A note from one of my favourite authors at the moment.
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@thirstybear One problem with this analogy is that the people talking about the arson ring often suggest banning fire rather than stopping arsonists from misusing it and the only way to get them to focus on the arsonists starts with reminding them that fire can be useful.
@MartyFouts or, and hear me out here, you could put your whataboutism where the sun does not shine. no-one loves proselytisers.
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@LevZadov @yugthebug @thirstybear I'm sorry, but you've lost that fight. In general usage, LLM is exactly what AI means.
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@resuna @yugthebug @jmax @thirstybear You probably use an ML system every time you spend money - every transaction is fraud scored at some point, some multiple times.
@TimWardCam Lots of comments arguing that this is not what people are complaining about, so I felt I should point out whatever system my cash back for groceries card is using for fraud detection is an absolute sack of shit, excelling at both Type 1 *and* Type 2 errors.
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@MartyFouts or, and hear me out here, you could put your whataboutism where the sun does not shine. no-one loves proselytisers.
@mawhrin @thirstybear oh aren’t you a special snowflake. Have a nice day.
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A note from one of my favourite authors at the moment.
@thirstybear good. explaining anything to a hostile when it is acting in bad faith would be pointless. that is the domain of actions.
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A note from one of my favourite authors at the moment.
"one day that fire will be able to build a house" they say
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@resuna @ScriptFanix @jmax @TimWardCam @yugthebug @thirstybear
yeah but this also includes image generators and things that maybe can't be accurately described as dealing with "language" in its output
Kate Crawford's term "large-scale computing" is also good as a reminder that these things are really just the same sort of thing we've had for a while, but bigger, more resource-intensive, and more exploitative@resuna
@ScriptFanix @jmax @TimWardCam @yugthebug @thirstybear
also if you wanna be more specific, u can say something like "plausible sentence generator", "plausible image generator", "plausible code generator", or whatever
so, for example, Minnesota recently banned plausible nude generators -
A note from one of my favourite authors at the moment.
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@ScriptFanix @TimWardCam @resuna @yugthebug @thirstybear If you use the term AI in modern language, you're talking about LLMs. Part of the scam is to pretend that they are synonyms, and they've won that fight.
You're helping with the con by continuing to refer to actual useful technologies as "AI".
Scalzi meant AI in the colloquial sense of LLMs. Stop playing "well actually" games that only benefit con artists.
@ScriptFanix @TimWardCam @resuna @thirstybear yeah I get that ai refers to generative ai nowadays, which is why I clarified to machine learning which does in my opinion have legitimate use cases
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@ScriptFanix @TimWardCam @resuna @thirstybear yeah I get that ai refers to generative ai nowadays, which is why I clarified to machine learning which does in my opinion have legitimate use cases
@yugthebug @ScriptFanix @TimWardCam @resuna @thirstybear Absolutely. 's right handy.
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A note from one of my favourite authors at the moment.
@thirstybear Surely there are two things going on here...
a) it's tone deaf and a big failure to read the room to come in with a 'but fire is used for x' argument.
b it still being true that @scalzi.com (love the work) is making a poor argument or deliberately conflating 'fire' with 'arson'.
I use LLMs daily for productive (daily janitorial) work no human should be burdened with. I try to be thoughtful about it and get the LLM itself to script alternatives to mindlessly burning processing cycles... etc.
There are arguments to say that despite this, it's wasteful and there are alternatives (none of which I can afford btw), but this is a complex argument.
There is solid discussion of LLMs vs ML vs just complex algorithms in this thread... We need to have these discussions lest the LLM bros win the day, and we have them all post hoc.
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A note from one of my favourite authors at the moment.
@thirstybear @TimChaffee This is perfect.
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@ScriptFanix @resuna @yugthebug @jmax @thirstybear That not all "AI" is LLM and not all non-LLM "AI" is evil. Many people here get that, but there are plenty who don't.
@TimWardCam @ScriptFanix @resuna @yugthebug @jmax @thirstybear people know that. That’s why “AI” is in quotations.
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@thirstybear One problem with this analogy is that the people talking about the arson ring often suggest banning fire rather than stopping arsonists from misusing it and the only way to get them to focus on the arsonists starts with reminding them that fire can be useful.
@MartyFouts @thirstybear they want to ban their houses being used for fueling the fire. The people roasting marshmallows and baking bread on their burning houses are not entitled to their houses as fuel and the arsonists have convinced them it’s necessary and okay.
So no, that’s not a problem. You just forgot that part of the metaphor.
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@MartyFouts @thirstybear they want to ban their houses being used for fueling the fire. The people roasting marshmallows and baking bread on their burning houses are not entitled to their houses as fuel and the arsonists have convinced them it’s necessary and okay.
So no, that’s not a problem. You just forgot that part of the metaphor.
@707Kat @thirstybear Well you have certainly belabored the metaphor more than I thought possible but your example still has people going after the wrong people, your “marshmallow toasters” instead of the arsonists.
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@707Kat @thirstybear Well you have certainly belabored the metaphor more than I thought possible but your example still has people going after the wrong people, your “marshmallow toasters” instead of the arsonists.
@MartyFouts @thirstybear I don't think people should go after the marshmallow toasters. The marshmallow toasters are the ones coming up to the homeowners and going "look how crispy the fire is making my marshmallow, isn't it nice? I hope the arsonists continue to burn houses so I can keep a roast going."
The bread bakers are talking about another kind of fire = AI.
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A note from one of my favourite authors at the moment.
@thirstybear
Since this post attracted a bunch of "not all AI" subthreads, here's a collection of useful articles about defining "AI" in our current day 🧵
https://tech.lgbt/@toolbear/116446645444544147 -
@thirstybear
Since this post attracted a bunch of "not all AI" subthreads, here's a collection of useful articles about defining "AI" in our current day 🧵
https://tech.lgbt/@toolbear/116446645444544147@toolbear It has. Which is ironic considering the original post
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A note from one of my favourite authors at the moment.
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/how-anthropic-used-its-ai-ethicslop
Anthropic ceo: “How can we ensure the gains of AI are shared globally? We do not have a mechanism for this. It is an unsolved problem.”
Brian Merchant: I actually laughed out loud reading this bit. What a mystery. It’s not like anyone has ever thought of progressive taxation before.
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A note from one of my favourite authors at the moment.
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/how-anthropic-used-its-ai-ethicslop
Anthropic ceo: “How can we ensure the gains of AI are shared globally? We do not have a mechanism for this. It is an unsolved problem.”
Brian Merchant: I actually laughed out loud reading this bit. What a mystery. It’s not like anyone has ever thought of progressive taxation before.
