In the meantime, the most damaging act of sabotage that we know of on European ground was perpetrated (it seems) by Ukrainians. Many were pointing the finger in Russia’s direction when that happened, even if it didn’t make much sense. Just saying, we shouldn’t take spooks at their word, you never quite know who is really behind covert attacks on infrastructure. At best we, the general public, can speculate. It usually takes a hell of a long time for any serious investigation to take place, if that is even going to be conclusive.

Well it is one thing to automate a repetitive task in your job, and quite another to eliminate entire professions. The latter has serious ramifications and shouldn’t be taken lightly. What you call “menial bullshit” is the entire livelihood and profession of quite a few people, speaking of taxis for one. And the means to make some extra cash for others. Also, a stepping stone for immigrants who may not have the skills or means to get better jobs but are thus able to make a living legally. And sometimes the refuge of white collar workers down on their luck. What are all these people going to do when taxi driving is relegated to robots? Will there be (less menial) alternatives? Will these offer a livable wage? Or will such people end up long-term unemployed? Will the state have enough cash to support them and help them upskill or whatever is needed to survive and prosper?

A technological utopia is a promise from the 1950s. Hasn’t been realized yet. Isn’t on the horizon anytime soon. Careful that in dreaming up utopias we don’t build dystopias.

Though I am not a lawyer by training, I have been involved in such debates personally and professionally for many years. This post is unfortunately misguided. Copyright law makes concessions for education and creativity, including criticism and satire, because we recognize the value of such activities for human development. Debates over the excesses of copyright in the digital age were specifically about humans finding the application of copyright to the internet and all things digital too restrictive for their educational, creative, and yes, also their entertainment needs. So any anti-copyright arguments back then were in the spirit specifically of protecting the average person and public-interest non-profit institutions, such as digital archives and libraries, from big copyright owners who would sue and lobby for total control over every file in their catalogue, sometimes in the process severely limiting human potential.

AI’s ingesting of text and other formats is “learning” in name only, a term borrowed by computer scientists to describe a purely computational process. It does not hold the same value socially or morally as the learning that humans require to function and progress individually and collectively.

AI is not a person (unless we get definitive proof of a conscious AI, or are willing to grant every implementation of a statistical model personhood). Also AI it is not vital to human development and as such one could argue does not need special protections or special treatment to flourish. AI is a product, even more clearly so when it is proprietary and sold as a service.

Unlike past debates over copyright, this is not about protecting the little guy or organizations with a social mission from big corporate interests. It is the opposite. It is about big corporate interests turning human knowledge and creativity into a product they can then use to sell services to - and often to replace in their jobs - the very humans whose content they have ingested.

See, the tables are now turned and it is time to realize that copyright law, for all its faults, has never been only or primarily about protecting large copyright holders. It is also about protecting your average Joe from unauthorized uses of their work. More specifically uses that may cause damage, to the copyright owner or society at large. While a very imperfect mechanism, it is there for a reason, and its application need not be the end of AI. There’s a mechanism for individual copyright owners to grant rights to specific uses: it’s called licensing and should be mandatory in my view for the development of proprietary LLMs at least.

TL;DR: AI is not human, it is a product, one that may augment some tasks productively, but is also often aimed at replacing humans in their jobs - this makes all the difference in how we should balance rights and protections in law.

Be careful with that logic, these are jobs forever lost to robots. They will eventually come for your job or the job of someone you know. Increasingly the question won’t be whether robots can do X better than humans, but whether they should.

Interesting. And shady. Though not about recording conversations.

A market agency claiming they do something of the sort isn’t proof that conversations are being monitored en masse. Security researchers can and probably have tested for this and found no clear, verifiable evidence, otherwise we would have known. Also, this stuff can be blocked at the OS level and I find it hard to imagine (esp. without solid proof) that Google or Apple would jeopardize their reputations to this extent by enabling such unauthorized listening in on users’ conversations.

Of course it’s good to keep watching this space but we shouldn’t jump to conclusions.

That is what the Chinese leadership likes to claim. That it’s cultural, and their culture is one of trade and cooperation, not expansion. And I don’t doubt that they are earnest in saying that. I mean they truly believe themselves to be different. But we know that once a power becomes global, i.e. when its interests and investments extend well beyond its borders, its military presence will also expand, and it will engage in conflict to protect said global interests. Whether it’s the US, Russia, or China, the dynamic at a certain level is the same. China is already growing a more formidable army and expanding into the South China Sea. This is only the beginning.

Lusted after one as a teenager but could not afford one. It was a bit of a luxury item where I grew up.

Among the sad stories about climate scientists having to deal with misinformation and abuse on the regular, suddenly, a unicorn: a statement purportedly by Musk that I wholeheartedly agree with:

Musk wrote in January: “People on the right should see more ‘left-wing’ stuff and people on the left should see more ‘right-wing’ stuff. But you can just block it if you want to stay in an echo chamber.”

Of course with the average Xitter post becoming ever more toxic, most people that have anything of value to add will probably leave sooner or later, whether lefties or righties or whatever.

Probably because many local women would outright reject the Taliban, as partners and as masters, if they had a say. Educated women especially would run circles around them.

Respectfully, I do not see how this falls under trolling. Trolling would assume that the poster is disingenuous. But nothing that I have seen suggests that he was. And I do not think that moderators should make such calls. You may feel that something is “nonsense” but that does not mean you should exercise what little power you have to silence people, unless they clearly violate commonly agreed upon rules. Anyway, I don’t have a horse in this race, only reason I’m speaking up is because I see more and more forums that could host lively debate turn into circlejerks.

Ok but my question was did he break any rules? Is all propaganda forbidden on here, only Chinese propaganda, how do we decide? Or is it up to the mod’s discretion to decide what propaganda is undesirable and remove it?

I don’t know what was said, but is that a rule on here now? That you can just remove anything you deem to be CCP propaganda? I have noticed that nearly anything that can be construed as pro Russia or pro China is downvoted to hell on here. But so far I hadn’t noticed posts outright removed by mods. This feels wrong on so many levels. Why not let people express their opinion so long as they do not do it in an offensive manner?

Yeah it is confusing. Anyway, I still prefer to judge a game on its merits primarily and not on whether some of the people behind it are jerks or hold views antithetical to my own.

This is possibly fake as noted on another thread.

Exactly, everything was measured by how well Intel did, they were the undisputed standard bearer.

IBM went through a huge transformation. More than one probably. Most if not all giant firms have had to reinvent themselves many times over. I remember the pivot from a technology company to services and consulting, which was hugely controversial, as I got to see that relatively up close. I won’t forgive them for giving up thinkpad though.

And to think I grew up at a time when Intel reigned supreme. My my.

Indeed, why would they? I never said they should, so not sure what you’re upset about.

Good on you for trying. I gave up a while ago. A consensus has formed, at least on here and on most of the English-speaking internet and lines have been drawn. Contrary opinions are rarely tolerated. Thankfully the rest of the world isn’t as gung-ho on isolating Russia and is actually helping restore some balance, because at the end of the day whether Ukraine is a NATO country or a Russian protectorate in ten years time matters little in the grand scheme of things.

What matters more is that the global pecking order between great powers is disturbed and this will likely lead to frequent local and perhaps generalized conflict in the future. It would be helpful for more countries to remain neutral, so as to help maintain balance and independence, while limiting the reach of great powers, but under such intense competition for global dominance most countries have to pick a sponsor for better or worse. And Ukraine’s leadership has chosen NATO, naturally. Whether they could have remained neutral or not is for historians to debate. Right now, as the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Do the US, Russia, and China have to be enemies? Yes, unfortunately they do. They have competing interests and the decline of the US is leaving space open for others. Hence also the focus on getting Europe more heavily militarized again. So that it can hold its own in the uncertain times to come. That is my understanding.