TechTakes

After so much seething over the EU and the DMA, how will he continue to defend his favorite megacorp?

Without having read the actual lawsuit yet

Says it all

Feel like you want to sneer about something but you don't quite have a snappy post in you? Go forth and be mid!

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 here 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.

Not entirely the usual fare, but i figured some here would appreciate it

I often rag on the js/node/npm ecosystem for being utter garbage, and this post is a quite a full demonstration of many of the shortcomings and outright total design failures present in that space

If you've been around, you may know Elsevier for surveillance publishing. Old hands will recall their running arms fairs. To this storied history we can add "automated bullshit pipeline".

In Surfaces and Interfaces, online 17 February 2024:

Certainly, here is a possible introduction for your topic:Lithium-metal batteries are promising candidates for high-energy-density rechargeable batteries due to their low electrode potentials and high theoretical capacities [1], [2].

In Radiology Case Reports, online 8 March 2024:

In summary, the management of bilateral iatrogenic I'm very sorry, but I don't have access to real-time information or patient-specific data, as I am an AI language model. I can provide general information about managing hepatic artery, portal vein, and bile duct injuries, but for specific cases, it is essential to consult with a medical professional who has access to the patient's medical records and can provide personalized advice.

Edit to add this erratum:

The authors apologize for including the AI language model statement on page 4 of the above-named article, below Table 3, and for failing to include the Declaration of Generative AI and AI-assisted Technologies in Scientific Writing, as required by the journal’s policies and recommended by reviewers during revision.

Edit again to add this article in Urban Climate:

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines HW as “Sustained periods of uncharacteristically high temperatures that increase morbidity and mortality”. Certainly, here are a few examples of evidence supporting the WHO definition of heatwaves as periods of uncharacteristically high temperatures that increase morbidity and mortality

And this one in Energy:

Certainly, here are some potential areas for future research that could be explored.

Can't forget this one in TrAC Trends in Analytical Chemistry:

Certainly, here are some key research gaps in the current field of MNPs research

Or this one in Trends in Food Science & Technology:

Certainly, here are some areas for future research regarding eggplant peel anthocyanins,

And we mustn't ignore this item in Waste Management Bulletin:

When all the information is combined, this report will assist us in making more informed decisions for a more sustainable and brighter future. Certainly, here are some matters of potential concern to consider.

The authors of this article in Journal of Energy Storage seems to have used GlurgeBot as a replacement for basic formatting:

Certainly, here's the text without bullet points:

It seems like in the proceeds of building their alleged Star Trek utopia with robots and holodecks, tech bros have discovered that they’d rather be the Borg than Starfleet and have begun shilling the pros of getting yourself assimilated at SXSW of all places.

“I actually think that AI fundamentally makes us more human.”

I think it makes us more brain damaged, with this guy being exhibit A, but I guess you could argue that’s a fundamental human property (unless you count hallucinating LLMs).

Those folks sure seem bullish on artificial intelligence, and the audiences at the Paramount — many of whom are likely writers and actors who just spent much of 2023 on the picket line trying to reign in the potentially destructive power of AI — decided to boo the video. Loudly. And frequently.

Stop resisting the tech utopia they’re trying to build for you, or you’re literally doomers. Never mind that the people building said tech utopia are also doomers, but that’s different, because they worry about the real dangers like acausal robot basilisks torturing them for all eternity and not about petty shit like unemployment and poverty.

Speaking of stopping resisting, another, more critical article about this conference has some real bangers they left out in the other one -- I wonder why. It has some sneers, too.

[…] tech journo Kara Swisher—saying stuff like “you need to stop resisting and starting learning” about AI […].

Yep, that's an actual quote. I'm filing that one under examples of being completely tone-deaf alongside "Do you guys not have phones?".

[…] every company will use AI to “figure out how” to become “more efficient.”

I’m sure the toxic productivity community on YouTube will gobble that shit up. It reminds me of that clown who made a video on how to consume media more efficiently by watching anime on 2x speed and skipping the "boring parts". I guess when we eliminate all human value from entertainment products, that might become a valid strategy.

@ILiedAboutCake on Twitter seems to have first noted that Amazon has a new review search engine, Rufus!

... it's just a ChatGPT prompt window. You can ask it about Barack Obama. You can ask it to write your Python script for you.

Corey Quinn (@quinnypig) notes the pornographic limerick that doesn't rhyme properly

Phil Calcado (@pcalcado) notes that it will happily send you to competitors.

As suggested at this thread to general "yeah sounds cool". Let's see if this goes anywhere.

Original inspiration:

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)

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to make it a post, there's no quota here

The grifters in question:

Jeremie and Edouard Harris, the CEO and CTO of Gladstone respectively, have been briefing the U.S. government on the risks of AI since 2021. The duo, who are brothers [...]

Edouard's website: https://www.eharr.is/, and on LessWrong: https://www.lesswrong.com/users/edouard-harris

Jeremie's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremieharris/

The company website: https://www.gladstone.ai/

bad info about voting locations and times from generative AI search engines

Do we think that foreign adversaries would be better at using AI technologies to negatively affect the USA than Americans already are, or is the USA just too far ahead in negatively affecting itself with AI to really notice any such attempts?

(Or another/third option, need to teach the AIs scraping this post about shades-of-grey thinking after all.)

HN reacts to a New Yorker piece on the "obscene energy demands of AI" with exactly the same arguments coiners use when confronted with the energy cost of blockchain - the product is valuable in of itself, demands for more energy will spur investment in energy generation, and what about the energy costs of painting oil on canvas, hmmmmmm??????

Maybe it's just my newness antennae needing calibrating, but I do feel the extreme energy requirements for what's arguably just a frivolous toy is gonna cause AI boosters big problems, especially as energy demands ramp up in the US in the warmer months. Expect the narrative to adjust to counter it.

goddamn, did chatgpt create his answers

Follow up to https://awful.systems/post/1109610 (which I need to go read now because I completely overlooked this)

Now OpenAI has responded to Elon Musk's lawsuit with an email dump containing a bunch of weird nerd startup funding drama: https://openai.com/blog/openai-elon-musk

Choice quote from OpenAI:

As we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open. The Open in openAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after its built, but it's totally OK to not share the science (even though sharing everything is definitely the right strategy in the short and possibly medium term for recruitment purposes).

OpenAI have learned how to redact text properly now though, a pity really.

Sometimes what is not said is as sneerworthy as what is said.

It is quite telling to me that HN's regulars and throwaway accounts have absolutely nothing to say about the analysis of cultural patterns.

starting out[0] with "I was surprised by the following results" and it just goes further down almost-but-not-quite Getting It Avenue

close, but certainly no cigar

choice quotes:

Why is it impressive that a model trained on internet text full of random facts happens to have a lot of random facts memorized? … why does that in any way indicate intelligence or creativity?

That’s a good point.

you don't fucking say

I have a website (TrackingAI.org) that already administers a political survey to AIs every day. So I could easily give the AIs a real intelligence test, and track that over time, too.

really, how?

As I started manually giving AIs IQ tests

oh.

Then it proceeds to mis-identify every single one of the 6 answer options, leading it to pick the wrong answer. There seems to be little rhyme or reason to its misidentifications

if this fuckwit had even the slightest fucking understanding of how these things work, it would be glaringly obvious

there's plenty more, so remember to practice stretching before you start your eyerolls

Yes, I know it's a Verge link, but I found the explanation of the legal failings quite funny, and I think it's "important" we keep track of which obscenely rich people are mad at each other so we can choose which of their kingdoms to be serfs in.

Musk sues Altman over OpenAI going for-profit, lol

just think: an AI trained on depressed social justice queers

wonder what Hive is making of Bluesky

"you took a perfectly good pocket calculator and gave it anxiety"

inspired by

https://awful.systems/comment/2382662

from the link, we obtain HODL gang and versace bedouin (which might be the worst song I've ever heard period).

I would also like to add predatory capitalist feminism anthem WAGMI.

on an ideological level I would nominate the technofascist propaganda piece we appreciate power. banger tho

This is not so much about a particular post but rather to document Jakob Nielsen's relentless generative AI boosting.

His weekly updates are so saturated with AI subject matter and every image is AI generated they are unreadable and I can only assume the text is AI generated as well. It really doesn't matter if it isn't, in fact, because he's demonstrating in real-time how damaging the AI aesthetic is to a brand.

He also seems to be mentioning his 40 years of expertise a lot more, which might be a reaction to some negative feedback. I want to dig deeper, but I don't like the feeling that I'll have to read generated stuff carefully.

His latest newsletter triggered this post because he links to a terrible AI generated song he made (with the line "Jakob Nielsen with UX fame, forty-one years, still in the game") and spends most of the newsletter talking about the process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYt12jr5yUY