Notices by tante (tante@tldr.nettime.org)

(Original title: They Walk Among Us)

https://leftycartoons.com/2024/11/20/they-walk-among-us/

The reason OpenAI is starting to release "How to use ChatGPT in schools" material is not because they care about the damage they do. It's about pretending their tool can be responsibly used in schools to get access to large, public subscriber bases.

Silicon Valley hates government regulation and paying taxes. But government contracts? It _loves_ them.

Here's the thing: "AI" is stories and tales of magical gains in the future. It needs massive critique.
There also is "machine learning" which is a field of computer science that does sometimes produce relevant work and can be useful.
But those things are basically distinct.

"We constrain our imaginations when we subordinate our creations to names owned by fascist tycoons. Imagine the author of a book telling people to "read my Amazon". A great director trying to promote their film by saying "click on my Max". That's how much they've pickled your brain when you refer to your own work and your own voice within the context of their walled garden. There is no such thing as "my Substack", there is only your writing, and a forever fight against the world of pure enshittification."

(Original title: Don't call it a Substack. - Anil Dash)

https://www.anildash.com//2024/11/19/dont-call-it-a-substack/

So if you use Matrix I just opened a small "Luddites Unite" Channel on my Matrix Server. Dunno what it will become yet but setting up a "Luddite Slack" felt like it was the dumbest thing on the planet.

https://matrix.to/#/!RjZTZaZdcUlIsCWJcf:tante.cc?via=tante.cc

(all runs on my dedicated server, no 3rd party cloud stuff)

"Remember that nobody has yet worked out how to make an actual profit from AI. So what if — God forbid — number stops going up?

There’s a plan for that: large data center holders will go public as soon as possible and dump on retail investors, who will be left holding the bag when the bubble deflates."

(Original title: Pumping the AI bubble: a data center funding craze with ‘novel types of debt structures’)

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2024/11/19/pumping-the-ai-bubble-a-data-center-funding-craze-with-novel-types-of-debt-structures/

It's time for the myth that #AI can summarize things to die.

"Apple Intelligence notification summaries are honestly pretty bad

Summaries are often wrong, usually odd, sometimes funny, rarely helpful."

(Original title: Apple Intelligence notification summaries are honestly pretty bad)

https://arstechnica.com/apple/2024/11/apple-intelligence-notification-summaries-are-honestly-pretty-bad/

You can also just read it like a normal blog in your feed reader using https://lefttoourowndevices.blog/feed/
https://indieweb.social/@emilygorcenski/113471342037661599

@pettter @parismarx I do agree, we probably didn't make that clear enough.
But for a long time many people pretended that the OSI was something different (I pointed that out in the article that sparked the conversation but I think it was way too much in the weeds for the podcast https://tante.cc/2024/10/16/does-open-source-ai-really-exist/ )

@molly0xfff do you draw directly on the lino or do you draw on paper or digitally and then copy it over?

@janl that has lists sure but they are
not integrated into clients for simple usage. And starter packs are special because people can make them themselves easily. The challenge isn't "building lists" it is creating a safe but useful way for people to offer curated lists of people for others to follow.

@janl yeah. I keep being a bit annoyed that Mastodon has no plugin/API that allows to extend it without having to wade through byzantine Ruby cruft. Like this could be a great plugin thing that admins could add of they wanted

Yes, please help Mozilla find their way. Make absolutely sure to tell them to stop dicking around with AI. Like fill in all the optional fields with that info.

Also telling them not to keep hands off of advertising might make sense (even though the questionnaire is from the foundation not the corporation, but that distinction is mostly BS)

https://mamot.fr/@Siltaer/113487305585943186

This is interesting. Let's see how good the results will be. This does totally undermine the OSI's plans to water down "Open Source AI" which is great.
https://social.coop/@luis_in_brief/113477780103561238

@alcinnz totally, I have given a few rather successful talks arguing exactly that

I know that this one is making the rounds since it is basically Masto-bait, but "Privacy" is not a feature like "AI" is. It can have technological aspects to it, sure, but way more important are affordances, the social system and the rules a technical artifact is being released into etc. etc.

(Oh and privacy as many understand it is mostly a bourgeois fantasy)

https://hci.social/@infinimatt/113472781592526225

The most confusing thing about the AI push is that we just accepted that this fancy new tech is so bad that every product comes with a "everything this thing generates might be wrong and it is upon you to check". Bad products that externalize all the risks and problems to the user. And we just accept that. Because "Innovation".

https://www.codastory.com/stayonthestory/nursing-ai-hospitals-robots-capture/

"I’m a neurology ICU nurse. The creep of AI in our hospitals terrifies me"

This interview confirms all the things I have been going on about for the last year.

"I don’t think the goal is really to provide a safety net for everyone — I think it’s actually to speed us up, so we can see more patients, reduce visits down from 15 minutes to 12 minutes to 10. Efficiency, again."

Sure, LinkedIn. Sure.

All the energy used, all the carbon emitted, all the e-waste created and still every chatbot has the "anything this thing says might be false, you still need to check" label all over it.
I cannot believe the resources we are spending on this bullshit instead of doing literally anything else.
https://mastodon.social/@dw_innovation/113463890083280062