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The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

simonandschuster.com

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Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#271

Post by ben_w »

delichon wrote: post #227
ben_w wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the AI was good enough, vision-only self-driving would be at least as good as the best human. The AI isn't good enough. I'm starting to suspect that current ML learning rates can't be good enough in reasonable wall-clock timeframes due to how long it takes between relevant examples for them to learn from. It's fine to lean on other sensory modalities (including LIDAR, radar, ultrasound, whatever else you fancy) un…

It's safer than human drivers now. That's good enough. It will take more than that to convince world, and it should. I applaud the well earned skepticism. But I'm an old guy who has no problem qualifying for a driver's license, and if you replaced me with FSD 14.2, especially under not ideal conditions like at night or in a storm, everyone would be safer. I predict a cusp to be reached in the next few years when safe…

I can't speak to your driving level, but everything I see about Tesla's FSD has unfortunately been giving me "this seems sus" vibes even back when I was extremely optimistic about them in particular and self driving cars more generally (so, last decade).

Unfortunately, the only stats about Tesla's FSD that I can find are crowd-sourced, and what they show is that despite recent improvements, they're still not particularly good.

Also unfortunately, the limited geo-fencing of the areas in which the robo-taxi service operates, and that they initially* launched the service without the permits to avoid needing a human safety monitor, strongly suggests that it hasn't generalised to enough domains yet.

Lack of generality means that it's possible for you to be 100% right about Tesla's FSD on the roads you normally use, and yet if you took them a little bit outside that area you might find the AI shocking you by reliably disengaging for no human-apparent reason while at speed and leaving you upside down in a field.

* I'm not sure what has or hasn't changed since launch: all the news reporting on this was from sites with more space dedicated to ads than to copy, so IMO slop news irregardless of if it was written by an AI or not

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#273

Post by fakedang »

konart wrote: post #59
fakedang wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why not code? Are facial recognition models, AI LLMs to spew out spam and addictive social media algorithms not backed by code? The kings and dictators of the past had a lot more capital than Silicon Valley, but could only dream of building such surveillance and propaganda capabilities, as is the case even in a number of tinpot dictatorships in the developing world.

>Are facial recognition models, AI LLMs to spew out spam and addictive social media algorithms not backed by code? Sure, just like tank is backed by metallurgy and engineers. >The kings and dictators of the past had a lot more capital than Silicon Valley, but could only dream of building such surveillance and propaganda capabilities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu (and not only him most likely) woul…

If Cardinal Richelieu had today's tracking, he'd be on another level. As would the Soviet Union - imagine being able to crush opposition in the satellites without any violence. Heck, no need to imagine - Russia already does that today. Simply put, with today's social media tech, backed by today's code, there would be no Walesa, no Nagy, no Soviet dissolution, nothing.

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#274

Post by bigyabai »

wtcactus wrote: post #265
bigyabai wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been 10 years, and I have still yet to hear any two people define "woke" the same.

It’s been 10 years and I have still yet to ear anyone on the far left defining what is a woman without using the very word “woman”. Meaning: if you think the majority of people will be coerced to normalize this all insanity being pushed by a bunch of mindless Marxists living under the prosperity of capitalism, you will be sorely disappointed. The USA just elected 2 communists for mayors (they don’t even hide it anymo…

> The USA just elected 2 communists for mayors (they don’t even hide it anymore) but here people are trying to tell us the real issue with present society is fascism.

Italy had elected dozens of communist and socialist leaders, including mayors, in the 1940s. History does indeed blame the fascists for cooperating with the Nazis, not the minority parties.

If you think the historians framed the wrong guy, that's news to me. Show me some evidence that fascism is a smaller threat to America, I love a good argument.

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#275

Post by wtcactus »

bigyabai wrote: post #274
wtcactus wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s been 10 years and I have still yet to ear anyone on the far left defining what is a woman without using the very word “woman”. Meaning: if you think the majority of people will be coerced to normalize this all insanity being pushed by a bunch of mindless Marxists living under the prosperity of capitalism, you will be sorely disappointed. The USA just elected 2 communists for mayors (they don’t even hide it anymo…

> The USA just elected 2 communists for mayors (they don’t even hide it anymore) but here people are trying to tell us the real issue with present society is fascism. Italy had elected dozens of communist and socialist leaders, including mayors, in the 1940s. History does indeed blame the fascists for cooperating with the Nazis, not the minority parties. If you think the historians framed the wrong guy, that's news t…

You've misinterpreted my point. But, I'll start by addressing your statement that fascism is so much worse than communism: It's not, all numbers from the 20th century show us that communism is even worse than fascism... and that's a very though target to beat.

But about my point. My point is not preferring fascism to communism: any kind of collectivism is equally bad and only brings pain and misery to the people.

My point is that presently, communism is a much bigger threat since you have a lot more communists in positions of power than fascists. Sure, it's fancy to now call fascist to anyone that defends basic common sense measures that were accepted by any Democrat as obvious under Clinton (you know, things like meritocracy, praising hard work, incarcerating violent offenders, keeping borders secure and expecting people to work in order to get money... all big red fascist flags nowadays), but you don't have single person in any real position of power of public exposure telling you proudly they are fascists.

But boy, you do have a bunch of them telling you they are "socialists", or "Marxists"... and now, you even have some telling you outright they are communists. Let's get this straight, the amount of propaganda reached such a degree of insanity in the USA, that you now have people, openly admitting they are communists without any repercussions. They are even getting elected for public office.

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#276

Post by jmye »

hagbard_c wrote: post #208
pjmlp wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything that is a millimeter to the left in US politics, which happens to still be considered right in the rest of the world, gets immediately coined as left wing activists.

This may have been true in the 80's but it is no longer the case. Left wing politics and whatever nutty ideas this faction produces is now more extreme than its counterpart in Europe. It is as if US lefties have taken the 'everything is bigger in the USA' mantra and applied it to their utopian ideologies. State-run grocery stores? The whole 'DEI/DIE' bureaucra[c/z]y? The aggressive way in which gender ideology is bei…

DEI “bureaucracy”? Love when people who don’t know what DEI even is are nevertheless determined to use it as a bludgeon. Almost as hilarious as when angry men whine about whatever the fuck “gender ideology” is.

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#277

Post by asacrowflies »

misja111 wrote: post #211
tastyface wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What do you think would have happened to someone like Seth Meyer under Franco or Hitler?" In what year? 1933? 1937? 1945? People conflate Nazi Germany with murderous, full-borne authoritarianism, but it took a decade to actually get there. They were just as much fascists at the start as at the end -- it's just that their ideology had room to fully metastasize.

Not true. Long before Hitler rose to power, the militant section of his movement, the SA, was already physically attacking political opponents. That started in the early 20's. When he finally became head of the government, in 1933, that violence immediately became much more official: the SA was officially deputized as 'Hilfspolizei' and attacks on e.g. communists became legalized. In that same year the first concentr…

So you mean like ICE and CBP pulling in new recruits from violent fringe groups that have been escalating for almost ten years of culture war worsening?????? Like proudboys and oath keepers?to create trumps own personal militarized police force?

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#278

Post by trinsic2 »

ben_w wrote: post #178
delichon wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. The current limitations of Tesla self driving are not around difficulties in judging distances that lidar solves. They're around inference deficiencies with accurate geometry.

If the AI was good enough, vision-only self-driving would be at least as good as the best human. The AI isn't good enough. I'm starting to suspect that current ML learning rates can't be good enough in reasonable wall-clock timeframes due to how long it takes between relevant examples for them to learn from. It's fine to lean on other sensory modalities (including LIDAR, radar, ultrasound, whatever else you fancy) un…

Im sorry that is just not true. You can never achive the kind of data with vison-only tech. its easy to confuse, you need lidar. anybody that thinks they can achieve self driving safety without that tech is lost.

Re: The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

#279

Post by fragmede »

trinsic2 wrote: post #278
ben_w wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the AI was good enough, vision-only self-driving would be at least as good as the best human. The AI isn't good enough. I'm starting to suspect that current ML learning rates can't be good enough in reasonable wall-clock timeframes due to how long it takes between relevant examples for them to learn from. It's fine to lean on other sensory modalities (including LIDAR, radar, ultrasound, whatever else you fancy) un…

Im sorry that is just not true. You can never achive the kind of data with vison-only tech. its easy to confuse, you need lidar. anybody that thinks they can achieve self driving safety without that tech is lost.

lived experience with a http://comma.ai system shows lidar isn't as critical as we've been lead to believe
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