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BranBucket

@ BranBucket @lemmy.world

Posts
2
Comments
185
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Sums up AI problems

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  • You're when it comes to finding affection. Which is precisely why my approach fell flat.

    While the environmental problems and the market bubble eventually bursting are bigger issues that will harm everyone, I see the beginnings of what could be a problem of equal significance concerning the exploitation of lonely and vulnerable people for profit with AI romance/sexbot apps. I don't want to fully buy into the more sensationalist headlines surrounding AI safety without more information, but I strongly suspect that we'll see a rise in isolated persons with aggravated mental health issues due to this kind of LLM use. Not necessarily hundreds of people with full-blown psychosis, but an overall increase in self-isolation coupled with depression and other more common mental health issues.

    The way social media has shaped our public discourse has shown that like it or not, we're all vulnerable to being emotionally manipulated by electronic platforms. AI is absolutely being used in the same way and while more tech savvy persons are likely to be less vulnerable, no one is going to be completely immune. When you consider AI powered romance and sex apps, ask yourself if there's a better way to get under someone's skin than by simulating the most intimate relationships in the human experience?

    So, old fashioned or not, I'm not going to be supportive of lonely people turning to LLMs as a substitute for romance in the near future. It's less about their individual freedoms, and more about not wanting to see them fed into the next Torment Nexus.

    Edits: several words.

  • Sums up AI problems

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  • Well, that's certainly not the direction I expected this conversation to go.

    I apologize to the necro community for the hurtful and ignorant comments I've made in the past. They aren't reflective of who I am as a person and I'll strive to improve myself in the future.

  • Sums up AI problems

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  • For a while I was telling people "don't fall in love with anything that doesn't have a pulse." Which I still believe is good advice concerning AI companion apps.

    But someone reminded me of that humans will pack-bond with anything meme that featured a toaster or something like that, and I realized it was probably a futile effort and gave it up.

  • Decided to see what Reddit was up to and this was the first thing I saw

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  • Yup. The Internet was going to demolish barriers and let people communicate mind to mind without prejudice. We were going to democratize information and science, put the power in the hands of the people, and put an end to pointless conflicts.

    Far fetched? Sure. But we should never forget what they stole from us. The most complex and powerful machine humanity has ever created, a collaborative project built in the spirit of cooperation and empowerment, is being monoplized and exploited so some high functioning sociopaths can get rich.

  • Why do you personally hate Christmas?

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  • Samsung is putting Google Gemini AI into your refrigerator, whether you need it or not

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  • No one needs this. No one.

  • Whats the most Fediverse "Thing" you know of?

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  • The phenomenon is sometimes called the Naccism of Small Differences or the Law of Triviality. It appears in just about any group of people to some degree. It's a wild and weird little bit of human behavior.

  • What wisdom from someone else has stuck with you?

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  • From others in general - Always invest in the things that separate you from the ground; shoes, tires, and your mattress.

    From a coach I knew - Every so often sit down and make sure your actions fit with your goals. It's easier to get off course than you think.

    From my father - The Hassle Factor. A job can give you three things, enough money to make up for the time you don't have, enough time to make up for the money you don't have, and a sense of satisfaction. If you aren't getting at least two of the three, the job isn't worth the hassle.

  • What wisdom from someone else has stuck with you?

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  • A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky animals and you know it.

  • Meanwhile, in SW Florida [OC]

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  • I'd rather have two cubes and a vehicle that doesn't reek of midlife crisis.

  • Meanwhile, in SW Florida [OC]

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  • Holy shit. It is, isn't it? Perfect!

  • Meanwhile, in SW Florida [OC]

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  • What an utterly useless thing. You add axles to bear more weight. Unless you're hauling a big tungsten cube, the truck isn't big enough to carry a load that would need three axles.

    It's even dumber than those Jeep Gladiators, the #1 pavement princess in my area, which sacrifice departure angle for a ridiculously small amount of cargo space and less load capacity than an entry level pickup truck.

    Just stupid.

  • J. D. Vance Fails a Simple Moral Test | The vice president welcomes anti-Semites into the Republican coalition.

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  • TBF the term is tossed around liberally these days. But you are correct, this is the type of antisemite that wants to start a genocide, not the kind that wants to end one.

  • So apparently full stops in texts are 'passive agressive' now. What other unwritten rules for texting have changed over the last couple of decades?

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  • I know. I have a problem. =(

  • So apparently full stops in texts are 'passive agressive' now. What other unwritten rules for texting have changed over the last couple of decades?

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  • Oddly enough, I don't claim to really love language for the sake of language, but it's pretty useful in my day to day so I try to use it well. I like your post, so, in the spirit of negotiation let's use the term baseline instead of rules.

    The bulk of educational and informational works on the English language gives us a kind of baseline for our written language. When someone deviates from that baseline, most of the time we can still understand them because we can see how it differs and can infer their intent based on context and that baseline.

    The dictionaries, style guides, and grammar texts that give us our baseline exist to facilitate written communication, not stifle it. They're the result of hundreds of years of these kinds of negotiations, not just arbitrary choice as so many people claim. Good grammar isn't just a cudgel to beat the creativity out of kids, it's the benefit of centuries worth of experience and study. Just as new ideas shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, we also shouldn't disregard past practice simply on the basis of it's age.

    Baselines do change. But it's a slow process, not every popular new deviation will stand the test of time, and many antique forms are still present in our modern language. Think of it like scientific progress. Some ideas are validated by experimentation, others are proven wrong. Our understanding of the universe is more complex now than centuries ago, but there are still numerous constants that have been proven time after time. Our language has grown more complex too, but that doesn't mean that some very old ideas about how to communicate in writing aren't still useful today.

    But you're very, very right about shame and reactions, and I'd be dishonest not to admit that. It's too easy for armchair grammarians to treat language as if it exists in a logic vacuum separate from human emotion, and that's simply not the case.

    Omitting a period from a text isn't a crime, I freely admit that I'm often a grumpy old asshole about this sort of thing when I shouldn't be, and you're 100% correct that people shouldn't be shamed over it.

    At the same time, the reverse is also true. Not every plea for punctuation and grammar is creative or ideological tyranny, and if some people react poorly to a text that omits punctuation, that's not something the author has a say in either.

    At any rate, I hope this comes of as intended, a genuine, if overly lengthy explanation from someone who supports the widespread use of punctuation, and not just Grandpa Simpson yelling at a cloud. =)

  • So apparently full stops in texts are 'passive agressive' now. What other unwritten rules for texting have changed over the last couple of decades?

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  • I still send =), =D, and =P.

    I'll just go ahead and get in my coffin now.

  • What's an unpopular UI opinion you have?

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  • Oddly enough, I liked sidebars because they left more vertical real estate available for endless scrolling in browsers and auto-hide on some taskbars can get flaky.

    But then again I go out of my way to find 16:10 monitors, so maybe take that with a grain of salt.

  • So apparently full stops in texts are 'passive agressive' now. What other unwritten rules for texting have changed over the last couple of decades?

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  • You seem to think a centralized style and grammar book like the French have is the only way to have strict set of grammatical rules.

    An overwhelming number of English textbooks and stylebooks agree on the use of a period. We're not talking about something esoteric here, it's how you end a sentence. Omitting them is poor writing. Claiming artistic licence or understandability doesn't change that in the vast majority of cases. I'm not calling those who omit them baby-killers or anything. It's just poor writing that people have grown accustomed to seeing.

    Writers like McCarthy, Twain, and Joyce have the chops to communicate exceptionally well despite breaking these rules, not just because they broke them. The people in the office next to yours mangling emails don't.

    And literacy rates are on the decline in the US. Take that however you will.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States

  • Removed

    It really is just a skill issue for Americans isnt it...

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  • Yeah, no way to connect these dots for me either.

    Let's call it anecdotal evidence if we must, but it seems to me that most school shooters seem to have been fairly knowledgeable in handling their weapons and aware of what happens when they pull the trigger.

  • So apparently full stops in texts are 'passive agressive' now. What other unwritten rules for texting have changed over the last couple of decades?

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  • It's very in line with Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death and the idea that the medium itself shapes communication and public discourse.

    People seem not just unwilling, but at times unable to tolerate any sort of discussion that's long enough to get into the real nuance of an issue. Postman blamed the news, especially TV news, and an over reliance on TV/Video as means to convey information (though he actually supported TV as entertainment). But he also cautioned against the risk centralizing what he referred to then as "computing" in a way that seem to almost prophesize what's currently happening with social media and AI.