Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

Last week’s thread

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)

      • corbin@awful.systemsEnglish
        12·
        2 年前

        It’s almost completely ineffective, sorry. It’s certainly not as effective as exfiltrating weights via neighborly means.

        On Glaze and Nightshade, my prior rant hasn’t yet been invalidated and there’s no upcoming mathematics which tilt the scales in favor of anti-training techniques. In general, scrapers for training sets are now augmented with alignment models, which test inputs to see how well the tags line up; your example might be rejected as insufficiently normal-cat-like.

        I think that “force-feeding” is probably not the right metaphor. At scale, more effort goes into cleaning and tagging than into scraping; most of that “forced” input is destined to be discarded or retagged.

        • froztbyte@awful.systemsOPEnglish
          13·
          2 年前

          yeah this is the thing I’ve been thinking a lot about

          fucking reCaptcha is literally mass-weaponising users for data filtration, and there is no good counter besides just not using reCaptcha (which is something one can’t easily pull off without things like regulatory action, massive reputational problems that make people gtfo, etc)

          I have similar worries about cloudflare being such a massive chokepoint and using that position to enable “ai bot filter” services. feels extremely monopolistic, but ianal and I’m not entirely sure what the case grounds/structure on that would be (if any)

          the only other viable strategy at the moment is fully breaking contact with any potential bad traffic systems, and that’s extremely fucking dire because that’s yet another nail in the coffin of the increasingly less open internet

          • bitofhope@awful.systemsEnglish
            11·
            2 年前

            The whole Cloudflare bot detection is so weird and eerie. I’ve had issues where I can’t get past it presumably just because I’m using some in-application browser just to get a login cookie, but other times it just lets fucking curl through no questions asked.

            • flavia@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
              4·
              2 年前

              it just lets fucking curl through no questions asked

              Fucking what. I’ve heard of sites blocking curl and I’ve been able to get around it by copying user agent and sometimes cookies from the browser. Now I’m cursed with the knowledge that I could probably just scrape stuff from everywhere

      • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
        7·
        2 年前

        I saw people say they would add 10% opaque layers of the musk with Epstein’s accomplice (whos name i forgot for a second and too lazy to look her up) photo. Would be nice if there was a tool to do so automatically. (Not that i post on twitter anymore).

          • bitofhope@awful.systemsEnglish
            6·
            2 年前

            I got nerd sniped into trying to resize felons_musk_and_maxwell.webp to the same size as some base image before compositing it on top with a 10% dissolve in the same magick invocation but I need to sleep so I’m giving up for now.

          • ShakingMyHead@awful.systemsEnglish
            5·
            2 年前

            Wouldn’t really need a script, though. Just open up photoshop or GIMP and add a layer after everything is finished.

            • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
              6·
              2 年前

              But that doesn’t scale properly, you want ideally some sort of browser extension that just automatically does it for you before the data gets send to twitter.

    • antifuchs@awful.systemsEnglish
      11·
      2 年前

      They added sleeps to training jobs? Sounds like they deserve a raise for improving energy efficiency instead…

    • luciole (he/him)@beehaw.orgEnglish
      6·
      2 年前

      I thought they were gonna do that themselves by feeding on their own outputs littered all over the www. Maybe they can use some help.

  • o7___o7@awful.systemsEnglish
    22·
    2 年前

    Update on LLM reviewer situation:

    PM is down to let us pitch them our argument. Good news: PM seems like a cool person, is open minded, and is being pretty frank about the forces at work here. Bad news: taking action on this will open a whole can of worms, so any proof has to be ironclad. After conferring with our local grant wizards, the battle plan is to crank out a 15 minute pitch consisting of:

    • a 2 min elevator pitch of our tech, highlighting what the reviews mangled
    • intro to LLMs for people who know what glycosylation is
    • intro to semiotics for the same
    • show how transformer architectures transform symbols into symbols to produce text-shaped objects without actual intent, ideas, or context (and why “automated AI detection” is also bullshit).
    • show a few examples of plausible-at-first-glance gen-ai slop (the nonexistant turkish fortress, mouse dck, etc)
    • Highlight how our weird reviews (both good and bad) fit exactly into this bin (absolutely mis-interpreting a table, inventing a bacterial species we didn’t use and talking shit about it, miscounting our team members, etc)

    We’ll be leaning on the Stochastic Parrot paper pretty hard, because it’s a good entry into the field on the skeptical side and is just well constructed in general. I’m also on the hunt simplified diagram for how LLMs convert tokens to arrays to tokens from the original transformer literature. Unfortunately, so much of the literature is obscurantist on purpose, and I want to avoid falling into the “It can’t be that stupid” trap. Any pointers in that direction are most welcome!

    Wish us luck, heh!

    • self@awful.systemsEnglish
      10·
      2 年前

      good luck! it sounds like you’re coming in remarkably well-prepared, so unless they’re gonna go fingers-in-ears (and it sounds like the PM’s better than that), you’re at least likely to make an impact

      Unfortunately, so much of the literature is obscurantist on purpose

      between this and all the SEO on OpenAI’s marketing horseshit and breathlessly parroted press releases, it’s exhausting to find good sources for how any of this stuff actually works in reality. shit, I’ve had old primary sources on things like Sora get buried after OpenAI’s promises didn’t pan out. I’m hoping you can find what you need — our back archives might have a few links if you haven’t searched through here yet.

  • BlueMonday1984@awful.systemsEnglish
    20·
    2 年前

    Update on the character.ai lawsuit:

    Gizmodo just reported on the story - in addition to the suicide that kicked this litigation off, they’ve also discovered an hour-long screen recording where a test account (self-reported as thirteen years old) gets sexted relentlessly by the site’s chatbots.

    So, in addition to driving one specific teen to suicide, character.ai is also facing accusations that their bots are sexually harassing children.

  • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
    19·
    2 年前

    The Bookseller: Penguin Random House underscores copyright protection in AI rebuff

    Penguin Random House (PRH) has amended its copyright wording across all imprints globally, confirming it will appear “in imprint pages across our markets”. The new wording states: “No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems”, and will be included in all new titles and any backlist titles that are reprinted.

    Now that the content mafia has realized GenAI isn’t gonna let them get rid of all the expensive and troublesome human talent. it’s time to give Big AI a wedgie.

    • bitofhope@awful.systemsEnglish
      14·
      2 年前

      It’s weird how rarely I see people point this, but in theory this kind of boilerplate should be technically meaningless. If copyright protections include the privilege to use the work for training a machine learning algorithm, you need explicit permission anyway. OTOH if it’s fair use or otherwise not something copyright law is concerned with, the copyright holder’s objection doesn’t matter.

      For the record, I think AI models are derivative works and thus they’re not only infringing on typical “all rights reserved” works, but also things such as Free software whose license terms require attribution if used in derivative work, and especially share-alike copyleft licensed work.

      • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
        11·
        2 年前

        I thinkt it’s pretty well-lknown that Spotify got all its initial music from Oink. They moved fast, got dominant, and were able to present the record labels with a big audience prepared to pay for streaming music. The labels quickly ensured they’d get the lion’s share of that revenue.

        OpenAI and friends tried the same thing - scrape everything, build AGI, reap the rewards. Except it didn’t work, and they’re in a much worse position morally. Even if they can get a judgement that what they’re doing is legal, it will cost them a lot in litigation fees, coupled with the public perception that these culture vampires are ripping off the poor honest author. Not a good place to be in.

    • BlueMonday1984@awful.systemsEnglish
      13·
      2 年前

      Now that the content mafia has realized GenAI isn’t gonna let them get rid of all the expensive and troublesome human talent. it’s time to give Big AI a wedgie.

      Considering the massive(ly inflated) valuations running around Big AI and the massive amounts of stolen work that powers the likes of CrAIyon, ChatGPT, DALL-E and others, I suspect the content mafia is likely gonna try and squeeze every last red cent they can out of the AI industry.

      • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
        11·
        2 年前

        At some point, something is going to reveal that all the money in AI has gone into power costs for datacenters and NVidia chips and that the AI companies themselves aren’t doing so hot. I hope it’s the discovery process for some of the inevitable lawsuits.

  • BlueMonday1984@awful.systemsEnglish
    16·
    2 年前

    ‘They wish this technology didn’t exist’: Perplexity responds to News Corp’s lawsuit

    “There are around three dozen lawsuits by media companies against generative AI tools. The common theme betrayed by those complaints collectively is that they wish this technology didn’t exist,” said the Perplexity team in the blog. “They prefer to live in a world where publicly reported facts are owned by corporations, and no one can do anything with those publicly reported facts without paying a toll.”

    I wish the AI bros at Perplexity and elsewhere a very cope and fucking seethe.

    Okay, quick personal sidenote:

    With how much misinformation, manipulation, outright theft and other horrific shit this AI bubble has caused, I suspect we’re gonna see some attempts at an outright ban on AI. How successful they’re gonna be, I don’t know, but at the bare minimum it’ll enjoy some popularity on the political fringe.

    • bitofhope@awful.systemsEnglish
      18·
      2 年前

      They prefer to live in a world where publicly reported facts are owned by corporations, and no one can do anything with those publicly reported facts without paying a toll.

      Yea, down with corporate IP trolls, information gatekeepers and idea landlords! Anyway, what was Perplexity’s business model again?

    • sc_griffith@awful.systemsEnglish
      16·
      2 年前

      they wish this technology didn’t exist

      this is supposed to be invalidating, but like… yes? what’s wrong with that?

    • o7___o7@awful.systemsEnglish
      9·
      2 年前

      Burglars telling homeowners to cope and seethe when questioned about their possession of crowbars at time of arrest.

  • maol@awful.systemsEnglish
    14·
    2 年前

    More AI generated shite from Ireland: Transport for Ireland decided, for some reason, to use AI for its Hallowe’en themed ads. This was roundly complained about online. Then someone decided, for genius reasons, to ring Liveline and complain about it.

    For those who are unfamiliar, Liveline is a national phone-in show presented by JOEEEE DUFFY, who could start a fight with a brick wall. Every episode is about either a petty grievance or a real horror story. It’s like a national whinge-in. I am going to listen to the episode (available here) and see if there are any highlights.

    • maol@awful.systemsEnglish
      11·
      2 年前
      The gist of Liveline

      Joe is complaining about TFI putting up the taxi fares in Dublin.

      The ad is for a TFI competition.

      Ciarán works in advertising and thought that the TFI ad must be a scam first because of the use of AI.

      Ciarán points out that TFI has plenty of money and could afford to pay a graphic designer or an illustrator.

      Joe is furious that TFI won’t say whether the ad was AI-generated or not. Ciarán points out that they didn’t even mark the image as AI-generated.

      Gerry O’Brien from Actors Equity is on the line. He’s explaining the issues faced by background actors and voiceover actors who are being pressured into signing over their image/voice rights

      Hannah Lockhead from Lucan is on the line. “I don’t disagree with what anyone is saying, but personally I think the most offensive thing about this ad is just that it’s ugly”.

      Gerry O’Brien is talking about fair compensation and clear consent for actors whose images are being used.

      Hannah says that “Frankenstein’s Wife is Margot Robbie”

      Ciarán says that the AI art is “quite tacky” and compares poorly with the iconic London Underground logo.

      Joe Duffy has seized the opportunity of having Gerry O’Brien on the line to complain that the Abbey Theatre has been closed for a year.

      Joe Duffy has asked Hannah Lockhead (who is an actress) “are you working Hannah or are you resting”. She’s just finished filming a horror film in Wales called Esoteric.

      That’s pretty much it.

      TFI have now apologised.

  • BlueMonday1984@awful.systemsEnglish
    14·
    2 年前

    Character.ai is getting sued thanks to one of their users killing himself, and The New York Times is talking about it (there’s also a piece by Gary Marcus talking about a previous incident if you’re interested).

    Like the copyright situation I previously mentioned, I suspect this is also gonna make potential investors wary of investing in AI post-bubble. Even if you manage to convince investors that you won’t get DMCA’d into oblivion, they’re still gonna be wary of the potential for a Dasani-level PR nightmare.

    Of course, that’s assuming that Section 230 protects you from being held liable for what your autoplag does - if Ms. Garcia, whose son’s suicide prompted this entire mess, succeeds in court, the legal precedent set means you’re likely gonna have to worry about being sued if/when someone ends up injured/killed/defamed/otherwise fucked up because of its output…

    • FredFig@awful.systemsEnglish
      11·
      2 年前

      Skimming the reddit thread in search of general public sentiment about this, but unfortunately mostly just found a greatest hits compilation of very gross comments.

      Yes you very smart people, parents should expect your teenager to die as an outcome of not being perfect people 24/7, technology can never be at fault even when it literally tells you to commit suicide in coded language, and it’s actually impossible to understand which parts of society are causing kids to be depressed, so we must take it as a given that we can’t do anything about it. I regret having done this to myself.

  • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
    13·
    2 年前

    Forget Gladwell

    All nonfiction writers can end up writing incorrect or controversial things, but why does every Gladwell book push half-formed and inaccurate theories? For years, my loose feeling about Gladwell was that he writes like someone who doesn’t care about being correct, which is not a way I would describe any other author I’ve encountered. There is something uniquely odd about his work.

  • flizzo@awful.systemsEnglish
    13·
    2 年前

    Look out, professional Nix crybaby Jon Ringer is back with his fork.

    In other news, I have my own as well called Borkfan, absolutely not a ban fork due to my having threatened multiple people, but instead dedicated to the idea that a technology that lacks chud approval must necessarily not be in the true hacker spirit.

    • self@awful.systemsEnglish
      12·
      2 年前

      literally the exact crowd shitting on the mere rumor of a Lix NixOS fork are clapping for this like trained seals. and I don’t think this getting announced right after those rumors is an accident — it gets Jon the most attention for his low-effort bullshit and might even let him hurt another fork by way of community fragmentation

      something I’m confused about is, is Ringer even effectively banned anymore? I stopped monitoring when someone with mod privileges unbanned him from a bunch of Nix community spaces. is he back to banned, or is this just a continuing tantrum from Jon having Release Manager stripped from him and given to someone who could do that incredibly thoroughly automated job without stirring up a fucking hate mob?

      • self@awful.systemsEnglish
        10·
        2 年前

        there is one silver lining: for once, I don’t have the cognitive load of another Nix fork to carefully consider switching to. there’s no way in fuck I’m using Ringer’s fork under any circumstances, and my brain already filed it away under “weird name, starts with an E, don’t remember the rest” seconds after I closed the tab

          • self@awful.systemsEnglish
            14·
            2 年前
            > FRABNOK LANTERN

Your lantern explodes into a rant about the wokes, killing you instantly.

*** You have died ***

Your score is 0 out of a possible 10 points, in 1 move. This gives you the rank of Release Manager.
      • o7___o7@awful.systemsEnglish
        6·
        2 年前

        Is their branding dominated an anime girl of ambiguous age?

        Just guessing, I promise I haven’t checked.

    • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      9·
      2 年前

      lmao incredible

      Then there’s BenevolentAI. I first wrote about them in 2018, as the company stated that it had “created a bioscience machine brain, purpose-built to discover new medicines and cures for disease.” How’s the machine brain doing these days? Well, the company’s lead program failed in the clinic last year, and in April announced major layoffs.

      just who buys this shit? this reads like refined crypto nonsense

      • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
        8·
        2 年前

        People who don’t get much tech/overdose on hype and heard of alphafold. Imagine how much worse things could be now after the Nobel.

          • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
            12·
            2 年前

            Given the past several decades of trickle-up economics, I think we haven’t seen anything close to the bottom of the well of basically-idle capital seeking unrealistic returns.

            I’d go so far as to say that the current crop of bubbles possibly represents the greatest downards wealth transfer (albeit from billionaires to millionaires rather than, y’know, working people) since the second world war, but I haven’t done anything near the amount of research necessary for that to be more than exciting rhetoric.