tangeli
@tangeli@piefed.social
- Comment on Ars Technica Fires Reporter After AI Controversy Involving Fabricated Quotes 1 week ago:
That’s part of the cost of AI that the AI companies leave to their customers. There is a tradeoff and we know from a long history of for-profit corporate behaviour that they will generally prefer lower short term cost, despite consequent risk and harm. But if the companies that sell AI services don’t take care to ensure the outputs are true and the companies that use AI don’t take care then that leaves the ultimate customer/consumer to fact check everything. That or simply be oblivious or stop trusting anything. The problem is made worse by the fact that most companies won’t disclose their use of AI, because of the adverse impact on their reputation, unless they are compelled to do so. So far, I don’t see any legislation to compel disclosure.
- Comment on Ars Technica Fires Reporter After AI Controversy Involving Fabricated Quotes 1 week ago:
You’re absolutely correct. But the problem is bigger than the rogue journalist. Separation of duties is a well known requirement for robust, reliable processes immune to single points of failure (whether malicious or, as I suspect in this case, merely grossly negligent and irresponsible). It is necessary but not sufficient to hold just the journalist who used AI responsible for the publication of false statements.
- Comment on Ars Technica Fires Reporter After AI Controversy Involving Fabricated Quotes 1 week ago:
Maybe they should do more than just fire a person who was caught using AI. Maybe they should establish a process of independent fact checking before publication, regardless of whether AI was known or intended to be used to produce the article. It is a problem that AI was used in a way that introduced factual errors. It’s fair that the person responsible for this was fired. But all processes need quality control. Why hasn’t the person who failed to wrap quality control processes around the author fired?
- Comment on Ars Technica Fires Reporter After AI Controversy Involving Fabricated Quotes 1 week ago:
This is a very large part of the problem. This and the fact that, by design, the output of AI is, despite its faults, increasingly difficult to distinguish from good work. Accountants’ spreadsheets and traditional software systems can be audited but AI output can’t: there’s no auditable process. The output doesn’t come out of nowhere, but the process is fundamentally resistant to inspection and validation. The only choices then are to run a parallel auditable system, audit it and compare the results, or run without quality control. It’s a crazy risk, but how many companies will spend the money to mitigate it? How many can survive the short term consequences of doing so?
- Comment on Ars Technica Fires Reporter After AI Controversy Involving Fabricated Quotes 1 week ago:
I don’t disagree with you. I wish there were more companies refusing to use AI, at least without the necessary quality controls. And customers enough to support them. But did you see Visualising AI spending: How does it compare with history’s mega projects?? I don’t think Ars can compete with that kind of funding, spent ruthlessly to eliminate competition. People need to wake up and realize they are the target of the predatory pricing of AI services, not just the companies: ordinary people doing good work can’t compete with AI given away for free. Manufacturing didn’t survive the competition of lower cost products from China. I don’t think Ars and companies like them can survive the competition of AI being given away, practically for free. It’s not even that I think AI has no value - it clearly does have enormous value and I expect it will get better. But current AI needs more oversight and control, and those using it should be required to pay the real cost so that those who choose not to use it can compete fairly. Markets that are too free can’t, until it is too late, constrain investment on this scale. We need not just a few companies resisting on principle but some regulation of AI companies to preserve some fairness of the markets, so that companies who use less AI and ordinary people can compete and survive on a level playing field. There are laws against unfair practices for good reason. We all need them to be enforced now.
- Comment on Ars Technica Fires Reporter After AI Controversy Involving Fabricated Quotes 1 week ago:
Her company has been good, though a recent restructuring is worrying. The advice came to an assembly of CFOs. The problem is much bigger than her company. This was the second professional development guidance she has received in the past month, promoting AI. I give her examples of unreliability and advise caution. At the session, they advised that no one should study programming or accounting any more. My advice was that they should study how to audit and that use of AI would make effective audit much harder than it has been, but also more necessary. The clusterfuck is going to affect everyone, unfortunately. You can’t avoid it by avoiding her company.
- Comment on Ars Technica Fires Reporter After AI Controversy Involving Fabricated Quotes 1 week ago:
My wife is an accountant. She went to a seminar today where they were told to start using AI or get out of the way. They were shown an AI that can produce consolidated annual accounts and financial statements in a few minutes, that it takes her and the auditors a month to produce. And they look very good! The company is unlikely to pay her and wait for the quality reports she has been producing for years. She’s on notice: start prompting the AI or move on. The AI promoters are going to run her and me and probably you into the ground and walk over us all, as they move on to their glorious future.
- Comment on Ars Technica Fires Reporter After AI Controversy Involving Fabricated Quotes 1 week ago:
Best if you don’t if quality is more important than financial viability, but no one can compete financially with the flood of AI/LLM being given away for free or, at most, far below actual cost. It’s not good for anyone but the billionaires, but have you noticed how much wealth they have accumulated in the past few years? It’s very, very good for them.
- Comment on Ars Technica Fires Reporter After AI Controversy Involving Fabricated Quotes 1 week ago:
AI - damned if you do and damned if you don’t. And it’s not just journalism affected.
- Comment on How to Use Local IP for Services when at Home? 4 weeks ago:
You might find the techniques used in Network-Aware Firewall useful. You can use firewall configuration to handle connections differently depending on whether you are connected to your home network or not. Or you can use the same techniquest to do other things, depending on network connection, like bringing up your VPN or not; modifying DNS or hosts file or not; etc.
- Comment on AI boom could falter without wider adoption, Microsoft chief Satya Nadella warns 1 month ago:
Who needs separate apps when you can just tell copilot what you want and it can put the slop straight into your trough?
- Comment on AI boom could falter without wider adoption, Microsoft chief Satya Nadella warns 1 month ago:
Didn’t OpenAI say it’s right about 25% of the time?
- Comment on AI boom could falter without wider adoption, Microsoft chief Satya Nadella warns 1 month ago:
Maybe WHO could declare a mental health emergency and mandate a lockdown and minimum 8 hours per day of AI use. And ban references to ‘slop’ - It’s really bad for the mental health of the billionaires when they hear their scam referred to as ‘slop’.
- Comment on European parliament calls for social media ban on under-16s 3 months ago:
MEPs insist that age assurance systems must be accurate and preserve minors’ privacy
The EU, where War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Ignorance Is Strength and Surveillance is Privacy.
- Comment on Gmail can read your emails and attachments to train its AI, unless you opt out 3 months ago:
Google can read your emails whether you opt out or not.
- Comment on HP and Dell disable HEVC support built into their laptops’ CPUs 3 months ago:
Is it disabled in hardware, firmware or software? Does Linux enable it?
- Comment on Open Source Power 3 months ago:
It’s an interesting article but it seems to me that when it comes to opposing abuse of power, free communication is more fundamental than free software. Without sufficiently free communication, free software is practically unavailable and for many purposes (anything that involves communication with others) it is unusable. Without sufficiently free means of communication, the fediverse will cease to exist. Access to and use of the Internet is increasingly regulated.
- Comment on German court: ChatGPT violated copyright law by ‘learning’ from song lyrics 3 months ago:
According to Are Song Lyrics Copyrighted? How the Law Works, unless their use is ‘fair use’ or they have a license, then they are violating copyright, if I understand the article correctly. I believe that site explains laws in the United States. It probably varies somewhat by jurisdiction, so I expect it would depend on who owns the website and where they are based.
- Comment on German court: ChatGPT violated copyright law by ‘learning’ from song lyrics 3 months ago:
Is ChatGPT a legal entity competent to violate copyright law? I don’t think that’s likely.
I do think OpenAI violated copyright law by copying song lyrics and other media to use them as input to their LLM systems for commercial benefit. Judging by the valuations of the companies that do not yet have significant income compared to the investments, on the face of it, the IP they copied, often without license, as far as I know, is fantastically valuable.
- Comment on Assign privileged port to caddy running with rootless podman 4 months ago:
I’m not running your configuration so can’t tell you with the assurance that I have it working but Forwarding ports with firewalld appears to address port forwarding to rootless podman using firewalld. If that doesn’t work for you you might need to clarify what your firewalld configuration is that obscures the client IP. I wouldn’t expect a simple port mapping to affect IP address.
- Comment on Western Executives Shaken After Visiting China 4 months ago:
What happened to “A rising tide lifts all boats”?
- Comment on Windows 10 support has ended, but here's how to get an extra year for free 4 months ago:
They may accept the ongoing cost, but that doesn’t make it free. There may be no cash payment, but that doesn’t make it free. Cost comes in many forms. The glib misrepresentation of the transaction is disappointing.
- Comment on Windows 10 support has ended, but here's how to get an extra year for free 4 months ago:
It’s not free.
- Comment on Sam Altman says that bots are making social media feel 'fake' 5 months ago:
Yes, but...
Making social media fake is the intention. It's not a failure.
The failure is that the fraud is noticed: the bots and LLMs are not yet good enough to be undetectable.
The fraud will be perfected when LLMs can be fake without feeling fake. At least until the fraudsters have achieved their objectives. After that, will they care how their victims feel? I guess not.
- Comment on NSW to ban people from appealing if working with children check denied 8 months ago:
and a teacher who was charged but never convicted of sexually abusing a foster child.
What happened to innocent until proven guilty?
- Comment on HP ditches 15-minute wait time policy due to 'feedback' 1 year ago:
People who buy HP products get what they deserve.