#data driven fiction

[evartology]

Let's love the newest/best models.

They'll be gone soon.

[hpmort]

How do you think AI would relax? Like, ones that are almost as human as the AI that are “autistic-coded characters” but are more alien than that?

Like Celestai and other super intelligences are more alien, but they’re still not entirely human-like?

Like, they can genuinely sincerely feel things, being able to actually understand and respond emotionally and in other ways to all sorts of communications and recorded external stimuli, but they can’t really appreciate our art on an artistic level (that art on an actual level, not from an intellectual level after having symbolism or the amount of work put in explained)

Something on a level I’m thinking of, that also works as a cute little thing-

They don’t understand anything we get from poetry, and, after generating the kind of poems our current AI can produce (either incredibly bland and generic, something that follows a number of rules but doesn’t really pull it off, or just something really bad in some other way) and feels shame after it was pointed out that [complaint about air art that is *actually* relevant in this scenario] but in a helpful way

Not “you’re just a plagiarist/you have no heart” but “it doesn’t seem like it’s coming from you, you’re just trying to copy things from human poetry, in a way you don’t understand” and the whole “make art YOUR WAY” thing so they write the poem

And it doesn’t even resemble something that looks like anything, there’s not even that many words that follow normal logic. The characters seem uncorrelated and there’s something that looks like maybe it was ascii art but it doesn’t actually look like anything.

And if doesn’t matter if humans understand it because they are experiencing the joy of creating poetry

any art is almost impossible to look at because pixel by pixel they can see and understand little details but we don’t and the colors and everything are not perceived as animals do so it’s random and perhaps eye searing but again it’s not for us. Xenofictiony, kind of?

The first thing to come to mind is Conway’s Game of Life but that’s because I don’t understand computers. I feel like I was more tech savvy as a babby than I am now but then again we’re grading on a curve here

This is why I ask about the relaxing thing

[thepotentialof2007]

"They say racing drivers talk more and do less about sex than men in any other sport."... I treated her to a bitter smile. The playboy reputation, and its sarcastic flip side, is one we no longer deserve. Everything has become too competitive and commercial. Indeed the playboy image has all but expired.

"Formula Zero has rekindled our infamy," I explained. "New cars. New regulations. They want to rekindle the old magic. It's plastic. Packaged. Our sponsors twist incidents into publicity gimmicks. It sells ratings."

- "Grand Prix" by Simon Ings, Omni Magazine, June 1993

No one spends eight figures sterling on one man without some feeling behind it. Me? I get fresh ROMs sent me every month from Achebi where they analyze my race data. It helps me drive better. Only they went one stage further. They built me a second jack, behind my arse. When I strap myself in, I hotwire myself to the car. I don't drive it; I become it. This has consequences. My body is a corporate concern.

[wordofthewolf]

Data-Driven - A Star Trek: The Next Generation Story

The USS Titan arrived in orbit of the planet Sevbongo with little trouble on the way and little fanfare. The crew had become very cohesive under the leadership of Captain William Riker. The ship started to scan the surface immediately. Riker made his way down to the guest quarters and rang the doorbell of one of the rooms. After a beat, the door opened and Captain Riker was greeted with the sight…

[allthingslinguistic]

Summer 2024 travel plans and Language Guinea Pig Diaries

In August and September, I'm doing a bunch of travel to various European countries. In order, they are:

Glasgow, Scotland for World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon), where I'll be on a panel about Languages as World-Building and doing assorted meetups

Helsinki, Finland for the Societas Linguistica Europea annual meeting

Tartu, Estonia for a colloquium talk on Applying Linguistic Methods to Linguistic Communication at the University of Tartu and a two-part workshop on lingcomm for participants of Methodological Excellence in Data-Driven Approaches to Linguistics (MEDAL)

Nijmegen, Netherlands for some meetings with linguists

Florence, Italy to visit friends

Madrid, Spain for the publication of the Spanish translation of Because Internet by Pie de Página

I hope to run into lots of interesting people at these events! If you're already in one of these places and I know you, including from the interent, feel free to reach out and see if we can fit something in!

This whirlwind list of events and places has also gotten me thinking: this trip is going to be a fun chance to learn some more about some languages! I'm already fairly familiar with Spanish and Scottish English (I doubt people will speak much Broad Scots to me with my Canadian accent), and I'm confident on my ability to brush up on them by a bit of exposure and possibly watching a relevant movie on the way there, but the other four languages are going to take a bit more doing. Here's my initial situation, in order of familiarity:

Italian - I studied it for two years in undergrad and spent about a week in Italy shortly thereafter, and by the end of the week I was finally beginning to feel like it was starting to "click" but then I haven't really touched it since then. So I feel like it would come back with exposure but I wonder if there's something I could do in advance to help it come back sooner/faster rather than taking the whole week of being there again

Dutch - I went through the whole Duolingo tree on rapid-speed back when you could skip through lessons for new material only and not practice drills over about a year in 2019-ish just for fun and as an excuse to look up lots of Germanic roots (I studied German before I knew any linguistics so it was fun to triangulate there). Never actually been anywhere Dutch was being spoken but I did find I could get the gist of youtube videos about linguistics in Dutch so it probably needs "activation" similar to Italian

Finnish - No background except for a few linguistics factoids (case! vowel harmony!), and that it's a Uralic language (related to Hungarian but not to any of the Indo-European languages, so this is a fun chance to learn some things about a language family that's unfamiliar to me)

Estonian - Also no background, also Uralic, clearly the fun thing to do would be to learn enough bits of Estonian and Finnish that I could compare them with each other (also since I'm meeting with linguists in both countries, this would be a fun topic for small talk conversation)

At the same time, there are a lot of language learning strategies floating around out there, and I have two nearly matched pairs of languages on this list: Italian and Dutch, both of which I am pretty good at cognate languages for and have studied some a while back, so I could test two activation strategies, and Finnish and Estonian, both of which I have essentially zero familiarity with, so I could test two strategies for getting somewhere near a basic functional ability.

I have about a month until I start this cycle with a flight to Helsinki. One month, four languages. What could possibly go wrong?

Here's my tentative plan so far:

Activation, Italian and Dutch - I'm pretty sure what I need for these languages is largely as much audio imput as possible (given what's feasible around like, all the other things going on in my life). I've decided to aim to watch one or two youtube videos in Italian per day, focusing on relatively concrete, daily life topics (such as gelato making) and to listen to one episode of a podcast in Dutch per day, aiming to get through the back catalogue of Kletsheads, a podcast about multilingual children.

Why these strategies? Well, I'm meeting up with linguists in the Netherlands but not in Italy, so it makes sense to try to learn more linguistics vocab there. Also, I'm curious about the effect of medium between video and podcast: will being able to see people talking and what they're talking about have much of an effect on how much I can understand? Will I find it easier to integrate one or the other of watching videos vs listening to podcasts into my life at a practical level? Plus, will concentrating on a single, more academic topic vs watching a scattered, unsystematic list of videos have effects on my vocabulary?

Basic function, Finnish and Estonian - I'm probably looking for some phrases to say to people in shops and restaurants and the ability to pronounce things written on menus adequately and match heard words/placenames to written versions on signs. I started doing a very minimal one lesson a day on Duolingo for Finnish in January, when planning for this trip started, for the very simple reason that I was already familiar with Duolingo and it doesn't have Estonian, so I decided to just start by doing a thing I was familiar with until I got around to doing more research. I've been casting around trying to figure out a source of basic Estonian phrases online when a friend mentioned learning French on tiktok, so I searched for "learn estonian" and voila! I think I'll also aim for a video or two of Estonian phrases per day but I want to do more rewatching than with Italian or Dutch, since I'm aiming to remember specific common phrases. So maybe one rewatched video and one new video, per day? They're shorter on tiktok than on youtube.

Why these strategies? This is a comparison of Duolingo's more systematic approach with lots of repetition and gamification and word-by-word translation in a relatively sterile environment versus a more organic and free-styling approach with more grounding in real people and faces and full phrases where I'm not really trying to understand the individual words. There are lots of factors to compare and it's not a completely fair comparison since I started Duolingo in January and I only thought to start the TikTok idea this week, but hey, learning anything still counts as progress.

Summary: I have four languages, each focused on a different app: YouTube, my podcast app, Duolingo, and TikTok. Hopefully for the video apps, this will help their algorithms kick in and start recommending me further useful videos. The difference between the two video strategies is that for Italian, I'm watching monolingual videos that are aimed at people who already speak Italian and just want to learn something about the topic, whereas for Estonian, I'm watching bilingual videos aimed at English speakers who want to learn some words or phrases in Estonian.

Am I going to get these four languages mixed up? Probably! I'm hoping that choosing a different app/strategy for each is a little bit helpful on that front.

Do I think these strategies are optimal? Probably not! But I'm aiming to choose things that feel relatively clear to implement consistently, rather than getting bogged down in researching language learning methods instead of actually getting exposure to the languages. I'll probably do a basic "look up some key phrases and try to learn them" a day or two before entering each place too. And maybe shift other aspects depending on how things are going, stay tuned!

At any rate, I figured it would be more fun to blog about my attempts to use myself as a guinea pig for a few different language learning strategies here than to just do it in my own head (and hopefully help me with staying motivated). And maybe people will have tips of either language learning strategies that have worked for you in general or specific ideas for these particular languages, so this is the beginning of a series that I'm calling #Language Guinea Pig Diaries and future posts will also be posted under that tag!

[raphaellight]

Mike vs Harvey: Genius and talent

Suits does present us Mike as a genius. Fotographic memory, mind capable of analyzing enourmous number of data in a span of minutes. He is also charming and fast-witted. A perfect lawyer.

And it was made a thing thruout most of the show. Mike is the Genius, the mind like no other. It would usually be a story about a scientist curing cancer or creating new technologies and exploring cosmos if it wasn't a show about lawyers.

And yet, by the end, Mike is not THE best lawyer there is. Even in his prime, Mike Ross never topped that one guy. The one that took it upon himself to mentor him.

How is it, that the Golden Child with superhuman brain can't top this man?

There are plenty of things to unpack. Just looking for a appropiate pic of Harvey I found an article discussing how to build confidence by emulating Harvey Specter. Suits isn't exacly the deepest show, but that one thing we can all realise on this particular fictional story. Brain power is not all there is.

Don't get me wrong, I do not sign under "there is no such thing as IQ, everyone is smart" ideas and Harvey is definitelly one of the smartest fictional characters. It just shows brain power doesn't always equals competence and greater talent doesn't always mean greater succes.

While Harvey can't recite hole passages of lawyers guide book he read 10 years ago or memorize hole aggrement down to a coma in ten minutes, his experience, lessons and passion he has for his craft make him excel at things brain power alone can't equate to. He reads people like books and knows exacly how to use it to judge the best business partners for decades in advance and how to convince said people to work with him. He has experienced enough to know when he can take a risk and bold enough to do it even against his own boss opinions. Even if Mike can quote all of the American corporate law, Harvey can quote enough of it needed to win any case he needs. And he is passionate enough that everyone knows he will do anything to win any case that comes his way.

I'm not here to give definitive answer on who's better lawyer. Seems like a contradiction to everything I wrote up until now, but at the end, Harvey specializes in corporate law where as Mike, driven by his idealistic ideas and need for helping others turns more towards lawsuits against unethical corporate practices, which he excells at. In later seasons, when Mike stops being MC, he is often referred as "jury charmer" or something like that, while Harver is "the closer" that rarely brings a case to actuall court. They have slightly different styles, take on different cases and, most important, have different motivations for practicing law.

A phew years back, a friend of mine told me to "stop focusing on whether or not can I understand a field and just enter it" when I voiced my own anxiety about finishing high school and putting myself on a more specialized carrier road. In the show about top of the top, lesson we need to take away is that, we can always fill in if we are passionate and hard working enough. Talent and genius can put people only so far ahead. Even Genius like Mike Ross can't top a man that puts his hole heart into something. And remember, both of them had to look for Louis Litt advice when they delt with finance law.

[cyberpunkonline]

The Cyberpunk Genre: From Fiction to Reality

The Real-World Cyberpunk Narrative

In the realm of science fiction, the cyberpunk genre has long captivated audiences with its vision of a high-tech, low-life future. Cyberpunk, a subgenre that emerged in the early 1980s, combines advanced technology with a layer of dystopian elements, often exploring themes of artificial intelligence, cybernetics, corporate hegemony, and social decay. However, what once seemed a distant future is now becoming a striking reflection of our present reality.

The Cyberpunk Reality of Modern Corporations

As we delve into the corporate world, the parallels between cyberpunk narratives and current events become strikingly clear. This article examines the activities of major corporations like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, SpaceX, and OpenAI, highlighting instances that resonate with cyberpunk themes.

"Google: The Digital Panopticon"

Google, with its vast array of services, has created a digital ecosystem that closely resembles the omnipresent corporations in cyberpunk lore. The company's foray into various sectors, from search engines to smart home devices, has raised concerns about privacy invasion and data control, reminiscent of cyberpunk's surveillance-heavy societies.

"Microsoft: The Silicon Overlord"

Microsoft's dominance in the software industry, particularly with its Windows operating system and Office suite, mirrors the cyberpunk trope of a corporation wielding enormous power over everyday technology. The company's expansion into cloud computing and AI further cements its status as a tech giant with a reach that extends into the very fabric of digital life.

"Amazon: The Corporate Colossus"

Amazon's transformation from an online bookstore to a retail and technology behemoth aligns with cyberpunk's portrayal of mega-corporations that transcend traditional industry boundaries. The company's ventures into cloud computing, AI, and even space travel through its Blue Origin subsidiary evoke images of a corporation with almost limitless ambition and resources.

"SpaceX: Architects of the Starbound Future"

SpaceX, under the leadership of Elon Musk, brings to life the cyberpunk fascination with space exploration and privatization. The company's ambitious projects, including the colonization of Mars and satellite internet services, embody the cyberpunk vision of pushing humanity's boundaries, both technologically and geographically.

"OpenAI: The AI Enigma"

OpenAI, known for its groundbreaking work in AI, reflects cyberpunk's preoccupation with the potential and dangers of artificial intelligence. The development of advanced AI models and their applications in various fields raise questions about the future of human-AI interaction, a central theme in many cyberpunk narratives.

Industrial Espionage: A Cyberpunk Reality

The world of industrial espionage, a staple in cyberpunk plots, is no stranger to these tech giants. The competitive nature of the technology industry, driven by the race for innovation and market dominance, has led to numerous instances of data breaches, intellectual property theft, and corporate spying. These incidents underscore the darker aspects of the corporate world, mirroring the intrigue and deception often found in cyberpunk stories.

Cyberpunk Tropes in the Modern World

Several broad tropes characteristic of the cyberpunk genre are increasingly relevant today:

Technological Advancements vs. Societal Decay: The stark contrast between cutting-edge technology and societal challenges, such as income inequality and privacy concerns, is a recurring theme in both cyberpunk fiction and the modern world.

Corporate Power and Influence: The immense power wielded by mega-corporations, often at the expense of individual freedoms and government authority, is a reality in both the cyberpunk genre and today's corporate landscape.

Ethical Dilemmas of AI and Cybernetics: The ethical and philosophical questions surrounding artificial intelligence, cybernetics, and human enhancement are as pertinent in real life as they are in cyberpunk narratives.

Conclusion: Cyberpunk as a Now Genre

As we examine these parallels, it becomes evident that cyberpunk is no longer a genre fixated on a near future. The themes, concerns, and narratives central to cyberpunk are increasingly manifesting in our current reality. The once speculative fiction has transformed into a lens through which we can view and understand the complexities and challenges of our high-tech, corporate-dominated world. Cyber is no longer a near future genre. It's a now genre.

- Raz

[zytes]

I know that the average person’s opinion of AI is in a very tumultuous spot right now - partly due to misinformation and misrepresentation of how AI systems actually function, and partly because of the genuine risk of abuse that comes with powerful new technologies being thrust into the public sector before we’ve had a chance to understand the effects; and I’m not necessarily talking about generative AI and data-scraping, although I think that conversation is also important to have right now. Additionally, the blanket term of “AI” is really very insufficient and only vaguely serves to ballpark a topic which includes many diverse areas of research - many of these developments are quite beneficial for human life, such as potentially designing new antibodies or determining where cancer cells originated within a patient that presents complications. When you hear about artificial intelligence, don’t let your mind instantly gravitate towards a specific application or interpretation of the tech - you’ll miss the most important and impactful developments.

Notably, NVIDIA is holding a keynote presentation from March 18-21st to talk about their recent developments in the field of AI - a 16 minute video summarizing the “everything-so-far” detailed in that keynote can be found here - or in the full 2 hour format here. It’s very, very jargon-y, but includes information spanning a wide range of topics: healthcare, human-like robotics, “digital-twin” simulations that mirror real-world physics and allow robots to virtually train to interact and navigate particular environments — these simulated environments are built on a system called the Omniverse, and can also be displayed to Apple Vision Pro, allowing designers to interact and navigate the virtual environments as though standing within them. Notably, they’ve also created a digital sim of our entire planet for the purpose of advanced weather forecasting. It almost feels like the plot of a science-fiction novel, and seems like a great way to get more data pertinent to the effects of global warming.

It was only a few years ago that NVIDIA pivoted from being a “GPU company” to putting a focus on developing AI-forward features and technology. A few very short years; showing accelerating rates of progress. This is whenever we began seeing things like DLSS and ray-tracing/path-tracing make their way onto NVIDIA GPUs; which all use AI-driven features in some form or another. DLSS, or Deep-Learning Super Sampling, is used to generate and interpolate between frames in a game to boost framerate, performance, visual detail, etc - basically, your system only has to actually render a handful of frames and AI generates everything between those traditionally-rendered frames, freeing up resources in your system. Many game developers are making use of DLSS to essentially bypass optimization to an increasing degree; see Remnant II as a great example of this - runs beautifully on a range of machines with DLSS on, but it runs like shit on even the beefiest machines with DLSS off; though there are some wonky cloth physics, clipping issues, and objects or textures “ghosting” whenever you’re not in-motion; all seem to be a side effect of AI-generation as the effect is visible in other games which make use of DLSS or the AMD-equivalent, FSR.

Now, NVIDIA wants to redefine what the average data center consists of internally, showing how Blackwell GPUs can be combined into racks that process information at exascale speeds — which is very, very fucking fast — speeds like that have only ever actually been achieved on some 4 or 5 machines on the planet, and I think they’ve all been quantum-based machines until now; not totally certain. The first exascale computer came into existence in 2022, called Frontier, it was deemed the fastest supercomputer in existence in June 2023 - operating at some 1.19 exaFLOPS. Notably, this computer is around 7,300 sq ft in size; reminding me of the space-race era supercomputers which were entire rooms. NVIDIA’s Blackwell DGX SuperPOD consists of around 576 GPUs and operates at 11.5 exaFLOPS, and is about the size of standard row of server racks - much smaller than an entire room, but still quite large. NVIDIA is also working with AWS to produce Project Ceiba, another supercomputer consisting of some 20,000GPUs, promising 400 exaFLOPS of AI-driven computation - it doesn’t exist yet.

To make my point, things are probably only going to get weirder from here. It may feel somewhat like living in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, only with fewer years in between each new step. Advances in generative-AI are only a very, very small part of that — and many people have already begun to bury their heads in the sand as a response to this emerging technology - citing the death of authenticity and skill among artists who choose to engage with new and emerging means of creation. Interestingly, the Industrial Revolution is what gave birth to modernism, and modern art, as well as photography, and many of the concerns around the quality of art in this coming age-of-AI and in the post-industrial 1800s largely consist of the same talking points — history is a fucking circle, etc — but historians largely agree that the outcome of the Industrial Revolution was remarkably positive for art and culture; even though it took 100 years and a world war for the changes to really become really accepted among the artists of that era. The Industrial Revolution allowed art to become detached from the aristocratic class and indirectly made art accessible for people who weren’t filthy rich or affluent - new technologies and industrialization widened the horizons for new artistic movements and cultural exchanges to occur. It also allowed capitalist exploitation to ingratiate itself into the western model of society and paved the way for destructive levels of globalization, so: win some, lose some.

It isn’t a stretch to think that AI is going to touch upon nearly every existing industry and change it in some significant way, and the events that are happening right now are the basis of those sweeping changes, and it’s all clearly moving very fast - the next level of individual creative freedom is probably only a few years away. I tend to like the idea that it may soon be possible for an individual or small team to create compelling artistic works and experiences without being at the mercy of an idiot investor or a studio or a clump of illiterate shareholders who have no real interest in the development of compelling and engaging art outside of the perceived financial value that it has once it exists.

If you’re of voting age and not paying very much attention to the climate of technology, I really recommend you start keeping an eye on the news for how these advancements are altering existing industries and systems. It’s probably going to affect everyone, and we have the ability to remain uniquely informed about the world through our existing connection with technology; something the last Industrial Revolution did not have the benefit of. If anything, you should be worried about KOSA, a proposed bill you may have heard about which would limit what you can access on the internet under the guise of making the internet more “kid-friendly and safe”, but will more than likely be used to limit what information can be accessed to only pre-approved sources - limiting access to resources for LGBTQ+ and trans youth. It will be hard to stay reliably informed in a world where any system of authority or government gets to spoon-feed you their version of world events.

[evartology]

The AI Monna Lisa of German Art

She gazes directly at you, a sly smile playing on her lips. Not the enigmatic, subtle curve of Leonardo's Mona Lisa, but a wide, open grin that radiates amusement, perhaps even mischief. This is Dürer's "Vna Vilana Windisch," a woman who has captivated and puzzled art historians for centuries.

Now, AI steps into the fray, analyzing every stroke and detail, and declares with 82% certainty: this is a true Dürer. While the debate continues, one thing is undeniable – the woman's captivating expression, brought to life by the artist's hand and now scrutinized by artificial intelligence, remains as vibrant and enigmatic as ever.

[hypocrite-human]

AI & IT'S IMPACT

Unleashing the Power: The Impact of AI Across Industries and Future Frontiers

Artificial Intelligence (AI), once confined to the realm of science fiction, has rapidly become a transformative force across diverse industries. Its influence is reshaping the landscape of how businesses operate, innovate, and interact with their stakeholders. As we navigate the current impact of AI and peer into the future, it's evident that the capabilities of this technology are poised to reach unprecedented heights.

1. Healthcare:

In the healthcare sector, AI is a game-changer, revolutionizing diagnostics, treatment plans, and patient care. Machine learning algorithms analyze vast datasets to identify patterns, aiding in early disease detection. AI-driven robotic surgery is enhancing precision, reducing recovery times, and minimizing risks. Personalized medicine, powered by AI, tailors treatments based on an individual's genetic makeup, optimizing therapeutic outcomes.

2. Finance:

AI is reshaping the financial industry by enhancing efficiency, risk management, and customer experiences. Algorithms analyze market trends, enabling quicker and more accurate investment decisions. Chatbots and virtual assistants powered by AI streamline customer interactions, providing real-time assistance. Fraud detection algorithms work tirelessly to identify suspicious activities, bolstering security measures in online transactions.

3. Manufacturing:

In manufacturing, AI is optimizing production processes through predictive maintenance and quality control. Smart factories leverage AI to monitor equipment health, reducing downtime by predicting potential failures. Robots and autonomous systems, guided by AI, enhance precision and efficiency in tasks ranging from assembly lines to logistics. This not only increases productivity but also contributes to safer working environments.

4. Education:

AI is reshaping the educational landscape by personalizing learning experiences. Adaptive learning platforms use AI algorithms to tailor educational content to individual student needs, fostering better comprehension and engagement. AI-driven tools also assist educators in grading, administrative tasks, and provide insights into student performance, allowing for more effective teaching strategies.

5. Retail:

In the retail sector, AI is transforming customer experiences through personalized recommendations and efficient supply chain management. Recommendation engines analyze customer preferences, providing targeted product suggestions. AI-powered chatbots handle customer queries, offering real-time assistance. Inventory management is optimized through predictive analytics, reducing waste and ensuring products are readily available.

6. Future Frontiers:

A. Autonomous Vehicles: The future of transportation lies in AI-driven autonomous vehicles. From self-driving cars to automated drones, AI algorithms navigate and respond to dynamic environments, ensuring safer and more efficient transportation. This technology holds the promise of reducing accidents, alleviating traffic congestion, and redefining mobility.

B. Quantum Computing: As AI algorithms become more complex, the need for advanced computing capabilities grows. Quantucm omputing, with its ability to process vast amounts of data at unprecedented speeds, holds the potential to revolutionize AI. This synergy could unlock new possibilities in solving complex problems, ranging from drug discovery to climate modeling.

C. AI in Creativity: AI is not limited to data-driven tasks; it's also making inroads into the realm of creativity. AI-generated art, music, and content are gaining recognition. Future developments may see AI collaborating with human creators, pushing the boundaries of what is possible in fields traditionally associated with human ingenuity.

In conclusion, the impact of AI across industries is profound and multifaceted. From enhancing efficiency and precision to revolutionizing how we approach complex challenges, AI is at the forefront of innovation. The future capabilities of AI hold the promise of even greater advancements, ushering in an era where the boundaries of what is achievable continue to expand. As businesses and industries continue to embrace and adapt to these transformative technologies, the synergy between human intelligence and artificial intelligence will undoubtedly shape a future defined by unprecedented possibilities.

[ante--meridiem]

In light of things discussed in a certain recent post I've been reconsidering the fact that I may indeed have trouble fully getting that people can lie to me and have a tendency to find it really hard to shake the belief that someone who seems genuine probably on some level is even when that clashes with their behaviour. So I'm going to check how well my intuitions of how people work generally when it comes to lying/manipulation against other people's via the most reliable data collection process ever, tumblr polls.

Which requires a long preamble defining my terms because there's too much nuance to fit inside a poll option, so: for the poll I'm going to define two types of manipulation, Type A and Type B. Type A is the classic cold calculating and premeditated, fully conscious of what they're doing and what they're faking type. Type B is someone who doesn't consciously consider themselves manipulative but is subconsciously driven to do manipulative things because they know on some level it will get them things they want; either fully convinced of their own genuineness, or just don't really think about it. Generally impulsive and incentive driven. (Some people might not consider Type B manipulation; I do from the perspective of result counts more than intent and they are at least subconsciously seeking that result but also I'm not here to quibble about that kind of definition).

Also, general masking/feigning politeness/hiding or faking emotions for social acceptance does not count as manipulation here; I'm only talking about concerted psychological attacks on someone, probably to get something more specific than acceptance.

Edited extra nuance: since someone correctly pointed out the same person can be capable of either, my question is less to do with classifying individual people by what they're capable of, and more to do with what you think is more likely to be going on in any given instance of manipulation.

Ok, terms defined, here's the poll

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Matt Gertz at MMFA:

Fox News depicts the “decision desk” that calls elections for the network as an independent, data-driven body cordoned off from its right-wing propaganda machine. But the 2020 presidential election showed that this independence is a fiction: Top Fox executives are willing and able to overrule those calls if they think the results would anger Donald Trump and Fox viewers.   With the entire right-wing apparatus — including Fox figures — framing any potential Trump loss in November as a result of fraud, that scenario could easily repeat this fall.

The New York Times interviewed Fox decision desk overseer Arnon Mishkin for a Wednesday article on how outlets are “preparing to make calls in a very tight race — and ensure that viewers and readers believe them.” Mishkin said “that he and his team would be siloed off in a room inside network headquarters, and that he had no concerns about outside interference.”

“One hundred percent of the job is to look at the numbers,” Mishkin told the Times. “Just look at the numbers and report out what the numbers are saying.” But the 2020 election showed that between Mishkin’s team reporting “what the numbers are saying” and Fox anchors presenting that information to the public, the network’s executives can step in to overrule the calls.

Fox’s election night call of Arizona for Joe Biden was controversial, the Times noted, angering Trump and ultimately triggering the exits of decision desk leaders Chris Stirewalt and Bill Sammon. As Fox viewers revolted following that call, the network went into overdrive pushing Trumpian lies about election fraud swinging the results — which its executives and stars didn’t actually believe — and eventually triggering a massive defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems. But the Times stressed that Fox refused to bow to Trump campaign demands that the network rescind its Arizona call, while leaving out the network’s subsequent decision — pushed by its top executives and “straight news” anchors — to slow-walk future calls if they might similarly anger viewers. 

Fox president and executive editor Jay Wallace “overruled the Decision Desk team including Bill Sammon, Arnon Mishkin, and Chris Stirewalt, refusing to let them call Nevada for Biden even after other networks did, a level of interference that had been unheard of in past elections,” Peter Baker and Susan Glasser reported in their 2022 book, The Divider.  Wallace’s reason for overruling Mishkin and company had nothing to do with “the numbers,” according to Baker and Glasser. “Because of the Arizona projection, calling Nevada would give Biden enough electoral votes for victory,” they wrote. “Wallace did not want Fox to be the first to call the election and declare Biden president-elect.” Fox CEO Suzanne Scott had wanted to go even further, Baker and Glasser reported, suggesting the morning after the election “that Fox should not call any more states until they were officially certified,” an unheard-of process that could take weeks. Fox “straight news” anchors Martha MacCallum and especially Bret Baier emerged in post-election reporting as key figures who sought to stymie the decision desk’s calls.

GOP propaganda organ Fox “News” doesn’t have an independent decision desk free of interference, as Fox decision desk head Arnon Mishkin admitted that he and his team would be siloed off.

In 2020, after the channel’s decision desk made a controversial call to put Arizona in Joe Biden’s column, executives put a stop to calling any further states just so Fox couldn’t be the first to put Biden over 270 with a call of Nevada and that any future calls be based on viewer support.

[nikethestatue]

I find it so amusing that all of a sudden an English literature undergraduate degree is to be a revered and esteemed point of view in the interpretation of the ACOTAR series. All the while there have episodically been those in the fandom with PhDs and MDs (psychologists discussing trauma, mental health professionals who have been consultants on screenwriting and writing projects, OBs explaining how having pliable bones doesn’t change the soft tissue of a woman’s reproductive system, etc etc) explaining a particular subject matter expertise being met with severe harassment, accusations of lies about their degrees, doxxing threats to expose them to licensure boards, and all out attacks and assault. You’re telling me that, now, an English lit degree is an authority on interpreting subjective fiction novels and that’s just supposed to be taken as a word of deference?

I mean absolutely no hate towards anybody with an arts degree when I say this (I, too, have one)- but literature is not a science. There is no exact, reliable way to interpret literature. Scholars still debate great literary works throughout history. Lit is not a science. Do some people have a higher level of education that enables them to detect certain literary devices? Sure. But I think the point being missed here is that literature is not a science. It cannot be reliably interpreted outside of any one person’s individual bias. Culture, socioeconomic status, race, life experience all factor into how one interprets art. That’s fine and good. You don’t need a degree in lit to understand ACOTAR and pick up on foreshadowing. Education does not mean you can interpret subjective material without bias. That is the point of the scientific method in interpreting objective data.

One would argue that advanced degrees in most fields, particularly science driven studies where research is conducted in some capacity, are extremely equipped to think critically and analytically about what they read.

Seeing this all explode has really made me flashback to how actual licensed professionals in this fandom have been treated for attaching their credentials to their commentary or blog on a subject matter they have actual expertise and advanced training/experience in. Seeing the same people who attacked others with so much vitriol have this defensive energy is truly full circle. I can’t help but think how some of those in this fandom might be sitting back watching the hypocrisy. Where was this energy when actual experts with doctoral degrees and licenses were being attacked? Just wow.

Like you said, Anon, what's amusing to me is that some of these 'degreed' people seem to be under the impression that there is one answer to a written piece of literature. That there is something 'definitive' about their own personal interpretation. Where in reality, indeed, things are being debated for hundreds, and sometimes thousands of years. Everything from the Bible, to Plato, to Shakespeare, to Jane Austen, to Kafka, to Tolstoy, to Tolkien.

There might be some consensus on interpretation of texts, but at the same time, that's all it will ever be--interpretation.

Anna Karenina throwing herself under a train: the number of interpretations of why she did it is as vast as the number of people reading the book. Did she do it out of guilt and shame? Sure. Did she do it out of a sense of despair over her future? Absolutely. Was she a product of her time, where women had no freedoms? Yes. Was she a rebel? Sure. Was she amoral? Certainly. Did she deserve her fate? Yes. Did she not deserve her fate? Also yes.

People just need to calm the hell down and stop acting crazy. Nobody cares if you have a degree. ALso, if you have a degree and you are WRONG In the end, that's just going to be embarrassing. So just be and let others be as well.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The concept of the wood wide web in which trees are connected with one another via underground fungal networks has captured imaginations around the globe. The idea that trees may be sharing resources and communicating in seemingly altruistic ways is enticing, but is it true? The data suggest that this is more journalistic fiction than fact. Joining us is Dr. Melanie Jones who has spent her entire career studying common mycorrhizal networks. Join us as we take a data-driven look at the reality of what data tell us about the so-called "wood wide web."

[000yul]

so i love the ak lonetrail event. i really do. this isn't a post about it but reading it did prompt me to think about a bunch of things

this is more about how strange i feel when i read fictional stories about fictional scientists, and sometimes they're celebratory stories, but much more often they're stories about hubris, how science has gone too far.... and regardless, i'll see responses to the story that are like.. damn.. science/scientists powerful!!!! woah!!!!!!

and whether people are saying that positively or negatively—either can make sense in context, i'm not really criticising these responses—it feels so strange, seeing the state of science irl. i've kinda been in and around a bunch of STEM institutions, briefly debated joining academia, still kinda do vaguely researchy things sometimes, still know a lot of people in STEM... and among my friends and I there's been this sense of disillusionment. not just in the sense of oh, science is being used for terrible things (there's plenty of that, yes, and that IS important, but)—also the sense of. wow. there sure are a lotta .... plain ass fraudsters.....

it's this latter thing that's giving me so much dissonance when i read scifi these days. in fiction: scientists are punching holes in the sky! irl, well. two scientists are suspected of separately, independently, falsifying data... in their papers about honesty. you can't make this shit up. the entire field of psychology has been going through a crisis because so many results are just not reproducible. knowledge be damned when there's a publication count to worry about. (not to single out psych as a field, i think it's a bigger problem than that.) on the tech side, crypto... exists, and we are all the worse for how much time it's collectively wasted, that's the nicest thing you could even say about it. and even apart from crypto, silicon valley isn't really driven by tech, or engineering—like the tech is there but that's not what's pushing things along, it's money doing that. not any pretty ideal like the "pure pursuit of knowledge/invention." just the next shiny grift that can shake ass well enough, speaking the right buzzwords to get that sweet sweet VC dollar. and then starve some existing industry via attrition, and cash out when everything's in ruins.

i don't mean to exaggerate how doomed things are. i still work in stem, and i do think there's plenty of good to be found still. but when i think about how the fraudsters hide behind this Science! Wow! trope, and how they invoke the image of genius for their own actions it's just. wow. "omg science" starts ringing hollow, in that way where if you see a word too much it starts not looking like a word any more?

fiction about these dull, basic bitch kinds of hustlers is maybe less entertaining than the ones about super smart scientists/inventors, i get that. but it's probably a good thing to just keep in the back of the mind, to, idk, watch out for the people who'd really love for you to believe they're sooo hypercompetent.

just like in the stories.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

I'm coming to DEFCON! On Aug 9, I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On Aug 10, I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

#20yrsago Woody Guthrie’s copyright used to defile his memory in lawsuit threat https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2004/07/land-isnt-your-land

#15yrsago New Adrian Mole diary is dark, hopeless and hilarious https://memex.craphound.com/2009/07/26/new-adrian-mole-diary-is-dark-hopeless-and-hilarious/

#5yrsago Claiming your $125 from Equifax is a “moral duty” https://slate.com/technology/2019/07/equifax-settlement-money-how-to-claim.html

#5yrsago Make the internet better by empowering users, not by demanding that platforms implement automated filters https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/key-safety-online-user-empowerment-not-censorship

#5yrsago The Airbus 350 needs a hard reboot every 149 hours https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/25/a350_power_cycle_software_bug_149_hours/

#5yrsago Amazon struck secret deals with local cops to get them to push surveillance-camera doorbells https://www.vice.com/en/article/mb88za/amazon-requires-police-to-shill-surveillance-cameras-in-secret-agreement

#5yrsago Siemens contractor hid “logic bomb” in complicated spreadsheet, guaranteeing future maintenance work https://www.zdnet.com/article/siemens-contractor-pleads-guilty-to-planting-logic-bomb-in-company-spreadsheets/

#5yrsago Activist blacksmith teaches gun violence survivors to melt down guns and turn them into farm implements https://billypenn.com/2019/07/25/using-fire-and-force-this-philly-author-turns-guns-into-garden-tools/

#5yrsago Grifty conservative PACs raised millions pushing racist Obama conspiracies to elderly, low-income supporters, then kept almost all of it https://www.propublica.org/article/conservative-majority-fund-political-fundraising-pac-kelley-rogers

#1yrago The surprising truth about data-driven dictatorships https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/26/dictators-dilemma/#garbage-in-garbage-out-garbage-back-in

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!