That there is no perfect defense. There is no protection. Being alive means being exposed; it’s the nature of life to be hazardous—it’s the stuff of living.
The corrupt oligopolists have completely given up on QA; why would they bother when they don’t feel any real competitive pressure.
AFAIK, this has been happening as far back as Windows 8. I believe they had a giant pool of physical PCs (laptops, pre-builts and various popular component combinations for desktop) that they physically tested updates on, but they scrapped all of it because they know they don’t need to worry about competition.
There are specialized niche services/domains in B2B professional services and engineering where it’s honestly difficult to be evil due to the nature of the domain and because it’s B2B.
One could argue you are are still enabling evil companies, which is fair, but at least you’re not really harming anyone.
Sounds a bit too good to be true.
These genre of articles “China invents magical technological” has become very popular in the last 5 years.
Not saying this isn’t a massive breakthrough or that fundamental research isn’t important (it very much is), but one should always maintain a critical posture to such things.
The Economist is generally a pretty good news source, but I thought this article was subpar.
Irrespective of whether this facial evaluation algorithm works or not, as things stand today, it is pointless to discuss its use in the context of meritocracy. A regime founded upon the rejection of personal responsibility, corruption and criminality makes such discussions irrelevant (algorithm or no algorithm).
At the risk of sounding like an accelerationist, I can’t get rid of the feeling that the regime members are really busy doing their best to make a new metaphorical rope.
Let’s hope for the best, without dark ages, and who knows, perhaps we have novel tools too.
One example would be: Trans-Siberian Railway (1904)
Took 13 years to build.
Thanks.
Can’t say I agree though. I can’t think of any historical examples where a positive agenda in of itself made a difference.
One example would be industrialization at the end of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century. One could argue it was far more disruptive of pre-industrial society (railroads, telegraph, radio, mass production) than the information age is now.
Clearly industrialization enabled mass benefits in society, but it took WW1/WW2 and the rise of uncompromising, brutal revolutionary regimes for societies to come to terms with pros and cons of industrial society and find a middle path of sorts (until the next disruption).
Let’s hope it doesn’t get to that point in our times. That being said, the current oligarch regime comes off as even more self assured than the beneficiaries of early industrial society (gilded age oligarch in the US, Romanov dynasty in Tsarist russia).
The current batch of oligarchs has the benefit of hindsight and yet they is no end to their hubris with Bezos talking about millions living in space and comically stupid projects like data centres in orbit and The Simpsons-style “block the sun” schemes to address climate change.
Only option is to not use Americans products and services.
America cannot be trusted. At the end of the day the current US administration is a mere symptom, not the root cause.
As another poster mentioned, there is far more similarity between Obama and Trump than most Americans would like to admit.
No disrespect to sane Americans. It is a disaster for global democracy that America has de facto transitioned to a chauvinistic oligarchy.
So yes, we need a positive vision for AI so we can deal with these problems
I am genuinely curious why you think we need a positive vision for AI.
I say this as someone who regularly uses LLMs for work (more as a supplement to web searching) and uses “AI” in other areas as well (low resolution video upscaling). There are also many other very interesting use cases (often specialized) that tend to be less publicized than LLM related stuff.
I still don’t see why we need a positive vision for AI.
From my perspective, “AI” is a tool, it’s not inherently positive or negative. But as things stand right now, the industry is dominated by oligarchs and conmen types (although they of course don’t have a monopoly in this area). But since we don’t really have a way to reign in the oligarchs (i.e. make them take responsibility for their actions), the discussion around positive vision almost seems irrelevant. Let’s say we do have a positive vision for AI (I am not even necessarily opposed to such a vision), but my question would be, so what?
Perhaps we are just talking about different things. :)
P.S. FWIW, I read your replies in this thread.
Google, Apple, Meta it’s all the same to me. I don’t do fandom for oligarch conglomerates. I am not from North America.
In reality, I think you’re being deliberately obtuse because you want to defend Google’s business practices for some reason. You’re conflating the way Google collects sensitive user information for the purpose of advertising in every single one of its products, including from non-Google apps and webpages with some technicality around verbiage in a privacy policy, which you have not even cited yourself.
All right, all right! It’s all a big conspiracy to protect Alphabet and discredit poor little Tim Apple.
You got me partner. It’s all technicality in their privacy policy!
So have you or have you not read the Apple privacy policy?
Where did I say Apple has a search engine? I said Apple tracks and logs your searches.
I am just curious, have you ever read Apple’s privacy policy?
What makes you think they don’t log your searches?
FWIW, from my last reading of their privacy policy, they openly stated that they do share PII with other companies who they consider to be their partners.
They claim that they don’t share PII with third parties “for their marketing purposes”.
That being said, you’re at the mercy of their definition of “partner” and interpretation of “for [the third party’s] marketing purposes”.
I should honestly just re-read their privacy policy (and the same for Google and Meta).
Their service line was growing much faster than hardware, it is a big part of their business. So their business model does depend on data collection.
The last time I read the Apple privacy policy it sounded like they pretty much collect everything and let themselves share this data with whoever they feel like.
There was a lot of calming language, but it didn’t sound convincing to me.
That being said, if you like the Apple ecosystem and UX, it’s a solid option.
I personally believe their statements about privacy are nothing more than PR.
I was referring to the general concept behind the quote.
I originally want to post the OG (apocryphal?) variant:
Owe Your Banker £1,000 and You Are at His Mercy; Owe Him £1 Million and the Position Is Reversed
But it sounds rather quaint these days.
They will be fine either way…
If you owe the bank $100, that’s your problem; if you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem.
I am starting to find Sam AltWorldCoinMan spam to be more annoying than Elmo spam.
And most importantly: post, comment, upvote.
Note, I am doing some of these thing when I can.