NaibofTabr

If there's no specific goal then hey, no problem, pick some part of your infrastructure that you want to work on for real, mark the project as speculative/exploratory because that's all it can be with no target metrics, then spend the budget on your actual technical debt problems and call it "modernizing to support AI implementation".

Your boss will be happy with it because he can tell his boss that you're working on implementing AI (see here's the project description and the report), and you can spend time and money on solving some actual problem. Claim any benefits that come from solving the actual problem as the result of the project.

Tell them you'll need to rip-and-replace all of the network hardware with newer gear to be AI-compatible. Then give them a realistic estimate on how much that would cost to purchase, and downtime for implementation and testing.

Then ask them what the (specific) target goal is for this project, so that you can give them a proper cost/benefit analysis, and define a progress report (in order for a goal to be achieved, it must be measurable in some way). And if they just respond with something vague like "10% increase in productivity", ask them what they think an increase in productivity looks like for network operations and how it would be measurable.

Every time they waffle on specifics, ask them again to define what the target goal is and how AI should be applied to it. If they handwave their answer, don't push them in direct conversation, but write an after-meeting email with a summary and explain that you still need a defined goal. Copy other senior employees if you think you can justify it (e.g. CFO because purchasing, CISO because network security, etc).

Avoid just saying no, as that will likely cause problems for you. After all, you are a paid employee, it is your job to help senior leadership achieve its goals. However, you are an employee, not senior leadership, so it is not your job to set targets. Your message should be that you can provide ideas if you know what the goal is.

And that goal should be SMART:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

Actually we fired all the creatives and replaced them with a large language model trained primarily on social media posts.

Just a warning on running a service like this - any website that allows arbitrary text entry from anonymous users will be found and flooded by bots very quickly.

The most innocent, least damaging version of what happens is adbots posting links to shoddy websites selling "essential oils" and other homeopathy nonsense.

More obscure but more malicious, text posts are used to control botnets for cybercrime. Basically a human running the botnet will post a string of letters and numbers to a website which the bots have been programmed to look for instructions. Websites that allow anonymous text entry are convenient for this because if the criminal activity is investigated, it's hard to trace the instructions from the controller back to a real person.

Just be aware that people will abuse your service for purposes you did not intend. You'll probably need both automated tooling for identifying and blocking bot traffic, as well as human moderation.

I find it difficult to see removing down votes as anything other than suppressing dissent.

I think the point of view described in the reddiquette is the most beneficial for good communities:

Vote. If you think something contributes to conversation, upvote it. If you think it doesn't contribute to the community it's posted in or is off-topic in a particular community, downvote it.

(Yes the link goes to reddit's website and I understand people are avoiding it, just keep in mind there was a time before everything went wrong and the reddiquette dates back to the early years)

So I don't upvote what other people say just because I agree with their opinion, or downvote because I disagree, but rather based on whether they're contributing to the conversation in a useful way. I frequently upvote people that argue with me, as long as they're addressing what I wrote in good faith.

This idea goes back further too - back when Digg was the most popular such website, the idea was that you "digg up" things that you think should be more visible (things that you think are worthwhile for other people to see), and "digg down" (bury) things that aren't.

For example, if I upvote an article about genocide, it's not because I approve of genocide, but because I think it's important for other people to see the article.

Aww, does the fragile little snowflake need a safe space?

Oh absolutely, I think the point of that talk was that none of the solutions really scale very well (trained eagles? really?).

Radio interference works great, but can disrupt your own comms, and now a lot of the drones over there are using fiber optic cables for in-flight control to avoid interference.

Net guns are not a scalable solution because they'll always be range and accuracy limited, plus you can protect a drone from nets with a cope cage as demonstrated in the video.

Can we get 4chan to start a new rumor?

"Anti-vax parents make children autistic"

...in mice

"ethnic unity" = ethnocide

hmm