More insightful A.I. commentary:
- The A.I.-P.R. industrial complex: If a Press Release Says “Artificial Intelligence,” There’s a Good Chance It’s Meaningless. Seems like everybody wants to jump on the A.I. bandwagon. "Technology this powerful should be able to make workers more productive, not unnecessary."
- Researcher Meredith Whittaker says AI’s biggest risk isn’t ‘consciousness’—it’s the corporations that control them. This person seems to agree with Ted Chiang to some extent.
- Free-lance writer posts on Reddit the experience of losing all his writing contracts due to ChatGPT, and having to switch occupations to being a plumber. Well, at least A.I. didn't drive him to suicide as it did this Belgian man.
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Stanford published a summary of the state of A.I.
The most important takeaway (to me) is: "More than 70% of Chinese,
Saudi, and Indian respondents felt AI had more benefits than drawbacks.
Americans? 35%." Indeed China is not afraid of advancing A.I. (even while American leaders advocate for a 6 month pause). Chinese A.I. will come with a few quirks, though.
Mental health crisis in teens. Three regional school districts are suing social media for a mental health crisis in teens. I think this is a little misplaced, but one must agree that giving young kids a platform where they can spout opinions and crazy stuff online, which is likely to be recorded forever and may come to haunt them later on is like offering cigarettes to youth. Few know how to use social media responsibly and errors are forever. Those who come to realize this can be severely depressed due to online incidents.
Related to this is the desire to facilitate transgender surgery for gender dysphoric youths, thinking that this will help. The passage of HB 2002-B is truly a sad day for Oregon. Families will be destroyed. And studies have shown that after genital-mutilating surgery, the use of psychoactive medications actually increases, not decreases. Once you cut body parts off, there is no satisfactory reversal.
In Hawaii, residents of Molokai and Lanai are dependent on one tiny airline service - Mokulele Airlines. Holy crap, this is crazy. Given the poor track record of businesses in Hawaii, I fear for these guys. Sounds like service is already spotty.
Awesome! Employees for the journal Neuroimage at at Elsevier are walking out to protest unreasonable publishing fees. It's heartening to see people standing up for scientists. Bravo!
This is just outrageous. Money given to agencies just enables drug abusers and contribute to the ongoing decay of Portland. No, Measure 110 will not work "eventually". The agencies just view this as a job — they don't want their employment to go away. Agency workers are content doing this day in and day out.