Because as everyone knows, political change only happens spontaneously, without any organization in the lead up, and people are famously fired up by sitting around at home until we all get the magic signal to go cut politicians’ heads off

I did not but I’ll give you an upvote anyway

I recently read a neat little book called “Rethinking Consciousness” by SA Graziano. It has nothing to do with AI, but is an attempt to describe the way our myriad neural systems come together to produce our experience, how that might differ between animals with various types of brains, and how our experience might change if some systems aren’t present. It sounds obvious, but the simpler the brain, the simpler the experience. For example, organisms like frogs probably don’t experience fear. Both frogs and humans have a set of survival instincts that help us detect movement, classify it as either threat or food or whatever, and immediately respond, but the emotional part of your brain that makes your stomach plummet just doesn’t exist in them.

Humans automatically respond to a perceived threat in the same way a frog does–in fact, according to the book, the structures in our brains that dictate our initial actions in those instinctive moments are remarkably similar. You know how your eyes will automatically shift to follow a movement you see in the corner of your vision? A frog responds in much the same way. It’s not something you have to think about–often your eye will have darted over to the point of interest even before you realize you’ve noticed something. But your experience of that reaction is also much richer than it is possible for a frog’s to be, because we have far more layers of systems that all interact to produce what we call consciousness. We have a much deeper level of thought that goes into deciding whether that movement was actually important to us.

It’s possible for us to continue to live even if we lose some parts of the brain–our personalities will change, our memory may get worse, or we may even lose things like our internal monologue, but we still manage to persist as conscious beings until our brains lose a large number of the overlying systems, or some very critical systems. Like the one that regulates breathing–though even that single function is somewhat shared between multiple systems, allowing you to breathe manually (have fun with that).

All that to say the things we’re currently calling AI just don’t have that complexity. At best, these generative models could fill out a fraction of the layers that would be useful for a conscious mind. We have developed very powerful language processing systems, at least in terms of averaging out a vast quantity of data. Very powerful image processing. Audio processing. What we don’t have–what, near as I can tell, we haven’t made any meaningful progress on at all–is a system to coalesce all these processing systems into a whole. These systems always rely on a human to tell them what to process, for how long, and ultimately to check whether the result of a process is reasonable. Being able to process all of those types of input simultaneously, choosing which ones to focus on in the moment, and continuously choosing an appropriate response? Barely even a pipe dream. And even all of that would be distinct from a system to form anything like conscious thought.

Right now, when marketing departments say “AI,” what they’re describing is like that automatic response to movement. Movement detected, eye focuses. Input goes in, output comes out. It’s one small piece of the whole that’s required when science fiction writers say “AI.”

TL;DR no, the current generative model race is just tech stock market hype. The absolute best it can hope for is to reproduce a small piece of the conscious mind. It might be able to approximate the processing we’re capable of more quickly, but at a massively inflated energy expenditure, not to mention the research costs. And in the end it still needs a human double checking its work. We will need to develop a vast number of other increasingly complex systems before we even begin to approach a true AI.

I’m not disagreeing in a general sense, but it’s funny to make that argument here when this info basically fell into the journalist’s lap. Very little actual journalism went into making this story possible

I got down to my last egg like a month ago and keep thinking about when and how I should use it. Technically I could afford to buy more but it’s the principle of the thing; not so much about not being a Spoiled American but I really don’t want to support the companies price gouging these things. But I was also making a loaf of challah almost every week and I don’t think my flax meal substitute will work for that…

My solitary, lonely egg. Just chillin in the fridge.

Maybe I should start my morning with an egg sandwich tomorrow.

I’m pretty sure musk is still the richest man in the world (at least on paper, who knows what people like Putin have hidden away). Until that changes there is a .00001% chance of trump and musk’s relationship deteriorating

Evil Villains In Love

Good thing they already put the “TP” logo on there so I won’t forget to wipe my ass with it.

it’ll probably be the vulnerable and the enemies of the MAGA.

Well, it’s starting with ours. It’ll end with theirs.

I’m not sure there’s any situation where trying to appeal to Trump won’t end in conceding to Russia. For God’s sake, this admin just ordered all cyber operations in relation to Russia to cease. There is no low they won’t stoop to. Any time spent trying to make Trump see the light is time wasted where in the end Trump will try to make you give up everything.

I’m honestly surprised Trump didn’t try to have Zelensky arrested and deported to Russia.

Am I missing something? 320/3203 is more like 10%

So what? AI can and will say just about anything unless it’s specifically altered not to. This story is just “the devs haven’t yet bothered censoring output about Musk.” There are so many legit reasons to dislike Musk and this story is basically “a d20 got rolled and it hit a 20!” Fuck off with this.

Sure, they’ll privatize what they can, but they need a way to keep those corporate entities in line. They don’t want to give up their own power, and their power lies in their position in government. If they go too far, they risk being thrown under the bus themselves. They’ll need to leave the treasury intact, at least, along with some kind of enforcement arm. Maybe we’ll see some drastic restructuring of the military soon.

Well, not all of the government. Just the parts that could hold them accountable for anything they do.

On the one hand calling it AI is annoying, but on the other we’ve been calling video game NPC logic “AI” for as long as I can remember and no one thinks they’re actually sapient. Surely we can get to that point with GenAI as well.

Yeah, he selected him to make DOJ appear impartial, except it doesn’t look like anyone cared.

And the reality is, not only did no one care, it actually made the department partial to not prosecuting Trump for his many, many crimes, because according to these moronic, selfish, short-sighted, anti-American Republicans, it’s not a crime when the president does it. Nixon toooootally should have finished his term without resigning, I’m sure no one would have convicted him :))))

Oh they will, but in their performative crowing it won’t be Tulsi they’re blaming

No they won’t. Even as self interested pricks, their interests overlap far too much for them to ever have a real fight. The richest man in the world paired with the (ostensibly) most powerful? They both want to weaken the power of average people, keep us uneducated, keep us too tired and sick and busy to question the status quo, and deregulate our economy. Their pairing is the most bald-faced bribery possible between corporate and political America, and they will never stop benefitting each other as long as people as self-absorbed as MAGA are in power.

These idiots all think they’re immune. They might last longer than the rest of us, but in the end they’ll wind up crushed just the same. Too bad if it gets that far there’ll be no one left to feel the schadenfreude.

Idk why I keep seeing comments like this, as though blame is a limited resource. For sure blame Republicans for actually being fascists, obviously, but Democrats deserve it too. This endgame has been visible since at least the 90s, and was impossible to miss by the time of the Tea Party. Over a decade of trying to compromise with unmistakeable fascists is inexcusable. Democrats repeatedly run a campaign playbook that both loses elections and shifts our political norms rightward over and over. Even now I see no signs that the party is interested in change. Fuck em.