bignose

@phil_b_reed@mastodon.social Yes, the intended association is to things like SQL injection. But that association is false, for the very reason @david_chisnall@infosec.exchange stated: This isn't some aberration of interacting with an LLM, it's exactly how the interface is designed and can't be improved while we expect to put natural-language text into it.

Yes @jirirbr@mastodon.design, we need to tax billionaires. Keep on taxing them, more and more. Until they are not billionaires. Outsized wealth inevitably translates to outsized political power. The only way to remove that power imbalance, is to take away that outsized wealth. #LetsMakeAMillionDollarsALotOfMoneyAgain @thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io

I bet @racheltobac@infosec.exchange already knows, but: This isn't for the benefit of LinkedIn users; it's not going to be used to reduce the amount of #AISlop. It's instead soliciting unpaid labour from users, to refine their #LLM so that it can produce *more* slop, harder to distinguish from human-generated content.

Yes, @javier@col.social. The Venus de Milo is still the Venus de Milo, even when packed inside a wooden crate. AI slop is still AI slop when no one can see it.

Seems to me they're asking for every single output to be reported, @mhoye@cosocial.ca

@petherfile@beige.party

hoping the AI bubble bursting makes this unnecessary (seems imminent)

Don't discount the capacity of the enormously wealthy to fall prey to sunk cost fallacy. They can keep propping up this bubble long past the point where everyone else sees it's insane.

I would have expected cryptocurrency to have gone away by now, but it's still being enthusiastically used to launder enormous bribes to corrupt politicians; no apparent end of money flowing into that bubble.

Similar madness can easily keep the LLM bubble floating for a long time. We'll need to actively puncture it, which is why I signed the petition.

Alternative front-end for the article, for those who don't want to visit Medium.com: https://libmedium.batsense.net/@tridge60/rsync-and-outrage-d9849599e5a0 @davidgerard@circumstances.run

RE: @mrj@fosstodon.org

@davidgerard@circumstances.run will have a good laugh, and we will laugh along.

“the report highlights the presence of the following eight major manipulative design patterns [in opt-out procedures]:

* Failing to provide a clear mechanism to opt out of sale and sharing of personal information
* Not clearly linking opt-out form from homepage and/or privacy policy
* Requiring consumers to submit multiple separate forms
* Deceptive statements about opt-outs and their success
* Confusing or scary language
* Requiring consumers to log in or pay for a subscription before opting out
* Design elements hiding important opt-out information
* Checkbox options preselected

Policymakers and regulators need to step in to provide real privacy protections for consumers. To that end, the report provides these recommendations […]

https://epic.org/good-luck-opting-out-manipulative-design-patterns-in-opt-out-processes-2/

#DarkPatterns #UserHostile #PredatoryCapitalism #SurveillanceCapitalism #ConsentMatters #YouAreTheProduct

True security in a system is impossible without #transparency, including free access to the source code. #SecurityByObscurity is a sham, a dangerous lie.

Services Australia is, on that false basis, arguing against release of the #myGov “code generator” source code. A system we must use, that is paid for by #Australia funds and rightly owned by all of us.

Support Fraser Tweedale @hackuador@functional.cafe court battle to free this public system, and make it accountable and secure for all of us.

https://chuffed.org/project/mygov-app-source-code-foi-review

#AusPol #FreedomOfInformation #FoI #FreeSoftware

Such a trove of awesomely appropriate illustrations. @davidgerard@circumstances.run

@MLE_online@social.afront.org

lots of companies are unable to act intelligently. many even think AI is their friend

Knowing what garbage those systems produce, I would never advocate their use.

But, having been tasked with interviewing and reviewing job applicants at many points in my career? It's an enormous time sink, that almost always is just loaded on top of the staff's existing workload. I get it, they have a burning desire to try to automate some of that.

On the other end, job seekers of course want an easier way to apply to as many positions as they can, and improve their chances of at least getting to a human interview; they don't want to waste their effort on the automated gatekeeping that employers erect to repel applicants. So there's a lucrative market for services that will automate your résumé, automate your cover letter, automate your application, automate your interview preparation. It's typically garbage, but desperate job seekers will pay. Thus we get the automated arms race that is today's job market. Automated systems generating fake job positions, automated systems flooding the positions with bullshit job applications, automated systems rejecting both the bots and the humans, automated systems turning up for the real job positions. @MLE_online@social.afront.org

People at both ends of the transaction (job seekers, employers) are both saying this. And it's because the incentives are all set up to produce these perverse outcomes. Many employers are corporations, wanting to tell a fable to investors: We are growing, invest more in us! So, they want to *always* have job positions open. But investors *also* dislike corporations that have lots of employees, because that's a big cost; they tend to love it when corporations lay off thousands of workers. So the employers *don't* want to hire more workers. So, they have incentive to post fake position adverts for jobs that don't exist. And that's more efficient if an LLM can churn them out, and another automated system can reject applicants without human intervention. @MLE_online@social.afront.org

@pmonks@sfba.social

We could literally set the money we collect on fire

Fortunately, that's what federal taxation is!

US dollars are created by US government spending: pass a law that says to spend new money, increase number at central bank, poof the money exists. Taxation is the opposite process: the money ceases to exist.

This exposes the folly of “but how will they use billionaire tax money”: they won't. A monetarily sovereign government doesn't need billionaire money to fund anything, they just fund what they want to fund by writing “spend this new money” in a law.

US federal taxation destroys the money, and the billionaire has less spending power. That's the point of US govt taxation: it removes the money the govt created. To control inflation; to discourage activities that are to be discouraged. Not to fund anything.

We don't need billionaires for anything, least of all their money.

#WhereMoneyComesFrom #MMT #FundBySpending #TaxTheWealthyat

@wiredfire

Now if only we could get the tech from places that aren’t abusive of the data collected.

Yes. And until that is reliably achieved for all people, we must not allow their use in public, no matter how transformative it is for one person.

@frang @danyork

@Shadedlady

i hope they make an exception for blind people that use these as ectr help with the be my eyes app

I hope they don't make that exception. Regardless of the user's legitimate need, all the data is under the control of a sociopathic corporation that cares nothing for everyone's privacy. Remove that threat before arguing for their use in public spaces.

@danyork

If you were interested @HG, there are simple numerical measures that aren't absolute dollar value, but do remain relevant over time as buying power changes. A good example would be to quantify “too wealthy” as “X multiple of current median disposable income”, or something else related to median wealth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

I see this very often in people who are far more interested in the *effect* words have in discourse, than the intended *meaning* (including nuance, definition, corollary, etc.) of what's being communicated. Such people tend to gravitate to political office or media corporations, from what I can see. They are incurious about ideas, but terribly interested in the power of rhetoric to achieve or thwart an agenda. So, I see that phenomenon (brazenly / heedlessly mis-use an established term in the wrong context, as an insult) as an unthinking by-product of the fact they never bothered to learn the meaning of that term in the first place. They're using it as a cudgel, a slur, an insult to spit at enemies, regardless of what it may have meant before. @spellingmistakescostlives@mastodon.ie

@scottsantens@hachyderm.io

Myth: Universal Basic Income is a magnet for the idle.

In a sense, it's true. Just, not the same idle group as people mean when they repeat that myth.

The idle group we need to beware of, are the #RentierClass who will endlessly seek to claw back any value temporarily placed in the hands of working people.

So, IMO any UBI can only work well, if we also #TaxTheWealthy so much they no longer have power to extract value from those who depend on UBI.

@dibi58@this.mouse.rocks And like most religions, the vocal mass of its proponents have never read the books from which their slogans come. It does not support their ideology nor their claims. Adam Smith was quite clear that the "invisible hand" of the market is *not* going to eliminate the damage of deliberate deception and greedy market actors. https://www.eastonbh.ac.nz/1998/10/what-adam-smith-really-said-about-the-invisible-hand/ @jackofalltrades@mas.to

@shug@theblower.au The potatoes had too much spicy pepper on. Roasted them anyway. Turns out, bloody good.