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AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

gabrielweinberg.com

101–110 of 236 posts

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#101

I stopped using Facebook because I saw a video of a little Australian girl maybe 7 years old age wise holding a spider bigger than her face in her hand. I wrote the most internet meme comment I could think of “girl let go of that spider, we gotta set the house on fire” hit the button to post, only it did not post, it gave me an account strike. At the time I was the only developer at my employer who managed our Facebo…

Maybe it banned you because you used a comma splice[0]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_splice

damn, you smoked them, please stop, they've had enough, don't be so, cruel

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#103

I stopped using Facebook because I saw a video of a little Australian girl maybe 7 years old age wise holding a spider bigger than her face in her hand. I wrote the most internet meme comment I could think of “girl let go of that spider, we gotta set the house on fire” hit the button to post, only it did not post, it gave me an account strike. At the time I was the only developer at my employer who managed our Facebo…

I'm suspended on reddit for, as best as I can tell, posting a DFhack bug fix script. For the uninitiated, this is a bug fix script for a program commonly used in Dwarf Fortress moderating, not anything illicit.

If this kind of low-quality AI moderation is the future, I'm not sure if these major platforms will even remain usable.

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#104

I stopped using Facebook because I saw a video of a little Australian girl maybe 7 years old age wise holding a spider bigger than her face in her hand. I wrote the most internet meme comment I could think of “girl let go of that spider, we gotta set the house on fire” hit the button to post, only it did not post, it gave me an account strike. At the time I was the only developer at my employer who managed our Facebo…

Not using Facebook doesn't help either though. My new co-worker didn't have one but needed it for his job so he made an account and was immediately flagged for suspicious activity.

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ads won't be for the product which will bring you maximum value. They will be for the product that will bring the advertiser maximum profit (for example, by manipulating you into buying something overpriced). The products which are really good and cheap, giving all their surplus value to you and just a little bit to the maker, will lose the bidding for the ad slot.

Not necessary. If economies of scale exist, that means that a popular product is going to be inherently superior in terms of price or quality than an unpopular one. Companies that advertise effectively can offer a better product precisely because they advertise and have large market share. (Whether they do it or not is a question of market conditions, business strategy, public policy and ultimately their own decision…

a popular product is going to be inherently superior in terms of price or quality than an unpopular one.

This is so far from the reality of so many things in life, it's hard to believe you've thought this through.

Maybe it works in the academic, theoretical sense, but it falls down in the real world.

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#106
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, thanks for asking. My reasoning is this: That chatbot you're interacting with is not your friend. I take it as a fact (assumption? axiom?) that it can never be your friend. A friend is a human - animals, in some sense, can be friends - who has your best interests at heart. But in fact, that chatbot "is" a megacorp whose interests certainly aren't your interests - often, their interests are at odds with your int…

But why not? If we look past the trappings of "we hate corporations", why not treat it as a friend? Let's say you acquire a free-trade organic GPU and run an ethically trained LLM on it. Why is an expensive funny-shaped rock not allowed to become a friend when a stuffed animal can?

The stuffed animal has only a sentimental value and it will not have a statistics based and geopolitically biased opinion that it shares with you and influences your decisions. If you want to see how bad a chatbot can be as a friend, see the recent case when it has driven a poor mentally vulnerable minor to suicide

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#107
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, retargeting/personalized ads have never bothered me. If I'm gonna see ads anyway, I'd much rather get ads that might actually interest me, versus wildly irrelevant pharmaceutical drugs and other nonsense.

I wish I could fund an as campaign to free people from the perception that ads are to sell you products Ads are there to change your behavior to make you more likely to buy products, e.g., put downward pressure on your self esteem to make you feel "less than" unless you live a lifestyle that happens to involve buying X product They are not made in your best interest, they are adverserial psycho-tech that have a side…

Ads are there to change your behavior to make you more likely to buy products

You have described one type of ad. There are many many types of ads.

If you were actually knowledgeable about this, you'd know that basic fact.

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#108

Lets not forget that Gabereial Weinburg is a two faced ghoul or wolf in sheep clothing. He has literally said he does not believe people need privacy yet that supposedly is the duckduckgo's main selling point. He has made all kinds of tracking deals with other companies so duckduckgo "is not tracking you" just their partners are. Most of the controversial stuff he has done is being whitewashed from the internet and i…

Interesting find, wasn't he selling info to Microsoft?

Interesting find, wasn't he selling info to Microsoft?

It's not a find. It's an allegation.

HN is supposed to be better than that.

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#109

The hype industry around AI is making too much money for governments to do anything about it that's actually needed.

Especially in the US right now where they are doing whatever it takes to be #1 in ~anything, ethical or not. It’s pure bragging rights and power, anything goes - profit is just the byproduct.

#1, likely not now:

Most of my close friends are non-technical and expect me to be a cheerleader fir USA AI efforts. They were surprised when I started mentioning the recent Stanford study that 80% of US startups are using Chinese models. I would like us to win but we seem too hype focused and not engineering and practical applications focused.

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#110

I stopped using Facebook because I saw a video of a little Australian girl maybe 7 years old age wise holding a spider bigger than her face in her hand. I wrote the most internet meme comment I could think of “girl let go of that spider, we gotta set the house on fire” hit the button to post, only it did not post, it gave me an account strike. At the time I was the only developer at my employer who managed our Facebo…

The underlying issue here isn’t AI based policing, it’s the fact private entities have enough unregulated influence on peoples’ daily life that their use of these or any such policy mechanisms are undemocratically effecting people in notably significant ways. The Facebook example is, whatever, but what if it’s some landlord renting making a decision, some health insurance company deciding your coverage, etc.

Now obviously this won’t stop with private entities, state and federal law enforcement are gung-ho to leverage any of these sorts of systems and have been for ages. It doesn’t help the current direction the US specifically is moving in, promoting such authoritarian policies.

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