and production designers.
Not hard, you would imagine. A simple cross-match of wikipedia or IMDB. But no! 2/n
Just threw a fairly simple query at #ChatGPT and it came up with straight out lies, and then *doubled down on the lies*.
There's a few cast members in For All Mankind who were also in The Americans. It got me wondering if the visual style, production design and the timeline continuity was due to crew, writers or production team in common. 1/n
Dave T-W
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A lot of people have responded to my Duolingo post with things like "Never work for free," and "I would never donate my time to a corporation.” Which I completely agree with.
But here's the thing about Duolingo and all of the other companies like it. You already work for them. You just don’t know it.
On Duo, I thought I was learning a language. Participating in the community by helping other learners and building resources seemed like part of the process.
Luis Von Ahn, the CEO of Duolingo, was one of the creators of CAPTCHA, which was originally supposed to stop bot spam by getting a human to do a task a machine couldn’t do. In 2009 Google bought CAPTCHA and used it to get humans to proofread the books they were digitising (without permission from the authors of those books btw). So in order to access much of the web, people had to work for Google. Most of them didn’t know they were working for Google - they thought they were visiting websites.
This is how they get you. They make it seem like they’re giving you something valuable (access to a website, tools to learn a language), while they’re actually taking something from you (your skills, your time, your knowledge, your labour). They make you think they’re helping you, but really you're helping them (and they’re serving you ads while you do it).
Maybe if people had known what CAPTCHA was really for they would’ve done it anyway. Maybe I still would’ve done all that work for Duo if I’d known it would one day disappear from the web and become training data for an LLM ...
... Or maybe I would’ve proofread books for Project Gutenberg, or donated my time to citizen science projects, or worked on an accessibility app, or a million other things which genuinely improve people’s lives and the quality of the web. I didn’t get an informed choice. I got lured into helping a tech company become profitable, while they made the internet a shittier place to be.
How many things are you doing on the web every day which are actually hidden work for tech companies? Probably dozens, or hundreds. We all are. That’s why this is so insidious. It’s everywhere. The tech industry is built on free labour. (And not just free – we often end up paying for the end results of our own work, delivered back to us in garbled, enshittified form).
And it’s a problem that’s only getting worse with AI. Is that thoughtful answer you gave someone on reddit or Mastodon something that will stay on the web for years, helping people in future with the same problem? Or is it just grist for the LLMs?
Do you really get a choice about it?
Dave T-W
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The Gardeners of the Galaxy Mission Report is a free weekly newsletter covering topics related to growing plants in space.
You can read online or subscribe to have it delivered directly to your inbox.
This week we've got a new UF Space Mission Institute, an electrically conductive "eSoil" for hydroponics, plant microbiomes and Bulgarian-style space yoghurt!
https://emmadoughty.substack.com/p/gardeners-of-the-galaxy-mission-report-5ff
Dave T-W
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As the saying goes, hardware is hard.
Whether these ai products make it into end users' hands is not guaranteed. And if they do, their functionality could bear little resemblance to the hyped-up product keynotes we’re currently graced with.
Dave T-W
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@davoloid @pluralistic @ZachWeinersmith
Realistically 99.9...9% of us wouldn't get a look in even if we wanted to take the risk. So acknowledging the vast amount of work to be done makes it _more_ interesting for normal people - we have a much higher chance of being involved in the really interesting - for so many fields - work that can happen in the near future.
Dave T-W
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Long thread/eof
With *City on Mars*, the Weinersmiths aren't making the case for giving up on space, nor are they trying to strip space of its romance and excitement. They're trying to get us to focus on the beneficial, exciting, *serious* space science we can do *right now*, not just because it's attainable and useful - but because it is a necessary precondition for any actual space settlement in the distant future.
eof/
Dave T-W
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🧵 1/2
Social media musings:
After reading through some lengthy thread/replies.
When a person runs out of points to argue/debate their side I don't understand the need to begin throwing insults like,
"You're a Nazi, sheep, communist, socialist...." the list goes on.
Why don't you simply admit you've run out of counter-points?
It's really *not* that difficult to withdraw respectfully from a debate while retaining your sense of dignity.
A simple,
"You've made good points as have I so...
Dave T-W
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Såatte...
"Last year, Big Tech companies (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft) received about $3.04 billion in fines for breaking laws on both sides of the Atlantic. As of seven days and three hours into 2024, they had already earned enough revenue to pay it all off."
Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines | Proton
https://proton.me/blog/big-tech-2023-fines-vs-revenue
Dave T-W
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As America is debating what to do with Donald Trump, the Beer Hall Putsch seems to offer a crucial warning: When extremists who attack the republic aren’t held to account, they will destroy democracy. Just a few years after the failed coup, Hitler was installed as Chancellor. 5/
- Location
- Mostly London
- Pronouns (plz)
- he/him
Just another worried little citizen of this modern-day Pompeii. Techie at UCL, working on Process Automation with MS Power Platform. Scatterbrain, interested in education, languages, Space and lots of disparate things. sorry.
Keeping my space toots at @astrodad as an experiment in self-moderation :)
*Background banner is a photo Yorkshire flag in blue and white, in front of a classic bell tent, in a field of similar tents at a festival.
Joined Oct 2022
