chaosfrisur - Tumblr blog

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anyway I loved this thing so much pls renew

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Scientist bakes sourdough bread with yeast derived from 4500 year old Egyptian pottery

i'm losing my mind @ this thread......historie......

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vegans make peace with honey

no shut up do it

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Full view to find 4 hidden penguins on the royal penguin; and 4 hidden ducks on the royal duck! 

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Dyslexic adventures!

Follow me on WEBTOONS

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Okay, quick pinned post because my gardening blog is kinda dead and I cannot follow people from my sideblog: fandom stuff is over at @chaosheadspace.

Ty

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Are there any blue roses? Like real ones. Or do they just take the white, green, or red ones then paint them as blue?

no, blue roses don't occur in nature- but they're easy to make artificially. just place a cut white rose into blue-dyed water and wait a bit, and eventually the rose will be blue. also why did you ask me this

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ppl are so annoying “you can’t paint ur bedroom pink you’re an adult” i did not spend my entire life waiting to grow up and control my life to paint my bedroom beige

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AI & the society

As the WGA strike is still ongoing, I would like to discuss a few things regarding Artificial Intelligence, its role and impact in a society, why it is good that people and organised groups resist it, and finally what is feasible through resistance and what is not.

(My own expertise is mostly on military uses of AI, but the dual nature of AI, as well as the prevalence of private industries in the development and production of AI tech, make knowledge on the civilian uses of AI necessary)

Disclaimer before we begin: when I talk about AI and AI tech, I mean generally any AI-based technology, and will not distinguish between General AI or deep-learning networks etc. because it will take us an entire semester to go through all that.

Also, I will not speak on the algorithmic prejudices which plague AI, such as "feeding" AI with data that is biased against or in favour of certain groups. This is only a minor problem of AI, and I want to talk about general, societal lines. Let's go:

I have seen that some people who react to my WGA strike post say that they do not care, there is enough human-created material for them to enjoy in the near future. Well, I do not know how to tell you what you should care about other people, or the future. There will be a time that the endless recycling of art by AI - because let's not kid ourselves, AI does not "create", it shuffles around - will have the same problem as a limited genetic pool aka incest: stagnation, errors, halt to artistic expression. Even with new "human" art being fed to it, it will also be fed already existing AI art, and we have all already seen the errors I am referring to. How many fingers does a human have?

Some of you see art backwards. Art is not created for you, at least not in its purest form: it is an expression of the artist, of meaning and intent and symbolism. AI does not create meaning, because meaning does not exist in mathematical form. I don't care if STEM folks want to fight me on this, no matter how you wax philosophical about the "poetry" of math, at the end of the day equations do not carry meaning and intent and emotion. That is not to say that it is lesser, but it is simply something different.

Somebody else commented that AI will win anyway, so there is no point in fighting. This is the most difficult point to address: first off, it is always worth fighting against the things we perceive to be unjust. Don't you think there were people thinking that the fight to liberty, to vote, to live free was futile? And while yes, there is a worldwide trend of reverting back to the suppression of civil liberties, there is also the old Law principle that says: silence is acquiescence. This is even a concept in modern international law: you have to react to a pattern of behaviour, otherwise with continuous, unresisted use it becomes customary law, and therefore impossible to claim a right to reject it.

At the same time, we cannot ban AI. It is such a complex topic but it can be summed up as: can you ban the internet? You can restrict it, you can even restrict access to it, but as a technology it is impossible to simply take it out of existence by legislation alone. Not unless we are talking about a purely authoritarian society, 1984 style, but that is not what we are talking about here.

But, you will say, we have banned chemical weapons, so why not AI? Firstly, AI is not one single technology or weapon or system or platform. Your smartphone operates on AI. Most university networks have AI cyber defence. Everything that is a computer has some variety of an AI tech, although the levels of autonomy vary significantly (which is the major discussion in military AI). Secondly, you can clearly define what a chemical weapon is, by its composition, use, and intended purpose. AI tech is so deeply integrated to all other components of a system, that it is impossible to isolate and ban. And not desired: even art AI can have useful purposes, like helping victims of abuse or attack identify their attackers.

Which brings me to the second difficult point: AI is very useful. It helps us identify cancer cells faster and more accurately than humans, it can detect weather patterns and warn for disasters early. It can crunch data and calculate statistics which would take humans years to do. BUT WHAT MATTERS IS WHAT WE MAKE OF IT. There is a very important book in International Relations theory entitled "Anarchy is What States Make of It."

Which means that technology is what we make of it. Let's not fall prey to technological determinism (the approach that says that technology and science, once created and out there will run their own course, regardless of human intent and effort). If you have a knife, you can choose whether you wish to slice an apple, or stab someone with it. The knife itself did not make a choice, we humans with agency do.

Sentient AI, the major boner of silicon valley investors and tech bros is not something which will ever happen. Yes I can predict the future. AI simply works in a different way that human brain, and it is why we should focus on employing AI in areas that humans might lack or need an extra help, and away from purely human endeavours, like art and war.

Not to mention the myriad problems that sentient AI presents for legislation. This has been a matter of debate for international law and security scholars for a decade now: if an AI commits a crime, who is to be held responsible for it, and if the sentient AI knows what it is doing, should it be the one to be held responsible? How do you punish a sentient AI? Based on what legal or ethical system? What about human dignity, how do you enact transitional, reparatory, and reconciliatory justice for crimes committed by machines?

Now for the cynical part: industries are largely dictating the rules of the game. And it is a game where being a first mover gives you significant advantage. At the same time, a lot of it is rhetoric without substance: Russia has been claiming to have the latest, most advantaged AI and Autonomous Weapons technology, only to show how much of a colossal lie that was in their ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

So, what is the solution? As with any societal issue, there is no one single solution. But legislation is definitely a good place to start: chemical weapons might have been banned, and they might have been used regardless - which some claim that renders the whole banning effort futile - but the truth is that the fact that the few cases of use of chemical weapons are so well known and reported only shows that legislation works. Making something a norm, or indeed stopping it from being a norm, works.

So, keep fighting. Even if you personally do not care about writers or art or war, just remember that nothing of what I said is exclusive to these areas. Anything that is by and for humans can be under threat by AI, by corporate greed, by legislators in corporate pockets. Don't let them create holes in the wall of solidarity, even if they are not directly in front of your own lawn. Corporations and governments will still use them to tear down that wall.

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How do you preserve the food from your garden so it doesn't go bad before you can eat it?

You are wildly underestimating my ability to go fucking feral about fresh produce. I don't think I even brought snap peas into the house last year. Just ate them right off the vine.

Though I did end up freezing the strawberries/blue berries as they ripened, but even those were consumed within the week.

The only tough one was the potatoes, but that was resolved by just foisting potatoes on everyone I knew. Much more welcome than Zucchinis.

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my farm girl blues

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You don’t have to love your body