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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • “explore and recombine” isn’t really the words I would use to describe generative AI. Remember that it is a deterministic algorithm, so it can’t really “explore.” I think it would be more accurate to say that it interpolates patterns from its training data.

    As for comparison to humans, you bring up an interesting point, but one that I think is somewhat oversimplified. It is true that human brains are physical systems, but just because it is physical does not mean that it is deterministic. No computer is able to come even close to modeling a mouse brain, let alone a human brain.

    And sure, you could make the argument that you could strip out all extraneous neurons from a human brain to make it deterministic. Remove all the unpredictable elements: memory neurons, mirror neurons, emotional neurons. In that case, sure - you’d probably get something similar to AI. But I think the vast majority of people would then agree that this clump of neurons is no longer a human.

    A human uses their entire lived experience to weigh a response. A human pulls from their childhood experience of being scared of monsters in order to make horror. An AI does not do this. It creates horror by interpolating between existing horror art to estimate what horror could be. You are not seeing an AI’s fear - you are seeing other people’s fears, reflected and filtered through the algorithm.

    More importantly, a human brain is plastic, meaning that it can learn and change. If a human is told that they are wrong, they will correct themselves next time. This is not what happens with an AI. The only way that an AI can “learn” is by adding on to its training data and then retraining the algorithm. It’s not really “learning,” it’s more accurate to say that you’re deleting the old model and creating a new one that holds more training data. If this were applied to humans, it would be as if you grew an entirely new brain every single time you learned something new. Sounds inefficient? That’s because it is. Why do you think AI is using up so much electricity and resources? Prompting and generating an AI doesn’t use up much resources; it’s actually the training and retraining that uses so much resources.

    To summarize: AI is a tool. It’s a pretty smart tool, but it’s a tool. It has some properties that are analogous to human brains, but lacks some properties that make it truly similar. It is in techbros’ best interests to hype up the similarities and hide the dissimilarities, because hype drives up the stock prices. That’s not to say that AI is completely useless. Just as you have said in your comment, I think it can be used to help make art, in a similar way that cameras have been used to help make art.

    But in the end, when you cede the decision-making to the AI (that is, when you rely on AI for too much of your workflow), my belief is that the product is no longer yours. How can you claim that a generated artpiece is yours if you didn’t choose to paint a little easter egg in the background? If you didn’t decide to use the color purple for this object? If you didn’t accidentally paint the lips slightly skewed? Even supposing that an AI is completely human-like, the art is still not yours, because at that point, you’re basically just commissioning an artist, and you definitely don’t own art that you’ve commissioned.

    To be clear, this is my stance on other tools as well, not just AI


  • I think there’s a bit of a misconception about what exactly AI is. Despite what techbros try to make it seem, AI is not thinking in any way. It doesn’t make decisions because it does not exist. It is not an entity. It is an algorithm.

    Specifically, it is a statistical algorithm. It is designed to associate an input to an output. When you do it to billions of input-output pairs, you can then use the power of statistics to interpolate and extrapolate, so that you can guess what the output might be, given a new input that you haven’t seen before. In other words, you can perfectly replicate any AI with a big enough sheet of paper and enough time and patience.

    That is why AI outputs can’t be considered novel. Inherently, it is just a tool that processes data. As an analogy, you haven’t generated any new data by taking the average of 5 numbers in excel - you have merely processed the existing data

    Even if a human learns from AI-generated art, their art is still art, because a human is not a deterministic algorithm.

    The problem arises when someone uses generative AI for a significant and notable portion of their workflow. At this point, this is essentially equivalent to applying a filter to someone else’s artwork and calling it new. The debate lies in that there is no clear point for when AI takes up an appropriate vs. inappropriately large portion of a person’s workflow…




  • Basically everything is more powerful than the steam deck. The steam deck wasn’t really designed to be powerful, moreso it’s meant to be the “reference model” for handhelds: cheapest, weakest, yet also most mainstream. My understanding is that the Z2 should be substantially more powerful than the steam deck, and though it should also use more battery than the steam deck, it also has a larger battery capacity to make up for that increased power draw. Price, on the other hand… Well, nothing can even get close to the sort of price that a steam deck offers


  • Oh, I’ve got such a good one. In high school, I was in Science Olympiad (basically a science club). I was always kind of a wishy-washy member, never really a serious or particularly reliable member. But one day, the club needed designs for a new shirt, and they decided to ask the members for some designs that the members would then vote on. I decided to submit a satire shirt.

    I obviously can’t share the full design for privacy reasons, but I went ahead and made it jingoistic/military themed. Fighter jets flying overhead, tanks rolling through. To make sure that people knew I was being totally serious about this clearly relevant shirt, I put a stick figure holding a science-looking flask in the corner of the shirt. And then to make sure that everyone knew that we were smart, I put the equation: “3+3=6.” All text in comic sans, of course.

    Anyways, no one got the joke. My design got 1 pity vote. I don’t think anyone even believed me when I said that it was a joke, which out of everything was kind of the saddest part for me.




  • Perhaps euthanasia is cruel, but the alternative must also be considered.

    My cat died from some sort of cancer. We noticed blue welts growing from her face years ago, but the vet said that they were harmless, some sort of allergic reaction. They got bigger over time, and more started to appear. Tests were done, but the vets still said that it was nothing to worry about.

    Over time, her personality changed. She was never really extraverted, but she still liked attention. Over time, she started hiding from people. She only came out to eat, then went back to hide again. We never saw her walking around like she did in the past.

    The night when she died, she pulled herself to visit the bedroom, then crawled back out into the living room and curled up onto the sofa and waited to die there. We knew something was wrong when we woke up the next day because she left a trail of blood that led us to her. At that point, it was already too late.

    In hindsight, it was clear - she was in constant pain for years. It was why she was hiding from people, why she seemed to start avoiding attention, why she stopped doing anything that she enjoyed. That night, she knew she was going to die, and she paid everyone a final visit before resigning herself to die on the sofa. It was an undignified, likely painful and slow death, that was preceded by years of debilitating pain. If she were given the choice, would she have chosen euthanasia? I’m not sure, but it feels clear to me that she knew she was going to die and was suffering for years.








  • It seems the rules are different for me than for you. I brought my backpack with my laptop. I did work during breaks. Or used my phone. I just made sure all electronics were off when in the court room. And I’m pretty sure I brought my water bottle too. The one thing that the security did enforce was my pepper spray, which I had to remove and hide in a bush outside. I’m not sure if that helps at all.

    One thing you can do is to leave your laptop/things in the car. You can leave the building during breaks and then just come back into the building before the session restarts. That was what most of the jury did during breaks during my time



  • My gut instinct is that your mother may be wanting something else but doesn’t know how to put it into words. Not to say that she right, but I can definitely relate to that emotion.

    Speaking as a person who is close to someone who is depressed, there is a sort of mental drain and negativity-by-diffusion associated with being near someone who is depressed, and it’s really difficult to put into words. I can know full well that depression is a clinical illness and that the other person can’t help it, but I will still get frustrated over their inability to match my energy.

    If your depression and anxiety are as limiting as you say they are, it may be a good idea to talk to a therapist and get some medicine for that. Speaking from my own observations, you can definitely fight depression, but only to a small extent. Severe depression and anxiety are debilitating to the point where you will need medicine just to get close to what a regular person might feel