😂 I needed that laugh, thank you comrade!

“Wake Up the Coma” by Front Line Assembly

If only Putin and Lukashenko supported free and fair elections like Trump and Zelenskyy

yes

yes

since when did communists care about art theft lmao?

My understanding of the “ai art is theft” take in this context is like this. Making art is a form of labor, where one’s artwork is the output of one’s labor. Models trained on a particular artist’s style can emulate the style of that artwork. Companies who build models trained this way profit off of that style emulation without compensating the artist. Their (unique) art (style) has thus been stolen, for another’s profit.

I’m not trying to weigh in one way or another on the debate; just sharing how I understand what other people mean when they say ai art is theft. Perhaps I’m wrong in my understanding.

Virtual Cognition? 🤔 No, I don’t think we’re going to come up with anything better than Bullshitting Machines

I have not, but I’ll add it to the list

I agree with your points and perspective, but I also fell like “Simulated Cognition” is a bit too generous. I don’t think an LLM/what we currently have as generative “AI” is a simulation of cognition, though I acknowledge/concur that is the intent. Perhaps I’m splitting hairs too finely, but I see it instead as a statistical approximation of language processing.

I mean, I guess one could just say, “yeah, they’re a statistical approximation of language processing with the intent of simulating cognition”, and I’d have to acquiesce. So I guess my hang up hinges on how one interprets the word “simulated,” because I think its connotation tends to be more weighty than its literal definition. For example, if we said “Mock Cognition,” that’s more obviously fake cognition (to me, anyway). Whereas a mathematical simulation of something, for instance the flight trajectory of a satellite or rocket, is not the real thing, but is more or less expected to exactly model the real thing (at least in my selected example). And it makes me uncomfortable to apply that perception to the “Simulated Cognition” of our models that approximate language processing.

“waste-maxxing” 😂

Yeah, I want to say that nonsense ends up being at least partially justified story-wise, but it’s been a while since I’ve read it, and I don’t know how true that is. 😅

First and foremost, I think it is egregiously misnamed. It is neither artificial nor intelligent; it is just math. There was a time when “knowledge based systems” was a popular moniker (albeit for a different approach) and I find it to be much more apt for the systems we call (generative) AI. If we’re going to repurpose a term, I think that one is more suitable. “Large language model” is good for its accuracy, but is also less evocative and descriptive, especially for the normies. Either way, it’s wild to me that we’re like “yeah AI is here now.” It’s frustrating to me because of how it impacts the way we interpret and use these systems.

Secondly, I think the way that Statesian companies are building these systems is exactly wrong, but I don’t suppose that should really be a surprise to anyone. The throwing-peas-at-the-wall and throwing-money-and-resources-at-it approach has netted results, sure, but wouldn’t it be neat if everyone was working together to more deliberately collate the entirety of human knowledge and create accessible tools for all to leverage? You know, instead of letting private companies extract the fruits of our labor, throw it into their equation, and then sell it back to us, over and over again? Anyway.

Outside of that, I think Cowbee’s succinct take reflects my view as well.

Ultimately, it is a tool. It’s impressive that hardware has developed to the point where we can throw so much language at these systems to get useful results. It is also true that these systems are both over- and underestimated. I think it’s also true that the current economic approach is intractable, and I look forward to the day when we more broadly understand how to build and use these tools more effectively.

I found the whole series fascinating; definitely comes from unique angles in my opinion/experience. Really got me thinking about things I hadn’t considered, and with different perspectives and nuance than I would likely ever arrive at on my own. I feel like the series is worth reading in its entirety, but I can also commiserate with losing interest or even feeling too fatigued to bother finishing. (Also, there was a weird part dealing with gender that felt almost like a non sequitur; I found it jarring and necessary, but I’m also not out here any literary awards.) What language are you reading it in? If it’s English, it might be worth noting The Dark Forest has a different translator than the other two.

I’ve been reading the Hunger Games series. I recently started Mockingjay.

Threw on some Outkast the other day. Also revisited Tyler the Creator’s Chromakopia.

Big Boi’s “War” was particularly fun/weird to hear again. Simultaneously inspirational and ineffectual

How’d it go though?

Because our ideology is coherent, consistent, and defensible

I’d say your reading is pretty much correct. I don’t know how much SSD variance would really impact things, but the extent to which it does would have to do with however the neural network was trained. The more robustly that model is able to discern what is and is not running based on the SSD analyses, the more plausible and reliable this attack is. I think that’s where the bulk of the “techno-babble” aspect comes into play.

The reported attack is really messed up from a privacy perspective, but I also think it’s not EXTREMELY viable in reality, due to the mentioned constraints (in particular the large file size requirement). There are two aspects here: 1. a web browser can snoop SSD behavior (❗), 2. if you run that data through an appropriately trained model, perhaps the sky’s the limit (☹️).

The wackest part is that a web browser can analyze SSD behavior. That’s just messed up. The fact that nerds were then like “yo, let’s train an ML model on this to tell what the user is doing on their computer” is also nuts, of course, but obviously that threat is mitigated presuming nefarious actors aren’t given carte blanche access to one’s hard drive behavior in the first place. It also seems plausible that you could maybe break such a model by running a program specifically designed to disguise SSD usage, not to mention other isolation approaches already referenced in the article.

But so yeah, being able to snoop on SSD activity is insane. Training a model on that activity is where it gets more techno-babbley, but they also showed it can at least be done on an M2. There’s no reason to think it couldn’t similarly be done for other systems, OSes, applications, and configurations, but of course the wider they cast that net, the trickier it likely is to viably train the model(s).

At least Cowbee has sources 🤷

To add to this, I think there are some assumptions in this reasoning that are worth addressing.

so then americans as a whole seem to have power in maintaining this system, from protecting it via participating in the military, working in jobs that manage this imperial system (e.g. finance, defense, etc.), selecting the american candidates that pursue their favorite imperialist policies (i.e the policies that give them a larger share of the super profits)

This is essentially how the system functions, but it presupposes more agency on behalf of the Statsian workers than exists in practicable reality. For example, if one is selecting one imperalist over another in an election, it’s worth noting the vote for imperialism is fully baked in.

Similarly:

in turn, the domestic capitalists in america need the support of the americans, so they and the americans come to an agreement on how to divide the superprofits from the factories abroad among them

It might be literally true that the domestic capitalists need the support of the Statesian workers, but it depends on what we mean by “support.” At present the Statesian workers do not have any viable organized resistance to provide any actionable counterbalance. The support is implicitly baked into the system as is, and of course the bribes, propaganda, systemic degradation of any meaningful angency, etc., solidify this. The Statesian workers have no real say in how the spoils are divided; they simply take what they can get at best.