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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: August 8th, 2023

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  • That seems like one of the more reasonable scenarios to expect “AI” to thrive, actually.

    You have dozens to thousands of people doing the actual work, then you have one CEO or owner that asks the AI to summarize what all the workers have been doing and communicating. It then presents them with a list of suggested decisions with some metrics tied to them like chance of success and Net Present Value (NPV).

    The AI wouldn’t even have to do a good job! It would just have to get things wrong or make up bullshit whole cloth as much as human middle managers, or maybe even less!

    I think this is a possiblity not because the AI will do a good job, but because the ONE thing that LLMs seem to be good at is mimicking what a random human might type, including humans who are often ignorant or wrong.


  • I used a few different OSs before Windows 95 and I have also used a taskbar for the past 30 years. It’s just a design that I like. It’s like I feel grounded or something.

    I just use a single taskbar at the bottom of my left-most monitor though. I ain’t all fancy like you!


  • That would be a humongous world-changing announcement in a sane timeline. Half the people in our stupid culture wouldn’t even register it as a blip though.

    In situations like this I like to think of the history students a thousand years from now, assuming the earth is still habitable, etc.

    "So humanity’s first public recognition of extraterrestrial life only happened when it did to distract from the fact that the Big Country at the time had reelected the planet’s worst person AGAIN and they needed to delay justice until they died for… let me double check the text… they needed to delay getting in trouble for being at the top of a global human trafficking and rape operation?

    And I am supposed to believe these people had running water, airplanes, internet, and space programs? They lied about every other damn thing!"


  • Zink@programming.devtome_irl@lemmy.worldme_irl
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    3 days ago

    Well that’s a very healthy response.

    It kinda makes me want you to get in touch and pick up where you left off to continue this story! My dopamine demands it, lol.

    But I’m worried that if you are still in touch, she lives 1,000 miles away and/or has a family.


  • The tech companies are doing a great job at making me uninterested in the hottest new phones. I used to follow the news about them and know the tech specs and stuff, because I’m a nerd and gadgets are fun and smart phones in particular are the intersection of SO much technology and engineering. Moore’s law was alive and well during all my formative years, so I am even conditioned to expect the excitement.

    But lately, not only have I been ignoring what the big players are offering, I have been ignoring the phone I already have! Instead I have a PC at the end of the couch with a monitor on an arm that s swings right over my lap.

    I use my phone pretty much just for music, web browser, Voyager (Lemmy on the go), and occasional texting. When I am at home I will sometimes misplace my phone for hours and just not worry about it.

    I have already pushed the megacorp phone + social media experience so far out of my daily life, that if future options for open linux phones are rough around the edges and don’t have tap to pay then oh well I don’t think I care.

    It’s much easier to live without the shiny new thing once you see how well your brain does when separated from it. (and you have some loved ones who are still hopelessly addicted to the scroll)












  • In modern society it seems like our ideal use of technology is to insulate us from the natural world and get rid of the everyday tasks we have to do. If it adds to comfort and convenience, it’s generally successful.

    But I think this is bad for our health. When you think about our hunter-gatherer ancestors, those are people who evolved to walk around the forest all day constantly being busy. We don’t necessarily need the same sunshine, fresh air, exercise, and full range of sensory inputs in order to have fulfilling lives. But I bet that stuff is a huge help for the vast majority of us. Our privilege as modern humans is that we can pick and choose what we spend our time on, in the form of hobbies.

    Removing the process of learning is like the meta, higher-level version of removing the day-to-day work from our lives.

    So if AI ever gets that good to where we are fine not learning shit and trusting in the quadrillion-dollar black box, I hope that means we end up in the post-scarcity Star Trek future or else I fear it will only get worse from here.