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mirceakitsune · 2 years ago

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The great bunny insurrection

Happy Insurrection Day! Or in our case, insuwwection might be more appropriate. After getting approval from the secret service in my bedroom, I can finally share a broadcast and witness account of what truly happened on January 6th 2021 (if fucking only) and break the silence after two years. As CNN was busy spreading lies about sweet little Trumpy-Dumpy, the true forces of darkness tried erasing this to cover up da truth but hath failed. The bunny task force seen in this footage are some of our top agents: On that day they were on a mission to find the sewer valve in the basement of the main building, which upon pulling the plug would result in a giant whirlpool sucking everyone who works there inside... took us a while to realize they took draining the swamp a bit too literally. The job was made easy thanks to officials jumping in voluntarily, after a bun designated it the secret tunnel for politicians needing to flee their own people... guess you could say it self-drained! At the time it was unclear what had happened to the new president: Many thought he was still alive, others were more optimistic. The cries of little children, some as young as 60, could be heard echoing throughout the nation muffled only by their face masks. Just as liberals feared their bribes lobbying and Dominion voting machines were in vain, president Brandon reemerged from... you don't wanna know. He soon held a speech addressing a bunch of flags in an empty garden surrounded by tanks soldiers and barbwire fences, standard procedure in every human democracy for a fairly elected president. He was accompanied only by his good friend and owner Barack Osama and a famous singer known as Lady Caca. Little did the world know he was but a drone resembling president Letsgo, the real one still boiling in bunny hell shall we say. Due to the AI being programmed by a slob of a rabbit who used Windows Millenium on Gameboy hardware, he forgets who or where he is and malfunctions on a daily basis. Fortunately this matches the exact level of intelligence everyone expects from the president of America which helps divert any suspicion. Extra fans had to be installed on the exoskeleton under the suit after he overheated while attempting to read off a teleprompter and parsed the command line instructions as plain text, after which the pattern recognition identified a non-existent person and went on to shake hands with the air, raising concerns the components would melt and cause an explosion. Several tests were preformed consisting of smelling different womans hair samples while the gyroscope was calibrated by climbing up the stairs of various airplanes without falling, after which the droid was deemed strategically unfit once more. To this day the order of the naughty bunnies secretly rules over America... if fucking only.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:210112-Z-NI803-2562_(50884625323).jpg Le government, CC0: Image of the masked lunatics... sorry I mean lunetists, we call people who work with snipers that. It was a long day and the bunnies didn't have anything to eat. Daddy government was nice and handed it to me under the Public Domain so I took it from Wikipedia... they truly care for me after all!

https://polyhaven.com/a/ballroom Sergej Majboroda, CC0: Our makeshift US capitol cuz I'm too cheap to get a HDRI of the real one. I actually imagined this render looking a bit different with larger rooms, but since it's the best background I could find I had to improvise. You can still lay back close your eyes and imagine the politicians fleeing its corridors like ants as the people barge in... you can also do other things while imagining that, just saying.

https://blendswap.com/blend/12035 Hervert Pimentel, CC-BY: Original bun model. It was still screaming while being downloaded knowing what it will be used for. Only took 8 years to find and 8 days to redo almost completely: Proper IK new head shape particle fur and so on, at some point I'll probably put it on Blendswap. At the moment it's missing essential features for a cartoon bunny, such as exaggerated realism in the crotch area and a lovecraftian alien digestive system for no reason in particular.

https://blendswap.com/blend/19271 Jonas Dichelle, CC-BY: Model of the agent getting bunned throughout the building. He's seen shit in his life but nothing could prepare him for this. Like many artists on Blendswap, its author is currently curled up in a corner crying, regretting the day he ever posted the model. Obviously I'm just joking... I hope.

Render itself is CC-BY-SA MirceaKitsune. Share and repost this freely, or else I will insurrect your house when Donald Trump gives the signal by telling me to be peaceful and go home... hey it's not my fault he didn't specify which one! And of course you can help support my insanity on Patreon and Subscribestar, do it while you can before the former has me on the stake for progressive heresy:

https://patreon.com/MirceaKitsune https://subscribestar.adult/mirceakitsune

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#blender #render #3d #joke #comedy #parody #troll #toon #cartoon #rabbit #hare #bunny #us #usa #america #american #capitol #insurrection #politics #political #donaldtrump #trump #television #news

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un-enfant-immature · 5 years ago

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Software and the war against complexity

Look around: what is happening? Australia, AI, Ghosn, Google, Suleimani, Starlink, Trump, TikTok. The world is an eruptive flux of frequently toxic emergent behavior, and every unexpected event is laced with subtle interconnected nuances. Stephen Hawking predicted this would be “the century of complexity.” He was talking about theoretical physics, but he was dead right about technology, societies, and geopolitics too.

Let’s try to define terms. How can we measure complexity? Seth Lloyd of MIT, in a paper which drily begins “The world has grown more complex recently, and the number of ways of measuring complexity has grown even faster,” proposed three key categories: difficulty of description, difficulty of creation, and degree of organization. Using those three criteria, it seems apparent at a glance that both our societies and our technologies are far more complex than they ever have been, and rapidly growing even moreso.

The thing is, complexity is the enemy. Ask any engineer … especially a security engineer. Ask the ghost of Steve Jobs. Adding complexity to solve a problem may bring a short-term benefit, but it invariably comes with an ever-accumulating long-term cost. Any human mind can only encompass so much complexity before it gives up and starts making slashing oversimplifications with an accompanying risk of terrible mistakes.

You may have noted that those human minds empowered to make major decisions are often those least suited to grappling with nuanced complexity. This itself is arguably a lingering effect of growing complexity. Even the simple concept of democracy has grown highly complex — party registration, primaries, fundraising, misinformation, gerrymandering, voter rolls, hanging chads, voting machines — and mapping a single vote for a representative to dozens if not hundreds of complex issues is impossible, even if you’re willing to consider all those issues in depth, which most people aren’t.

Complexity theory is a rich field, but it’s unclear how it can help with ordinary people trying to make sense of their world. In practice, people deal with complexity by coming up with simplified models close enough to the complex reality to be workable. These models can be dangerous — “everyone just needs to learn to code,” “software does the same thing every time it is run,” “democracies are benevolent” — but they were useful enough to make fitful progress.

In software, we at least recognize this as a problem. We pay lip service to the glories of erasing code, of simplifying functions, of eliminating side effects and state, of deprecating complex APIs, of attempting to scythe back the growing thickets of complexity. We call complexity “technical debt” and realize that at least in principle it needs to be paid down someday.

“Globalization should be conceptualized as a series of adapting and co-evolving global systems, each characterized by unpredictability, irreversibility and co-evolution. Such systems lack finalized ‘equilibrium’ or ‘order’; and the many pools of order heighten overall disorder,” to quote the late John Urry. Interestingly, software could be viewed that way as well, interpreting, say, “the Internet” and “browsers” and “operating systems” and “machine learning” as global software systems.

Software is also something of a best possible case for making complex things simpler. It is rapidly distributed worldwide. It is relatively devoid of emotional or political axegrinding. (I know, I know. I said “relatively.”) There are reasonably objective measures of performance and simplicity. And we’re all at least theoretically incentivized to simplify it.

So if we can make software simpler — both its tools and dependencies, and its actual end products — then that suggests we have at least some hope of keeping the world simple enough such that crude mental models will continue to be vaguely useful. Conversely, if we can’t, then it seems likely that our reality will just keep growing more complex and unpredictable, and we will increasingly live in a world of whole flocks of black swans. I’m not sure whether to be optimistic or not. My mental model, it seems, is failing me.

#TechCrunch

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fantasyinvader · 10 months ago

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In her retrospective on Avatar the Last Airbender and Legend of Korra, Xiran Jay Zhao criticized the creators for how Avatar was a world based on East Asian cultures, but the only way they could think of progressing that world for Korra was to turn it into a Western-style democracy like it was the only way to move forward. I can't help but remember that when it comes to Houses, as despite the European trappings of the game it's a story that is heavily rooted in Easter beliefs. You have stuff relating to Buddhism, Confucianism, some parts of it can be tied into Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Chinese history, and the devs even admitted to taking some inspiration from Legend of the Galactic Heroes sci-fi series. Yet, when it came to the translation we can observe Buddhist and Confucian elements being downplayed, altered or even erased.

The heroic Church faction are subtly damned while the villainous Edelgard is changed to be more heroic. Some examples of her spreading misinformation to control others is erased, her having the Agarthans dancing to her tune is changed to make her out to be dancing to theirs, her admitting she's walked the path of hadou, using the power of the government and violence to assert her rule over the people, is removed and the game tries to push her being a champion of freedom.

That is not the character that she was meant to be, and as a result the story doesn't read the same. And right now, Japanese creators are getting pissed with Western translators altering their works, leading to publishers using AI translations, and there's the whole debacle with Assassin's Creed with Japan accusing Ubisoft of appropriating their culture while pushing their values.

I've mentioned before that Ken Liu, translator of The Three Body Problem, talked in his notes about how translating isn't just getting the story across but also the thinking behind it. That we, the audience of the translation, can read it and have the same understanding of it as a reading in it's native language. It's actually why I went with the Yu Sumei translation of Three Kingdoms as it was said to embody just that (being translated by someone whose native tongue is Chinese). Houses just doesn't have that quality to it. That when it was telling the story, it was the translators putting their own spin or take on it, not getting the original intent across and that just seems to be common nowadays.

Really, I just can't help but feel like it's wrong what Pat and Treehouse did. They took someone else's work and tried to make it say what they wanted it to say.

Everytime I see your Pat lolcalization posts, I can't help but think if this is him overcompensating for voicing the character of n*zi germany in the first seasons of the hetalia anime.

I can't say and I'd rather not say anything about Pat's intent or own agenda or whatever -

But the interesting "lolcalisation changes" and direction give to VAs really seem to favour a certain reading of the events happening in FE16 and to this day, I still can't understand how that managed to be released without getting at least some flak.

Sure Fates' lolcalisation is a tough nut to beat and nothing comes quite close to what happened to Fates to FE16/Nopes, and yet I wish I am joking when I say nearly 80% of the lines involving Supreme Leader and/or Rhea/the CoS should be double checked, because "Dany expy bringing a revolution" has to fit in the story that is FE16, and that's talking about the washed down version of Dany some people have and not the one who uses violence for the greater good, until she starts to realise that the "greater good" is as solid as smoke and runs away from the - well-intentioned ! - mess she created.

Again, I don't think anything was malicious with the lolcalisation Fodlan got, is it just a case of misunderstanding the game and slapping archetypes and "trendy notions" to make this "strange" game sell like hotcakes in your home market?

Or is it another case of "think of the children Susan" where Susan sure as hell can't endorse a character presented as the heroine sprout disgusting things and advocate for imperialism 101 so the heroine is now rewritten?

Or is it the lolcalisation team - after looking at the jp script - try to make the general idea of "you must feel bad for this character" somehow work, because they thought no one would seriously want to walk with her and feel any sort of sad uwus for the "you have pointy ears, you cannot rule over humans" red emperor? So they modified the script and directed the VA accordingly ?

IDK, but I think if you've been long enough on this blog you know my stance on localisation and lolcalisation but this discrepency between the two versions (or at least two audios) really took me by surprise when the game was released in 2019 lol

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thisbiasedlife · 8 years ago

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Firewall Down (AI/Robot! Jungkook x Reader)

Important Author’s Note: Hello everyone! I am back again after a brief hiatus or whatever you would like to call it. This new story is quite special to me as it is my first request that I have decided to try to turn into a story, hopefully, quite a few chapters long. Thanks to @line-fangirl for the request and I hope you thoroughly enjoy this work. Please don’t hate me for the crappy summary that is to follow or any crappy writing mistakes as this work has not undergone any form of editing.

Pairing: Reader x Jungkook

Genre: Fluff, Angst, Smut (eventual)

Rating: PG - PG13 (for this chapter)

Characters: Reader, Jungkook, BTS (Eventual)

Word Count: 4,146

Summary: (Y/N) lives in a world consumed by hate, famine, and fear. A nuclear stricken world characterizes the loss of all chances of hope, love, and trust. Living in a world so far from the world that we know today, (Y/N) and her dad try to prolong their own survival, nevermind their existence in a group. (Y/N)’s intention to secure only her own survival in a world so hell-bent to erase it is slowly altered by a most unusual source. Though AIs were created with solely the intent of destruction and control, (Y/N) finds herself taking a deadly interest into an AI by the name of Jungkook assigned to her survival group. His continual expresssion of his lack of emotion only encourages (Y/N) to find out more about him. And suddenly, the unfeeling Jungkook is made to feel things he never considered and unintentionally change the course of (Y/N)’s life for forever.

The scene depicted in the painting was an item of great wonder. A beautiful blue hued ocean, people peacefully walking the beach, seagulls flying overheard, and a beautiful orange setting sun. Every inch of the painting captured your attention and made you wish for the days passed. Days you had seen through your infancy and into your early teens. Days that filled you with a splendor unlike any other, but were now to be forever what seemed like distant memories.

The painting was no longer the truth of your world. Your world was marked by famine, disease, hatred, and fear. A world that had gone to war with itself and lost. Unity was a thing of the past and now allegiance could be the death of you if caught in the wrong place. No one had believed all the scientists that insisted that people would one day actually overpopulate the Earth. That the Earth would no longer be able to sustain the indulgence of man. Yet despite the unheeded warnings, the majority of Earth’s populace was taken quite by surprise when the scientists’ predictions actually came to fruition.

Of course, at first, the world leaders met to discuss what could be peacefully done to share Earth’s remaining precious resources. That had lasted a matter of two years before all structure had come tumbling down. With resources stretched thinner and thinner, war became a common, if not more largely accepted, alternative. The division between democracy and communist and socialist regimes had been apparent first, the United States quickly turning on China and Russia. The United States needed a larger population to blame on shameless resource consumption and of course Russia had come to China’s defense stating the opulence of American life as the true reason for resource depletion. So, camaraderie had come crashing down.

Sure, the first outbreak of the world war to end all world wars appeared to have a reason, but war costed even more resources and destroyed the planet further. When it became apparent loyalty to any other country but your own costed you resources, every country turned on every country. The war became a shameless war for self-preservation. Then, this shameless war among countries for self-preservation turned into a shameless war among individuals of the same country for self-preservation. Everyone turned on everyone. To have to look out for anyone other than yourself was assumed to have meant certain death.

Only two years ago had small factions begun to band together again, in hopes of creating a better chance for survival. So far, it had proved mostly effective with enhanced protection, larger numbers of people scouring for food, and a general sense of humanity among members of the group.

Having seen most of the breakdown of society with teenage eyes, you were capable of understanding everything that happened. Capable of feeling the loss of everything that you had once known. You’d experienced the switch from democratic nations, to your own country, and then to yourself. Your shamelessness in ensuring your own survival growing with the breakdown of each group. You’d been hesitant about becoming part of a community again, but your father had insisted. Your father, an army general before all of this chaos engulfed the Earth, was a natural born leader and got people to follow him easily.

Together, you and your father lead a band of twenty people and created a top notch society eventually recognized by the remaining fragments of the United States government. As your living quarters were stationed in the United States, your fathers connection to the United States government had them, ironically, sending you all resources from time to time. You supposed it was likely because he had close connections with some big-wig who’d been in office before the literal collapse of the world.

You didn’t entirely trust it. Then again, you hadn’t entirely trusted anything after what had happened to your mother. A group you’d been traveling with for months elected to kill her because she was taking extra rations to feed your starving and meek form. How could you trust anyone after something like that? How could you even learn to live with yourself?

It was often evident to your father that you were still struggling with this, even though you’d accepted and played your part in your leadership role in the community your father had built from the ground up. He noted the long hours you spent in your quarters away from everyone else as well as the could demeanor you greeted most with. He’d caught you staring at the same painting a hundred times and always chastised you for focusing on times passed and what you’d lost rather than looking at how to survive in the present. He expected you to push all of your feelings down and focus at the task at hand, almost like a robot.

Almost as if your thoughts had summoned him, your father pulled the curtain to your more “lavish” tent aside and entered your quarters. You quickly tried to put the painting away to no avail. “Honestly, how many times have I told you? If I catch you looking at it again, I will burn it,” your father said snatching the painting from you and throwing it onto the ground. Your string of protests almost rang out. How could he do such a thing? Especially when that painting was mom’s. She’d spent hours bringing life to that canvas and now he was just going to throw it in the fire?

You knew better though and kept your mouth shut. Your father was a stubborn man before war struck the world and war had only served to make him more stubborn. He claimed it was in the interest of self-preservation, but you believed it was so he wouldn’t have to feel all that he’d lost. It was no secret he hadn’t spent time to grieve over your mother properly.

“What brings you to my humble abode?” you questioned jokingly. “I thought you might want to see how my friends really came through for me on the last shipment. According to the letter they sent with the shipment, they want to try to bring the United States back together,” he said looking fully optimistic. “You do know that that is never going to happen, right? The trust has been irreparably fractured among countrymen. Regardless, you definitely should know they’re just trying to give you an incentive you use your resources and time to further their own aims. You’re what they used to call a lackey,” you replied cynically picking the painting up off of the floor and carefully putting it away.

“You haven’t seen the high tech shit they sent yet. I mean these things are built for destruction and enforcement,” he said excitedly gesturing outside the tent. “You know, I find it entirely ironic that you just said that they were looking to rebuild the U.S., yet they sent, in your words, something ‘built for destruction’. I think that those words are polar opposites. So, if rebuilding was really their intent, why’d they send these objects of destruction?” you replied with a role of my eyes.

“You really just don’t get excited about anything anymore. You’re always so cynical,” he replied with a role of his eyes as he took my arm. “Just…come check them out okay. I even have one I’ll assign to your direct command,” your father encouraged as he pulled you out of your tent.

Standing just a few yards outside of your tent, positioned conveniently next to your fathers, stood three people in a line. These three people had drawn quite a crowd of onlookers whom your father was currently navigating you through. “Alright everyone, disperse a little,” he commanded placing you only feet away from these three people.

“Wow, dad. They sent you more mouths to feed,” you responded with a role of your eyes. “These aren’t people. They’re objects of artificial intelligence. They, unlike people, follow orders exactly as they are given. They’re also a thousand times better than people in that they don’t have emotions to cloud their judgement,” he responded taking time to send a verbal jab your way.

“So basically, like your wet dream, right?” You shot back not at all liking the jab that he thought you wouldn’t notice. “Stop being like that, (Y/N). I told you that I picked one to be under your command. According to the letter, he’s the youngest of the three AIs and was created the most recently,” your dad offered attempting to bond. “It’s really not like I have a choice. Which one is it?” you asked taking in the three AIs before you. They were all rather high tech, each possessing human skin and human features. Though their brains were of an artificial nature, you were almost certain that the bodies had started out human. Maybe these people had died and their corpses had been planted with AIs to further their life.

“That one on the far left, “he said pointing towards one with medium length black hair and brown eyes. “According to the letter, he’s the one that they refer to as Jungkook. We’ve been given clearance to use them for the purposes that we see fit,” he continued. “So that means that we can have them do or ask them whatever we like, correct?” you questioned making sure to show a little interest.

“Within reason of course,” your dad made sure to answer. “Very well. Then, I accept this arrangement on the grounds that I alone have sole authority over its actions,” you replied making sure that this particular bonding experience with your dad was clearly attached to the ultimatum. “Very well. Take this activation chip then and place it into his mouth. You’ll hear a swallowing sound to indicate the AI has been activated. Remember, these AIs were designed to appear exactly as humans, so they speak and act just like us. Always remember this and don’t forget that Jungkook is not here to be your boyfriend,” your dad shot at you.

“That particular insult is completely without base. You know that I hate people,” you replied walking up to Jungkook. You took a moment to take in his features. He was certainly masculine and, if not for the fact that you knew his intelligence was artificial, you would have thought that he possessed a god-like appearance. He was quite honestly attractive, even if he was artificial. He possessed sharp facial features, toned thighs, toned arms, probably a toned stomach, and honestly who knew what other attractive elements. His creators had designed him with the potential to be an intel gatherer. If he was attractive, of course females would find it easier to talk to him and thus he presented more opportunity for gathering information.

You took the chip from your hand and placed it in his open mouth, closing his mouth once you made sure the chip was firmly in place. It felt much like inserting a DVD into a DVD player and waiting for the DVD player to read the information on the disk.

A swallowing sound came from his throat as his eyes filled with life. “Hello,” he said sending you a small smile as he realized you were standing in front of him. “Hi,” you answered a little taken aback as you wondered how anything could possess a smile that breathtaking. He said nothing further apparently waiting for you to add some additional response. You certainly didn’t think it proper to introduce yourself as his new master, or commander, or whatever. As if he could read your thoughts, he broke the silence.

“I noticed that you seem conflicted. Don’t worry. I was made aware of my position based upon your placing of the chip inside my mouth. Is there anything you want to ask me or anything that you want me to do?” he questioned. Well, after that breathtaking smile, you could name more than a few things that the less than proper side of you might have wanted from him. Even so, it would certainly not go over well with your dad and the rest of present company if you were to voice it.

“Well, you can follow me back to my tent. I promise you you’ll be the first guy my dad has ever allowed back there,” you answered Jungkook as you sent your dad a sly smile. Your dad looked as though he was going to protest, but either thought better or simply gave up as no word of opposition left his lips.

You had no intent of doing anything other than talking. You had some questions that you wanted to ask Jungkook. Questions that you really weren’t sure that you wanted anyone else to hear the answer to. You wanted either conformation or rejection of your theory that the people that sent these AIs were up to more than they let on. You wanted to know how he was created. If people had really sunk to placing intelligence inside the corpses of dead people to make weapons. Or even if your theory was completely unfounded and maybe these AIs had ended up in their present state in a more ethical way. Either way, you certainly wanted to know more, be it good or bad, and you weren’t sure that the rest of the rather sensitive community would be able to take the depth of whatever potential truth you uncovered.

Jungkook followed you wordlessly to your tent, an awkward tension filling the air. A tension that only you felt because robots weren’t capable of understanding the feeling of embarrassment. You decided that you would not look back. You would not risk potentially locking onto his eyes again and being completely shaken by the depth and beauty that they held. You needed to remind yourself that even though there might be beauty to his eyes, Jungkook held no depth. His responses were computer generated and selected based upon their correctness in each situation. He was a robot that did not make the errors of conversation intrinsic to normal humans. Everything about him was too perfect. Too perfect in that it felt like a giant wool was being pulled over your eyes. Even though you knew what he was, it was easy to forget that he wasn’t human.

“So, why did we come here?,” Jungkook asked from behind you as you both entered your living quarters. You finally turned to face him, your nerves and wandering thoughts steeled. “I have a few questions for you,” you responded holding his gaze. “This feels like an interrogation, but ask away,” he responded. It was almost funny to you that this AI was trying to be funny, trying to relate to your humanity via a joke. It was shocking though that it felt completely natural in the conversation, that it didn’t appear at all forced.

“Why were you created?,” you questioned bluntly wanting to get to the heart of the matter at hand. “Oh, that’s an easy one. I was created to provide service in the reassembling of the United States. If that cannot be achieved, my most important and leading task is to protect the remaining populace of your loyal faction”, Jungkook answered without delay. “And there are no hidden agendas?,” you pressed. “See, we AIs always get a bad reputation for being agents of like betrayal or hidden agendas. I cannot say that I am capable of expressing the emotion of regret. However, I will issue an emotionally bereft apology if you were expecting such an outcome by my hand,” Jungkook responded in what appeared to be total honesty.

“Okay, fine. How were you created then?” you questioned further a little agitated that your previous point had been completely dashed. “I bet you’re thinking up some terrible story. Allow me to put your rampantly running thoughts at ease. This body was dying. I was inserted into this body to keep it still functioning. I can’t speak of what happened to whatever consciousness was in here as I have no recollection of encountering any nor any recollection of feeling one die or ebb away. It is one of the few questions I do not concretely possess and answer too,” Jungkook answered monotonously.

“Well, do you even know the name of the person whose body you just took over?” you chastised expressing your general dismay with regard to the situation. “Sure I do. It’s Jungkook. You’ve been addressing me with his name. It’s the name my creator suggested I take on. Your name is?,” Jungkook questioned flipping the script.

“(Y/N). Do you know what the real one was like?,” you wondered aloud. “I know his history, disposition, beliefs, and behaviors. It’s all part of my programming. It would be safe to say that I am him, just enhanced. I possess his memories, but not the feelings attached to them,” Jungkook answered, pausing to take in my reaction.

“So, you really are incapable of emotion?,” you asked aloud seriously wondering what kind of life that was. “If makes orders easier to obey and difficult things easier to do, so yes,” he answered without a shred of doubt in his voice. You nodded at his response. Your dad had been right. Jungkook was the perfect weapon, but that’s where it ended. He may have once been a person, but now he yet another instrument for man to use carelessly. You almost felt bad for him, almost.

He’d likely killed people. Of course you’d done the same, but at least you felt remorse about it. Jungkook had likely remained entirely unaffected by his victims’ pleas for their life. Meanwhile, they haunted you. Jungkook was dangerous, that fact was apparent. Even so, you felt yourself drawn in an indescribable way. After all, you’d never been one to shy away from danger.

Your train of thought was interrupted by your father clearing his throat as he walked into your tent, as if he thought he’d been interrupting some sexual activity between you and a robot that you had just met. Overprotective much? “Yes, father dearest?,” you questioned him as Jungkook turned to look at him. There was something in his demeanor that hadn’t been there when it had been just you and him. Almost as if your father’s unexpected entry had flipped a switch inside him. Almost as if he was already being defensive of you, without you even having to say so. Honestly, it was almost like he had already tuned into changes in your emotion and demeanor even though he’d only been assign to you for like an hour, if even that.

“Heel,” you joked with a small laugh. “If I could feel offended, I would now do so, but I can’t. So, I’ll laugh with you,” Jungkook responded emitting the fakest laugh you’d probably heard in your entire life.

“You two appear to already be healthily acquainted,” your dad observed. “Sure. You did assign him to my command after all. You insisted I get acquainted with my other soldiers. What makes Jungkook any different?,” you questioned even though you had been drawing a fine like between humans and Jungkook earlier. Sure, it was hypocritical, but there was just something about other people thinking Jungkook was different that bothered you. You couldn’t quite put your finger on why, but the feeling was there nevertheless.

“I told you before. He’s an AI. Don’t get too attached. They left a note saying that if his state is compromised, we have to terminate him,” your dad cautioned. That was certainly a strange statement. Compromised, huh? He had cautioned you getting too close to him and equated it with Jungkook’s state being compromised. Did that mean that something in Jungkook would come to express emotion, a dangerous quality according to your dad and apparently everyone else in power? Possibly his consciousness that had been invaded by the AI?

“You’ve always been all business. Live a little and stop worrying. Now, what do you want?,” you questioned your father trying to find a reason for him invading your privacy for a second time that day. You were not going to let onto the direction of your thought process. You wanted to explore this particular possibility further in your own time and away from your father’s prying eyes.

“We’re leaving for a scouting mission in ten minutes. Gather a team of two plus Jungkook. Bring you gear. It’s a radioactive live site,” your dad directed. “You know how I hate those. What exactly are we looking for there?,” you questioned. There was honestly no reason to go to a site like that. All food or water sources were subject to radiation poisoning and thus incapable of consumption. There was only one reason that you could possibly even remotely fathom as a legitimate reason for going and you weren’t too keen on the idea.

“A rival group has been rallying some numbers and they’re a little close for my liking. I have a hunch they’ll pass through there on our way to us and I want to ambush them where they least expect it,” your dad said confirming your thought. “Honestly dad, can’t you just wait until they get out of that dead zone? Based on the lack of urgency in your voice, they aren’t an immediate threat. Can we just lay low for once? You gave the camp today off from even training. Don’t you think it’s a bit much to disrupt this temporary peace for something that isn’t pressing?,” you half argued, half pleaded against this course of events.

“I really want to test out the new AIs,” he replied voicing the real reason for the excursion that you already knew existed. You rolled your eyes in response. How could someone so childish command a band of people? Let alone a militant band of people whose motivation lie only in self-preservation. Loyalties were scarce among groups like that, but your dad managed to hold everyone together. How someone with such a strong inclination towards authority result to being such a child in desiring to show off his new “toys”.

Jungkook must have picked up on the rising tension of the situation as he spoke up. “If I may, sir, it wouldn’t be a bad military strategy to not let the enemy know what you have in your arsenal and use that to your advantage,” Jungkook spoke up, coming to your defense. Your eyes widened in surprised. Jungkook may have been under your command, but you were under your father’s. Generally, AIs and the sort could immediately recognize authority hierarchy and respond accordingly. He’d just acted entirely against it if he had recognized it. For some reason, that had you looking at him differently, maybe he wasn’t totally mindless or brainwashed after all.

“What do you know? You’re not designed for strategy, just destruction,” your father snapped back. “We are sticking to my desired plan,” your father added quickly before walking out of your tent. “Don’t mind him. Honestly, he can be a real stubborn asshole,” you directed at Jungkook after your dad left.

“I don’t feel, remember? Didn’t bother me in the slightest,” Jungkook responded to your instant comfort. You’d known that, but that still hadn’t stopped you. There was just something about Jungkook that made you incapable of believing that he would always be incapable of emotion. He might be now, but you just felt that that could change. At least, that’s what you told yourself to justify your above average interest in him as an AI. Perhaps you were really getting too close to the situation as your father had warned. It wasn’t that you were trying to. Something in you was just drawn to him, wanted to figure out more out him, desired to defend him when he was being insulted because he wasn’t going to defend himself. You were never the type to shelter others, quite the opposite actually. Something just felt wrong about not shielding Jungkook from the words, judgement, and prejudice of others, especially your father. For whatever reason this was the case, it scared you because you neither understood it nor had experienced anything like it with another human, let alone an AI.

“Don’t go getting all sentimental on me. Let’s catch up to your father before he blows a head gasket,” Jungkook suggested as he left the tent on his own orders. Something was different in his expression, something that wasn’t there before. It was a something that confirmed your hopes and alleviated the apprehension you possessed at your interest in him. It confirmed your need to figure this all out. It lit a fire underneath you that no custom or warning from your father could hope to quell.

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mantismatsuri · 6 years ago

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Quotes from “21 Lessons for the 21st Century” by Yuval Noah Harari

“Terrorism works by pressing the fear button deep in our minds and hijacking the private imaginations of millions of individuals. Similarly, the crisis of liberal democracy is played out not just in parliaments and polling stations but also in neurons and synapses.”

“Philosophers are very patient people, but engineers are far less so, and investors are the least patient of all.”

“Unable to conduct a reality check, the mind latches onto catastrophic scenarios. Like a person imagining that a bad headache signifies a terminal brain tumor, many liberals fear that Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump portend the end of human civilization.”

“Humans were always far better at inventing tools than using them wisely.”

“Ordinary people may not understand artificial intelligence and biotechnology, but they can sense that the future is passing them by.”

“Donald Trump warned voters that the Mexicans and Chinese would take their jobs, and that they should therefore build a wall on the Mexican border. He never warned voters that algorithms would take their jobs, nor did he suggest building a firewall on the border with California.”

“The liberal story was the story of ordinary people. How can it remain relevant to a world of cyborgs and networked algorithms?”

“The Russian, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions were made by people who were vital to the economy but who lacked political power; in 2016, Trump and Brexit were supported by many people who still enjoyed political power but who feared that they were losing their economic worth.”

“It is much harder to struggle against irrelevance than against exploitation.”

“In the end it was communism that collapsed. The supermarket proved to be far stronger than the gulag.”

“In particular, the liberal story learned from communism to expand the circle of empathy and to value equality alongside liberty.”

“Most people who voted for Trump and Brexit didn’t reject the liberal package in its entirety –they lost faith mainly in its globalizing part. They still believe in democracy, free markets, human rights, and social responsibility, but they think these fine ideas can stop at the border.”

“By manufacturing a never-ending stream of crises, a corrupt oligarchy can prolong its rule indefinitely.”

“…economic growth will not save the global ecosystem; just the opposite, in fact, for economic growth is the cause of the ecological crisis. And economic growth will not solve technological disruption, for it is predicated on the invention of more and more disruptive technologies.”

“Panic is a form of hubris. It comes from the smug feeling that one knows exactly where the world is heading: down.”

“Two particularly important nonhuman abilities that AI possesses are connectivity and updatability.”

“What we are facing is not the replacement of millions of individual human workers by millions of individual robots and computers; rather, individual humans are likely to be replaced by an integrated network.”

“Of all forms of art, music is probably the most susceptible to Big Data analysis, because both inputs and outputs lend themselves to precise mathematical depiction. The inputs are the mathematical patterns of sound waves, and the outputs are the electrochemical patterns of neural storms.”

“Technology is never deterministic, and the fact that something can be done does not mean it must be done.”

“When people design web pages, they often cater to the taste of the Google search algorithm rather than to the taste of any human being.”

“It is debatable whether it is better to provide people with universal basic income (the capitalist paradise) or universal basic services (the communist paradise).”

“If universal basic support is aimed at improving the objective conditions of the average person in 2050, it has a fair chance of succeeding. But if it is aimed at making people subjectively more satisfied with their lot and preventing social discontent, it is likely to fail.”

“In a famous interview in 1987, Thatcher said ‘There is no such thing as society. There is [a] living tapestry of men and women… and the quality of our lives will depend on how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves.’”

“Democracy assumes that human feelings reflect a mysterious and profound “free will,” that this “free will” is the ultimate source of authority, and that while some people are more intelligent than others, all humans are equally free.”

“If the feelings of some ancient ancestor were wrong and as a result that person made a fatal mistake, the genes shaping these feelings did not pass on to the next generation. Feelings are therefore not the opposite of rationality –they embody evolutionary rationality.”

“We usually fail to realize that feelings are in fact calculations, because the rapid process of calculation occurs far below our threshold of awareness.”

“Winston Churchill famously said that democracy is the worst political system in the world, except for all the other. Rightly or wrongly, people might reach the same conclusions about Big Data algorithms: they have lots of glitches, but we have no better alternative.”

“Already today, ‘truth’ is defined by the top results of the Google search.”

“However, in order to take over from human drivers, the algorithms won’t have to be perfect. They will just have to be better than the humans.”

“… robots always reflect and amplify the qualities of their code.”

“Yet autonomous weapon systems are a catastrophe waiting to happen, because too many governments tend to be ethically corrupt, if not downright evil.”

“In the late twentieth century democracies usually outperformed dictatorships because democracies were better at data processing. A democracy diffuses the power to process information and make decisions among many people and institutions, whereas a dictatorship concentrates information and power in one place.”

“AI make centralized systems far more efficient than diffused systems, because machine learning works better the more information it can analyze.”

“Science fiction tends to confuse intelligence with consciousness and assume that in order to match or surpass human intelligence, computers will have to develop consciousness.”

“The danger is that if we invest too much in developing AI and too little in developing human consciousness, the very sophisticated artificial intelligence of computers might only serve to empower the natural stupidity of humans.”

“The economic system pressures me to expand and diversify my investment portfolio, but it gives me zero incentive to expand and diversity my compassion.”

“Property is a prerequisite for long-term inequality.”

“Globalization will unite the world horizontally by erasing national borders, but it will simultaneously divide humanity vertically.”

“Mandating governments to nationalize the data will probably curb the power of big corporations, but it might also result in creepy digital dictatorships.”

“The so-called Facebook and Twitter revolutions in the Arab world started in hopeful online communities, but once they emerged into the messy offline world, they were commandeered by religious fanatics and military juntas.”

“[Facebook] and the other online giants tend to view humans as audiovisual animals –a pair of eyes and a pair of ears connected to ten fingers, a screen, and a credit card.”

“For all its glory and impact, Athenian democracy was a halfhearted experiment that survived for barely two hundred years in a small corner of the Balkans.”

“Human groups are defined more by the changes they undergo than by any community.”

“We insist that our values are a precious legacy from ancient ancestors. Yet the only thing that allows us to say this is that our ancestors are long dead and cannot speak for themselves.”

“The heated argument about the true essence of Islam is simply pointless. Islam has no fixed DNA. Islam is whatever Muslims make of it.”

“The process of human unification has taken two distinct forms: establishing links between distinct groups and homogenizing practices across groups.”

“War spreads ideas, technologies, and people far more quickly than commerce does.”

“The kamikaze […] relied on combining state-of-the-art technology with state-of-the-art religious indoctrination.”

“Human diversity may be great when it comes to cuisine and poetry, but few would see witch-burning, infanticide, or slavery as fascinating human idiosyncrasies that should be protected against the encroachments of global capitalism and Coca-Colonialism.”

“Saying that black people tend to commit crimes because they have substandard genes is out; saying that they tend to commit crimes because they come from dysfunctional subcultures is very much in.”

“In terrorism, fear is the main story, and there is an astounding disproportion between the actual strength of the terrorists and the fear they manage to inspire.”

“Terrorists don’t think like army generals. Instead, they think like theater producers.”

“In 1914 war had great appeal to elites across the world because they had many concrete examples of how successful wars contributed to economic prosperity and political power. In contrast, in 2018 successful wars seem to be an endangered species.”

“Today the main economic assets consist of technical and institutional knowledge rather than wheat fields, gold mines, or even oil fields, and you just cannot conquer knowledge through war.”

“Human stupidity is one of the most important force in history, yet we often tend to discount it.”

“Unlike such universal religions as Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, Judaism has always been a tribal creed.”

“Scientists nowadays point out that morality in fact has deep evolutionary roots predating the appearance of humankind by millions of years. All social mammals, such as wolves, dolphins, and monkeys, have ethical codes, adapted by evolution to promote group cooperation.”

“From an ethical perspective, monotheism was arguably one of the worst ideas in human history.”

“What monotheism undoubtedly did was to make many people far more intolerant than before, thereby contributing to the spread of religious persecutions and holy wars.”

“Does God exist? That depends on which God you have in mind: the cosmic mystery, or the worldly lawgiver?”

“After giving the name of “God” to the unknown secrets of the cosmos, they [the faithful] then use this to somehow condemn bikinis and divorce.”

“The deeper the mysteries of the universe, the less likely it is that whatever is responsible for them gives a damn about female dress codes or human sexual behavior.”

“The missing link between the cosmic mystery and the worldly law giver is usually provided through some holy book.”

“The third of the biblical Ten Commandment instructs humans never to make wrongful use of the name of God. […] Perhaps the deeper meaning of this commandment is that we should never use the name of God to justify our political interests, our economic ambitions, or our personal hatreds.”

“The idea that we need a supernatural being to make us act morally assumes that there is something unnatural about morality.”

“Every violent act in the world begins with a violent desire in somebody’s mind, which disturbs that person’s own peace and happiness before it disturbs the peace and happiness of anyone else.”

“Self-professing secularists view secularism in a very different way. For them, secularism is a very positive and active worldview, defined by a coherent code of values rather than by opposition to this or that religion.”

“The most important secular commitment is to the truth, which is based on observation and evidence rather than on mere faith. Secularists strive not to confuse truth with belief.”

“This is the deep reason secular people cherish scientific truth: not in order to satisfy their curiosity, but in order to know how best to reduce the suffering in the world. Without the guidance of scientific studies, our compassion is often blind.”

“Questions you cannot answers are usually far better than answers you cannot question.”

“Not only rationality, but individuality too is a myth. Humans rarely think for themselves. Rather, we think in groups. Just as it takes a tribe to raise a child, it also takes a tribe to invent a tool, solve a conflict or cure a disease.”

“This is what Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach have termed “the knowledge illusion”. We think we know a lot, even though individually we know very little, because we treat knowledge in the minds of others as if it were our own.”

“It is extremely hard to discover the truth when you are ruling the world. You are just far too busy.”

“Power is all about changing reality rather than seeing it for what it is.”

“Justice demands not just a set of abstract values, but also an understanding of concrete cause-and-effect relations.”

“… in a world in which everything is interconnected, the supreme moral imperative becomes the imperative to know.”

“We have zero evidence that Eve was tempted by the serpent, that the souls of all infidels burn in hell after they die, or that the creator of the universe doesn’t like it when a Brahmin marries a Dalit –yet billions of people have believed these stories for thousands of years. Some fake news lasts forever.”

“When a thousand people believe some made-up story for one month, that’s fake news. When a billion people believe it for a thousand years, that’s a religion.”

“If you want to gauge group loyalty, requiring people to believe an absurdity is a far better test than asking them to believe the truth.”

“[…] if you want reliable information, pay good money for it. If you get your news for free, you might well be the product.”

“[…] perhaps the worst sin of present-day science fiction is that it tends to confuse intelligence with consciousness.2

“Whenever you see a movie about an AI in which the AI is female and the scientist is male, it’s probably a movie about feminism rather than cybernetics. For why on earth would an AI have a sexual or gender identity? Sex is a characteristic or organic multicellular beings. What can it possibly mean for a nonorganic cybernetic being?”

“The mind is not the subject that freely shapes historical actions and biological realities; the mind is an object that is being shaped by history and biology.”

“If this generation lacks a comprehensive view of the cosmos, the future of life will be decided at random.”

“So what should we be teaching? Many pedagogical experts argue that schools should switch to teaching ‘the four Cs’ –critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.”

“Already in 1849, the Communist Manifesto declared that ‘all that is solid melts into air.’ Marx and Engels, however, were thinking mainly about social and economic structures. By 2048, physical and cognitive structures will also melt into air, or into a cloud of data bits.”

“To stay relevant –not just economically but above all socially- you will need the ability to constantly learn and to reinvent yourself […]”

“To survive and flourish in such a world [where profound uncertainty is not a bug but a feature], you will need a lot of mental flexibility and great reserves of emotional balance.”

“The Industrial Revolution has bequeathed us the production-line theory of education.”

“Because of the increasing pace of change, you can never be certain whether what the adults are telling you is timeless wisdom or outdated bias.”

“The voice we hear inside our heads is never trustworthy, because it always reflects state propaganda, ideological brainwashing, and commercial advertisements, not to mention biochemical bugs.”

“Homo sapiens is a story telling animal that thinks in stories rather than in numbers of graphs.”

“To give meaning to my life, a story needs to satisfy just two conditions. First, it must give me some role to play. […] Second, whereas a good story need not extend to infinity, it must extend beyond my horizons.”

“A crucial law of storytelling is that once a story manages to extend beyond the audience’s horizon, its ultimate scope matters little.”

“How do we make the story feel real? Priests and shamans discovered the answer to this question thousands of years ago: rituals.”

“Why does the Indian government invest scarce resources in weaving enormous flags instead of building sewage systems in Delhi’s slums? Because the flag makes India real in a way that sewage systems do not.”

“Of all the rituals, sacrifice is the most potent, because of all the things in the world, suffering is the most real.”

“If by ‘free will’ you mean the freedom to do what you desire, then yes, humans have free will. But if by ‘free will’ you mean the freedom to choose what to desire, then no, humans have no free will.”

“[…] the ‘self’ is a fictional story that the intricate mechanisms of our mind constantly manufacture, update, and rewrite.”

“We humans have conquered the world thanks to our ability to create and believe fictional stories. We are therefore particularly bad at knowing the difference between fiction and reality.”

“When you are confronted by some great story and you wish to know whether it is real or imaginary, one of the key question to ask is whether the central hero of the story can suffer.”

“Whenever politicians start talking in mystical terms, beware.”

#21 Lessons for the 21st Century #yuval noah harari

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neptunecreek · 5 years ago

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Researchers Targeting AI Bias, Sex Worker Advocate, and Global Internet Freedom Community Honored at EFF’s Pioneer Award Ceremony

Virtual Ceremony October 15 to Honor Joy Buolamwini, Dr. Timnit Gebru, and Deborah Raji; Danielle Blunt; and the Open Technology Fund (OTF) Community

San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is honored to announce the 2020 Barlow recipients at its Pioneer Award Ceremony: artificial intelligence and racial bias experts Joy Buolamwini, Dr. Timnit Gebru, and Deborah Raji; sex worker activist and tech policy and content moderation researcher Danielle Blunt; and the global Internet freedom organization Open Technology Fund (OTF) and its community.

The virtual ceremony will be held October 15 from 5:30 pm to 7 pm PT. The keynote speaker for this year’s ceremony will be Cyrus Farivar, a longtime technology investigative reporter, author, and radio producer. The event will stream live and free on Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and audience members are encouraged to give a $10 suggested donation. EFF is supported by small donors around the world and you can become an official member at https://eff.org/PAC-join.

Joy Buolamwini, Dr. Timit Gebru, and Deborah Raji’s trailblazing academic research on race and gender bias in facial analysis technology laid the groundwork for a national movement—and a growing number of legislative victories—aimed at banning law enforcement’s use of flawed and overbroad face surveillance in American cities. The trio collaborated on the Gender Shades series of papers based on Buolamwini’s MIT thesis, revealing alarming bias in AI services from companies like Microsoft, IBM, and Amazon. Their subsequent internal and external advocacy spans Stanford, University of Toronto, Black in AI, Project Include, and the Algorithmic Justice League. Buolamwini, Gebru, and Raji are bringing light to the profound impact of face recognition technologies on communities of color, personal privacy and free expression, and the fundamental freedom to go about our lives without having our movements and associations covertly monitored and analyzed.

Danielle Blunt is one of the co-founders of Hacking//Hustling, a collective of sex workers and accomplices working at the intersection of tech and social justice to interrupt state surveillance and violence facilitated by technology. A professional NYC-based Femdom and Dominatrix, Blunt researches sex work and equitable access to technology from a public health perspective. She is one of the lead researchers of Hacking//Hustling's “Erased: The Impact of FOSTA-SESTA and the Removal of Backpage” and “Posting to the Void: CDA 230, Censorship, and Content Moderation,” studying the impact of content moderation on the movement work of sex workers and activists. She is also leading organizing efforts around sex worker opposition to the EARN IT Act, which threatens access to encrypted communications, a tool that many in the sex industry rely on for harm reduction, and would also increase platform policing of sex workers and queer and trans youth. Blunt is on the advisory board of Berkman Klein's Initiative for a Representative First Amendment (IfRFA) and the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project in NYC. She enjoys redistributing money from institutions, watching her community thrive, and “making men cry.”

The Open Technology Fund (OTF) has fostered a global community and provided support—both monetary and in-kind—to more than 400 projects that seek to combat censorship and repressive surveillance. The OTF community has helped more than two billion people in over 60 countries access the open Internet more safely and advocate for democracy. OTF earned trust and built community through its open source ethos, transparency, and a commitment to independence from its funder, the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), and helped fund several technical projects at EFF. However, President Trump recently installed a new CEO for USAGM, who immediately sought to replace OTF's leadership and board and to freeze the organization's funds—threatening to leave many well-established global freedom tools, their users, and their developers in the lurch. Since then, OTF has made some progress in regaining control, but it remains at risk and, as of this writing, USAGM is still withholding critical funding. With this award, EFF is honoring the entire OTF community for their hard work and dedication to global Internet freedom and recognizing the need to protect this community and ensure its survival despite the current political attacks.

“One of EFF’s guiding principles is that technology should enhance our rights and freedoms instead of undermining them,” said EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn. “All our honorees this year are on the front lines if this important work—striving to ensure that no matter where you are from, what you look like, or what you do for a living, the technology you rely on makes your life better and not worse. While most technology is here to stay, a technological dystopia is not inevitable. Used thoughtfully, and supported by the right laws and policies, technology can and will make the world better. We are so proud that all of our honorees are joining us to fight for this together.”

Awarded every year since 1992, EFF’s Pioneer Award Ceremony recognize the leaders who are extending freedom and innovation on the electronic frontier. Previous honorees have included Malkia Cyril, William Gibson, danah boyd, Aaron Swartz, and Chelsea Manning. Sponsors of the 2020 Pioneer Award ceremony include Dropbox; Ridder, Costa, and Johnstone LLP; and Ron Reed.

To attend the virtual Pioneer Awards ceremony: https://eff.org/PAC-register For more on the Pioneer Award ceremony: https://www.eff.org/awards/pioneer/2020

Contact:

Rebecca

Jeschke

Media Relations Director and Digital Rights Analyst

[email protected]

from Deeplinks https://ift.tt/3khJiKc

#Deeplinks

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vladislav-karelin · 6 years ago

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Мои твиты

Сб, 14:06: #81 Cops Digitally Erase Suspect's Facial Tattoos To Make Him Look More Like The Robbery Suspect Caught On Camera v… https://t.co/1C0O6LSXqI

Сб, 16:01: New story on NPR: Will A Massive Effort To Secure The 2020 Vote End Up Superfluous Or Not Enough?… https://t.co/lBujlSfgF2

Сб, 16:01: New story on NPR: Attorneys General Focus On Facebook And Google https://t.co/A2DuP5VPcJ https://t.co/ehHUrECYva

Сб, 16:21: #81 The Many Ways Planned Obsolescence Is Sabotaging How We Preserve Internet History via /r/technology --… https://t.co/XnSCgJSlH7

Сб, 18:21: #81 Unsolicited nudes detected and deleted by AI - Software that can detect and delete unsolicited penis pictures s… https://t.co/zRqhuNuwo9

Сб, 18:21: #81 Facebook's Dating Service is Full of Red Flags via /r/technology -- https://t.co/1fR2zxwrhQ… https://t.co/vDSX09zY9V

Сб, 19:36: #81 Facebook broke democracy — now it's coming for your marriage | The "Secret Crushes" feature on Facebook Dating… https://t.co/Ou6ZGKoWOL

Сб, 20:21: Рост. Вес. Три соседа https://t.co/Fn6rmite22

Сб, 20:36: #81 Automatic Listening Exploitation Act would fine a company $40K for each recording their smart home device makes… https://t.co/0Xv20TNKC0

Вс, 00:36: #81 Apple takes flak for disputing iOS security bombshell dropped by Google. Apple statement alienates the security… https://t.co/0oJNWj9t0R

Вс, 01:41: #81 Robot Helps Perform First Long-Distance Heart Surgery The surgeon operated the controls from a room 20 miles aw… https://t.co/r4ZJbjyTJt

Вс, 02:31: #81 Director of M.I.T.’s Media Lab Resigns After Outcry Over Jeffrey Epstein Ties via /r/technology --… https://t.co/U5aahUAvKE

Вс, 05:26: #81 Facebook quietly ditched the 'It’s free and always will be' slogan from its homepage via /r/technology --… https://t.co/GpEjFKPc82

Вс, 07:41: #81 US to collect social media profiles from immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees (not just visa applicants) vi… https://t.co/d4AvgbnPor

Вс, 07:41: #81 What if aging weren’t inevitable, but a curable disease? via /r/technology -- https://t.co/yxmM6K3Tar… https://t.co/mWWQMauwjI

Вс, 08:31: #81 EA Received A Guinness World Record For Most Downvoted Comment In Reddit History via /r/technology --… https://t.co/efVc3kDWp8

Вс, 09:38: [Перевод] Тренинг Cisco 200-125 CCNA v3.0. День 36. Канальный протокол STP https://t.co/kmdRmM32z2

Вс, 10:31: #81 Firefox will encrypt web domain name requests by default - You can expect to see DNS over HTTPS by the end of S… https://t.co/KnbrW4EUAV

source https://karelin-vlad.livejournal.com/102081.html

#RSSToTumblrApp

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toomanysinks · 6 years ago

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Technology’s dark forest

We used to be such optimists. Technology would bring us a world of wealth in harmony with the environment, and even bring us new worlds. The Internet would erase national boundaries, replace gatekeepers with a universal opportunity for free expression, and bring us all closer together. Remember when we looked forward to every advance?

I just finished Liu Cixin’s magisterial science-fiction trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past. It is very much a bracingly pessimistic story for our era. Without spoiling it too much, I’ll just say that it’s a depiction of a transition from optimistically anticipating contact with other worlds … to a bleak realization that we haven’t done so yet because the universe is a “dark forest,” the title of the trilogy’s second book. “Dark forest theory” holds that civilizations fear one another so much that they don’t dare to reveal themselves lest they immediately be considered a potential threat and destroyed.

There are certain analogies here. We’ve grown to fear technology, to mistrust everything it offers us, to assume its every new offering has a dark side. Consider the recent mini-viral-storm around the “10 Year Challenge” meme, and the resulting Wired piece suggesting it’s a Trojan Horse designed to manipulate us into training Facebook’s AI to improve recognition of aging faces.

I strongly doubt that that is actually the case. Not because I have any faith in Facebook’s transparent benevolence; because they already have a way-past-enormous cornucopia of such data, more accurately (implicitly) tagged. Even if explicit tags were helpful rather than counterproductive — which I doubt, given the stripping of metadata, the jokes riffing on the meme, etc. — they wouldn’t move the needle. As Max Read puts it:

i get the attraction but i found this post wildly unconvincing. FB already has an enormous, rich facial-recognition dataset going back 15 years. the idea that it's "too noisy" to be of use is obviously untrue given that facebook *already uses it* https://t.co/31na0W9fPL

— Max Read (@max_read) January 16, 2019

But I find it a striking example of how so many of us have grown to treat technology as a dark forest. Everything tech does seems to now be considered a threat until proved a blessing, and maybe even then. It wasn’t long ago that the reverse was true. How and why did this happen?

Part of it is probably resentment. The fabulously wealthy and influential tech industry has become one of the world’s premier power centers, and people (correctly) suspect tech is now more likely to reify this new hierarchy than disrupt or undercut it. But it’s hard to shake the sense that it’s not really technology’s job to improve human hierarchies; it’s democracy’s. It’s true that democracy seems to have been doing a shockingly poor job over the last few years, but it’s hard to blame that entirely on technology.

Rather, I think a lot of this dark-forest attitude towards tech is because, to most people, technology is now essentially magic. In AI’s case, as we see from that Wired piece, even experts can’t agree on what the technology needs, much less exactly how it works, much less explain step-by-step how it arrives at its (not always be reproducible) results.

(Possibly implicitly biased results! you may shout. Yes, that’s true and important. But I find it bizarre how everyone outside of the business keeps hammering the table shouting about how the tech industry need to stop ignoring the fact that AI may reinforce implicit bias, while all the AI people I know are deeply aware of this risk, describe it as one of their primary concerns, talk about it constantly, and are doing all kinds of work to mitigate or eliminate it. Why the implicit assumption that all AI researchers and engineers are blithely ignoring this risk? Again: technology has become a dark forest.)

Tech-as-magic is not just limited to AI, though. How many people really understand what happens when you flick a switch and a light comes on? How many fewer really understand how text messaging works, or why a change of a mere few degrees in global temperatures is likely to be catastrophic for billions? Not many. What do we fear? We fear the unknown. Tech is a dark forest because to most people tech is dark magic.

The problem is, this dark magic happens to be our only hope to solve our immediate existential problems, such as global warming. We already live in a dark forest full of terrible but subtle and ill-defined threats, and they aren’t caused by new technologies, they’re caused by the consequences of exceeding the carrying capacity of our planet with our old technologies. Climate change is a grue coming through the trees for us with terrifying speed, and technology is the one torch which might lead us out.

Fine, granted, that fire might, theoretically, in the long run, and/or in the wrong, might eventually become some kind of a threat. It’s used by a lot of bad actors to manipulate people, reify oppression, and siphon wealth its users don’t deserve. In some parts of the planet it’s being horrifically misused in far worse ways yet. All true. But just because fire is dangerous doesn’t every new use of it is a malevolent threat. Let’s get past the knee-jerk backlash and try to restore a little optimism, a little hope, a little potential belief that new technological initiatives are not automatically a bad-faith misuse, even if they do come from Facebook.

(I’m the first to admit that Facebook does a lot of bad things, and condemn them for it! But that does not mean that everything they do is bad. Companies are like people; it is possible, hard as this may to be to believe in this Death Of Nuance era, that they can do some good things and some bad things at the same time. Most shocking of all, this is even true of Elon Musk.)

I’m not just saying that this would be nice. I’m saying it’s something we probably need to do, because like it or not, it seems that we have, as a species, already collectively wandered into a very real dark forest, and a cascading series of better technologies is the only plausible route out. It’ll be awfully hard to build that route if we start assuming it’s been deliberately filled with pitfalls and quicksand. Let’s be skeptical, by all means; but let’s not assume guilt and bad faith as our default stance.

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/20/technologys-dark-forest/

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fmservers · 6 years ago

Text

Technology’s dark forest

— Max Read (@max_read) January 16, 2019

Via Jon Evans https://techcrunch.com

#TechCrunch

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un-enfant-immature · 6 years ago

Text

Technology’s dark forest

— Max Read (@max_read) January 16, 2019

#TechCrunch

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nofomoartworld · 8 years ago

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Hyperallergic: A Documentary About China’s Coal Mining Industry Fuels Western Biases

Scene from Zhao Liang’s Behemoth (image courtesy Zhao Liang and Institut National de l’Audiovisuel)

The Chinese contemporary filmmaker Zhao Liang’s latest movie Behemoth looks at the iron and coal mining industry in Inner Mongolia, a sweeping northern region of China with a population of primarily Mongols (an official ethnic minority in the country) and the Han majority.

Despite its heavy topic, the film is rife with visual splendor. Segments portray the artist lying naked in grassy fields and mountain ranges, while the unrelenting mechanics of capitalist industry sputter smoke around him. Scenes of the workers bathing, as they scrub and scrape at the metallic dust that coats their bodies, portray a pain and sacrifice that is more than just skin-deep. Zhao has described Behemoth as “closer to art than film,” and it delivers through aesthetically stimulating, raw expression.

Scene from Zhao Liang’s Behemoth (image courtesy Zhao Liang and Institut National de l’Audiovisuel)

Forgoing the conventions of documentary-style filmmaking, Zhao decides not to give any of the laborers a voice in lieu of his own narration. Zhao, who was born in Dandong, Liaoning Province and now lives in Beijing, speaks in perfect pudonghua that is not native to the region, but rather a standardized dialect imposed by a Bejing-centric government. The choice is a risky one for a film that, at first glance, gives a voice to the voiceless. Left nameless, the workers serve as actors in Zhao’s dramatic production, which tells a dark truth by reproducing many of the same power structures that dehumanize the laborers in the first place.

The script is loosely inspired by Dante’s Inferno. It is easy to imagine why the Italian novel is relevant to the workers, who are tasked with descending into a sweltering dark abyss to extract the earth’s natural resources each day. While this decision finds common ground with Western audiences, it’s only yet another instance of viewing China from a Western perspective — one that is quick to demean, infantilize, and “other” Chinese citizens as incapable of governing themselves. One precarious scene involves a family who lives in a tent with a toddler. Left naked to play in the dirt, the child is a metaphor for the worker’s existential crisis; however, there is also the dangerous potential of implicating the mother in irresponsible parenting or rendering primitive the very people who have generously allowed Zhao Liang into their lives. This imagery is especially harmful in a film that neglects to identify aspects of Chinese culture that are redeemable, aside from its scenic environment. Likewise, there is little focus on how the workers’ lives were better off before their labor was exploited.

Scene from Zhao Liang’s Behemoth (image courtesy Zhao Liang and Institut National de l’Audiovisuel)

All of this ultimately leads me to question the environmentalist bent of the movie. Is it to preserve lands for cultural tourism that both privileged Western peoples and Han Chinese audiences, including viewers of this film, already engage in? The film also serves as a way for viewers to feel better about their own situations; as Wendy Ide from The Guardian put it, “I sometimes complain about having to watch mediocre movies, but this rather puts that into perspective. At least I don’t have to chisel chunks of molten pig iron from my flesh at the end of my working day.” For a film that sets out to be socially engaged, providing soothing relief for more privileged people seems to be misaligned with its intentions.

Behemoth digs at the Chinese government’s failure to care for its laborers, who quickly develop black lung from working in a toxic environment. This theme of an inherently wicked Chinese government, aside from its pervasiveness in US news, political rhetoric, and historical narrative, is also commonly found in the work of popular Chinese artists based abroad, like Ai Weiwei, Yue Minjun, Liu Bolin, and Cui Xiuwen, as well as in critically acclaimed films like Meishi Street (2006) and Up the Yangtze (2007) — a trend rooted in a colonial past that leaves me longing for more complex perspectives. This singular, perpetuating narrative of China incubates existing xenophobia and resentment for Communism, which reaffirms the “successes” of democracy. These tired viewpoints often conveniently omit Western democracy’s own complicity in creating hazardous environments: for starters, the US’s dependency on cheap, readily available goods and American CEOs responsible for outsourcing.

Scene from Zhao Liang’s Behemoth (image courtesy Zhao Liang and Institut National de l’Audiovisuel)

Zhao’s overt critiques of the Chinese government, depicted in the way of workers carrying protest signs that identify their perpetrators, detracts from the real silent evil at play, which is the undisputed desire for Western modernism. Perhaps some might pick up on this after seeing the brief ending sequence of a ghost town built by the rural laborers, filled with colonial era-esque apartment buildings, immaculately trimmed hedges, and smoothly paved roads. Most film critics have not.

There are other artists, such as Xing Danwen in her Urban Fiction series or Cao Fei’s La Town, who assign much greater responsibility to Western forces within the damage of Chinese lands and culture. More transgressive is Steve McQueen’s earlier film Western Deep, with similar scenes of descent and darkness as metaphors for oppression without any of the decorum. Given the reality of globalized capitalism and white supremacy, the ongoing trauma to humanity, like the kind in Behemoth, is in truth neither beautiful nor entertaining.

At some points in the film, a coal miner carries a mirror upon his back, which reflects the surrounding landscape under excavation, excluding the filmmaker’s camera-holding presence. Ironically, this scene can act as a summation of the film. Zhao Liang’s gesture, though poetic, erases the awareness of our violent gazes just as much as it erases the man holding it.

Zhao Liang’s Behemoth is playing at Metrograph (7 Ludlow St, Lower East Side, Manhattan) through Thursday, February 9.

The post A Documentary About China’s Coal Mining Industry Fuels Western Biases appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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