Notices by Lauren Weinstein (lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org), page 4

I mean this seriously. If these Big Tech firms could replace ALL their employees with brain dead AI systems, THEY WOULD.

SENILE, DANGEROUS S.O.B: Fascist Trump again calls Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi "THE ENEMY WITHIN!"

Environmental groups are pushing Amazon to deliver even more packages in their original packaging, so that additional packaging isn't needed. There's just one enormous problem with that. In many areas porch package thefts are a tremendous problem. This will almost certainly make it worse since it makes targeting of high ticket items easier. Also, the original packaging of many items is designed for bulk transport in the shipping chain to stores or warehouses, not for the rigors of last mile delivery. Even more damaged deliveries seem certain. And with Amazon's return operations seemingly swamped with returns these days, this is all likely to get much worse.

@kevindalley @darnell There are also many women not telling pollsters they're voting for Harris because they don't want their husbands to find out.

Here in California, which doesn't matter in presidential elections due to the obsolete and undemocratic electoral college, we basically see very few ads for president, but are inundated with ads for school board candidates who somehow seem to have enormous financial backing much of the time.

Just opened the URL history in Chrome and #Google threw me a pop-up wanting me to enable "History Search Powered by AI." I just want to find a damned URL. I don't want you rummaging through my history with your damned AI. NO. A thousand times NO. If I want your AI, I'll ask you for it. Don't hold your breath. Take your unsolicited AI and ...

@darnell This is a key point. I suspect many women are reluctant to tell pollsters or the males in their life that they're voting for Harris. Side note: A very conservative woman I've known for many years, who lives in a very conservative state, sent me a text a few days ago asking for my opinion of Harris, and thanked me after I gave Harris my endorsement to her. I've never been asked for a political opinion from this person before. Maybe this means nothing, or maybe it does. I dunno.

Trump is making General Ripper from "Dr. Strangelove" seem like a stable genus by comparison.

Half the U.S. population would vote in a dictatorship for a guaranteed discount of 50 cents/gallon on their gasoline. Seriously.

Say whatever else you will about #Mastodon, but it's really the only social media platform I've used since the fall of Google+ where I don't feel a twinge of nausea in the morning when I contemplate looking to see what has come rolling in overnight.

***** AI vs. Cats! *****

This the script of my national network radio report from last Monday, reacting to the lead-in of a Meta AI expert admitting that AI doesn't even have the intelligence of a cat. I agree. As always, there may have been some minor wording changes from this script as I presented this report live.

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So now we finally get to the heart of the matter about artificial intelligence. It's NOT intelligent at all. These systems don't have any intelligence as we would normally use the term. In fact, they're as dumb as damp sponges -- no offense meant to damp sponges of course. These systems can often find some kinds of patterns in data much faster and more reliably than humans. That's a good thing.

On the other hand, generative AI can spit out summaries of data that they've previously sucked in, with decidedly varying levels of accuracy, often misleading and sometimes even dangerously incorrect summaries in whole or in part.

Neither of these kinds of abilities are intelligence. And that cute kitty or doggy that may be in the room with you right now has more common sense and abilities to deal with the real world than all the AI systems on the planet rolled into one big ball of electricity sucking CPUs.

And frankly, this is intuitively obvious to all of us, despite the endless stream of AI promotional hype the AI firms have been shoving down our throats and in our faces.

A bit of history. You might not know that this is actually the second wave of AI. The first was back in the latter half of the 20th century, from places like the MIT AI Lab on the east coast and the Stanford AI lab out here on the west coast. In their heyday I used to visit both of them whenever I had the opportunity. And all manner of important computer innovations came out of those centers.

But when you come right down to it most observers feel that the approaches available at the time didn't actually lend themselves to really successful artificial intelligence projects even under the more limited definitions for AI being used at the time. Still, they were fascinating places doing fascinating work, even though the results in an AI context are generally viewed as having been limited.

So fast forward to today and the sheer processing power being thrown at AI systems. Both Microsoft and Google are making deals for nuclear plants to provide the massive amount of electricity these systems need.

And the resulting generative AI large language models are being rapidly deployed to consumers whether they want them or not. And their promoters keep talking about how these systems will be more intelligent than humans in 10 years or 20 years, or more or less. Of course they say this is dependent on their continuing to have a pretty much endless flow of untold billions of dollars into their development coffers. Of course that's what they'd say.

Make lots of predictions and promises, and when things don't go as planned, hey, just pretend that's what you were expecting all along. Then they ask for even more billions and it's deja vu all over again.

This is certainly not to say that AI systems aren't useful. We know many areas where their pattern analytics and related capabilities can be extremely useful -- medical diagnostics is only one example. On the other hand, I personally consider generative AI such as chatbots and the like to be typically useless at best, and potentially dangerous misinformation sources that have the potential to do serious damage in some cases.

Right now there don't seem to be breakthroughs on the horizon that will alter this dynamic in major ways. Of course, technology can change very suddenly. A paper might be published tomorrow that will supercharge the AI world with incredible new approaches that could be enormous game changers to how we all view AI.

But frankly, absent that ... I'll still take the cat!

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L

#Google announces new Android security measures -- but a lot could go wrong for many users.

Google has announced a list of new Android security features, especially around device theft. These include some measures (like stronger passkey protections in some cases) that I've been advocating.

However, there's a problem. Many of these features will likely result in many users being locked out of their devices inappropriately, and without the ability to regain access. These changes will almost certainly exacerbate the already deeply serious problems of innocent users being locked out from their devices and/or Google accounts, often losing all access to their Gmail and other data, with no effective recourse of any kind. Often it's impossible to even find out why you've been locked out.

I have been pushing Google for years to improve this situation, including with detailed proposals, but it's been like banging my head into a brick wall. Google just doesn't seem to care about users who are not in the majority demographics, and that's shameful.

The #Mastodon / Docker follies continue. Just did an entire new Mastodon install in Docker, and avoided most of the problems from before. In fact, the test instance started right up. BUT. Yeah. Even though docker-compose.yml specifies Mastodon v4.3.0, AND the running docker (docker ps) agrees with that -- the Mastodon About page and the actual source file version is once again 4.4.0alpha1. This is, well, very very odd, and needs to be understood. Because I'm just following the formula, and the wrong version is showing up.

@pettter @mekkaokereke I was attempting not to invoke Lehrer for this rather serious discussion.

@mekkaokereke The whitewashing of von Braun was really a sight to behold. A great example is how Disney had him hosting some of their classic "Men Into Space" programs back in the 60s. These were wonderful shows from an educational standpoint, except that they had to go through nightmarish twists to avoid connecting von Braun with the Nazi rocket program and his direct involvement in the slaughter of so many in England, etc.

Ward Christensen, co-founder of first online BBS system and creator of XMODEM, dies at 78. Peace.

Musk's presentation for his "Cybercab" and humanoid robots failed to impress investors. Tesla closed down nearly 9% today.

"Trump makes people I care about afraid -- I find him reprehensible" -- JD Vance's tweet resurfaces after 8 years

"Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants. Muslims, etc. Because of this I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us." - J.D. Vance

https://boingboing.net/2024/10/09/trump-makes-people-i-care-about-afraid-i-find-him-reprehensible-jd-vances-tweet-resurfaces-after-8-years.html

GEICO (second largest auto insurer in U.S., I believe) is informing Tesla Cybertruck owners that Geico will no longer cover the vehicle, their policies will be non-renewable for that vehicle, and that the vehicle does not meet their underwriting standards.

A few seconds ago, a commentator on MSNBC said that presidential debates should be fact-checked in real time in the same way that movies are critiqued by Mystery Science Theater 3000. Works for me.
#mst3k