geekwithsoul

In casual conversation IRL, if someone made this claim, I’d assume good faith. Or even in a reply to an existing discussion of Snopes. But OP decided to make a post without verifying their information and then went through and defended that take in the comments when people explained the actual facts to them. This wasn’t done in good faith, it would appear.

This has the same energy as the folks running around doing a disinfo op on Wikipedia. None of this is true and either OP wildly misunderstood the situation or they’re intentionally being deceitful.

I probably didn’t explain well enough. Consuming media (books, TV, film, online content, and video games) is predominantly a passive experience. Obviously video games less so, but all in all, they only “adapt” within the guardrails of gameplay. These AI chatbots however are different in their very formlessness - they’re only programmed to maintain engagement and rely on the LLM training to maintain an illusion of “realness”. And because they were trained on all sorts of human interactions, they’re very good at that.

Humans are unique in how we continually anthropomorphize tons of not only inert, lifeless things (think of someone alternating between swearing at and pleading to a car that won’t start) but abstract ideals (even scientists often speak of evolution “choosing” specific traits). Given all of that, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be worried about a teen with a still developing prefrontal cortex and who is in the midst of working on understanding social dynamics and peer relationships to embue an AI chatbot with far more “humanity” than is warranted. Humans seem to have an anthropomorphic bias in how we relate to the world - we are the primary yardstick we use to measure and relate everything around us, and things like AI chatbots exploit that to maximum effect. Hell, the whole reason the site mentioned in the article exists is that this approach is extraordinarily effective.

So while I understand that on a cursory look, someone objecting to it comes across as a sad example of yet another moral panic, I truly believe this is different. For one, we’ve never had access to such a lively psychological mirror before and it’s untested waters; and two, this isn’t some objection on some imagined slight against a “moral authority” but based in the scientific understanding of specifically teen brains and their demonstrated fragility in certain areas while still under development.

Yes, and it’s clear that they wouldn’t have done an outright temp ban for the length of time they did if you didn’t already have the history you did. Quit painting this as “They couldn’t handle me voicing my opinions” when it was entirely “This guy just won’t stop trolling”. No one really cares about your opinions, they cared about you trolling the community. You trying to make a martyr of yourself is ridiculous.

I got a two-week ban in a community (for posting duplicate article from different sources)

Dude, you got it for that AND a history of trolling, even just after coming off a previous temp ban for trolling. Quit lying.

I understand what you mean about the comparison between AI chatbots and video games (or whatever the moral panic du jour is), but I think they’re very much not the same. To a young teen, no matter how “immersive” the game is, it’s still just a game. They may rage against other players, they may become obsessed with playing, but as I said they’re still going to see it as a game.

An AI chatbot who is a troubled teen’s “best friend” is different and no matter how many warnings are slapped on the interface, it’s going to feel much more “real” to that kid than any game. They’re going to unload every ounce of angst into that thing, and by defaulting to “keep them engaged”, that chatbot is either going to ignore stuff it shouldn’t or encourage them in ways that it shouldn’t. It’s obvious there’s no real guardrails in this instance, as if he was talking about being suicidal, some red flags should’ve popped up.

Yes the parents shouldn’t have allowed him such unfettered access, yes they shouldn’t have had a loaded gun that he had access to, but a simple “This is all for funsies” warning on the interface isn’t enough to stop this from happening again. Some really troubled adults are using these things as defacto therapists and that’s bad too. But I’d be happier if lawmakers were much more worried about kids having access to this stuff than accessing “adult sites”.

No idea on the song, may have better luck identifying the singer, and working backwards from there? Maybe something by Fine Young Cannibals? Certainly the most notable falsetto that comes to mind for that era for me.

That’s certainly where the term originated, but usage has expanded. I’m actually fine with it, as the original idea was about the pattern recognition we use when looking at faces, and I think there’s similar mechanisms for matching other “known” patterns we see. Probably with some sliding scale of emotional response on how well known the pattern is.

In that case, I think the whole question is moot. The umbrella term of thingamawidget is not both modular and versatile, but its constituent parts are individually. “The thingamawidget with versatile software and modular hardware is…” would then be the more accurate description.

Otherwise it’s like describing a brownie as wet and bitter because the egg is wet and the raw cocoa is bitter.

I’ve heard it used that way - basically taken to mean “It’s over that way in a straight line” but then usually followed by directions on how to get there via a twisty route because there’s no direct path there.

The problem is the laymen expect it to do reasoning, so the sales & marketing team says that it can do reasoning, and then the CEO will have consumed the Kool-Aid and restructure the company because he believes it can do reasoning.

A capitalism casino that somehow rules the entire economy*

* or at least many people’s view of it

Always frustrates me how underutilized @media print is. Always liked crafting some good CSS for it on sites, especially ones that I worked on that were document heavy.

With no snark intended, when was the last time that Michael Moore was culturally or politically relevant? I was a fan of his from his earlier work, but not sure why his take on anything would be valued over anybody else’s at this point. I’m not even necessarily disagreeing with his point, but not sure why anyone cares what he says about the race.

Maybe? But in the article he was talking about his priority being that he wanted to disconnect from his phone but still wanted news. Just seems there’s been a solution for that for a few centuries now. His solution seemed to me at least to be a lemon that wasn’t worth the squeeze as it were.

So, a newspaper with a lot of extra steps? I understand the gee whizness of getting this all to work but not really sure there’s a solid “why” to this.

This shows so many gross misconceptions and with such utter conviction, I’m not even sure where to start. And as you seem to have decided you like to get free stuff that is the result of AI trained off the work of others without them receiving any compensation, nothing I say will likely change your opinion because you have an emotional stake in not acknowledging the problems of AI.

I inherited brain structures that are natural language processors. As well as the ability to understand and repeat any language sounds. Over time, my brain focused in on only the language sounds I heard the most and through trial and repetition learned how to understand and make those sounds.

AI - as it currently exists - is essentially a babbling infant with none of the structures necessary to do anything more than repeat sounds back without understanding any of them. Anyone who tells you different is selling you something.

Hopefully not too pedantic, but no one is “teaching” AI anything. They’re just feeding it data in the hopes that it can learn probabilities for certain types of output. It “understands” neither the Reddit post nor the scientific paper.

<waves at likely a fellow genealogist!> :)