@yoginho@spore.social I wonder a lot about what you dubbed phil-washing. Anyone who pushes on tech hard enough recognizes that it's a bit of an intellectual husk. There's no grounding, no there there, for the vast majority of it (in my opinion of course). Wouldn't it be lovely if one of the tech giants came up with a philosophy! Wouldn't it be remarkable if it came from a division named "deep mind"!

I just inadvertently put a pair of headphones on my computer keyboard and by the time I picked them up again there were 51 screenshots taken of the same window. Oops.

@yoginho@spore.social

I'm positively surprised to see so much sense coming out of #Google #Deepmind, for a change. What's going on?

A guess? Critihype: hype of their viewpoints and methods clothed in what appears to be criticism, in hopes that people like us spread it (thereby achieving the goal of hyping themselves). Google has regularly done just this for roughly two decades at this point. I won't read corporate PR wrapped in a lab coat from such clearly compromised labs with obvious, deep conflicts of interest. However, that'd be my guess. A lot of these folks fight amongst themselves about whether AGI is possible, whether doom or utopia will result from attempts at creating it, and other religious nonsense.

@dingemansemark@scholar.social Oh wow thanks for sharing this, going to dig in when I get a chance next!

This preprint on arXiv from CMU, Oxford, MIT and UCLA adds to the growing list of harms that overuse of AI tools are implicated in.

I would suggest that folks who think using AI is great for mathematicians should think again. It seems as little as 10 minutes of use can be problematic. What else do we know that provides short-term gains at the expense of long-term loss?

Here, through a series of randomized controlled trials on human-AI interactions (N = 1,222), we provide causal evidence for two key consequences of AI assistance: reduced persistence and impairment of unassisted performance. Across a variety of tasks, including mathematical reasoning and reading comprehension, we find that although AI assistance improves performance in the short-term, people perform significantly worse without AI and are more likely to give up. Notably, these effects emerge after only brief interactions with AI (approximately 10 minutes). These findings are particularly concerning because persistence is foundational to skill acquisition and is one of the strongest predictors of long-term learning.

From AI Assistance Reduces Persistence and Hurts Independent Performance, on arXiv https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.04721

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #AgenticAI #AIAssistants #CognitiveImpairment #math #MathematicalReasoning #ReadingComprehension

@davidgerard@circumstances.run @atax1a@infosec.exchange Imagine having a conversation with the main character from Memento and he's furiously writing shorthand of everything you say onto his arms to maintain the thread.

@nielsa@mas.to @olivia@scholar.social Thanks for sharing! This is thought-provoking. Here's one reaction I had, for what it's worth.

I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, and though the sex ed then and there was a tiny bit better than what this author describes experiencing in Arkansas, it was not by much. I wonder sometimes whether non-Americans grasp how backwards and regressive US culture can be. Anyway, an attempt to adapt the rhetoric of abstinence-only sex "education" to shame AI critics is complicated for this reason. E.g., arguments about the need to abstain from use of AI might actually work on some people. It might fall flat or even raise the ire of others who had bad experiences. Putting on my evil tech marketer hat, I'd avoid this frame because of the complexity and unpredictability about how it might land (I don't actually have this hat). There are probably some effective wedges to drive here, and I think the linked article hits on one.

We all have good ethical and political reasons to reject the president’s words. But those who serve in government, and in the armed forces, have been placed under the legal shadow of genocide by what Trump wrote. To bomb a bridge or a dam or a power plant or a desalinization facility, very likely a war crime in any event, could very well have a different legal significance, a genocidal one, if it takes place after the expression of genocidal intent by the commander and head of state.

From https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-president-speaks-genocide

#USPol #IranInvasion #WorldPol #genocide

Trump and Vance telegraphing significant weakness and fear today.

#USPol #IranInvasion #Hungary #WorldPol

Part of the yard right now.

#maine #weather #snow

The snow is pretty. The prospect of shoveling it, not so much. It's above freezing so I could wait for it to melt, but we need the driveway clear today.

#maine #weather #snow

Re: LB:

What appears as critique – yearning for smaller, weirder, more human spaces – often functions as brand repair. Netstalgia becomes a strategy: it restores trust without redistributing power, softens anger without changing infrastructures and reframes structural problems as matters of vibe, design or community feeling.

"Am I working on change, or am I working on brand repair?" is an important question to ask oneself regularly, it seems to me. It's especially relevant for the tech sector, open source, and computer science.

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLM #tech #dev #software #OSS #FOSS #ComputerScience

@nielsa@mas.to @olivia@scholar.social Likewise---I tend to be blunt I guess, but I am legitimately interested in pushing ideas forward, especially with regards to this AI situation we've all been thrust into. Thank you for sticking through it.

@nielsa@mas.to Maybe there's a cultural thing here. I am in and from the US, where "purity test"---like the Wikipedia article Olivia linked---is very frequently used in bad faith to shut down discussion and conversation, especially by the powerful when anyone challenges their position from a more principled position. For instance, the Democratic party here---a corporate, centrist or center-right party---frequently accuses anyone with left-leaning politics as unreasonably demanding ideological purity, thereby distracting from the core policy debate.

I've seen similar language around AI, which is also a project of the powerful, used to stifle reasonable debate about this technology. So, I'm quite sensitive to this rhetoric.

@nielsa@mas.to @olivia@scholar.social Now that I've read all the interactions after your thread I think I understand you, yes. I don't think you're speaking in bad faith, slinging dogwhistles, or anything like that. I'm sorry if I wasn't clearer about that earlier.

@nielsa@mas.to If you're suggesting I've come at you with bad intent, I'd offer that this is a great way to convince me that your own words are being offered in bad faith. I think my read of your posts was a reasonable one even if it is not what you intended to express. I know it's frustrating to be misread but that's one reason we interact, isn't it? To clarify?

And absolutely I've seen a bunch of people say rude stuff to @olivia@scholar.social on here. Ugly stuff, undeserved.

Re: https://social.coop/users/scottjenson/statuses/116352800579635299

Yes, a lot of you don't want AI posts in your feed (or pick any other topic) but the solution isn't to keep "AI People" from joining Mastodon

If this were not a disingenuous strawman---because it's impossible for one thing---I'd ask "why not?" I wouldn't invite the "AI People" I've encountered into my house either, because I've found them to be unpleasant and I get to choose who enters my space. This solution has worked quite well for me over the years.

It seems to me that what this person is saying is that people should give up the power they have---namely, their power to exclude people and topics they don't wish to interact with---because it favors them. That's a typical rhetorical move of AI boosters: demanding you give up your power because you having and exercising that power inconveniences them.

any more than it is keeping marginalized communities off of Mastodon.

One should ask why this person chose to use the most offensive possible metaphor to make their case for inclusion. It's almost as though they don't believe the argument their words are shaped into resembling.

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #AIHype #AIBoosters

@nielsa@mas.to @olivia@scholar.social

avoidance purity is incompatible with increasing AI literacy

"Avoidance purity" is both a strawman and a dogwhistle. Nobody serious is doing either of these things, and a lot of bad actors use this phrase to cudgel people into submission or sow doubt. A strange take, frankly.

That said, the conclusion is false. I practice an extreme form of avoidance purity when it comes to experimenting with whether murder would enhance my life. Nevertheless, I am "murder literate". I contend the overwhelming majority of folks can say the same.

(I recognize that I too am whacking a strawman, but this is for effect; the point gestured at stands regardless).

Watching someone share their screen on Zoom and seeing the dozen AI-related icons, tabs, and popups polluting every application and web app is pretty amazing. It is so much like intrusive advertising both in how invasive it is and in how much it degrades the general experience. I don't use any of these apps and aggressively use uBlock Origin rules to block every icon, widget, and box having to do with AI on every web site I do regularly visit. Having made all these rules over time I had a sense for how bad it was getting but till today I hadn't had the full frontal assault of AI cruft the tech world has gifted us.

#tech #dev #computers #AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #advertising #InformationPollution

I don't know Zoom, maybe you should open another browser tab and application window, I didn't see the first four.

#zoom #VideoConferencing #meetings #work

@lienrag@mastodon.tedomum.net It's fine if you don't like chess tournaments, but a lot of other people do, and the point was that a computer beating Kasparov did not change this.

(which led to the suicide of a good player recently).

Are you referring to Daniel Naroditsky?

@cwebber@social.coop @mttaggart@infosec.exchange No one with a moral compass would respond positively to someone purposely polluting a community and then writing about how they managed to make a fancy chemical that has positive uses but felt bad about it in the process. It is time to take a principled ethical stance against any use of this technology and refuse to use it altogether until it can be created and deployed in an ethical manner. It's been years at this point. There are thousands of posts and articles like this. We don't need more.

I cosign this sentiment from Ross Barkan's Substack, and would add that it extends to software development as well:

I’ve made this point before about how inane AI hype is now, but a computer beat the best chess player in the world in 1997. No one pretended, after 1997, it wasn’t worthwhile to have humans compete in chess. In fact, the world of chess developed strict protocols around computer use and you can get banned from tournaments if you use a computer program as you play. You are certainly shamed and mocked.

AI and writing needs to be treated the same way. I do think people should be shamed for using AI to help them write creatively. It’s an embarrassment, and a form of cheating.

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #AIHype #LLMs #writing #tech #dev #coding #SoftwareDevelopment #SoftwareEngneering #software

@ngaylinn@tech.lgbt I don't know if this explains your specific experience, but generally speaking there's a fairly large loophole in pharma regulation that leads to stuff like this. Basically if you produce a pharmaceutical or bio-based product, you can artificially extend its patent by combining it with a digital artifact and rebranding it as a medical device. It's also cheaper, faster, and easier to obtain FDA approval for medical devices than for other types of products. I've come across this numerous times in my consulting works as well as at the startup I cofounded (where I heard this strategy explained from the horse's mouth so to speak).

I agree completely that none of this is good!

@ObsidianUrbex@mstdn.social Wow! Are you able to share where this is? I grew up in PA!

Microsoft rushed Azure out of the gates under intense competitive pressure. Corners were cut. Fundamental principles of reliability and operational simplicity were quietly abandoned.

Meaning all this came straight from the top. "Intense competitive pressure" is self-induced.

Fortunately this kind of thing, rushing software out the door under self-induced competitive pressure, doesn't happen anymore. Organizations have learned their lessons about the perils of operating this way. (/s)

Layered on this chaos was an Azure-wide mandate: all new software must be written in Rust.

LOL

On a more serious note: LMAO

On top of all that, the org had a hard commitment to deliver the already long-delayed OpenAI bare-metal SKUs that had been promised for years. This work started around May 2024 with a target of Spring 2025 and was led by a Principal engineer who had evidently never tackled a task of that scale.

Fast-forward to March 10, 2025: OpenAI signed an $11.9 billion compute deal with CoreWeave for model training and services.

This detail really struck me. Microsoft's deep internal dysfunction drove OpenAI right into the outstretched arms of Datacenter Enron.

An unbelievable series thanks for sharing. I feel like @davidgerard@circumstances.run could make quite a bit of hay out of this one.

@prietschka@mastodon.social @davidgerard@circumstances.run Yeah, once the rich people with fancy lawyers start getting squeezed, they start fighting with one another instead of focusing on screwing the rest of us. Re: the fraud, I also wonder how many of these "deals" were made without public scrutiny, hidden behind NDAs, by local politicians who may not survive politically once all the cards start toppling and nothing gets built.

@adingbatponder@fosstodon.org

Claude code works.

...

All I know is at the receiving end it feels like it is Christmas every day because the tool does stuff that helps novices do stuff.

Claude Code "works" in the way that slot machines "work" for gambling addicts or Christmas "works" for children.

Claude Code deliberately sets up an addiction loop the way casino gambling machines do, inducing the perception that it is helping when more and more data shows that it does exactly the opposite. It does not help novices "do stuff". Rather, it deskills them, prevents them from learning, and passes the negative consequences of these effects downstream to someone else, all while fooling them into believing they are being more productive.

The reality is that insurance companies more and more won't insure companies that lean on AI for exactly this reason: the downsides are not documented and therefore not auditable, and are ultimately pushed outside the company, which introduces liability and other loss risk. Companies are of course free to take on needless and unaccounted-for internal risk, but insurance companies won't cover it and that is a very important signal about the actual real-world value of this technology.

"Christmas every day" is a phrase gambling addicts use too. But somebody has to clean up the wrapping paper and replace the batteries that die and dispose of the toys that break or are discarded after one use. Somebody has to buy them in the first place, and somebody has to make them for them to be available to buy. Christmas "works" for children, but it's a temporary illusion created for their benefit, not the basis for a sustainable workflow, business, or economy.

@baldur@toot.cafe I'm getting COVID vibes from this. Here in the US anyway, the average person started acknowledging COVID was a uniquely dangerous disease and that it was probably good to wear masks only after the intense minimization efforts largely succeeded. It became safe to express that opinion because there was no chance it'd upset the (engineered) consensus that COVID was no big deal. There was no risk in saying it anymore.

If software developers largely perceive that most of their contemporaries are using LLMs and that expressing something negative about it won't have any material effect on that reality, they take no risks expressing concerns about the technology.