#damien williams

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

As of this week, I have a new article in the July-August 2023 Special Issue of American Scientist Magazine. It’s called “Bias Optimizers,” and it’s all about the problems and potential remedies of and for GPT-type tools and other “A.I.”

This article picks up and expands on thoughts started in “The ‘P’ Stands for Pre-Trained” and in a few threads on the socials, as well as touching on some of my comments quoted here, about the use of chatbots and “A.I.” in medicine.

I’m particularly proud of the two intro grafs:

Recently, I learned that men can sometimes be nurses and secretaries, but women can never be doctors or presidents. I also learned that Black people are more likely to owe money than to have it owed to them. And I learned that if you need disability assistance, you’ll get more of it if you live in a facility than if you receive care at home. At least, that is what I would believe if I accepted the sexist, racist, and misleading ableist pronouncements from today’s new artificial intelligence systems. It has been less than a year since OpenAI released ChatGPT, and mere months since its GPT-4 update and Google’s release of a competing AI chatbot, Bard. The creators of these systems promise they will make our lives easier, removing drudge work such as writing emails, filling out forms, and even writing code. But the bias programmed into these systems threatens to spread more prejudice into the world. AI-facilitated biases can affect who gets hired for what jobs, who gets believed as an expert in their field, and who is more likely to be targeted and prosecuted by police.

As you probably well know, I’ve been thinking about the ethical, epistemological, and social implications of GPT-type tools and “A.I.” in general for quite a while now, and I’m so grateful to the team at American Scientist for the opportunity to discuss all of those things with such a broad and frankly crucial audience.

I hope you enjoy it.

+

The “P” Stands for Pre-trained

I know I’ve said this before, but since we’re going to be hearing increasingly more about Elon Musk and his “Anti-Woke” “A.I.” “Truth GPT” in the coming days and weeks, let’s go ahead and get some things out on the table:

All technology is political. All created artifacts are rife with values. There is no neutral tech. And there never, ever has been.

I keep trying to tell you that the political right understands this when it suits them— when they can weaponize it; and they’re very, very  good at weaponizing it— but people seem to keep not getting it. So let me say it again, in a somewhat different way:

There is no ground of pure objectivity. There is no god’s-eye view.

There is no purely objective thing. Pretending there is only serves to create the conditions in which the worst people can play “gotcha” anytime they can clearly point to their enemies doing what we are literally all doing ALL THE TIME: Creating meaning and knowledge out of what we value, together.

There is no God-Trick. There is enmeshed, entangled, messy, relational, intersubjective perspective, and what we can pool and make together from what we can perceive from where we are.

And there are the tools and systems that we can make from within those understandings.

[more]

[blackmensuited]

[mourningmaybells]

so-called "tragedy enjoyer" reads the exorcist and suddenly feels heartbreak instead of catharsis or vindication over seeing a character who was always gonna die in the worst way possible die

[smiledog15578]

Alice human sacrifice is such a good vocaloid song and it fits wkm so well!!! I hope everyone remembers this song cause its a banger

[fictionalsownme]

How do you feel about the original idea of William accidentally killing Damien instead of us?

I think the angst would’ve broken most of us in quarters, probably TWT Seeing art of this AU makes my heart clench for my poor boys (well it already does)

AHAHAHA PAIN! THAT'S HOW IT MAKES ME FEEL. But okay I put some thought into it for these drawings so if you're interested in how I think it would go down, I put it all in the screenshot below (alt text available)!!

So yeah!! I like this AU a lot!! There are some aspects I like better than what we ended up with-- William going insane for a life long friend rather than someone he met a day ago (even though I love that we made such an impression on him ;)), it could add a lot to Damien & Will's dynamic. I also like the seance idea I came up with! It'd be nice to give us some agency! And to try and save Damien too 👀 Also I think this version of Dark I came up with is so cool (👉🏻👈🏻) even though the effect would be like,, impossible irl

But there's way more that I think works better about the canon ending-- Celine's reckless pursuit of knowledge getting Damien killed is super fitting, especially since he seems to be the only loved one she has left, it helps explain how angry she is with Actor and the House (maybe that's why Dark is so unstable? I'm getting off track lol--) she's a righteous protector of someone who's already dead yk, whose death she caused. Also! In the canon version, we get to die! pretty fkn sick imo lol

thanks for asking!! I like to blabber!!!!

___

lmk if you want to join the taglist for when the Markiplier Ego Discord I'm making goes live or for any updates! I've been a little hesitant to work on it because my zone is at risk for power shut offs because of the cali wildfires (there's no fires near me so far) and if my power goes out while I'm working on it idk what that does ^^" but I'll try to update soon!

edit: added a cut and shuffled things around ;))

[squeeshh]

Since I drew the Actor, twitter wanted them too ✨✨

[deezbignutz]

Ages of Redacted characters cuz why not ig

Sam is 45 years old

Vincent is 44 years old

Avior is 37 years old (coalesced 37 years ago)

Gavin and Aaron are 34 years old

David, Asher and Milo are 31 years old

Lasko and Elliott (kinda) are 30 years old (Elliott was adopted 30 years ago)

Huxley is 27 years old

Caelum and Damien are 25 years old

More stuff under the cut

Sweetheart and Milo met when he was 23

Baaabe and Asher met when he was 25

Angel and David when he was 26

Freelancer met Caelum the he was 18

Lovely and Vincent met when he was 40

Elliott confesses to Sunshine at 26

Freelancer met Gavin when he was 30

William has been a Vampire for around 505 years

Elliott met Brachium when he was around 5 (? i think?)

Will turned Vincent when he was 20

Sam graduated from D.A.M.N. when he was 24

Sam got turned when he was 29

David was 24 when Gabe died

Freelancer met Lasko when he was 26

Freelancer met Damien when he was 21

Freelancer met Huxley when he was 23

Sam confessed to Darlin when he was 42

Inversion happened when Sam was 42, Vincent was 41, Avior was 34, Gavin and Aaron were 31, David, Asher, and Milo were 28, Lasko and Elliott(?) were 27, Huxley was 24, and Caelum and Damien were 22.

Elliott left CloseKnit and met up with Aaron when he was 28 (?) and Aaron was 32

Milo shifted back again when he was 29

Damien and Huxley confess their feelings for each other when Dames was 23 and Hux was 25

David proposed to Angel when he was 29

Baaabe proposed to Asher when he was 30

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk

[traceyc-uk]

Alvin @acslytherpuff, Charlie Cagney @heyitszev, Damien Evans @theladyofshalott1989, Chris Mongrel @diana-bluewolf, Fifth-Year, Hellendil Melinae @theravenchild, Sunan Saelee @dom1re, William & Elland @lil-grem-draws, Allan Waite @a-usernamelol

Silly AU crossover I drew for lols whilst watching

[miketheme]

I WON’T LET MY FRIENDS DIE IN THIS GODFORSAKEN HOUSE!

(Feel free to zoom in, I’m very fond of the details ✨)

[severeddreamz]

someone get these tragic queers off my screen!!!

[ghiertor-the-gigapeen]

WKM: The Last Supper

"I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me."

Comparison/Analysis

- Peter(chef) has a knife in his hand but it's to protect his master, he's not a traitor.

- Judas(Wil) og pic he has a bag includes money earned for betraying jesus, but in this pic Wil's shocked seeing blood in his hand, he's "picked" to be the traitor.

- John(D/A) in og pic he's in shock, but this one the D/A slept through the whole thing, that's why the audience didn't get to see what happened at first.

This one's almost 100% accurate to the og

- Thomas(Abe)need to confirm Jesus’ wounds by touching them with his own hands. Also Thomas(Abe)'s hand gesture's foreshadowing Jesus(actor)'s "resurrection"

- James(Damien)shocked and waiting for an explanation from jesus.

- Philip(Ben) asking, “Lord, is it I?” (it's not, idk why he thought it's him😭)

Jesus in the og pic: “He that dipped his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me” in his right hand it's the dish him and judas dipped in

- actor handing Wil a gun while his left hand placing a death tarot card on a table. He knows who's the traitor because he picked the traitor himself.

[lynnstereotypical]

Remnant, the Lazarus pit, and ectoplasm are essentially the same thing and in this essay I will

[mourningmaybells]

hm

[pacing around the room like a grizzled, alcoholic detective] I think those two guys fucked

[galaxyg1204]

Time for the update on how old certain redacted character are/ will be turning this year

Sam: 46 (17 years of being a vampire)

Vincent: 45 (25 years of being a vampire)

Avior: 38

Gavin & Aaron : 35

David, Asher & Milo: 32

Lasko: 31

Huxley: 28

Damien & Caelum: 26

(Bonus: William will be a vampire of 506 years & Alexis will be a vampire of 56 years)

[todosmeiape1an]

Illustration I made for a spanish Hooky contest💖

[aimedis]

redacted asmr headcanons pt.1

-when lovely cried around sam for the first time he didn’t know how to react but he was honoured that they felt comfortable enough to be so vulnerable around him

-lovely used to look up to william a lot, when they first turned they went to him for reassurance a lot

-william gave lovely the biggest hug after they turned and he just let them cry into his chest for hours

-william's favourites are vincent & lovely (canon)

-sweetheart says it’s ironic that milo calls them sweetheart when he’s the sweetest person they’ve ever met (milo and sweetheart have arguments about who’s sweeter)

-damien’s singing voice is angelic and so is freelancer’s (they sing the best duets)

-sweetheart tells milo “don’t touch me i have a boyfriend” when they’re bored and milo threatens to beat him (the boyfriend) up

-when freelancer gets into a bad mood they can be worse than damien when he’s in a bad mood (they get pissed off at everything and everyone, even cussing out gavin)

-angel has four brothers (one older, three younger) and they bring out an aggressive side to them that no one else sees from them (angel whenever one of their brothers speak: “can you literally shut the fuck up?”)

-milo and darlin' make fun of each other’s trauma (milo: “that’s why your dad doesn’t fucking love you” darlin': “your dad doesn’t love you either, hoe”)

-darlin’ tried to convince themself to be mad at sam after david confronted them but they literally could not stay mad at him

-milo would call sweetheart "baby girl" (regardless of gender)

-sweetheart calls milo “handsome”

-angel likes to straddle david, like sitting on his hips with their hands on his chest and david likes it too