Pinned
Reblogged scallioncreamcheesebagel
Reblogged thewordywarlock
In science fiction, AIs tend to malfunction due to some technicality of logic, such as that business with the laws of robotics and an AI reaching a dramatic, ironic conclusion.
Content regulation algorithms tell me that sci-fi authors are overly generous in these depictions.
“Why did cop bot arrest that nice elderly woman?”
“It insists she’s the mafia.”
“It thinks she’s in the mafia?”
“No. It thinks she’s an entire crime family. It filled out paperwork for multiple separate arrests after bringing her in.”
I have to comment on this because this is touching on something I see a lot of people (including Tumblr staff and everyone else who uses these kind of deep learning systems willy-nilly like this) don’t quite get: “Deep Reinforcement Learning” AI like these engage with reality in a fundamentally different way from humans. I see some people testing the algorithm and seeing where the “line” is, wondering whether it looks for things like color gradients, skin tone pixels, certain shapes, curves, or what have you. All of these attempts to understand the algorithm fail because there is nothing to understand. There is no line, because there is no logic. You will never be able to pin down the “criteria” the algorithm uses to identify content, because the algorithm does not use logic at all to identify anything, only raw statistical correlations on top of statistical correlations on top of statistical correlations. There is no thought, no analysis, no reasoning. It does all its tasks through sheer unconscious intuition. The neural network is a shambling sleepwalker. It is madness incarnate. It knows nothing of human concepts like reason. It will think granny is the mafia.
This is why a lot of people say AI are so dangerous. Not because they will one day wake up and be conscious and overthrow humanity, but that they (or at least this type of AI) are not and never will be conscious, and yet we’re relying on them to do things that require such human characteristics as logic and any sort of thought process whatsoever. Humans have a really bad tendency to anthropomorphize, and we’d like to think the AI is “making decisions” or “thinking,” but the truth is that what it’s doing is fundamentally different from either of those things. What we see as, say, a field of grass, a neural network may see as a bus stop. Not because there is actually a bus stop there, or that anything in the photo resembles a bus stop according to our understanding, but because the exact right pixels in the photo were shaded in the exact right way so that they just so happened to be statistically correlated with the arbitrary functions it created when it was repeatedly exposed to pictures of bus stops over and over. It doesn’t know what grass is, what a bus stop is, but it sure as hell will say with 99.999% certainty that one is in fact the other, for reasons you can’t understand, and will drive your automated bus off the road and into a ditch because of this undetectable statistical overlap. Because a few pixels were off in just the right way in just the right places and it got really, really confused for a second.
There, I even caught myself using the word “confused” to describe it. That’s not right, because “confused” is a human word. What’s happening with the AI is something we don’t have the language to describe.
Anyway what’s more, this sort of trickery can be mimicked. A human wouldn’t be able to figure it out, but another neural network can easily guess the statistical filters it uses to identify things and figure out how to alter images with some white noise in exactly the right way to make the algorithm think it’s actually something else. It’ll still look like the original image, just with some pixelated artifacts, but the algorithm will see it as something completely different. This is what’s known as a “single pixel attack.” I am fairly confident porn bot creators might end up cracking the content flagging algorithm and start putting up some weirdly pixelated porn anyway, and all of this will be in vain. All because Tumblr staff decided to rely on content moderation via slot machine.
TL;DR bots are illogical because they’re actually unknowable eldritch horrors made of spreadsheets and we don’t know how to stop them or how they got here, send help
Having been to several talks on modern ai I can confirm
I always think of this tweet when I see people praising machine learning and the new kinds of AI as a panacea.
Reblogged harpyhormones
Constant Sanitizing is Unnecessary and Harmful (A Collection of Sources)
[Links to be added in a reblog so tumblr doesn’t hide this post from tags.]
In my opinion, the chance of transmission through inanimate surfaces is very small, and only in instances where an infected person coughs or sneezes on the surface, and someone else touches that surface soon after the cough or sneeze (within 1–2 h). I do not disagree with erring on the side of caution, but this can go to extremes not justified by the data. Although periodically disinfecting surfaces and use of gloves are reasonable precautions especially in hospitals, I believe that fomites that have not been in contact with an infected carrier for many hours do not pose a measurable risk of transmission in non-hospital settings. A more balanced perspective is needed to curb excesses that become counterproductive.
“Exaggerated risk of transmission of COVID-19 by fomites,” Emanuel Goldman, The Lancet, August 2020
A global comparison of government interventions to control the pandemic in its early months found that cleaning and disinfection of shared surfaces ranked one of the least effective at reducing transmission. Social distancing and travel restrictions, including lockdowns, worked the best.
[…]
Armed with a year’s worth of data about coronavirus cases, researchers say one fact is clear. It’s people, not surfaces, that should be the main cause for concern. Evidence from superspreading events, where numerous people are infected at once, usually in a crowded indoor space, clearly point to airborne transmission, says Marr. “You have to make up some really convoluted scenarios in order to explain superspreading events with contaminated surfaces,” she says.
“COVID-19 rarely spreads through surfaces. So why are we still deep cleaning?,” Dyani Lewis, Nature, 29 January 2021
Unlike the coronavirus, hygiene theater is very much alive on surfaces across America. Transit authorities are still taking subway cars offline to power-scrub their walls. Baseball parks are banning cash to protect fans from fiat germs. Schools throughout the country still require deep cleanings that sometimes shut down classes for hours or days…Target is still running ads on Hulu bragging about how it calls in workers at 6 a.m. to mop and scrub for several hours, for the comfort of its germophobic customers.
[…]
But hygiene theater carries with it an immense opportunity cost. Too many institutions spend scarce funds or sacrifice scarce resources to do microbial battle against fomites that don’t pose a real threat. This is especially true of cash-strapped urban-transit authorities and school districts that have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on soap technology rather than their central task of transporting and teaching people.
Hygiene theater also muddles the public-health message. If you tell people, “This disease is on surfaces, on your clothes, on your hands, on your face, and also in the air,” they will react in a scattered and scared way. But if you tell people the truth—this virus doesn’t do very well on surfaces, so you should focus on ventilation—they can protect themselves against what matters.
“Deep Cleaning Isn’t a Victimless Crime,” Derek Thompson, The Atlantic, 13 April 2021
Reblogged meshugenist
ppl. need to understand that spreading misinformation is still bad. even if it is misinformation which aligns with your politics.
& also especially need to understand that someone correcting misinfo that aligns with your politics doesn't mean that they disagree w your politics! assuming that only people on the 'other side' would want to correct misinformation that aligns with your worldview just helps misinfo proliferate.
Reblogged meshugenist
After an accidental fall that l led to assistance having to be called I am having to make many changes to how I live because that can never happen again.l
Big news, big plan, the one uncle that actually knows plumbing says for $350 in supplies he can fully convert my bathroom to the point where the whole room is practically a shower, this is so exciting. Tile everwhere, room for one of those huge shower chairs the hospitals have.
$150 away from a dream bathroom
Reblogged scallioncreamcheesebagel
Dumbasses who have never talked to a non-christian in their life will say that religions are cults because they preach salvation and give you rules to keep you in line like y’all do realize that hell isn’t a universal belief???? That Judaism teaches that god wants his people to be just and compassionate??? That Buddhism is about liberation from suffering??? That Hinduism teaches reincarnation? That Islam believes in a just and merciful god? That there are an endless number of diverse and nuanced beliefs that various indigenous peoples struggle to reclaim every day? And you all have the nerve to lump us all in together with the likes of catholicism and jehovah’s witnesses just because you’re too fucking smug and lazy to get off your ass leave your own bubble and read a god damn wikipedia article?
Reblogged harpyhormones
Texas Republicans are now trying to pass Bill SB1646, which would remove transgender minors from parents who affirm their gender and support them getting proper transition care.
I repeat, they are trying to criminalize parents supporting their trans children and make it legally child abuse, and a removable offense
Its a lot of legal verbatim but the specific points are underlined
Reblogged bunnyalope
Joe Biden making it possible for trans people to go be imperialist warmongers overseas and libs patting him on the back for it while his entire administration remains dead silent on the like 30+ states that have some sort of anti-trans legislation in the works (and Arkansas which basically just forcefully detransitioned trans youth) is peak neoliberal "equality", i.e. utterly fucking useless
Reblogged meshugenist
Each semester is $2,500 and that is basically nothing. ($3972/$15,000)
Reblogged meshugenist
Protest was planned for 7:00 tonight in Brooklyn Center.
This is the entirety of the Twin Cities. Gov. Walz is attempting to shut down the entire metro area and has called a state of emergency. The situation last night wasn’t even close to the level of the Floyd uprising, but the National Guard has been deployed already. Keep an eye on social media. Watch the TC. Help us out.
Reblogged meshugenist
This response absolutely perpetuates and escalates the trauma plaguing our city. We are basically under military occupation.
saturnine-powerbomb
This is at least the third time Walz has deployed the national guard in the last 12 months. They are becoming a regular part of policing. They are flying their reaper drones over the cities to spy on routine demonstrations. They fortified and manned the building the Chauvin trial is being held in. They cordoned off the state capitol prior to Biden’s inauguration. He is consistently setting curfews precisely when protests are announced to begin.
Walz is making martial policing a completely normal thing. This man is particularly brutal in his projection of force.
Reblogged meshugenist
daunte wright’s girlfriend chyna is requesting community support for herself & their baby. monetary donations can be sent to chyna’s cashapp $Hubby98. if you’d like to send necessary baby items instead, please dm @ holisticheaux on facebook or instagram.
Reblogged meshugenist
further donations for protestors/community members in brooklyn center, minnesota
twin cities worker defense alliance asking for donations towards freedom street health - who are supplying medical aid to protestors on-site
Reblogged gemevieve
Reblogged sawtrap
MONTERO (2021) dir. Lil Nas X & Tanu Muino
Reblogged thewordywarlock
Kurt Vonnegut wrote: “When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.
And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”
And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”
And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.”
“I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them.”
I need this quote framed in every room of my house, thanks.
Reblogged thewordywarlock
My girlfriend doesn't have enough money for food, if anyone wants to help her PayPal is at PayPal.me/spamda