• 3 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • I’m confused exactly what you’re saying here. It does seem from your experiment that if you specifically ask it to, Chat GPT can reproduce selected pieces of copyrighted creative works verbatim, but what’s your point? You posted the screenshots underneath a quote about how AI systems extract patterns from works rather than copying them so I guess you want to show that it can at times in fact just copy things despite this seeming claim to the opposite, but the fact that you prompted the system to do it seems to kind of dilute this point a bit. In any case, it’s not just reproducing the work, it’s producing output that is relevant to your naturally phrased English language input, and selecting which particular passage in a way that is specifically relevant to the way your input was phrased and also adding additional output aside from the quoted passage which is also relevant and unique to the prompt.

    The developers make the analogy of a person being influenced by works in the creation of their own and that that is considered acceptable. If you asked Bob Dylan to cite a passage from a work by Hemingway and he successfully remembered such a passage and in the correct context recited it to you verbatim, followed by an explanation for why it’s a good passage to have selected, you wouldn’t take from that exchange that this was proof that Bob Dylan was not really actually ‘influenced’ by anything but was instead just cobbling together the work of others when he produces his music. If anything, it’d likely be regarded as a mark of how well read Bob Dylan must be that he could remember the passage so accurately and choose a passage that so successfully fits the brief of your request. I don’t typically want to leap to the defence of these AI models that wholesale take in so much creative work and mechanistically re-assemble it without compensation nor input from the artist but I wouldn’t pretend that it’s not an issue with at least a little nuance to it and I can’t see what these screenshots prove.








  • I haven’t been to the states but I can compare Burger King UK to Burger King (Hungry Jacks) Australia and also Hungry Jacks to any other burger place that isn’t Mc Donald’s (because that’s just a tie). BK UK was significantly worse than the Aussie version but I nevertheless indulged quite a few times whilst there, ironically probably even more than here in Australia. Despite managing to be worse, it still occupies that very wide band between just under the threshold of good all the way down to just above actually inedible and usually if going for BK it’s definitely because “it’ll have to do” and it always does.

    Hungry Jacks (BK) compared to an actual good burger joint here in Australia stands no chance but it does fulfill its promise of a consistent standard, even if it’s a low one and that’s a good thing since you can find some awful shit here like a local cafe’s burger or those Vietnamese lunch bars that have to offer a ‘burger’ on their otherwise nice menu. But of course the flipside is you can get good to great burgers easily as well as long as you go somewhere that’s actually a burger place not somewhere that just has a burger option.



  • The thing is now, manipulative tactics are used to persuade people to choose one option over another either for representatives, or in some cases like Brexit, directly for specific policies. In that scenario one might argue that those that successfully made the case for one side of the referendum did so by knowingly presenting the outcome of choosing one policy differently from what they knew to be the reality hence “manipulating” people.

    However, with this proposed idea of being able to delegate your vote to other people or organisations, I’m concerned people will be manipulated into giving up their ability to vote on something one way or the other they don’t even need to be convinced of the merits of something, just convinced to give it up. Seems like a small difference but I can imagine people being unknowingly disenfranchised thinking they’re giving up something else, or possibly having to give up their vote even though they do want to use it because if they’re offered some tangible immediate benefit in exchange, they might not be in a position to decline such an offer.

    In these cases the distortion of the democratic ideal is worse than in the Brexit scenario for example, because at least in that situation one could say (however disingenuously) that that vote more or less reflected how convincing the case was for the leave campaign and argue that anyone saying that leave voters were manipulated is just being patronizing to such voters by denying their agency in the decision. Of course that’s a simplistic way to portray it, but there’s an element of truth there. At the very least that referendum does tell you what most people decided to vote for even if the details of how the cases were presented might be dishonest. Delegated votes would more accurately be described as a reflection of who successfully obtained votes through whatever means, not who prosecuted a case the most convincingly.






  • This can NOT happen, the risk is too big and people could get hurt. Your Mom has allowed this to escalate too far, too fast and can’t see the danger she is inviting.

    Your Mom isn’t ‘mad’ but she is definitely being reckless and while trying to help someone else that she thinks needs her, she is forgetting about her family that need her. She doesn’t know everything she needs to know to be sure this is a safe idea and she doesn’t have the resources or ability to find out. Just getting to know someone over the internet is NOT enough and it IS possible to be deceived even when you think you know the person well. That’s how online scammers work, they have to be convincing or people would not give them anything.

    Even if they are telling the truth, the amount of help they’re going to need and the long term commitment could be a disaster for you all. This person will be completely dependent on your family while in your country and they may have all kinds of complicated needs having come from a difficult home in a very different country, and with potential immigration questions. Offering to help someone with those kinds of needs is not a good thing to do if you are not truly in a position to offer that much help. Already your Mom can’t even offer them a place to stay without making promises on someone else’s behalf (yours), can she really offer what will likely be years and years of emotional, legal and financial support to a stranger without compromising her responsibilities to her family? When you speak to your mother about this, you need to remind her that YOU are her first responsibility and you are the one being put at risk most of all. You mentioned siblings, I’d be worried about them too. Are they minors? This is just such a bad idea.

    You should speak to your father and find out if he is really okay with this like your Mom says? It sounds possible that like you, he didn’t think it would do any harm for your mother to comfort this person online and now it’s getting out of control and he doesn’t want to upset her or doesn’t know what she’s promised them. If he really doesn’t have any objections, then maybe there’s other family members you can talk to? Most people outside this situation will think your Mom is making a bad decision and maybe you have an Aunt or Uncle that can talk to her. YOU are her first responsibility, because you are her child and family, this person online is not. It would be nice if it was possible for her to take care of the whole world, but it isn’t, and if she tries to do that she might find herself unable to care for you and your family either because she gets scammed and loses your family’s money, or because the person invited in to your home turns out to be more dangerous than expected or just requires more care than any of you can offer. It’s not that they don’t deserve care or help, it’s that it’s not help your family can reasonably and safely provide.

    I hoped I would have good advice on how your mother could still help this person without the risk of being scammed or without going way too far like inviting them to live in your home but unfortunately I don’t know any way that can be done. Though tragic, there is sadly a line where your personal responsibility for others ends. When caring for strangers involves risks to your own children that line has been crossed. Help offered to people in bad home situations, or in dangerous countries or in this case both, is complicated and difficult and full of risks even for professional organisations that try their best to do this, to take on this responsibility personally is very reckless and dangerous for your Mom, for you, for the rest of her family and even for her internet friend. Once he stays with you guys, what then? Can he work in your country? Can he legally immigrate there? What’s his family going to do if they find out about you guys? How long can you support him? If he stays for some time and it doesn’t work for any reason, where could they go? They’d be be alone in a foreign country with no where to stay? This isn’t a real plan, it’s a big, kind, but thoughtless gesture that needs to be reconsidered.


  • My cat likes to sit on the desk in the little space between my pen tablet and the brick size external hard drive I use, and nod off to sleep while I work.

    Yesterday she did this peacefully for hours until out of nowhere, I assume because of a bad dream maybe, she woke up suddenly by jumping in to the air knocking over the expensive hard drive I was working off of and then also, upon seeming to realize she wasn’t comfortably laying on the desk anymore but instead in the midst of a rapid descent towards it from a height, proceeded to kick every limb in a panic and also me in the process. Good times.


  • This along with much else that’s pointed out make the whole devices capturing audio to process keywords for ads all seem unlikely, but, one thing worth pointing out is that people do sell bad products that barely or even just plain old don’t do what they told their customers it would do. Someone could sell a listening to keywords to target ads solution to interested advertisers that just really sucks and is super shit at its job. From the device user’s standpoint it’d be a small comfort to know the device was listening to your conversations but also really sucked at it and often thought you were saying something totally different to what you said but I’d still be greatly dismayed that they were attempting, albeit poorly, to listen to my conversations.


  • I don’t know why, given recent impressive developments, but I’ve always met thie idea that this is really happening with heavy skepticism and I still do. This is definitely the most concrete thing I’ve ever heard and I definitely don’t doubt companies would do this, I just… I don’t know, it’s hard to believe they really are.

    One reason is it just seems like they’d be absolutely overwhelmed by useless data, it’s not like AI is cheap to run, and it’d be so hard to link a conversation that’s captured to a genuine sentiment and then to an ad connecting to that person and then a purchasing decision to that ad. This is scary for sure but it feels like this is more marketing hype to marketeers than a real thing.

    Will be watching closely. I feel like this might actually be that bridge too far that the mainstream of society will demand action be taken against if it gets widely adopted and widely known. Even if it technically works and is provably effective to advertisers I think you’d need Google or Amazon to be the ones pulling it off and to have done so silently so we all just kinda assume they’re doing it but don’t know. If a company “starts” offering this service in a way the public can latch on to it would likely cause a massive backlash that would hopefully scupper such plans.





  • Trying it out now as I reply. Quite like it, for similar reasons to openboard. I’m not sure why, but i think I type a little bit more accurately when I use this compared to openboard and also gboard, which is interesting, can’t really see why that would be. It also has that awesome space bar trackpad feature.

    Sadly, like openboard, it has no swipe to type either, nor a searchable emoji board. It’s a real shame there seems to have been a freeze on updates because the current version doesn’t yet support the word suggestions. This really breaks the app as a daily keyboard unless they ever resume updates. It’s good though for sure.