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Musk’s Chatbot Started Spouting Nazi Propaganda. That’s Not the Scariest Part.

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  • cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/33174237

    By Zeynep Tufekci - Opinion Columnist
    July 11, 2025

    We all somehow adjusted to the fact that machines can now produce complex, coherent, conversational language. But that ability makes it extremely hard not to think about L.L.M.s as possessing a form of humanlike intelligence.

    They are not, however, a version of human intelligence. Nor are they truth seekers or reasoning machines. What they are is plausibility engines. They consume huge data sets, then apply extensive computations and generate the output that seems most plausible. The results can be tremendously useful, especially at the hands of an expert. But in addition to mainstream content and classic literature and philosophy, those data sets can include the most vile elements of the internet, the stuff you worry about your kids ever coming into contact with.

  • cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/33174237

    By Zeynep Tufekci - Opinion Columnist
    July 11, 2025

    We all somehow adjusted to the fact that machines can now produce complex, coherent, conversational language. But that ability makes it extremely hard not to think about L.L.M.s as possessing a form of humanlike intelligence.

    They are not, however, a version of human intelligence. Nor are they truth seekers or reasoning machines. What they are is plausibility engines. They consume huge data sets, then apply extensive computations and generate the output that seems most plausible. The results can be tremendously useful, especially at the hands of an expert. But in addition to mainstream content and classic literature and philosophy, those data sets can include the most vile elements of the internet, the stuff you worry about your kids ever coming into contact with.

    They are not, however, a version of human intelligence. Nor are they truth seekers or reasoning machines.

    Neither are our brains.

    “Brains are survival engines, not truth detectors. If self-deception promotes fitness, the brain lies. Stops noticing—irrelevant things. Truth never matters. Only fitness. By now you don’t experience the world as it exists at all. You experience a simulation built from assumptions. Shortcuts. Lies. Whole species is agnosiac by default.”

    ― Peter Watts, Blindsight

    LLMs are built from our words. Maybe they're more human than human? One wonders.

  • They are not, however, a version of human intelligence. Nor are they truth seekers or reasoning machines.

    Neither are our brains.

    “Brains are survival engines, not truth detectors. If self-deception promotes fitness, the brain lies. Stops noticing—irrelevant things. Truth never matters. Only fitness. By now you don’t experience the world as it exists at all. You experience a simulation built from assumptions. Shortcuts. Lies. Whole species is agnosiac by default.”

    ― Peter Watts, Blindsight

    LLMs are built from our words. Maybe they're more human than human? One wonders.

    Ooo added the book to my list, thanks!

    Also, Robert Sapolsky's book Determined explores whether we're conscious or not based on his work in neuroscience and primatology. It's like a book length version of the quote you posted

  • Ooo added the book to my list, thanks!

    Also, Robert Sapolsky's book Determined explores whether we're conscious or not based on his work in neuroscience and primatology. It's like a book length version of the quote you posted

    It's not the most welcoming read in terms of sci-fi but I love that book. That and its sequel (Echopraxia) do what sci-fi is supposed to do (make you think).

  • It's not the most welcoming read in terms of sci-fi but I love that book. That and its sequel (Echopraxia) do what sci-fi is supposed to do (make you think).

    I'm a sci fi nerd from foundation to Hyperion to the expanse but I've never heard of Blindsight, and you've absolutely sold me on it

  • They are not, however, a version of human intelligence. Nor are they truth seekers or reasoning machines.

    Neither are our brains.

    “Brains are survival engines, not truth detectors. If self-deception promotes fitness, the brain lies. Stops noticing—irrelevant things. Truth never matters. Only fitness. By now you don’t experience the world as it exists at all. You experience a simulation built from assumptions. Shortcuts. Lies. Whole species is agnosiac by default.”

    ― Peter Watts, Blindsight

    LLMs are built from our words. Maybe they're more human than human? One wonders.

    LLMs are just massively-multidimensional maps of human language use. It is academically interesting to have developed both the map and a method for plotting a course through language-space using a prompt as an initial vector, but human intellience is not in language. Rather, language is part of human intelligence, and mapping it to ever more computationally-expensive distances is never going to chart a path to the digital mind that all the tech billionaires are so desperate to enslave.

  • Tech Giants Team Up With Teachers Union on $23M AI Academy

    Technology technology
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    D
    incorrect assessment: unions will gladly collaborate with 3rd party corps if it benefits them. Also unions protect interests of their members, not entire humanity...
  • A receipt printer cured my procrastination [ADHD]

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    cygnosis@lemmy.worldC
    Good to know. Also an easy problem to fix. Just use phenol free paper.
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    M
    In the end I popped up the terminal and used some pot command with some flag I can't remember to skip the login step on setup. I reckon there is good chance you aren't using windows 11 home though right?
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    that's not just useless defeatism, but also false. effective end to end encryption exists in multiple forms today. signal, maybe even with a custom server. matrix if the server is being ran on trusted hardware. XMPP too with the right extensions.
  • Catbox.moe got screwed 😿

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    archrecord@lemm.eeA
    I'll gladly give you a reason. I'm actually happy to articulate my stance on this, considering how much I tend to care about digital rights. Services that host files should not be held responsible for what users upload, unless: The service explicitly caters to illegal content by definition or practice (i.e. the if the website is literally titled uploadyourcsamhere[.]com then it's safe to assume they deliberately want to host illegal content) The service has a very easy mechanism to remove illegal content, either when asked, or through simple monitoring systems, but chooses not to do so (catbox does this, and quite quickly too) Because holding services responsible creates a whole host of negative effects. Here's some examples: Someone starts a CDN and some users upload CSAM. The creator of the CDN goes to jail now. Nobody ever wants to create a CDN because of the legal risk, and thus the only providers of CDNs become shady, expensive, anonymously-run services with no compliance mechanisms. You run a site that hosts images, and someone decides they want to harm you. They upload CSAM, then report the site to law enforcement. You go to jail. Anybody in the future who wants to run an image sharing site must now self-censor to try and not upset any human being that could be willing to harm them via their site. A social media site is hosting the posts and content of users. In order to be compliant and not go to jail, they must engage in extremely strict filtering, otherwise even one mistake could land them in jail. All users of the site are prohibited from posting any NSFW or even suggestive content, (including newsworthy media, such as an image of bodies in a warzone) and any violation leads to an instant ban, because any of those things could lead to a chance of actually illegal content being attached. This isn't just my opinion either. Digital rights organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation have talked at length about similar policies before. To quote them: "When social media platforms adopt heavy-handed moderation policies, the unintended consequences can be hard to predict. For example, Twitter’s policies on sexual material have resulted in posts on sexual health and condoms being taken down. YouTube’s bans on violent content have resulted in journalism on the Syrian war being pulled from the site. It can be tempting to attempt to “fix” certain attitudes and behaviors online by placing increased restrictions on users’ speech, but in practice, web platforms have had more success at silencing innocent people than at making online communities healthier." Now, to address the rest of your comment, since I don't just want to focus on the beginning: I think you have to actively moderate what is uploaded Catbox does, and as previously mentioned, often at a much higher rate than other services, and at a comparable rate to many services that have millions, if not billions of dollars in annual profits that could otherwise be spent on further moderation. there has to be swifter and stricter punishment for those that do upload things that are against TOS and/or illegal. The problem isn't necessarily the speed at which people can be reported and punished, but rather that the internet is fundamentally harder to track people on than real life. It's easy for cops to sit around at a spot they know someone will be physically distributing illegal content at in real life, but digitally, even if you can see the feed of all the information passing through the service, a VPN or Tor connection will anonymize your IP address in a manner that most police departments won't be able to track, and most three-letter agencies will simply have a relatively low success rate with. There's no good solution to this problem of identifying perpetrators, which is why platforms often focus on moderation over legal enforcement actions against users so frequently. It accomplishes the goal of preventing and removing the content without having to, for example, require every single user of the internet to scan an ID (and also magically prevent people from just stealing other people's access tokens and impersonating their ID) I do agree, however, that we should probably provide larger amounts of funding, training, and resources, to divisions who's sole goal is to go after online distribution of various illegal content, primarily that which harms children, because it's certainly still an issue of there being too many reports to go through, even if many of them will still lead to dead ends. I hope that explains why making file hosting services liable for user uploaded content probably isn't the best strategy. I hate to see people with good intentions support ideas that sound good in practice, but in the end just cause more untold harms, and I hope you can understand why I believe this to be the case.
  • Twitch is getting vertical livestreams

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    zombiemantis@lemmy.worldZ
    Oh, yeah, that makes sense. I kinda assumed they already supported it, like YouTube Shorts adopting the vertical format for shorts after Ticktock blew up.
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    blue_berry@lemmy.worldB
    Cool. Well, the feedback until now was rather lukewarm. But that's fine, I'm now going more in a P2P-direction. It would be cool to have a way for everybody to participate in the training of big AI models in case HuggingFace enshittifies
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    softestsapphic@lemmy.worldS
    How are they going to make money off of these projects if people can legally copy and redistribute them for free? The same reasons everyone doesn't already do this via pirating. You mean copy, not steal. When something is stolen from you, you no longer have it. Wow you are just a troll, thanks for showing me so I don't waste anymore time with you.