Notices by Glen, waiting for the pre-poll (glent@aus.social), page 2

@danirabbit UBI doesn't allow people to sit at home and smoke weed all day, at least for very long. Weed costs money, and the word 'basic' in UBI carries some meaning.

What UBI does do is to provide a safety net. Including to entrepreneurs who never meet the criteria for social welfare. UBI means that you don't risk your family starving if your new venture has a cashflow crisis. You don't need to justify to some social welfare agency why you need cash for your family when a month ago a bank just gave your firm millions of dollars for capital purchases. The UBI just appears in your bank account, like it has every week when you didn't need it.

That UBI will be the best thing to happen to new small business often escapes both the left-wing promoters and right-wing detractors of UBI.

UBI will allow a new wave of entrepreneurship and new businesses. That in turn makes the entire economy richer.

@danirabbit I'd also add that UBI is a huge benefit for the unmeasured economy. A huge amount of economic activity goes unmeasured by the System of National Accounts. Particularly caring, such as childcare and care of the sick and disabled.

As a concrete example, if a grandmother wants to help their daughter care for a new baby for its first year, UBI makes that affordable for the grandmother.

UBI also allows a better end-of-career. People can wind down their hours without affecting their 'pension'. This is a great help to business, which would far prefer a phase out of an experienced staff member, rather than their sudden disappearance on a magic birthday.

@tylermorganwall I do love this. Australia has a tiny 'state' fully enclosed in another (ACT in NSW). Making that visible is a major pain for map visualisations. This looks like a nice possible approach.

@thomasfuchs Philips have been good. It's a soft recommend as the US models can differ from the models in Aus.

I often program and write for pleasure. Both are skills I like to exercise. Often, but not always, I'll give the results of that hobby away for free.

But here comes Google, saying "We want a presumption that we can use all of your works -- whatever copyright license you choose -- to train our AI systems."

Just fuck off. You already use some of my software for free. Why when I say that this particular item of prose is for me, do you presume to want that too.

It's some sort of tech-bro colonialism.

(Don't give me any "But you can opt out" b.s. "Just like robots.txt" isn't a viable opt-out mechanism. The people who do metadata and rights professionally -- libraries and rights collection agencies -- don't use that mechanism, but link the metadata to the work via ISBNs and the like, or embed the metadata as seen by the copyright notice on every movie or the Dublin Core markup. How about we use a opt-in mechanism, a set of rights to make a copy, we could call it "copy right".)

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/09/google-says-ai-systems-should-be-able-to-mine-publishers-work-unless-companies-opt-out

Australia doesn't have fair use in its copyright law. It has fair dealing -- a list of allowed exceptions to copyright, narrowly drawn. There is no way that list includes "training AI".

I am so looking forward to this...

A note to US speakers. The rest of the English speaking world has no idea what a 'sophomore' is (and no interest in having it explained).

Related: the relationship between 'college' and 'university' in the US is similarly unique, and incomprehensible in the Bologna Process world.

Excellent interview with Meredith Whittaker

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jun/11/signals-meredith-whittaker-these-are-the-people-who-could-actually-pause-ai-if-they-wanted-to

Highlights:

Q: Is it interesting to you how their [Gebru and Mitchell's] warnings were received compared with the fears of existential risk expressed by ex-Google “godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton recently?

A: If you were to heed Timnit [Gebru]’s warnings you would have to significantly change the business and the structure of these companies [such as Google]. If you heed Geoff’s warnings, you sit around a table at Davos and feel scared.

Geoff’s warnings are much more convenient, because they project everything into the far future so they leave the status quo untouched. And if the status quo is untouched you’re going to see these companies and their systems further entrench their dominance such that it becomes impossible to regulate. This is not an inconvenient narrative at all.

Q: Unlike many other tech entrepreneurs and academics you didn’t sign either of the two recent petitions, the Future of Life institute “pause AI” letter or last month’s Center for AI Safety “existential threat” letter.

A: No. I don’t think they’re good faith. These are the people who could actually pause it if they wanted to. They could unplug the data centres. ...

@evan I'd also object to this for a second reason -- curriculum overload.

There is currently too much crammed into schooling, and that pushes against time for teaching basic life skills. If you want to teach digital literacy then something else has to go. That should be an explicit choice, because implicit choices nearly always remove play and exploration, which are one of the most valuable schooling activities for both primary and secondary learning.

@evan This is "everyone should be able to service the car they drive" territory. A view strongly argued in some pubs until about 20 years ago.

My view is that it is a useful skill, needed more in some careers than others. If it's complicated then hire a professional. Just like cars.