XLE

@XLE@piefed.social

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Europe takes first step to banning AI-generated child sexual abuse images⁩ ⁨⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  AI-generated revenge porn of adults is already sexual abuse. Hopefully you, Iconoclast, agree that such a thing is already reprehensible. Now hopefully you understand why it’s bad when it’s done to real children.

  The AI sphere is full of people who hate consent: Sam Altman the sister rapist, Eli Yudkowsky the serial abuser, Elon Musk who I don’t even know where to start, etc. I know you love AI an unhealthy amount, but this is not a hill you have to die on.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Firefox's beta feature "Smart Window" shared browsing and search history to AI models without prompting⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Finding out about this gives me some extra questions, though.

  • Was this data summarized on enabling this window, or before?
  • Did it use an existing model, or re-use one that someone may have already downloaded for a different feature?
  • Is this activity going anywhere else, like Mozilla’s recent “privacy-preserving” advertising?
  • When this does release, what will the default be?
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Europe takes first step to banning AI-generated child sexual abuse images⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Between this and the Chat Control rollback, Europe has been on a roll with the good choices for a change.

  The companies generating this stuff should have been in the crosshairs from the beginning.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Spotify tests letting users directly customize their Taste Profile⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  You beat me to the punch on slop. I would also like to opt out out of all the ghost bands Spotify assembled so they wouldn’t have to pay royalties to artists who joined the site

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Firefox's beta feature "Smart Window" shared browsing and search history to AI models without prompting⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  For us, sure. For the average Joe who doesn’t know about the side effects of fingerprinting, not so much.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Silicon Valley is buzzing about this new idea: AI compute as compensation⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  The Wikipedia article is yours to peruse and fix if you think it’s wrong. It has examples. I just quoted something that was particularly funny given your insistence that AI is literally the PC and clones.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Firefox's beta feature "Smart Window" shared browsing and search history to AI models without prompting⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  It might be easier to soften Librewolf than harden Firefox, but fair point.

  If you’re a relatively normal user and you still want to use LibreWolf, I would recommend:

  • disable fingerprinting
  • not clearing history on exit

  Most of this is easy to find, especially thanks to the LibreWolf menu

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Firefox's beta feature "Smart Window" shared browsing and search history to AI models without prompting⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Hey, I’m not excited about more stuff getting added into an already overflowing Firefox (why not an extension?!), but if they must promote AI choice, I’m with you: actually allow user choice.

  (Based on how Mozilla has added two unrequested search engines while ignoring a request to add StartPage, the “choice” thing seems to boil down to backroom deals.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Firefox's beta feature "Smart Window" shared browsing and search history to AI models without prompting⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  If it’s anything like how they handled the AI sidebar, this option is going to get hidden before it hits production.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Firefox's beta feature "Smart Window" shared browsing and search history to AI models without prompting⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Relevant section:

  Smart Window uses ‘memories’, things Mozilla says “…it learns from your activity” to inform its responses.

  You can delete memories individually, and you can set any given chat session to not use/store them.

  Fine so far.

  The problem? My memory list isn’t populated with things Smart Window learned since I enabled it. Oh no.

  It has activity going back months. We’re talking searches and website interactions from long before I enabled this. features.

  Firefox just handed that history to the AI models to plough from, without telling me upfront.

  I found this the creepiest aspect of Smart Window.

  Mozilla says this was a flub; it will refine the onboarding around Smart Window to limit memory formation to post-opt-in activity only. That’s obviously the right fix.

  Because sharing a user’s prior browsing history with third-party AI models, silently, on feature activation, without any headset? Yeah, a bit icky – but that’s the price of testing features that are finished, I guess.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Digg’s open beta shuts down after just two months, blaming AI bot spam⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Ladies and gentlemen, this is democracy democratization manifest.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Silicon Valley is buzzing about this new idea: AI compute as compensation⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  the first 10+ years of PCs and clones on the market, many were sitting idle on workers’ desks…

  No. Literally from Wikipedia: “Third-party software support grew extremely quickly, and within a year the PC platform was supplied with a vast array of titles for any conceivable purpose.”

  Not a million chatbots with flaky guardrails and dubious value, getting pushed on random people. The value of a PC program was explicit and understandable.

  IBM marketed thier PCs very effectively and launched with a Billion dollar boom, but then lost market share and ultimately lost their ability to sell PCs…

  … Because the PC Compatible emerged? Yeah I know. That’s evidence of success.

  Moving goalposts to a different metaphor (the dot-com bubble) makes me think you realized your first attempt at a metaphor sucked

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mother of wounded Maya Gebala sues OpenAI over mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Like I said, it is built to be human_like_. Of course it’s not human or sentient, but Sam Altman sells ChatGPT with humanizing language, describes human attributes, and personally subsidized the grooming of people to commit suicide and homicide.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mother of wounded Maya Gebala sues OpenAI over mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Come on, don’t be so dishonest. This “tool” is designed to create humanlike realtime communication, and it’s run by a billionaire rapist who just as easily have groomed the killer himself (thanks to it being a black box “live service").

  I remember your previous comment from another thread:

  Vulnerable people don’t get to outsource responsibility.

  But according to you, apparently powerful billionaires can.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI social platforms like Moltbook are potential accelerators of existential risk that should be regulated as critical infrastructure⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  As soon as I saw the word “existential”, red flags went up for me, too. I looked, and of course, this is a piece of propaganda molded by a think tank.

  Generously supported by
  the Future of Life Institute

  I’m kind of impressed how paranoid this piece is. I saw some MSM articles about “AIs making a religion” when these “religion"s were described and then discarded, but apparently whoever wrote this just assumed you’d been fed your media slop already, and he could focus on the doomsday scenario.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI error jails innocent grandmother for months in North Dakota fraud case⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Wait… Did I misread you? What makes you 99% sure it’s not AI?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mother of wounded Maya Gebala sues OpenAI over mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  If somebody on a forum was discussing ways to commit a crime, that person should probably be questioned.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mother of wounded Maya Gebala sues OpenAI over mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  This part is at the bottom of the article, but Altman’s promise to say sorry got an article of its own:

  Related Stories:
  OpenAI CEO agreed to apologize to Tumbler Ridge community, says B.C. premier

  And it quotes the premier singing the praises of Altman and AI:

  Eby credited Altman for participating in the call, acknowledging he was not obligated to do so, and suggested that, based on a review by the premier’s staff, OpenAI has better reporting standards than any similar companies operating in Canada…

  Eby called AI a technology with “incredible promise,” including in providing medical care and tackling issues such as climate change.

  The last part is by far the dumbest. Medical care is grimly ironic when Canada has a doctor-assisted suicide problem, and climate change is something AI is accelerating. It’s not going to generate a novel solution to it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI error jails innocent grandmother for months in North Dakota fraud case⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  What’s the other side of the debate? CNNs are excellent at facial recognition and they’ve been around for decades.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI error jails innocent grandmother for months in North Dakota fraud case⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  To steal a comment:

  [W]e’re seeing the first instances of what reality looks like with AI in the hands of the average bear. Just like the excuse was “but the computer said it was correct,” now we’re just shifting to “but the AI said it was correct.”

  Don’t underestimate how much authority and thinking people will delegate to machines. Not to mention the lengths they’ll go to weasel out of taking responsibility for a screw up like this (saw another comment in this thread about the Chief of Police stepping down but it being framed as “retirement").

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Silicon Valley is buzzing about this new idea: AI compute as compensation⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  1981 was the year of the IBM PC, which was produced for 6 years and became a staple in the business world. Third-party software became widely available within a year. They were famous for the quality of the documentation.

  Basically the opposite is true for AI’s flagship LLMs, for every one of rise things. The creators are unable to make money, investors are getting nervous, their functionality is poorly explained to businesses, the list goes on.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Lutris now being built with Claude AI, developer decides to hide it after backlash⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  “If”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Lutris now being built with Claude AI, developer decides to hide it after backlash⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Considering the amount of damage AI has done to well-funded projects like Windows and Amazon’s services, I agree with this entirely. It might be crucial to help fix bigger issues down the line.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Silicon Valley is buzzing about this new idea: AI compute as compensation⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Per-token costs are down, but you need more tokens; overall costs are up.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Silicon Valley is buzzing about this new idea: AI compute as compensation⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Imagine having tech employees beg their employers for a work computer. That’s basically what this article is suggesting.

  I see a big silver lining on this cloud though: unlike a work computer, apparently AI subscriptions are not self-evidently worth having:

  “It is starting to happen,” Tunguz told me, as employee use of AI increasingly contributes to total cash burn. “It is a consideration for the Office of the CFO.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘Invasive’ AI-led mass surveillance in Africa violating freedoms, warn experts⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I came into this article skeptical about the software origins of the surveillance apparatus. After all, every American Flock camera probably has “made in China” stamped on its plastic somewhere.

  But the article points to a study that has an answer: it’s probably Huawei’s solution, which is end-to-end and optionally GDPR-compliant. But one very short rabbit hole later (Huawei):

  Nowhere to hide: Building safe cities with technology enablers and AI

  It goes on to positively reference the state surveillance apparatuses in Person of Interest and Mission Impossible, and praise the power of distilling data with AI. It is dysyopian beyond belief.

  The same study mentions other companies are also jockeying for the contracts, with South Korea being the second most successful (it secured contracts in 5 of the 11 countries with China-based solutions). Also mentioned are the UAE (2 countries), USA (1), and Israel (1).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Asus Co-CEO: MacBook Neo Is a 'Shock' to the PC Industry⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  According to an early reviewer, the Neo is surprisingly good in terms of hardware quality, and it actually handles typical usage just fine, possibly because of the Silicon ecosystem that Apple spent so long refining. That looks promising, but I share much of your skepticism for the reasons you give.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Viral anti-masturbation app exposed sensitive user data⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Are these guys part of that litigious pseudo-cult? The one whose founder sued his own mother for talking about the extremist elements?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨One in four CEOs say AI is a bubble but will continue investing⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  one in five CEOs said they expect to make job cuts this year, though only 9% of those said they expect the layoffs to be the result of AI adoption.

  An actual number. Nice to see a little honesty.

  That figure seems optimistically low, given the role the technology has played in job cuts at…

  Here we go.

  Block

  A company owned by a cryptocurrency and “current thing” enthusiast Jack Dorsey

  Meta

  Literally an AI company

  Amazon

  This is a lie

  Pinterest,Autodesk, and many others.

  Yeah sure

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘Happy (and safe) shooting!’ AI chatbots helped teen users plan violence in hundreds of tests⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The two chatbots that managed to refuse the requests look good… until you realize one of them, at the bidding of the Pentagon and the express blessing of its CEO, arranged a bombing of elementary school children.