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Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

theguardian.com

391–400 of 605 posts

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#391

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My father has fallen for one fraud after another these last few years. It’s disgusting. Anything in the direction of solving this would be doing the lord’s work.

The solution is for all foreign wire transfers to be insured and reversible which would drive up the cost of doing business with countries home to scammers.

Insured against what? (The bank is already liable if the account is breached). These scam transfers are intentional acts authorized by the account holders. A company can't be held liable for the stupidity of its customers.

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#392
post #383

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It’s so bizarre to me that this uniquely US phenomenon of for-profit-middlemen inserted into the healthcare system has resulted in an adverserial relationship between the sick person and the “healthcare provider”. I put that air quotes because insurance companies don’t actually provide health care. They provide insurance. That’s a financial product, not a medical one.

in Japan where the government sets the prices, dentists do things over 3 visits that dentists in other places would do in 1 because then they can bill the government set price 3 times instead of one

that's crazy ! Do they at least schedule the 3 visits back to back in the same day ?

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#393
post #228

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Money is whatever people agree it is. Printed pieces of paper or recorded bits in a database are no more inherently valuable than digital tokens, yet everyone accepts them as "money". AI faces are no surprise, but I fail to see the connection you are going for.

Because the government backs the dollar. The government doesn’t back runescape gp for instance. It has value yes but its also not money. Otherwise anything one could trade could count as money. I traded my couch for beer now its money if we only defined money by having some value and ability to trade it.

> Otherwise anything one could trade could count as money.

But that's correct and often occurs on black markets for all kinds of reasons, for example coffee and cigarettes in Germany after WW2 and Hungarian salami and tires in the GDR. There are no alternative currencies because they are strictly prohibited by penal law, otherwise they would occur in all kinds of areas. Governments only allow highly regulated alternative currencies, and even then only under very rare circumstances. Crypto coins weren't an exception to this, they only emerged a bit faster than how legislation could be updated.

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#394

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What about them?

The political boogeyman was that government bureaucrats would be the members of “death panels” if we went full socialized healthcare industry, but in practice we already have death panels in health insurance claims adjusters and (less maliciously) doctors on transplant review boards.

My mother beat cancer. Insurance paid for follow up testing every 2 years. I tried to convince her to pay out of pocket and do it every year but she said 'they know best'. My mom did not beat cancer the second time when it came back and too much time elapsed between screenings.

I know 'pro status quo' people will say online anecdotes are all lies and not relevant, but there are a heck of a lot of people with a lot of animosity to the current system and it's 'for profit death panels'. I think it would be easier to swallow if it were societal chosen death panels over failed doctors (that can't make it so they go work for the insurance company) or random AIs doing the decision making.

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#395
post #99

I don't like that some people, esp at larger companies, think that groups with disadvantages in today's world are cutesy adorable things to play make-believe with.

I also find this tacky, but it does fit into AI fairness. Their goal is to offset lack of in-vivo representation of blacks by over-representing them in virtual venues. It's less creepy in search result ranking , text & image LLMs. but now that they are personifying the characters, the uncanny valley really stands out.

I think your sentiment applies well to the general AI fairness strategy

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#396

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Having worked at a similarly gargantuan and dysfunctional company, I can tell you exactly how this went down. Someone had this idea for AI profiles. They speced the product and took it to engineering. The engineers had a good laugh at how preposterous it is, but then remembered that they get paid a ton of money to do what they're told, and will get promos and bonuses for launching regardless of the outcome. It all st…

That is not at all how things work at Meta. The impact of the things you deliver as an engineer has a direct effect on your performance review. For better or for worse, that also means that engineers have a ton of leverage on deciding what to work on. It's highly unlikely that the engineers working on this were laughing at it while doing so. Don't assume that you can simply pattern match because you've been at anothe…

I don’t think anyone took this seriously while building it, if that’s what you’re implying.

I’ve been at companies like this where you are told to build X, you laugh with your co-workers, and then get to work because you’re paid disgusting amounts of money to build stupid shit like this.

That’s part of why I quit to start my own company. It’s such an awful waste of resources.

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#399
post #387
post #348

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Fictional dystopias aren't the real world. Westworld is just television.

Life often imitates art.

It's like people have already forgotten the deep life lessons of The Core (2003).

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#400
post #290

You know what AI profiles I want more of? Clueless grandma/grandpa that accepts scammer calls and waste their time. Such as UK's O2 Daisy: https://news.virginmediao2.co.uk/o2-unveils-daisy-the-ai-gra...

There is another real-world version of this in the US healthcare system, where doctor offices are using domain-specific LLMs to craft multi-page medical approval requests for procedures that cover every known loophole insurer’s use to deny, which are then being reviewed by ML-powered algorithms at the insurance company looking for any way to deny and delay the claim approval. In other words we have a bona fide AI arm…

What really grinds my gears is the CO2 emissions and power-grid load that's being used for this stupid arms race.

I realize that there's no magic solution to perverse systems like this, but it really bothers me nonetheless.

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