I wonder what the ratio is of "constructive" use of AI is, verses people writing pointless internet comments.
It seems personal computing is being screwed so people can create memes, ask questions that take 30 seconds to find the answer to with Google or Wikipedia, and sound clever on social media?
If you think AI as the whole discipline, there are very useful applications indeed, generally in pattern recognition and regulation space. I'm aware a lot of small projects which rely on AI to monitor ecosystems, systems or used as nice regulatory mechanisms. Also, same systems can be used for genuine security applications (civilian, non-lethal, legal and ethical).
If we are talking generative AI, again from my experience, things get a bit blurry. You can use smaller models to dig data you own.
I personally used LLMs, twice up to this day. In each case it was after very long research sessions without any answers. In one, it gave me exactly one reference, and I followed that reference and learnt what I was looking for. In the second case, it gave me a couple of pointers, which I'm going to follow myself again.
So, generative AI is not that useful for me, uses way too much resources, and industry leading models are well, unethical to begin with.
It just goes to show how totally corporations have captured western aligned governments. Our governments are powerless to do anything (aside from some baby steps from the EU).
China is now the only solution to fix broken western controlled markets.
Cynicism in unhelpful, and it's not correct. This has nothing to do with governments and everything to do with market economics. This sort of thing happens every few years in computing.
Then what's your solution? It's a capital intensive business to get into, without some regulatory changes either on the supply side or the demand side, there's no way for it to be naturally prevented without consumers bearing the brunt of the downside. Yes, the market will eventually correct itself but until then consumers suffer.
The only legal check for monopoly corporations is regulation/taxation. That doesn’t work cross border. Especially when the other side has nationalised and artificially props the monopoly.
The solution then is removing the product from market till local competition takes its place.
When there is a risk of feeding sensitive data to the AI giants the first reaction should be to pull the plug. I'm impressed the government acted quickly and decisively for once. Maybe the company involved will think twice before entering an agreement with an AI company. Notice in the whole rant it is never mentioned which AI giant they were feeding.
But when the conspiracy involves lack of prosecution or inconsistent sentencing at scale and then the Ministry of Justice issues a blanket order to delete one of the best resources to look into those claims...? Significantly increases the legitimacy of the claims.
I assumed it was the usual conspiracy stuff up until this order.
My passport has biometrics, the government knows everything about me already through the tax system which is "digital". All my other interactions with the government are through digital services.
What exactly would a digital ID allow a government to do that it can't already? Apart from solve all the issues with having to provide scans of (my already digital) ID documents to every bank/solicitor/mortgage broker/estate agent/etc i interact with, where in many my personal ID documents probably sit on a company file share or some random persons One Drive.
A government digital ID with a one-time code to complete verification would solve all of this nonsense.
On control, again, what possible super power would a "digital ID" give a government that it doesn’t have already to control you?
Digital ID to interact with government services is great. It becomes a problem when they add something like OpenID4VC to it, with the intention of linking it to all your online activity for "age verification". This would create one giant government metadata silo on every individual's online activity.
Like the real world there a services online that need age verification, unless we want kids to continue to be exploited by social media and freely access porn.
We aren't living with the internet of the 90's any more, it's now owned by corporations and bad actors. Yes, i know it's impossible to stop those that are determined to circumvent restrictions (just as can happen with alcohol or movies) but clear restrictions give parents that want to do the right thing cover when setting rules in their own family.
In the end society raises children not just individual parents, and society need to take some responsibility too.
Personally i don't see how an API call to complete a government ID verification could be used to create a giant "metadata silo", unless the companies using the API are voluntarily sending more data than some sort of one-time challenge token. If the companies are coerced into feeding the government with your account activity history, what is stopping the government forcing that to happen now without bothering to draw attention via a digital ID?
Debank you for wrong speak or think, leaving you with no alternatives. The more cuntries implement digital id, the more they'll sync with each other, making life more and more miserable for anyone who doesn't want to go along with whatever nonsense is currently being pushed as the new thing.
Erm, there is still a newspaper stand in the supermarket I go to (Wallmart for the Americans). Not sure if the British library keeps a copy of the print news I see, but they should!
The internet was built on noncompliance with laws. The hens are coming home to roost that is all. Sovereign countries can only let social media and tech companies poison their societies so much before it becomes a real threat to the nation.
It was all fun and games while it was a few geeks and early adopters having (mostly) fun. Now it is corporations making billions while destroying the mental health and productivity of their "users".
That's no reason to just give up. Do we give up on schools because they are attractive to paedophiles?
Children should be safe online and in school or nursery.
We should try our best to protect children online in a similar way that there are age restrictions in the real world like for alcohol and movies. It won't ever be 100% but for parents who care it helps greatly.
For abuse perpetrated by an adult on children we should strive to stop 100% of cases, but unfortunately that is not possible either.
I'm not saying to give up, I'm saying that "for children" spaces online can be counterproductive. Comparing to physical spaces where everyone can see your age and everyone can see what you do, makes no sense.
Open online spaces directed at children are more dangerous for children than the average open online space. Age verification doesn't help at all with that.
Less competent might be a disservice. But I've seen nothing to suggest that execs/founders are any more competent that the average employee. Execs and founders just had a few more dice rolls go their way.
You can still open the real notepad, you just have to turn off a "feature" that makes running notepad.exe open the new notepad. Its called "execution alias" or something like that.
It seems personal computing is being screwed so people can create memes, ask questions that take 30 seconds to find the answer to with Google or Wikipedia, and sound clever on social media?
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