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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.

  • 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

    Found it at the library 10+ years ago, read the flyleaf, thought, "This is pants on head idiotic. I need a break on something light. Let's try it." I have never been more wrong in judging a book by it's cover.

    Read it probably 13-14 times, kinda embarrassing. Anyway, the ship's captain is a vampire. And it's hard sci-fy, no sparkles. My post was the vampire talking about humans.

    explores whether we're conscious or not

    Holy shit will you love Blindsight. You are going to scream with joy. Free on the author's site.

    One more thing, Watts puts a bibliography (science journals and books) in the back for every idea he writes about.

  • Found it at the library 10+ years ago, read the flyleaf, thought, "This is pants on head idiotic. I need a break on something light. Let's try it." I have never been more wrong in judging a book by it's cover.

    Read it probably 13-14 times, kinda embarrassing. Anyway, the ship's captain is a vampire. And it's hard sci-fy, no sparkles. My post was the vampire talking about humans.

    explores whether we're conscious or not

    Holy shit will you love Blindsight. You are going to scream with joy. Free on the author's site.

    One more thing, Watts puts a bibliography (science journals and books) in the back for every idea he writes about.

    Oh fuck yeah, buddy! I'm grabbing it right now! Might buy the audio on libro.fm to support the author too

  • Found it at the library 10+ years ago, read the flyleaf, thought, "This is pants on head idiotic. I need a break on something light. Let's try it." I have never been more wrong in judging a book by it's cover.

    Read it probably 13-14 times, kinda embarrassing. Anyway, the ship's captain is a vampire. And it's hard sci-fy, no sparkles. My post was the vampire talking about humans.

    explores whether we're conscious or not

    Holy shit will you love Blindsight. You are going to scream with joy. Free on the author's site.

    One more thing, Watts puts a bibliography (science journals and books) in the back for every idea he writes about.

    Dude, what is this book. Who writes like this? I fucking adore it

  • US criticizes French inquiry into social media platform X

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    Headline read to me like Mordor criticizes Shire for query into Sauron's social media platform
  • Nyamerican Jacket – Where Modern America Meets Timeless Fashion

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    Niemand hat geantwortet
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    a toddler giving another toddler some milk.
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    What I'm speaking about is that it should be impossible to do some things. If it's possible, they will be done, and there's nothing you can do about it. To solve the problem of twiddled social media (and moderation used to assert dominance) we need a decentralized system of 90s Web reimagined, and Fediverse doesn't deliver it - if Facebook and Reddit are feudal states, then Fediverse is a confederation of smaller feudal entities. A post, a person, a community, a reaction and a change (by moderator or by the user) should be global entities (with global identifiers, so that the object by id of #0000001a2b3c4d6e7f890 would be the same object today or 10 years later on every server storing it) replicated over a network of servers similarly to Usenet (and to an IRC network, but in an IRC network servers are trusted, so it's not a good example for a global system). Really bad posts (or those by persons with history of posting such) should be banned on server level by everyone. The rest should be moderated by moderator reactions\changes of certain type. Ideally, for pooling of resources and resilience, servers would be separated by types into storage nodes (I think the name says it, FTP servers can do the job, but no need to be limited by it), index nodes (scraping many storage nodes, giving out results in structured format fit for any user representation, say, as a sequence of posts in one community, or like a list of communities found by tag, or ... , and possibly being connected into one DHT for Kademlia-like search, since no single index node will have everything), and (like in torrents?) tracker nodes for these and for identities, I think torrent-like announce-retrieve service is enough - to return a list of storage nodes storing, say, a specified partition (subspace of identifiers of objects, to make looking for something at least possibly efficient), or return a list of index nodes, or return a bunch of certificates and keys for an identity (should be somehow cryptographically connected to the global identifier of a person). So when a storage node comes online, it announces itself to a bunch of such trackers, similarly with index nodes, similarly with a user. One can also have a NOSTR-like service for real-time notifications by users. This way you'd have a global untrusted pooled infrastructure, allowing to replace many platforms. With common data, identities, services. Objects in storage and index services can be, say, in a format including a set of tags and then the body. So a specific application needing to show only data related to it would just search on index services and display only objects with tags of, say, "holo_ns:talk.bullshit.starwars" and "holo_t:post", like a sequence of posts with ability to comment, or maybe it would search objects with tags "holo_name:My 1999-like Star Wars holopage" and "holo_t:page" and display the links like search results in Google, and then clicking on that you'd see something presented like a webpage, except links would lead to global identifiers (or tag expressions interpreted by the particular application, who knows). (An index service may return, say, an array of objects, each with identifier, tags, list of locations on storage nodes where it's found or even bittorrent magnet links, and a free description possibly ; then the user application can unify responses of a few such services to avoid repetitions, maybe sort them, represent them as needed, so on.) The user applications for that common infrastructure can be different at the same time. Some like Facebook, some like ICQ, some like a web browser, some like a newsreader. (Star Wars is not a random reference, my whole habit of imagining tech stuff is from trying to imagine a science fiction world of the future, so yeah, this may seem like passive dreaming and it is.)
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    I gave you the data, as they say "facts don't care about your feelings."
  • I Counted All of the Yurts in Mongolia Using Machine Learning

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    I'd say, when there's a policy and its goals aren't reached, that's a policy failure. If people don't like the policy, that's an issue but it's a separate issue. It doesn't seem likely that people prefer living in tents, though. But to be fair, the government may be doing the best it can. It's ranked "Flawed Democracy" by The Economist Democracy Index. That's really good, I'd say, considering the circumstances. They are placed slightly ahead of Argentina and Hungary. OP has this to say: Due to the large number of people moving to urban locations, it has been difficult for the government to build the infrastructure needed for them. The informal settlements that grew from this difficulty are now known as ger districts. There have been many efforts to formalize and develop these areas. The Law on Allocation of Land to Mongolian Citizens for Ownership, passed in 2002, allowed for existing ger district residents to formalize the land they settled, and allowed for others to receive land from the government into the future. Along with the privatization of land, the Mongolian government has been pushing for the development of ger districts into areas with housing blocks connected to utilities. The plan for this was published in 2014 as Ulaanbaatar 2020 Master Plan and Development Approaches for 2030. Although progress has been slow (Choi and Enkhbat 7), they have been making progress in building housing blocks in ger distrcts. Residents of ger districts sell or exchange their plots to developers who then build housing blocks on them. Often this is in exchange for an apartment in the building, and often the value of the apartment is less than the land they originally had (Choi and Enkhbat 15). Based on what I’ve read about the ger districts, they have been around since at least the 1970s, and progress on developing them has been slow. When ineffective policy results in a large chunk of the populace generationally living in yurts on the outskirts of urban areas, it’s clear that there is failure. Choi, Mack Joong, and Urandulguun Enkhbat. “Distributional Effects of Ger Area Redevelopment in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.” International Journal of Urban Sciences, vol. 24, no. 1, Jan. 2020, pp. 50–68. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1080/12265934.2019.1571433.
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    I support them , china I mean
  • For All That Is Good About Humankind, Ban Smartphones

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    Appreciated, but do you think the authorities want to win the war on drugs?