I think the issue is not wether it’s sentient or not, it’s how much agency you give it to control stuff.

Even before the AI craze this was an issue. Imagine if you were to create an automatic turret that kills living beings on sight, you would have to make sure you add a kill switch or you yourself wouldn’t be able to turn it off anymore without getting shot.

The scary part is that the more complex and adaptive these systems become, the more difficult it can be to stop them once they are in autonomous mode. I think large language models are just another step in that complexity.

An atomic bomb doesn’t pass a Turing test, but it’s a fucking scary thing nonetheless.

I think they were joking. As in actually submitting bugs (adding bugs to the code).

I can’t really pinpoint why, but I barfed a little after seeing that video.

I agreed with you up until your last paragraph: that is some serious exaggerating. Never did the original commenter say that the solution was to kill all Palestinians.

I don’t agree with their view that eradicating Hamas followed by a temporary occupation by Israël will magically help the Palestinian people, but reducing an opposing viewpoint to a literal Nazi isn’t going to help or convince anyone.

Honest question: what is so dangerous about children seeing nudity / sex in media? I understand that it could skew their perception of what reality is like, but I think a good book is often better at realistically depicting this kind of stuff than what they would find on the internet when the legal sources have dried up.

Haha as a Belgian this comment is hilarious. Like we’re all scrambling for ways to kill each other here without our poor guns.

The headline feels a bit alarmist to me. The article itself is a bit better and more nuanced, but still I feel they are putting way to much drama around this device while almost all these issues already exist as small slabs of electronics that we wear all the time. Combined with smartwatches, smartphones do almost all the spying that is described here and add some GPS tracking wherever you go.

This is not to say that this is not a big issue, merely that this issue is not related to this new device. And also I believe Apple is in fact the only big tech provider that actually tries to be somewhat privacy conscious (Google and Microsoft don’t give damn).

I feel that reducing access to abortion actually creates more poor people no? As in, not being able to financially support a child is a common reason for not wanting to complete a pregnancy.

I’m glad you bring up the power imbalance. The “both sides have been doing horrible stuff” only works if both sides have equal footing, which they clearly do not. This does not negate the crimes commited by Hamas, but extremism doesn’t come from nowhere and Israël has a responsibility in that.

This is extremely well put, especially the penultimate paragraph! Thank you for taking the time to put this in words.

There is indeed no moral equivalence, but where does it come from?

This culture of extreme jihadist violence is not something that suddenly came to being.

He talks as if both sides are equal, except in the way they commit warcrimes, but that is not true. One is a massive state that has money and military power that eclipses that of the other. The other is a country that has been losing land, homes and dignity with every passing year.

Being disgusted by warcrimes is the privilege of an army that is able to still do war without commiting them. With the massive power imbalance comes a genuine desensitization of the underdog to violence, as they feel no other way to fight and have a chance at winning or making a difference.

I feel like the author is choosing exactly what part to compare in both groups (the morality of their war tactics) while silently hoping that the reader forgets any other differences between the two parties.

But won’t those criminals always find another way of communicating? If you’re doing something illegal, it’s worth it to you to go through some hoops to have safe and private communication. All this does is remove that option from less tech literate people.

I agree, but even further: those articles should be open to begin with :)

Do you know any old people? Lots of them still have joyful and valuable lives. Also, quit talking about people in terms of “usefulness”. Sick people aren’t “useful”, disabled people aren’t “useful”, but they most certainly have a fucking right to live.

I agree that artificially keeping a person alive while they no longer have any joy or value in their lives might be wrong, but this is a very difficult assertion to make and is certainty a lot more complex than your “just kill everyone at 65”.

Also, the problem is not population, it’s how consumer focused our society is, constantly throwing away sustainable and ecological solutions for the sake of more profit.

Bad actors are already commiting crimes, they will have no trouble “illegally” using encryption software to keep their message hidden. Encryption is just math, you cannot stop a computer from performing an encryption algorithm.

You can however “make it illegal” for software to do this, what just results in normal citizens having unencrypted communication, while people who are up to no good are still encrypting their stuff.

🤦

I am very happy using a surface go with Linux (used arch with GNOME for a while, now trying out KDE Neon for a change).

I feel like you’re not exactly talking about the same thing. What you are afraid of is for the government to have the ability to filter out what they see as “false” information, which I also find a horrible idea. A government with this power would be able to change the information flow to whatever works best for them.

But a government can in my mind make specific rules about certain stuff that we as a society agree upon to not say (just as other laws are things we as a society agree to not do). I know that there are lots of wrong laws that need fixing, but the idea of a law in and of itself is quite sound in my opinion. And therefore I also have no problem with the specific law: people shouldn’t advocate for violence against others because of their sexual orientation.

This is not a slippery slope as every one of these laws on speech would be independently created, and opposed if society does not accept them.This is just like how all other laws are constantly in flux, but pushed towards a moral alignment with the people (e.g. allowing LGBTQ+ marriage). The outrage and possible revolution when these laws go opposite ways is what causes them in the end to align further.

These are all my opinions and views, based on my own experiences and ideas. Feel fee to disagree or correct me!

I personally like transparent enforcement of false information moderation. What I mean by that is something similar to beehaw where you have public mod logs. A quick check is enough to get a vibe of what is being filtered, and in Beehaw’s case they’re doing an amazing job.

Mod logs also allow for a clear record of what happened, useful in case a person does not agree with the action a moderator took.

In that case it doesn’t really matter if the moderators work directly for big tech, misuse would be very clearly visible and discontent people could raise awareness or just leave the platform.

While I agree with the sentiment, I feel that this kind of direct ad hominem is not really relevant. Especially since there is enough substantially bad stuff to say about Greene that does not equate her appearance to that of a cave person from 40 000 years ago.

The family of the 4 people that died on Jan. 6 were also given “HORRIFYING NEWS” that day.