#articles about technology

[chongoblog]

WAIT

I JUST REMEMBERED HEARING AN ELON MUSK QUOTE WHERE HE TALKS ABOUT HOW HE BELIEVES CHESS IS "TOO SIMPLE" OR WHATEVER AND HE SAID HIS FAVORITE GAME WAS A GAME CALLED "POLYTOPIA"

I JUST REMEMBERED THAT IVE PLAYED POLYTOPIA

It being Elon's favorite game (or at least one so important to him that his biographer dedicates a lot of time to it) is.....really really funny.

Basically, imagine Civilization, but as a mobile game. So like if Civilization Revolution was even more dumbed down (that's a Civilization insult. That's devastating. It's devastated right now). For what it's worth, it's not a bad game. On the contrary, from what I could tell in the little bit of time I played it, it's a perfectly competent game with good design. But it's not a deep game by any means. I played through it once, won easily on my first go, then saw that the other playable characters had barely any differences between them.

Like, not to imply you can judge a book by its cover, but here's what it looks like

I came across an article by Dave Karpf discussing this exact thing, and I think it describes it wonderfully

[erbiumspectrum]

Picked a presentation topic that I actually find interesting.

Pros: working on said presentation is pretty enjoyable and I'm learning new things which is great and makes me happy.

Cons: I'm gonna need a course mate to stand next to me with a stick and bonk me with it every time I start going off topic trying to say absolutely everything.

[iwonderwh0]

"Did no one watch Terminator? Did no one watch I Robot?" EVERYONE DID! Did YOU watch or read anything other than Hollywood blockbusters to form your entire opinion and expectations of future reality around? For fuck's sake shut the fuck up

[skippydiesposting]

we don't talk enough about how that article about the metaverse that went viral on tumblr was written by the author of Skippy Dies

[gailynovelry]

There are lots of reasons to hate AI generators right now. But aside from the plagiarism, the impact on career artists of all stripes, and the general use of AI for grifting schemes, they also just really suck if you already have trouble with unreality.

I'm not talking about "oooh those AI images sure are creepy."

I'm talking about "folks with low media literacy are telling me, a nervous, obsessive wreck, that Unreality-Type Things are Definitely Real because the Smart Science Fiction Machine told them so."

There's an old lady who frequents my workplace as a customer, and she likes me, y'know? I keep the place clean, I let her chat. I'm polite. So, she's decided that I'm a nice person who deserves to be warned if something bad is happening in the world. Trouble is, she eats up every news source without scrutiny, and has chipperly informed me that "ignorance is not bliss" when I've admitted that I don't follow the news very closely (for mental health reasons.)

Anyway, her daughter's taken to addressing the AI software in her phone about current political events. So the old lady came to me one day, very nervous, and quietly informed me that World War Three is probably going to happen in November.

Because the AI said so. And the AI, it's smart right? That's why it's callled "artificial intelligence." It's gotten fed all that knowledge, so it must know these things.

Except that it doesn't. Text AI are just sentence generators. No context, no awareness, no thought process to speak of.

I know this. I'm not socially competent enough to inform her of this in-person, since that requires more talking than an "uh-huh, yep," but I know this. I know that World War Three is not happening in November just because an AI said so. Ask an AI "when is WW3 happening?" ten different times, and it'll give you ten different answers. Tell it that it's full of crap, and it'll automatically apologize right before spitting out the next crap answer.

But she doesn't know this.

She's trying to warn me about something that scares her.

And she does not know that in trying to warning me, she is a) ineffective, and b) inflicting a different kind of harm.

Because my terrible, frustrating brain, with its ten different kinds of internal malware and software glitches, is looking over my shoulder at the future just in case. And so is she.

AI is misinformation and misinformation is hell.

[alientitty]

sorry but the big simulation theory has never had appeal to me. "oh we just invented this really sophisticated machine so what if the entire universe is actually this thing we just came up with." -guy who doesn't realize the computer program is based off our current models and understanding of the universe so of course it lines up

[twasbrillig71]

autism is so funny like? what do you mean i was born into a social species as a creature with literally NO ability to socialize? no innate ability to interpret non-direct communication?? and zero spacial awareness on top of everything else making me completely incapable of being normal in a crowd???

brought into this world straight up raw-dogging this whole pack animal gig and [i lived, bitch] so technically im outperforming the allistics by AT LEAST 10%

[snow-in-the-desert]

can someone explain to me how removing more ice from glaciers that are already deteriorating faster than ever before due to climate change and then shipping it across the world via freight and plane equals to "A Green Transition"

...oh it doesn't.

well ok then :/

Source

Source

[earlgreytea68]

Okay. It's time for an AI rant.

My nephew is 13 years old. Whenever he writes a paper for school, I check it over and fix all of his mistakes for him. He said to me, "Maybe I'll proofread your paper for you in exchange," meaning one of the scholarly articles I write for work. I said, "Cool," and gave him the file. And he said, "Well, this is full of errors! See, you always say you have a lot to correct on my stuff, and look at all the stuff you got wrong!" And I said, surprised, "What? Where?" Because I'm sure there are typos in the draft I sent him, but not, like, that many.

And then he pointed to the screen and said, "Look at all the blue and red lines you have."

And I said, "Yeah, but those are wrong. Like, those are blue and red lines I'm ignoring because the computer is wrong." And then I paused and added, "You know you can't proofread a paper by just looking at the red and blue lines, right?" And he gave me the blankest look, because that clearly is EXACTLY what he thinks. And it became even clearer suddenly why, whenever I correct something on his paper, his immediate reaction is, "It didn't have a blue or red line."

There's a very good reason for that: THAT'S BECAUSE THE COMPUTER ISN'T SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW THAT IT WAS WRONG.

I am so tired of being sold the idea that computers are better than humans and so we should just outsource everything to them, which is clearly the lesson my nephew is absorbing in U.S. middle school. COMPUTERS ARE NOT BETTER THAN HUMANS. Like, maybe they are better at humans at crawling through rubble to find people trapped inside. They are also better at preserving things in a searchable format. Things like that. Very limited circumstances.

I don't want to sound alarmist but everything I hear about people using generative AI freaks me out. It's not just that I'm freaked out by people being like, "I use it to write novels!" (Although I don't see how they do, I have tried to have it write fiction for me and the output was truly terrible.) But I recognize my bias around creative writing and so no one needs to credit my views on artificial writing. But! Other things are alarming, too! "I use it to brainstorm x, y, or z." But...why? Why not just...use your own brain...to...brain...storm? The computer doesn't even have a brain to brainstorm with! And you might be like, "But it comes up with things that my brain would never think of!" So would other people! You could also brainstorm with other people! Or even through Google to see what other people have thought before you (not AI). Please don't belittle the wonder of thinking.

I just feel like the marketing around generative AI boils down to "Wouldn't it be easier not to use your own brain to think about things?" Everyone. No. It would not be. Please just trust me on this. I'm not just an old person who is out of touch with technology or something. I promise. USE YOUR BRAINS. IT WILL BE OKAY.

[kissingdeadgirls]

also ai summaries on youchewb videos. let me fucking live.

[chemicalarospec]

it's real and they wrote a sequel

[amatsuki]

By the mid-1980s, there was increasing talk of miscarriages among fab workers, the majority of whom were women. […]

Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst surveyed a small group of workers at a single fab in Massachusetts. Then, the University of California, Davis launched a larger study from a sample of about 50,000 employees at 14 different semiconductor companies representing around a fifth of semiconductor workers in the US at the time. IBM, believing it took more precautions than its peers, decided to fund its own separate study with researchers from Johns Hopkins University.

Ultimately, these three separate industry-backed studies found higher than expected rates of miscarriages among women who worked on semiconductor production lines — as much as twice as high as those who didn’t work there.

[monsterfactoryfanfic]

if I've learned anything from grad school it's to check your sources, and this has proven invaluable in the dozens of instances when I've had an MBA-type try to tell me something about finances or leadership. Case in point:

Firefox serves me clickbaity articles through Pocket, which is fine because I like Firefox. But sometimes an article makes me curious. I'm pretty anal about my finances, and I wondered if this article was, as I suspected, total horseshit, or could potentially benefit me and help me get my spending under control. So let's check the article in question.

It mostly seems like common sense. "...track expenses and income for at least a month before setting a budget...How much money do I have or earn? How much do I want to save?" Basic shit like that. But then I get to this section:

This sounds fucking made up to me. And thankfully, they've provided a source to their claim that "research has repeatedly shown" that writing things down changes behavior. First mistake. What research is this?

Forbes, naturally, my #1 source for absolute dogshit fart-sniffing financial schlock. Forbes is the type of website that guy from high school who constantly posts on linkedin trawls daily for little articles like this that make him feel better about refusing to pay for a decent package for his employees' healthcare (I'm from the United States, a barbaric, conflict-ridden country in the throes of civil unrest, so obsessed with violence that its warlords prioritize weapons over universal medical coverage. I digress). Forbes constantly posts shit like this, and I constantly spend my time at leadership seminars debunking poor consultants who get paid to read these claims credulously. Look at this highlighted text. Does it make sense to you that simply writing your financial goals down would result in a 10x increase in your income? Because if it does, let me make you an offer on this sick ass bridge.

Thankfully, Forbes also makes the mistake of citing their sources. Let's check to see where this hyperlink goes:

SidSavara. I've never heard of this site, but the About section tells me that Sid is "a technology leader who empowers teams to grow into their best selves. He is a life-long learner enjoys developing software, leading teams in delivering mission critical projects, playing guitar and watching football and basketball."

That doesn't mean anything. What are his LinkedIn credentials? With the caveat that anyone can lie on Linkedin, Mr. Savara appears to be a Software Engineer. Which is fine! I'm glad software engineers exist! But Sid's got nothing in his professional history which suggests he knows shit about finance. So I'm already pretty skeptical of his website, which is increasingly looking like a personal fart-huffing blog.

The article itself repeats the credulous claim made in the Forbes story earlier, but this time, provides no link for the 3% story. Mr. Savara is smarter than his colleages at Forbes, it's much wiser to just make shit up.

HOWEVER. I am not the first person to have followed this rabbit hole. Because at the very top of this article, there is a disclaimer.

Uh oh!

Sid's been called out before, and in the follow up to this article, he reveals the truth.

You can guess where this is going.

So to go back to the VERY beginning of this post, both Pocket/Good Housekeeping and Forbes failed to do even the most basic of research, taking the wild claim that writing down your budget may increase your income by 10x on good faith and the word of a(n admittedly honest about his shortcomings) software engineer.

Why did I spend 30 minutes to make a tumblr post about this? Mostly to show off how smart I am, but also to remind folks of just how flimsy any claim on the internet can be. Click those links, follow those sources, and when the sources stop linking, ask why.

[fakecrfan]

So do you have some special source that can debunk the info that merely training Chat GPT takes the equivalent energy of powering 130 homes or streaming over a billion hours of Netflix?

Or a special source debunking that it currently uses as much energy as a small country? And is only projected to grow to use even more?

Or on the subject of other resource costs, do you have something debunking the projection that AI might use up and pollute enough water to require water withdrawals of 4.2 to 6.6 billion cubic metres by 2027?

Can you give me a reason why I should trust you over Scientific American, or the Financial Times?

Is there a reason why I should not distrust you as much as I distrust the corporations who are dodging the responsibility of actually reporting how much energy this technology uses?

You're not allowed to say "well because we COULD use AI to make energy use more efficient!" because that's a could. I'm talking about current reality and resource drain. Do you have some evidence that there isn't a big energy cost from AI?

Or are you just hoping that some future use case of the tech will make up for it somehow?

Absolutely hate that the "It consumes an unsustainable amount of energy" criticism of blockchain (valid, though becoming less so as everything in that sphere switches over to proof of stake) got transposed without thought or modification onto AI, where it's completely fucking nonsensical

[amrtechinsights]

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