One clip on Instagram, which has been viewed over 21.5 million times, shows a man ordering “a large Mountain Dew” and the AI voice continually replying “and what will you drink with that?”.
“Dude, Where’s my car” turning into prophecy wasn’t in my bingo card:
I discovered that recent versions of the built-in photo apps on Android flat out refuses to do this. The UI for removing location info is there, but it is intentionally blocked if the exif info was added automatically by GPS (i.e., it only works if you manually have set a location). It seems so weird, and outright evil, to block one of the key ways for people to stay safe.
The only reason this is “click bait” is because someone chose to do this, rather than their own mental instability bringing this out organically.
This is my point. The case we are discussing now isn’t noteworthy, because someone doing it deliberately is equally “impressive” as writing out a disturbing sentence in MS Paint. One cannot create a useful “answer engine” without it being capable of producing something that looks weird/provoking/offensive when taken out of context; no more than one can create a useful drawing program that blocks out all offensive content. Nor is it a worthwhile goal.
The cases to care about are those where the LLM takes a perfectly reasonable conversation off the rails. Clickbait like the one in the OP is actually harmful in that they drown out such real cases, and is therefore deserving of ridicule.
Does the marketing matter when the reason for the offending output is that the user spent significant deliberate effort in coaxing the LLM to output what it did? It still seems like MS Paint with extra steps to me.
I get not wanting LLMs to unprompted output “offensive content”. Just like it would be noteworthy if “Clear canvas” in MS Paint sometimes yielded a violent bloody photograph. But, that isn’t what is going on in OPs clickbait.
And, the thing is, LLMs are quite well protected. Look what I coaxed MS Paint to say with almost no effort! Don’t get me started on plain pen and paper! Which we put in the hands of TODDLERS!
If someone is trying to do the most good with their money, it seems logical to give via an organization that distributes the funds according to a plan. To instead hand out money to people closest at hand seems it could be motivated more by trying to make me feel good than to actually make a difference.
Furthermore, there are larger scale systemic issues. Begging takes up a lot of time. It becomes a problem if it pays someone enough to outcompete more productive use of time that could, in some cases, pay, and in other cases, at least be more useful: childcare/teaching kids, home maintenance, cooking, cleaning, etc. In contrast, state welfare programs and aid organizations usually do not condition help on that the receiver has to sit idle for long times to receive help. Add to this that begging really only works in crowded areas, which may limit the possibility to relocate somewhere where living might be more sustainable. Hence, in the worst case, handing out money to those who begs for it could actually add to the difficulty for people stuck in a very difficult situation to get out of it.
This “analysis” of course skips over the many, many individual circumstances that get people into a situation where begging seems the right choice. What we should be doing is investing public funds even heavier in social programs and other aids to (1) avoid as much as possible that people end up in these situations; and (2) get people out of these situations as effectively as possible.
I don’t get this. Why are so many countries willing to play Trump’s game? It seems a horrible long-term strategy to allow one country to hold global trade hostage this way. Shouldn’t we negotiate between ourselves, i.e., between the affected countries?
The idea should be: for us, exports of X, Y, and Z are taking a hit, and for you A, B, and C. So, let’s lower our tariffs in these respective areas to soften the blow to the affected industries. That way, we would partly make up for, say, lost exports to the US for cars, at the cost of additional competition on the domestic market for, say, soy beans; and vise-versa; evening out the effects as best we can.
With such agreements in place, we can return to Trump from a stronger position and say: we are willing to negotiate, but not under threat. We will do nothing until US tariffs are back to the levels before this started. But, at that point, we will be happy to discuss the issues you appear to see with trade inbalances and tariffs, so that we can find a mutual beneficial agreement going forward.
Something like this would send a message that would do far more good towards trade stability for the future.
No shade on people trying to make sustainable choices, but if the solution to the climate crisis is us trusting everyone to “get with the program” and pick the right choice; while unsustainable alternatives sit right there beside them at lower prices, then we are truly doomed.
What the companies behind these foods and products don’t want to talk about is that to get anywhere we have to target them. It shouldn’t be a controversial standpoint that: (i) all products need to cover their true full environmental and sustainability costs, with the money going back into investments into the environment counteracting the negative impacts; (ii) we need to regulate, regulate, and regulate how companies are allowed to interact with the environment and society, and these limits must apply world-wide. There needs to be careful follow-up on that these rules are followed: with consequences for individuals that take the decisions to break them AND “death sentences” (i.e. complete disbandment) for whole companies that repeatedly oversteps.
After having a lot of sysvinit experience, the transition to setting up my own systemd services has been brutal. What finally clicked for me was that I had this habit of building mini-services based on shellscripts; and systemd goes out of its way to deliberately break those: it wants a single stable process to monitor; and if it sniffs out that you are doing some sketchy things that forks in ways it disapproves of, it is going to shut the whole thing down.
I very much understand wanting to have a say against our data being freely harvested for AI training. But this article’s call for a general opt-out of interacting with AI seems a bit regressive. Many aspects of this and other discussions about the “AI revolution” remind me about the Mitchell and Web skit on the start of the bronze age: https://youtu.be/nyu4u3VZYaQ
What you describe is more or less the Nordic economic model, except the basic income. Corporate abuse is low, because it is not unthinkable to “not work” in response to such abuse, but also because unions are strong. Nevertheless, a lot of people still work a lot, so it doesn’t completely change the work/life balance oddity op is posting about.
I couldn’t agree more. If there only was a somewhat user-friendly setting that allowed the oom killer to be far more aggressive, killing or freezing processes as soon as their memory use starts to affect system responsiveness, and just tell me this is what has happened.
ADA should be the lawful good.
Bash is chaotic neutral.
Java is lawful neutral.
Javascript fits ok as chaotic evil.
Move ASM to neutral evil.
And maybe f77 as lawful evil.
SAAB Gripen: Am I a joke to you?
That’s On Me, I Set the Bar Too Low 
Something utterly meaningless, like a bag of generic candy, from the closest corner store “wrapped” only in that store’s type of plastic bags, clearly purchased last-minute on your way over to them. As they unwrap it you slip an “oh, I forgot to take that” and snatch up the receipt that you’ve forgotten in the bag, but only after they’ve seen that the item was on sale for $0.99.
Ukraine don’t want to give up territory. Russia demands territory to end the war. Trump has offered to resolve this in 24h. The conclusion seems clear: Trump has to offer Russia some parts of the US in exchange for releasing the occupied regions in Ukraine?
Doesn’t North Koreans fighting in Ukraine mean that North Korea now is at war with Ukraine? Wouldn’t that legitimize a Ukrainian invasion of North Korea? Could we ship some Ukrainians to North Korea and have them do a lot of damage there; including offer asylums to anyone who wants to get out?
This whole rapey lingo needs to fucking die already.
Maybe widely name-calling this practice for what it is could help steer companies away from this disgusting pattern.
Should we start refering to pop-ups that give no option to say “no” as something like “rape-ups”?
Seems like a weekend hack to set up a fediverse-backed categorized market that, when you want to buy something- forwards to a “buy our download” link of the seller’s choice. Rabid moralists would have to challenge each producer/indie developer individually to take things down.
The real crux is to build a nice user interface on top of it so people would actually use it.