CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@mtechman I do like that word. I think the issue is that it is usually used with an article, right? With the article I have visions of multiple types of anathemas (anathemae? IDK), and this is just one flavor.

@gregatron5 Group-based education has to be, to some extent, targeted at the slowest learners. Bonus: most parents can feel pretty great about their kids' progress. I know I do

@nuintari I agree for many stories. For others, time travel is the means to tell a story that can't be told, otherwise. Of all the time travel mechanisms in SFF I think Connie Willis' is my favorite: The time continuum is what it is, and you are a part of it. No alternate universes. And things are the way they are now because of all the events that could have ever affected every moment in history. So if you try to time travel to the past and change something that will have a ripple effect into your current present, it won't work because the timeline is not shaped that way. Perhaps you are part of the timeline in a way like "this person tried to make money by investing in the Bank of England in the 1700s and, weirdly, their time machine dropped them in the middle of the Atlantic and they were never seen again." So time travel becomes useful only for academics trying to learn esoteric things from the past that will never change the present/future.

RE: https://flipboard.com/@timesofindia_/times-of-india-bsl3e3p0z/-/a-GtNOuFlESmet1HHPFEXD6w%3Aa%3A3972488315-%2F0

The whole series is about a misunderstood kid who goes to a different school and becomes a super-wealthy jock, so it tracks.

Silly #shitpost I made a few years back. I think I could have done better with the choices, but you move on, you know? I think I cut corners because I just wanted #Deadpool in the middle, there.

#shitpost #funny #comics #movies #VennDiagram

@jmax Good point. Others have pointed out that .ai is actually the nation TLD for Antigua, and that governments who own these TLDs don't have to pay for their domains, so it's likely the Antigua government actually is using registration as a way to block domains someone finds distasteful.

@FritzAdalis ah, I also did not know that last fact.

@i oh! It's one of those nation TLDs that gets used for other things, like .tv

I feel like I should have thought of that. Thanks.

@jmax this is good information. I thought the former.

Hello, people who know things about the #internet and #domainnames and like #DNS and such. I have a little chunk of ignorance I hope someone can clear up:

Because reasons I found out that I can't register a particular domain name (fuck.ai, if you must know) because it's already registered. There's no landing page, not even a For Sale site. Looking at WHOIS a bit closer I see the domain was registered to an entity called blockeddomains.gov.ai which also doesn't resolve to a website. What is this?

I don't think this can be ICANN getting prudish; for instance, that domain name but with a dot com at the end leads to a british sex work site. blockeddomains.gov.ai sure sounds like a blocklist of some kind, but is a government really buying up domain names with swear words in them just to prevent them from being used? That seems silly, but who knows?

Any ideas? Knowledge? Insights? Inquiring minds want to know.

#question #TinyMystery

@trendless Two weeks ago a colleague posted to the faculty (small uninversity) listserv their concerns about genAI and higher ed. Within minutes a Very Positive Colleague (who I actually like quite a bit) posted a Very Positive Correction. They said that these concerns are overblown, and that some of them (copyright, use of work, etc.) were simply not true because all AI companies had committed to respecting personal and corporate copyright, private material, etc.; even if they hadn't made this high-minded commitment, it would be literally impossible for AI bots to get around firewalls or get into government data not meant to be public, and the energy use and labor concerns, well, "research" had apparently shown that genAI uses very little electricity and hasn't really been responsible for any of these job layoffs...

I stared at my screen for probably two full minutes having one of those "whaaaa..... um.... ggggggg....." reactions in my locked-up brain. I then typed what was supposed to be a small, polite reply but ended up being two or three paragraphs, with lots of links.

Anyway, this is a story to a stranger about how yet another colleague will probably never speak to me politely again.

@grumpydad Your concept of reducing someone's anxiety is an interesting one

@Illuminatus I don't want genAI or whatever it turns into within five years to solve all our complex problems. I have my personal reasons for this, but the bigger reasons (as all mostodonians probably know) have to do with income inequality/wealth hoarding, labor rights, distortion of democratic government processes, destruction/hoarding of community resources, reducing our ability and motivation to learn, etc.

I have been meaning (in between all the shit my dean dumps on me to keep this job that I don't love) to learn more of the technical side of genAI for 3 or 4 years now, but from a 30,000-feet perspective what I see is that, within two years, the things genAI can do have increased dramatically. It's driven by money (and weird fantasies of money), so it's all twisted in that direction, but that money will probably keep flowing. Some companies will go under and others will survive. Many of the laid-off workers will stay laid off and many of the shareholder gains will continue or increase, so the money will keep driving this, to some extent. I wish it would implode under its own overblown weight, but I don't think it will.

It's impossible for me to imagine a technology like this going "back in the bottle." Beyond the greed-fueled idiocy involved, there are real breakthroughs: one of the first genAI/ML things most of us heard about was an oncology appliction--identifying cancerous cells in biopsies--as an outgrowth of a Japanese bakery's use of early (?) AI to visually identify different bread types. There are dozens of examples of prosocial, even life-saving things being done or just on the horizon with genAI. It can't (currently?) make anything truly unique. It's currently kind of dumb despite how smart it can sound. But it does some things well, and when used for those things it solves certain problems.

Those positives will be used as another stick to beat all of us with, to pressure us to adopt, or at least stop resisting, AI. It will keep coming, unless we have some global transformation of how we allocate resources. I think it would take something like the USA, China, Russia, and the EU all becoming truly socialist/anarchist with effective citizen representation and government. That's not going to happen in my lifetime (though it would be super cool).

Most of the "AI sucks LOL" messages seem to have behind them a desire to believe that AI will never earn its pay, so to speak, so it will just disappear because it will stop being useful, or will be recognized as not marginally useful enough for any real-world enterprise to use it. That won't happen.

I think the best we can do is to aim for effective regulation. AI companies need to pay their fair share (I'd say a progressive gradation is fair) for the resources they use. That would slow a lot of this down. Hell, if AI companies were actually fairly compensating the right people for every bit of water, electricity, bandwidth, labor externalities, etc. that they generated, many of my concerns would be alleviated. If, in addition, the companies pushing AI were physically/legally/criminally prevented from accessing certain resources no matter how much they were willing to pay (I'm thinking of national parks, aquifers, etc.), almost all of my major concerns would be down to a dull roar.

Even that, however, would require that the USA (and probably other countries) suddenly experience a radical change in how we regulate corporations, how much money we allow in politics (and where and how), etc. It's an impossibly tall order for the moment, and I only hope we can make some progress before I die.

@anchr Literally every time I've listened to a biologist talk about genetics, epigenetics, etc. I have realized there is not only more quantity of complexity but more dimensions of complexity. It's just mind-bogglingly complicated (to me, at least).

@grumpydad You have failed. I am now worried. Not a lot, but maybe a small amount.

Right now, yes, I think biological systems like the incredibly complex way DNA (and other genetic code) interacts with hyper-local and other environments to produce biological stuff is beyond the reach of genAI.

However, I'm sure there are hundreds or thousands of biological researchers using AI or slightly simpler machine learning algorithms to solve tough problems--these tools can sometimes spot (and other times just use, without telling us how) patterns that humans can't.

I like this post and think it's accurate so far--with my painfully limited, layperson's understanding of biology--but a year ago the experts said #AI would never generate good code, and now it generates useful code in lots of areas. It won't stop getting better, and I don't think we're near any plateaus in its improvement.

The main reason to oppose AI isn't because it sucks.

#biology #code #resist #meme #dna

The lake last night. Stiff winter-style wind. Mounds of ice on the #beach. Still, dozens of other people also felt the need to get out of their cars and see the #sunset while feeling the brutal cold.

#photo #lakeerie #greatlakes

@rl_dane I'm liking it except it doesn't have drag-typing (or whatever that is). I've kind of started to get used to that.

@FritzAdalis How to make both of my eyes twitch uncontrollably while also having a slight smile at one point.

Seeing links to the (latest) exposé of #banksy and all the stories say "Reuters investigation." However, I could swear I saw, just yesterday, one or two posts (somewhere?) labeling this as funded by a more specific venue, maybe a #newspaper. Does anyone know about this? Was the #reuters news org the source of funding for this?

I ask because I recall thinking, when scrolling, "Ah, perhaps it's because this outlet has an axe to grind with Banksy". Sadly, I can't remember what the outlet was, and searching (masto and also DDG and even the googs) is not helping, yet. I'll keep looking, but if anyone knows, can you drop a hint?

#question #journalism #FollowTheMoney