@technocrit While I agree with the main point that "AI/LLMs has/have no agency", I must be the boring, ackchyually person who points out and remembers some nerdy things.tl;dr: indeed, AIs and LLMs aren't intelligent... we aren't so intelligent as we think we are, either, because we hold no "exclusivity" of intelligence among biosphere (corvids, dolphins, etc) and because there's no such thing as non-deterministic "intelligence". We're just biologically compelled to think that we can think and we're the only ones to think, and this is just anthropocentric and naive from us (yeah, me included).If you have the patience to read a long and quite verbose text, it's below. If you don't, well, no problems, just stick to my tl;dr above.-----First and foremost, everything is ruled by physics. Deep down, everything is just energy and matter (the former of which, to quote the famous Einstein equation e = mc, is energy as well), and this inexorably includes living beings.Bodies, flesh, brains, nerves and other biological parts, they're not so different from a computer case, CPUs/NPUs/TPUs, cables and other computer parts: to quote Sagan, it's all "made of star stuff", it's all a bunch of quarks and other elementary particles clumped together and forming subatomic particles forming atoms forming molecules forming everything we know, including our very selves...Everything is compelled to follow the same laws of physics, everything is subjected to the same cosmic principles, everything is subjected to the same fundamental forces, everything is subjected to the same entropy, everything decays and ends (and this comment is just a reminder, a cosmic-wide Memento mori).It's bleak, but this is the cosmic reality: cosmos is simply indifferent to all existence, and we're essentially no different than our fancy "tools", be it the wheel, the hammer, the steam engine, the Voyager twins or the modern dystopian electronic devices crafted to follow pieces of logical instructions, some of which were labelled by developers as "Markov Chains" and "Artificial Neural Networks".Then, there's also the human non-exclusivity among the biosphere: corvids (especially Corvus moneduloides, the New Caleidonian crow) are scientifically known for their intelligence, so are dolphins, chimpanzees and many other eukaryotas. Humans love to think we're exclusive in that regard, but we're not, we're just fooling ourselves!IMHO, every time we try to argue "there's no intelligence beyond humans", it's highly anthropocentric and quite biased/bigoted against the countless other species that currently exist on Earth (and possibly beyond this Pale Blue Dot as well). We humans often forgot how we are species ourselves (taxonomically classified as "Homo sapiens"). We tend to carry on our biological existences as if we were some kind of "deities" or "extraterrestrials" among a "primitive, wild life".Furthermore, I can point out the myriad of philosophical points, such as the philosophical point raised by the mere mention of "senses" ("Because it’s bodiless. It has no senses, ..." "my senses deceive me" is the starting point for Cartesian (René Descartes) doubt. While Descarte's conclusion, "Cogito ergo sum", is highly anthropocentric, it's often ignored or forgotten by those who hold anthropocentric views on intelligence, as people often ground the seemingly "exclusive" nature of human intelligence on the ability to "feel".Many other philosophical musings deserve to be mentioned as well: lack of free will (stemming from the very fact that we were unable to choose our own births), the nature of "evil" (both the Hobbesian line regarding "human evilness" and the Epicurean paradox regarding "metaphysical evilness"), the social compliance (I must point out to documentaries from Derren Brown on this subject), the inevitability of Death, among other deep topics.All deep principles and ideas converging, IMHO, into the same bleak reality, one where we (supposedly "soul-bearing beings") are no different from a "souless" machine, because we're both part of an emergent phenomena (Ordo ab chao, the (apparent) order out of chaos) that has been taking place for Æons (billions of years and beyond, since the dawn of time itself).Yeah, I know how unpopular this worldview can be and how downvoted this comment will probably get. Still I don't care: someone who gazed into the abyss must remember how the abyss always gazes us, even those of us who didn't dare to gaze into the abyss yet.I'm someone compelled by my very neurodivergent nature to remember how we humans are just another fleeting arrangement of interconnected subsystems known as "biological organism", one of which "managed" to throw stuff beyond the atmosphere (spacecrafts) while still unable to understand ourselves. We're biologically programmed, just like the other living beings, to "fear Death", even though our very cells are programmed to terminate on a regular basis (apoptosis) and we're are subjected to the inexorable chronological falling towards "cosmic chaos" (entropy, as defined, "as time passes, the degree of disorder increases irreversibly").

I believed they were doing such things against budding competitors long before the LLM era. My test is simple. Replace it with China. Would the replies be the opposite of what you've recieved so far? The answer is yes. Absolutely people would be frothing at the mouth about China being bad actors. Western tech bros are just as paranoid, they copy off others, they steal ideas. When we do it it's called "innovation".

AFAIK, you have the option to enable ads on your lock screen. It's not something that's forced upon you. Last time I took a look at the functionality, they "paid" you for the ads and you got to choose which charity to support with the money.

I want to read his "Meaning of the City" because I just like City theory, but I keep postponing in case it's just Christian morality lessons. The anarchist Christian angle makes this sound more interesting.

Police: Arrest you for having an open beer in public Judge: sentences you to prison The PIC:

I really wish their whole lap-dock concept had succeeded. Or at least ran a few more generations, so I could get an upgraded model with USBc

A private company is selling cheap tablets to inmates to let them communicate with their family. They have to use "digital stamps" to send messages, 35 cents a piece and come in packs of 5, 10 or 20. Each stamp covers up to 20,000 characters or one single image. They also sell songs, at $1.99 a piece, and some people have spent thousands over the years. That's also now just going away. Then you get to the part about the new company. Who already has a system in Tennessee where inmates have to pay 3-5 cents per minute of tablet usage. Be that watching a movie they've bought or just typing a message.