11–20 of 110 posts
There are public sources of information such as a curated WIkipedia, open content from Kiwix, Gutenberg Math books and OpenStreetMap for maps. Better, you can download offline and curated version of these so anyone can have a working snapshot anytime. That's good to avoid future AI tamperings. As long as these as AI free, we are potentialy in the right direction.
We're going to have to go in the opposite direction and rely on directories or lists of verified human-made/accurate content. It will be like the old days of yahoo and web-indexes all over again.
Local news coverage has really suffered these past several years. Wouldn't it be great to see relevant local news emerge again, written by humans for humans?
That approach might be a good start. Use a cloud service that forbids AI bot scraping to protect copyright?
I think it is an information virus, but differently - it's homogenized everything, and made people dumber and lazier. It's poisoned public and professional discourse by reducing writing and thinking from the richness of humanity to one narrow style with a tiny latent space, and simultaneously convinced people that this is what good writing looks like. And it's erased thought from board classes of endeavor. This virus…
I think it is an information virus, but differently - it's homogenized everything, and made people dumber and lazier. It's poisoned public and professional discourse by reducing writing and thinking from the richness of humanity to one narrow style with a tiny latent space, and simultaneously convinced people that this is what good writing looks like. And it's erased thought from board classes of endeavor. This virus…
This is how the church felt about the printing press.
I think it is an information virus, but differently - it's homogenized everything, and made people dumber and lazier. It's poisoned public and professional discourse by reducing writing and thinking from the richness of humanity to one narrow style with a tiny latent space, and simultaneously convinced people that this is what good writing looks like. And it's erased thought from board classes of endeavor. This virus…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasshouse_(novel)
> "Curious Yellow is a design study for a really scary worm: one that uses algorithms developed for peer-to-peer file sharing networks to intelligently distribute countermeasures and resist attempts to decontaminate the infected network".
Hat tip to HN user cstross (as I discovered the idea via Charlie’s blog):
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-archive/October_2002.ht...
These topics were first brought to my attention through his amazing novel Glasshouse. I’ve had the pleasure of having my first edition copy of the book signed by the author, and I then promptly loaned it indefinitely to a friend, who then misplaced it. The man himself is a friendly curmudgeon who I am happy to have met, and I have enjoyed reading about the future through his insights into the past and present.
Also I must acknowledge Brandon Wiley, who wrote the inspiration for Curious Yellow as far as I can tell.
We're going to have to go in the opposite direction and rely on directories or lists of verified human-made/accurate content. It will be like the old days of yahoo and web-indexes all over again.
A few years ago, some talk briefly circulated about local internet efforts, possibly run by public libraries. Local news coverage has really suffered these past several years. Wouldn't it be great to see relevant local news emerge again, written by humans for humans? That approach might be a good start. Use a cloud service that forbids AI bot scraping to protect copyright?
Unless you mean a platform only for vetted local journalists...
That's how I view LLM's now. They are what follows computers in the evolution of information technology.
I think it is an information virus, but differently - it's homogenized everything, and made people dumber and lazier. It's poisoned public and professional discourse by reducing writing and thinking from the richness of humanity to one narrow style with a tiny latent space, and simultaneously convinced people that this is what good writing looks like. And it's erased thought from board classes of endeavor. This virus…
I recall some Chinese language discussion about the experience of studying abroad in the Anglophone world in the early 20th century and the early 21st century. Paradoxically, even if you are a university student, it may now be harder to break out of the bubble and make friends with non-Chinese/East Asians than before. In the early 20th century, you'd probably be one of the few non-White students and had to break out of your comfort zone. Now if you are Chinese, there'd be people from a similar background virtually anywhere you study in the West, and it is almost unnatural to make a deliberate effort to break out of that.
I think it is an information virus, but differently - it's homogenized everything, and made people dumber and lazier. It's poisoned public and professional discourse by reducing writing and thinking from the richness of humanity to one narrow style with a tiny latent space, and simultaneously convinced people that this is what good writing looks like. And it's erased thought from board classes of endeavor. This virus…
Perhaps that is the real danger. Everyone except a small elite who (rightly) feel they understand how LLMs work would simply give up serious thinking and accept whatever "majority" opinion is in their little social media bubble. We wouldn't have the patience to really engage with genuinely different viewpoints any more. I recall some Chinese language discussion about the experience of studying abroad in the Anglophon…