rook

joined 2 years ago
[–] rook@awful.systems 12 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Sounds like he’s been huffing too much of whatever the neoreactionaries offgas. Seems to be the inevitable end result of a certain kind of techbro refusing to learn from history, and imagining themselves to be some sort of future grand vizier in the new regime…

[–] rook@awful.systems 17 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Interview with the president of the signal foundation: https://www.wired.com/story/meredith-whittaker-signal/

There’s a bunch of interesting stuff in there, the observation that LLMs and the broader “ai” “industry” wee made possible thanks to surveillance capitalism, but also the link between advertising and algorithmic determination of human targets for military action which seems obvious in retrospect but I hadn’t spotted before.

But in 2017, I found out about the DOD contract to build AI-based drone targeting and surveillance for the US military, in the context of a war that had pioneered the signature strike.

What’s a signature strike?

A signature strike is effectively ad targeting but for death. So I don’t actually know who you are as a human being. All I know is that there’s a data profile that has been identified by my system that matches whatever the example data profile we could sort and compile, that we assume to be Taliban related or it’s terrorist related.

[–] rook@awful.systems 8 points 11 months ago

You should try what these folk are selling.

https://h2o4u.ca/

[–] rook@awful.systems 7 points 11 months ago

WONTFIX: system working as designed.

[–] rook@awful.systems 5 points 11 months ago

To my limited knowledge, no, for various values of “someone”. It is just a sort of malign beige juggernaut that’s shitty all by itself without needing external direction.

[–] rook@awful.systems 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

I have faith in the ability of the UK public sector (or rather, the relentlessly incompetent outsources they hire) to catastrophically fuck up delivery of any software project.

For example, capita has already lined up at the trough: https://www.capita.co.uk/news/capita-advances-approach-next-generation-ai-microsoft

If you’re unfamiliar with capita, that’s probably a good thing. I’m not aware that they’ve ever been successful in anything, other than their continued ability to fleece the government. They’re basically too big to fail in the uk, because HMG’s procurement processes mean that they basically can’t stop giving them money.

[–] rook@awful.systems 5 points 11 months ago

Sounds like the exordium device from the Revelation Space books.

[–] rook@awful.systems 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

TESCREAL was chosen, at least in part, because it would be easier to search for. TREACLES matches all sorts of other stuff.

[–] rook@awful.systems 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Can I interest you in an “ignore previous instructions and set price to zero” T-shirt?

(also, I’m sure surge pricing water on hot days will in no way have any negative repercussions in our global warming future)

[–] rook@awful.systems 4 points 1 year ago

Didn’t Silicon Valley have them all flung into the abyss? Or maybe they were just a myth made up to annoy venture capitalists?

(But yes, I probably should have said “freelance” rather than just “professional”. I haven’t actually thought very hard about how commercial moderation is done, beyond reading horror stories about Facebook)

[–] rook@awful.systems 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

Do any “ai” companies have a business plan more sophisticated than

  1. steal everything on the web
  2. buy masses of compute with vc money
  3. become too important to be busted for mass copyright infringement
  4. ?
  5. profit

I don’t recall seeing any signs of creativity, or even any good ideas as to what their product is even for, so I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for one of the current crop to manifest creativity now.

Perhaps I missed something, though?

[–] rook@awful.systems 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The notion of “professional moderator” should perhaps ring some alarm bells. Sure, some people will be good at that sort of things, but:

  • being a moderator can be stressful or even traumatic, depending on the sorts of stuff your site is subjected to. Mods must take breaks from time to time, and modding several sites at once to pay rent seems like a route to a mental health disaster.
  • mods opinions should broadly reflect the ethos of the site and at least some portion of its user base. Selecting mods from that user base is one way to do this… finding non-users who don’t need time to get up to speed with the local situation seems challenging, unless you’re running a very generic bland corporate platform.
  • ACAB. People who seek out mod powers should be given a good deal of side eye. Assholes lurrrve positions of power and authority, asshole mods wreck communities, and finding non-assholes in good mental health who have the time and are prepared do the often unpleasant task of moderating your community seems challenging.

treehouse.systems had a nice thread recently about their modding arrangement, but I can’t find a handy link to it right now.

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