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Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#381

Post by blitzar »

Roark66 wrote: post #79

>The criticism of his former employer came as Mr Suleyman told the Telegraph about plans for a new international body to monitor AI threats. I hope they first threat they choose to monitor is the monopolisation of the AI services, all while the huge monopolies preach about "the dangers of ai" to increase the barriers to entry for the small guy (we all know disappearance of open source models and a ban on sale of hard…

Those who can do, those who can't become regulators (those who can't but have deep pockets and reputations to uphold beg to become the regulators)

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#382

Post by cccbbbaaa »

MereInterest wrote: post #365
cccbbbaaa wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Please read the ePrivacy directive (the so-called “cookie law”), especially article 5(3): https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... >3. Member States shall ensure that the storing of information, or the gaining of access to information already stored, in the terminal equipment of a subscriber or user is only allowed on condition that the subscriber or user concerned has given his or her cons…

Huh, I stand corrected, thank you. Looks like the primary difference is then in requiring that consent be freely-given, clarifying that consent is specific to a purpose, and requiring that consent be retractable.

Consent was already required to be freely given under the DPD. Agree on the two other points, it seems that GDPR clarified this–I thought it was already covered by the DPD.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#383

Post by lesostep »

Roark66 wrote: post #278
Too wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How well does that work? I would imagine recipes iate really hard to entrust to chatgpt. At least for baking, where ratios and timing is crucial. LLMs have very bad sense of numbers generally. How would you verify it’s not all bogus hallucinations? At best it’s a source of inspiration, for ingredients you can freestyle from yourself.

I didn't mean recipes specifically, but this type of question where I'm looking for a very specific short answer. For example, I don't know if some software has some specific feature, or I ask, write me a short python script fragment that does this or that. Or how do I reverse a git commit that was pushed etc. Or what is the thermal conductivity of kingpin extreme paste. All are very specific things years ago I would…

I found original "The Joy of Cooking" brownie recipe https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brownie-recipes-from-joy-of-coo... and compared it with the recipe Chat-GPT gave you. Now, I'm not a great baker, so I'll relay heavily on "The Joy of Cooking" explanations.

chat-GPT: 2. Mix melted butter and sugar. Add eggs, one at a time you can see how its a bad idea. Butter melting point is somewhere in 82.4–96.8 °F (28–36 °C). Eggs could be cooked at that temperature. Some of the proteins would harden prematurely. Also, who uses "1 cup of butter" as a measure. Original recipe calls for 1 stick of butter, but google says that 1 cup is 2 sticks. Maybe chat-GPT switched chocolate from original recipe with 1 stick of butter and cocoa powder?

Chat-GPT doesn't mention beating mixture up either. Introducing more air to the mixture would make brownies better.

Based on my experience, this chat-GPT recipe would make you some nice cookies, but not brownies.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#384

Post by heresie-dabord »

tim333 wrote: post #371
heresie-dabord wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. Let's recognise the irony of your link. The need for ^^^ such services is a symptom of the problem. We are all taking measures to circumvent the rubbish . I don't believe that every link that I click should contribute revenue to any billion-dollar corpocracy. I definitely do not want rubbish content to be intermingled with valid information. This is not the Internet that we want. If an entity wants money f…

I think the main reason for the link is to circumvent the Telegraph's pay wall? In a way we are the problem - if we won't pay then newspapers have to get money for their staff salaries from somewhere.

> In a way we are the problem [...] newspapers have to get money for their staff salaries from somewhere

I understand your argument and I want to respond. I like a good discussion.

Yes of course the news business needs money. The modern economy is not the fault of the news business or its customers.

The paper-based news business is almost dead. The Advertising Business quit funding the paper-based news business in order to optimise for an empire of Web-based surveillance and profit. We know even by casual observation that the online advertising business is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. [0]

(Read the preceding line again, just for the effect of scale.)

Social media aggregates news content because people want news. The news business knows it needs a revenue stream from on-line advertising. The lack of direct traffic to news sites does not mean that people do not want news. Subscriptions could be part of a solution but a) using a paywall is often meaningless to international visitors, and b) the fact is that subscriptions don't scale.

Users of the Web and social media find their news via the aggregation provided by Google, Meta, and Xitter. These companies mine user data for profit. These companies are opposed to paying for news content. [3]

It's estimated that 30%-40% of users block advertising somehow. [1] Even if we accept this number for the sake of discussion, I doubt that this equates to a direct 30%-40% loss of revenue for a news site. To judge from Firefox's share of usage, a "privacy-focused browser" that is free as in beer isn't anywhere near a major concern for most people. [2]

Advertising revenue is easy money. The sad fact is that advertising, market segmentation, and data surveillance have all optimised for enshittification of the Web. Quality of news content or search content be damned!

If paywalls won't scale in the modern economy, should the only option be enshittification of content by the insidious advertising business (not to mention filler content -- generated or copy-pasta -- to feed click-bait)?

In summary,

People want and need news, but Google and Meta are definitely unwilling to pay for being the world's aggregators of news content. [3]

Subscriptions don't scale and can't compete with revenue from the Advertising Empire. [0]

Don't blame users for not being a multi-billion dollar source of revenue for these obscenely profitable companies.

- - -

[0] _ https://www.statista.com/statistics/237974/online-advertisin...

[1] _ https://www.insiderintelligence.com/insights/ad-blocking/

[2] _ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

[3] _ https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/30/google-to-block-canadian-new...

[4] https://www.insiderintelligence.com/insights/ad-blocking/ _ "As consumers use ad blockers, the tech makes it harder for advertisers to track and measure their ad campaigns, which could negatively affect advertising revenues."

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#385

Post by TheCoelacanth »

clnq wrote: post #233
foooorsyth wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is awful for anything controversial, but it’s good for uncontroversial hobby communities. If I need recommendations on new hockey skates, Reddit is a good place. It basically replaced independent phpBB forums of old — which were even better and less subject to sweeping centralized policy changes like all their subreddit replacements are now.

I disagree, but probably because we have different definitions of "good". To me, "good" means quite high quality. Like an expert sharing their thoughts in their niche. If you wish to use these thoughts, they will be very reliable and correct. If you consider "good" to be anything that is not "bad" or "harmful", then I would be more inclined to agree with you. My niche of tech is full of hobbyists and enthusiasts who…

Reddit mostly operates at the advanced beginner level. If you're a complete novice, it will help you avoid the most obvious mistakes, but it's not going to help you on topics where you already have in-depth knowledge.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#386

Post by simpaticoder »

ThrowAwayChris wrote: post #360
Vox_Leone wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I've been thinking for some time that we could do with having a sort of private internet for the nerds. If we only could. I'd work for free helping to build it. Count on me. I just think we don't have to build one. We already had it in 1998. It's still there, buried beneath the landfill.

We just need some sort of "search engine" that can find it. If only such a thing existed.

I know of https://search.marginalia.nu/. However, it's been 2 months and my site hasn't been listed yet, despite what I thought was a good convo with the owner.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#387

Post by gilbetron »

chmod775 wrote: post #187
SideQuark wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Historically, incentives on human behavior have tended much more towards collaboration than competition Humans spent far longer in kill others mode than in don't kill others mode. Incentives to not kill others is fairly new in history.

Can you cite the pop-sci TV show you got that from? You've got it exactly the wrong way around. Evidence of deadly human-on-human violence mostly starts showing up with the Neolithic period, before that humans didn't go out of their way to kill each other as much. It looks a lot like you need to be settled and amass possessions to give people a good enough reason to kill each other. That's recent behavior as far as o…

https://ourworldindata.org/ethnographic-and-archaeological-e...

Death by homicide seems much worse the further back you go, on balance.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#388

Post by gardenhedge »

p3rls wrote: post #366
gardenhedge wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I visited the site. It has pages of facts about bands and artists.. you might even call them profiles... It also has a forum with a community. I really this as you being frustrated by the competition rather than them doing something nefarious.

Who said anything about nefarious? Struggling with reading comprehension? It's about quality.

Every reply you make makes you look worse. No one cares (i.e. google, kprofiles, journalists, kpop fans) about what you think is "quality" or not.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#389

Post by marginalia_nu »

simpaticoder wrote: post #386
ThrowAwayChris wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We just need some sort of "search engine" that can find it. If only such a thing existed.

I know of https://search.marginalia.nu/ . However, it's been 2 months and my site hasn't been listed yet, despite what I thought was a good convo with the owner.

Yeah still looking into this. Seems like a bug somewhere.

Overall I have a pretty long pipeline for getting new sites indexed, but should improve when I finish migrating to the new server.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#390

Post by jorvi »

clnq wrote: post #233
foooorsyth wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is awful for anything controversial, but it’s good for uncontroversial hobby communities. If I need recommendations on new hockey skates, Reddit is a good place. It basically replaced independent phpBB forums of old — which were even better and less subject to sweeping centralized policy changes like all their subreddit replacements are now.

I disagree, but probably because we have different definitions of "good". To me, "good" means quite high quality. Like an expert sharing their thoughts in their niche. If you wish to use these thoughts, they will be very reliable and correct. If you consider "good" to be anything that is not "bad" or "harmful", then I would be more inclined to agree with you. My niche of tech is full of hobbyists and enthusiasts who…

> My niche of tech is full of hobbyists and enthusiasts who want to participate in it - it's a part of the video games industry. And there is a very large amount of misleading knowledge on Reddit. Of course, even misleading knowledge can push people generally in the right direction, so I don't see the discourse as harmful. But I also don't see it as of particularly high quality. It might be "good" on some terms, or "neutral" on others.

I vehemently disagree. Check something like: https://old.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/ug0ii6/digital_found...

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