Biggles @Biggles@social.cleverlibre.org

@darkuncle

can you download them all locally as DRM-free files?

@darkuncle

"The Expert" quote should be "well, it's a bit more complicated than that..."

@darkuncle

Maybe?

But again - heroin. It's damn handy for the "legitimate use cases". And they used to put it in all sorts of crazy shit. Until they realized how addictive it was. Now it's a controlled substance because it causes more harm than good.

Let's look at LLMs, today. You can chat with it! You can ask it to do your homework! And ... it's wrong (lots - plus it plagiarizes). Well that sucks. Good thing I didn't use it for anything important. Except - some people did. And still do. We are arguably still in the "fuck around" stage. I'm not excited about the "find out" bit.

LLMs today belong in research labs. Not as a " virtual assistant" in things the general public actually uses. We've already seen them ruin careers and offer up fatal advice - see https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/08/ai-powered-grocery-bot-suggests-recipe-for-toxic-gas-poison-bread-sandwich/ - do people actually have to die before we exercise restraint.

@darkuncle

"Microsoft is going nuclear to power its AI ambitions" is the headline.

Microsoft vowing to go carbon-neutral would be worthy of praise.

They're not.

They're offsetting very real criticism that AI - like bitcoin before it - is grossly wasteful of resources due to its intense compute requirements with a bit of greenwashing fluff. They're not even committing to nuclear - they're hiring someone to look into it.

But they really really want you to think they're doing a lot more than that - and they've succeeded.

@darkuncle ok, but - I'm not beating up nuns. Not being actively evil isn't worthy of praise. IMHO - MS is wasting energy on bullshit - the fact that it's carbon-zero is lovely but mostly irrelevant, unless you want to talk about greenwashing. A better carbon-zero solution is to not waste energy on the latest gpu-based-fad.

@darkuncle

You're sure it wasn't 4 or 5 raccoons in a trench coat? Did they have a mask on? That's a sign.

@darkuncle

How do you figure? Not that MS was going to donate that money/time/effort to housing the homeless or universal healthcare, but what tangible benefit do you or I (or anyone!) get because MS powers it's current boondoggle via nuclear rather than say solar and batteries?

@darkuncle

Someone older than you was on the Tok-Tik? Inconceivable.

@paul_ipv6 @darkuncle

That one has an *opportunity* to learn from bad decisions isn't always the case. but as they say - burned hand teaches best.

I still prefer to learn from the mistakes of others. Less painful.

@darkuncle

Heh. s/Tik Tok/music/g and welcome to the 1970's, grandpa. Don't forget your cane and beltline just under your nipples.

(Yes, it's rude, but it's far from new; the younger generation always does something to annoy the elders, usually something loud)

@darkuncle

I think current AI/ML has *negative* value for society - it, like bitcoin, causes more harm and potential harm than benefits. We have lots of things like that - heroin, for example. It has super niche uses where it might be beneficial, but on the whole it's a dangerous attractive nuisance.

For example - a big company might invest in nuclear power to waste on the fantasy, rather than for something *actually useful to society* like making said nuclear power safer and cheaper and easier to adopt as a replacement to fossil fuels, or investing in green wind and solar power. MS isn't looking at next gen nuclear power to benefit society - they mean to utilize it for yet another gpu-based boondoggle. In this case, when all is said and done we'll have additional nuclear waste and bad poetry and AI hallucinations and lies to show for it. I do hope the lies don't get people hurt or killed.

@darkuncle

We learned nothing from bitcoin. Nothing.

At least this is only wildly wasteful rather than an actual ponzi scheme.

@darkuncle

Do you want a surgeon operating on you who *knows what to do* - or one who could look it up?

This is just generalist versus specialist - and the answer is that both are useful in different ways.

@darkuncle

They told us this back in Junior High school, long before the web existed (for me): your Library Research Skills are the gateway to knowledge. Knowing things is often not nearly as important as knowing how to find out.

@Nickiquote

We also have a very different take on "Bloody".