#science technology and society

[afutureworththinkingabout]

My New Article at WIRED

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So, you may have heard about the whole zoom “AI” Terms of Service  clause public relations debacle, going on this past week, in which Zoom decided that it wasn’t going to let users opt out of them feeding our faces and conversations into their LLMs. In 10.1, Zoom defines “Customer Content” as whatever data users provide or generate (“Customer Input”) and whatever else Zoom generates from our uses of Zoom. Then 10.4 says what they’ll use “Customer Content” for, including “…machine learning, artificial intelligence.”

And then on cue they dropped an “oh god oh fuck oh shit we fucked up” blog where they pinky promised not to do the thing they left actually-legally-binding ToS language saying they could do.

Like, Section 10.4 of the ToS now contains the line “Notwithstanding the above, Zoom will not use audio, video or chat Customer Content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent,” but it again it still seems a) that the “customer” in question is the Enterprise not the User, and 2) that “consent” means “clicking yes and using Zoom.” So it’s Still Not Good.

Well anyway, I wrote about all of this for WIRED, including what zoom might need to do to gain back customer and user trust, and what other tech creators and corporations need to understand about where people are, right now.

And frankly the fact that I have a byline in WIRED is kind of blowing my mind, in and of itself, but anyway…

Also, today, Zoom backtracked Hard. And while i appreciate that, it really feels like decided to Zoom take their ball and go home rather than offer meaningful consent and user control options. That’s… not exactly better, and doesn’t tell me what if anything they’ve learned from the experience. If you want to see what I think they should’ve done, then, well… Check the article.

Until Next Time.

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Read the rest of My New Article at WIRED at A Future Worth Thinking About

[explore-blog]

In the autumn of 1883, a paper in the nation's capital reported that "an Iowa woman has spent 7 years embroidering the solar system on a quilt" — to teach astronomy in an era when women could not attend college. Her story.

[joyboythehopepunk]

therapy isnt enough i need capitalism to end

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Fear Factory - Replica

[night-triumphantt]

Someday I’ll stop reblogging arcane critical posts I’m sure but fjskdjsksjs my cousin finally finished and I was sent back into the hole that is ‘wtf was that I am actually so thoroughly dissatisfied with nearly every narrative choice they made now that I’m not being blinded by emotions’ and i fear I’m no fun to talk to ab it for her 😂

The tags for this got Crazy but I stand by them 😂 (tho none of it is polished so, yk, don’t come at me if some stuff is a lil underbaked ok, I only got 30 sentences)

[frank-olivier]

The Future Unscripted: Professor Nolan’s Musings on AI, NHI, and Humanity

Professor Garry Nolan’s conversation offers a profound exploration of the intersections between unconventional phenomena, artificial intelligence (AI), and humanity’s future. His personal anecdotes of unexplained childhood experiences serve as the catalyst for his professional inclination towards the unorthodox, underscoring the importance of considering unconventional data in scientific inquiry. By embracing anomalies, Nolan exemplifies the transformative potential of curiosity-driven research in the pursuit of novel knowledge.

Nolan’s scientific approach is notably inclusive, as evidenced by his exploration of Non-Human Intelligence (NHI), a term that broadens the scope of inquiry beyond traditional notions of extraterrestrial life. The analysis of enigmatic materials, such as Bismuth Magnesium, and the theorized capabilities of NHI, including mastery over anti-gravity and energy, prompt intriguing questions about coexistence. His analogy between human-ant interactions and potential human-NHI relations offers a thought-provoking perspective on mutual existence, shifting the focus from competition to symbiosis.

The future, as envisioned by Nolan, is intimately tied to AI’s development and application. He posits AI as a dual-edged solution: a tool for expediting scientific breakthroughs and resolving global crises, as well as a potential precursor to artificial superintelligence (ASI) that could embody a form of consciousness. This speculative horizon highlights the imperative of careful AI management to ensure equitable global access to education and growth. Nolan’s emphasis on AI-driven objective decision-making processes also presents a compelling case for reforming the current political landscape, which is often mired in tribal histories and scarcity mindsets.

A notable aspect of Nolan’s discourse is his critique of contemporary leadership and power structures, juxtaposed with the conflict resolution methods of bonobo chimps as a paradigm for more harmonious human interactions. This dichotomy underscores the urgent need for innovative, peace-centric approaches to global relations. Ultimately, Nolan’s optimism about humanity’s future, rooted in our capacity for crisis-driven ingenuity and the judicious leveraging of AI, presents a compelling vision of a world where challenges are met with collective brilliance and equality in education and growth becomes a universal reality.

Gary Nolan: Alien & UFO - The Critical Question Nobody's Asking (Gita Wirjawan, Endgame Podcast, December 2024)

Friday, December 6, 2024

[thirdity]

The culture-heroes of preliteracy and postliteracy alike are robots.

Marshall McLuhan, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan)

[tmarshconnors]

Cybernetics Girl

[the-busy-ghost]

"Oh it would have been more satisfying if the humans had invented a technology which defeated the Martians rather than have them killed off by accident just when humanity's impotence in the face of disaster seems to be confirmed". I

To me that's just a fancy way of saying "Yeah but humans could totally handle the Martians and the writer has a duty to reassure the audience of that!"

Sir we cannot even handle climate change and I'm sorry to tell you that it's not entirely due to a lack of technological expertise

[tmcphotoblog]

[chineseffect]

UNDERSTAND CHINA 2025/01

I am sure you know quite a lot of things about China.

However there can always be something new to discover.

The FREE MINI lifestyle magazine DISCOVER CHINA is here for you to guide you through current and ancient mysteries of Chinese culture, thinking and innovation.

Get your free copy here: https://payhip.com/b/sM32k

[afutureworththinkingabout]

My New Article at American Scientist

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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.

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Read My New Article at American Scientist at A Future Worth Thinking About

[explore-blog]

Oliver Sacks on how chocolate cast its spell upon humanity, from biochemistry to culture.

[kvetch19]

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Fear Factory - Replica

[wayti-blog]

"Archaeologists using laser-sensing technology have detected what may be an ancient Mayan city cloaked by jungle in southern Mexico, authorities said Wednesday.

The lost city, dubbed Valeriana by researchers after the name of a nearby lagoon, may have been as densely settled as the better-known pre-Hispanic metropolis of Calakmul, in the south part of the Yucatan peninsula.

What the study, published this week in the journal Antiquity, suggest is that much of the seemingly empty, jungle-clad space between known Maya sites may once have been very heavily populated.

"Previous research has shown that a large part of the present-day state of Campeche is a landscape that was transformed by its ancient inhabitants," said Adriana Velázquez Morlet of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History, a co-author of the report. "Now, this study shows that a little-known region was a urbanized landscape."

Mexico's National Institute said about 6,479 structures have been detected in LiDAR images covering an area of about 47 square miles (122 square kilometers). The technique maps landscapes using thousands of lasers pulses sent from a plane, which can detect variations in topography that ware not evident to the naked eye."

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