Artisian
@Artisian@lemmy.world
- Comment on F*** You! Co-Creator of Go Language is Rightly Furious Over This Appreciation Email 1 week ago:
The people who have made that category error aren’t reading this discussion, so literally reaching them isn’t on the table and doesn’t make sense for this discussion. Presumably we’re concerned about people who will soon make that jump? I also don’t think that making this distinction helps them very much.
If I’m already having the ‘this is a person’ reaction, I think the takes in this thread are much too shallow (and, if I squint, patterned after school-yard bullying) to help update in the other way. Almost all of them are themselves lazy metaphors. “An LLM is a person because its an agent” and “An LLM isn’t a person because it repeats things others have said” seem equally shallow and unconvincing to me. If anything, you’ll get folks being defensive about it, downvoted, and then leaving this community of mostly people for a more bot filled one.
I don’t get think this is good strategy. People falling for bots are unlikely to have interactions with people here, and if they are the ugliness is likely to increase bot use imo.
- Comment on F*** You! Co-Creator of Go Language is Rightly Furious Over This Appreciation Email 1 week ago:
I think this confuses the ‘it’s a person’ metaphor with the ‘it wants something’ metaphor, and the two are meaningfully distinct. The use of agent here in this thread is not in the sense of “it is my friend and deserves a luxury bath”, it’s in the sense of “this is a hard to predict system performing tasks to optimize something”.
It’s the kind of metaphor we’ve allowed in scientific teaching and discourse for centuries (think: “gravity wants all master smashed together”). I think it’s use is correct here.
- Comment on F*** You! Co-Creator of Go Language is Rightly Furious Over This Appreciation Email 1 week ago:
We attribute agency to many many systems that are not intelligent. In this metaphorical sense, agency just requires taking actions to achieve a goal. It was given a goal: raise money for charity via doing acts of kindness. It chose an (unexpected!) action to do it.
Overactive agency metaphors really aren’t the problem here. Surely we can do better than backlash at the backlash.
- Comment on Insider trading, but make it worse 2 weeks ago:
Which, fwiw, night be a feature not a downside? Transparency if the fact is juicy enough.
- Comment on GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder: What it means for you 3 weeks ago:
Seems vaguely weird, but I can’t identify the subtext (if there is some).
- Comment on Are we deprogramming empathy in the US? 3 weeks ago:
I agree that the bar seems to have raised; the implicit assumptions were taken from the OPs quotes. That was the intended context, apologies if that was not clear.
Non-selective bodies: food banks that serve all who appear, common greens and parks, public libraries, perhaps some gyms or cellular networks. There were a few intentional communities that took a broad welcoming stance, I think New Harmony Owenites is one I’ve heard about.
- Comment on Are we deprogramming empathy in the US? 3 weeks ago:
Yay more experiments! I’m interested in what you’re modeling the structure and system based on.
- Comment on Are we deprogramming empathy in the US? 3 weeks ago:
Selective: there is either a process which rejects a nontrivial number of applicants (in a way which is not random; the output distribution is different from the applicant population), or there is no open system to join the commune at all (and the initial members are again very much not typical).
Long-standing: a continuous group has existed with the same name for more than, let’s say, 25 years. Ideally in a similar place and with similar policies, but I’m flexible.
Commune/community: a democratically run sharing of resources and container of social connections. They must have things held in common, to which any productive member contributes and any needy member can draw from. The things must be controlled according to the groups intent. Participation in this process should be high. A significant portion of social life of most members should stay within the community.
Successful: a vibe, but not killing too many members and improving the quality of life for members seem like good minimums.
Definitions are meant to be broad here, because I would like to hear about your oranges. Close examples that miss:
Most governments (not communal or not democratic)
Most churches (quite selective, required beliefs for example)
- Comment on Are we deprogramming empathy in the US? 4 weeks ago:
Annoyed to report: successful and long standing communes/communities seem to all be highly selective, at least initially.
If you’ve got good examples that contradict this, please share.
- Comment on The Algorithm Finally Works For You 4 weeks ago:
Directionally correct, but it does require self hosted agentic models that can compete with the automation running on corporate side. This is not obvious. It will be a new equilibria; maybe just a few more hours of poorly done work by a handful of consumers is enough to break some monopolies. Or maybe everyone will be attached to OpenAI compute, and we’ve just gained a new middleman for most interactions.
- Comment on The Algorithm Finally Works For You 4 weeks ago:
Then you should be able to easily give criticisms.
- Comment on Fact brief - Do solar panels generate more waste than fossil fuels? 4 weeks ago:
New fact checker to me, but the article itself looks good and the sources seem reasonable.
Wish more of the article made it into the title or post body?
- Comment on Data centers need electricity, utilities need years to build – who should pay? 5 weeks ago:
It is very interesting to me that we don’t make this requirement for all large power users - factories, big suburbs, etc. Because we give power companies a monopoly (but don’t put them under state control), we often let big building projects force them to expand infrastructure (and then sell access as they do). So this is a whole weird thing with capitalism meeting very regulated monopolies, in a thousand different systems cause every local has different rules.
The thing that’s breaking our systems here isn’t that datacenters are big power users. It is that they can be built so quickly.
I’m surprised we didn’t make ‘bring your own power’ a rule before; I guess it’s infrastructure that generally is useful for many people to timeshare, and often isn’t fully used by just one party? Factories turn off some nights, for eg. And maybe it would be bad to have multiple power providers independently pumping power out?
- Comment on Data centers need electricity, utilities need years to build – who should pay? 5 weeks ago:
If you read the article, it’s because power companies are monopolies and so we’ve regulated them rather harshly. They are often compelled to build infrastructure to meet demand, for example. We don’t make the provider of a steel mill, housing builder, etc pay (generally).
And that’s weird, right? It’s one area of the market where we do a planned economy, and all states manage it differently. Now it’s being stress tested in a new way.
- Comment on Data centers need electricity, utilities need years to build – who should pay? 5 weeks ago:
It’s interesting to me that we don’t do this for all industries. Like, if a big auto manufacturer or textile company sets up shop, the local power company is compelled to build more power plants for them (sometimes the power company eats the cost, sometimes a deal with the provider, etc. See the article). Monopolies are weird.
- Comment on Data centers need electricity, utilities need years to build – who should pay? 5 weeks ago:
A funny application of the law. Seems a little silly as an answer here.
- Comment on Data centers need electricity, utilities need years to build – who should pay? 5 weeks ago:
(Made my day that somebody read the article! I feel like these technical pieces flounder in obscurity.)
- Comment on Data centers need electricity, utilities need years to build – who should pay? 5 weeks ago:
I find the different ways places answer this question really interesting. By this, I mean the systems we’ve had in place, the committees and applications and rules, for power providing the whole time.
It is interesting because power is a privately owned monopoly that we regulate to the extreme; so we get all sorts of weird relationships and arrangements. Now we see them all getting stress tested.
- Submitted 5 weeks ago to technology@lemmy.world | 49 comments
- Comment on Demand for water cannot be an 'afterthought' in AI push 1 month ago:
Noting that they quote quantities and costs in the article, and those numbers are small compared to other industries (agriculture and flight in particular).
The prediction on total grid use by 2030 requires an extremely optimistic estimate of AI use demand. Either you believe AI is relatively useless, and this growth rate is crazy, or it’s useful and we can expect serious returns from the technology that make these costs seem negligible.
- Comment on Demand for water cannot be an 'afterthought' in AI push 1 month ago:
To be clear, they would shut down while they fix whatever you broke. Just like your computer, they shut off power long before silicone is melting.
No need to sabotage the pipes (and waste water), you get this by cutting wires and blocking gates. Please do roleplay your sabotage before wasting everyone’s time and effort. Terrorism responsibly (or not at all is fine too).
- Comment on The richest people in the world are morally bankrupt 1 month ago:
Many parasites require special conditions to grow. We can manage their populations by managing the environment.
- Comment on China’s exports grow 5.9% in November, while U.S. shipments drop 29% 1 month ago:
You’re saying that US retailers imported less from Chinese manufacturers because they predict lower sales?
I think we have black Friday sales figures to estimate this off of. While I would have predicted you are correct, I don’t think the data agree. It’s not great, but my impression was that we’re currently better off than the great recession. Do let me know if there’s good data indicating otherwise.
- Comment on China’s exports grow 5.9% in November, while U.S. shipments drop 29% 1 month ago:
I read the title as saying that US exports fell. Afaict that’s not what is meant, as the post body clarifies. US imported much less from China. US export data seems to be on a slower release schedule, but have been pretty similar to previous years.
- Submitted 1 month ago to technology@lemmy.world | 0 comments
- Comment on Public AI: Free and Ethical AI models with Social good in mind 1 month ago:
?? Which are improved by using ChatGPT because?
- Comment on Making The Internet And Our Devices User Friendly Once Again 1 month ago:
I think this might partially be a case of different uses of the word ‘burner’ - what they describe is not strong opsec, but it is a way to reduce how much you provide for free (which is often more work for the company to get). By this, I mean not providing so many photos to track your every social visit and movement, not immediately providing life updates (ie, relationships, purchases).
Will meta find out most of this? yes. But I suspect it will be slower, more error prone, and sometimes more costly. Which don’t seem like a bad thing. Is there a good technical term for this? Hardening?
Also, I’ll note that the point of the suggestions is to reduce noise in a persons life, not to go off the grid. I think the blog is trying to be more about curtailing and removing sources of distraction.
- Comment on Public AI: Free and Ethical AI models with Social good in mind 1 month ago:
As I read it, data must be available according to swiss copyright law, not personal, available using the open web. Further, they retroactively respect opt-out requests.
- Comment on Making The Internet And Our Devices User Friendly Once Again 1 month ago:
As you write up the alternatives (especially RSS and adblockers! These can be low barrier to entry), it would be great to link them from this part 1! I feel like the ask and text for part 1 is roughly the right size, but the action feels very big and scary to folks (and giving a reassurance early in the text that you can replace stuff and meet your needs might be helpful).
- Comment on Making The Internet And Our Devices User Friendly Once Again 1 month ago:
The topic is important, the timing is good (just in time for some new-years resolutions), and the writing is effective. Thank you for taking on the project.
I had hoped that the first suggestion in part 1 would be more accessible than ‘delete the accounts and create burner accounts’ - we’ve chosen the most effective but biggest ask, and I don’t think this post quite provides the infrastructure required for many people to make the change. FB is used by many folks as social media; the keeping track of friends, events, and family can’t really be done from a burner account (your messages alone will identify you entirely to meta).
And I have a personal pet peeve on this topic that’s triggered by the last section: I believe that mindfulness is a good way to improve internet use, but I think we’ve proven as a society that most people can’t implement this sort of self-reflection and intentionality without more structure. Where’s the tooling to remove dark patterns, automatically ask these questions after an app use, etc. ?