Here's a fun AI story: a security researcher noticed that large companies' AI-authored source-code repeatedly referenced a nonexistent library (an AI "hallucination"), so he created a (defanged) malicious library with that name and uploaded it, and thousands of developers automatically downloaded and incorporated it as they compiled the code:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Another great piece about AI from @pluralistichttps://pluralistic.net/2024/04/01/human-in-the-loop/#monkey-in-the-middle
Cory pinpoints in a few succinct paragraphs how robot assistance has been and can be great and helpful and turns us into powerful "centaurs" but that the way to profits lies in "reverse centaurs" where AI is the pilot and humans are tasked to correct bot productions at superhuman speed, degrading us to robots. In other words, AI driven Automation is only profitable if it enshittifes our work and life.
Le toujours formidable Cory Doctorow aka @pluralistic sur l'usage des AI (et le fait que leur business modèle ne peut reposer que sur l'exploitation des humains, à la manière des entrepôts Amazon, au lieu de leur libération)
Reading this IRC log of #monkey-island (that Ron has briefly interacted) from 1999, and it's amazing that people are already hacking SCUMM files that far back, and the @scummvm project wasn't even conceived yet. Wild.
This one focuses on LLMs and the idea of the "reverse centaur", where a robot does the fun stuff while a human does the tedious, error-prone work.
I'll note from the periphery that, despite the current hype, AI is more than LLMs. There are other AI systems (e.g., Chess and Go players, VLSI design tools) that do have an internal model of the domain about which they are reasoning. Unfortunately, there's a slippery continuum:
solves the problem perfectly and deterministically
significantly outperforms any human
about as good as an expert human, but makes different, weird mistakes
there used to be a boat docked here. the boat was run by Affenpaule. Affenpaule had a #monkey and a #boat and dressed up as a pirate. him and the monkey took tourists and kids on boat trips down the river, telling yarns and doing sightseeing.
they have been gone for a while now, the boat, the monkey and Affenpaule. the dock is not the same without them. I remember Affenpaule, his monkey and his boat, and now so do you.
Its multiple story threads and attempts to satirise India’s government sit awkwardly with the action, but there’s much to admire in Dev Patel‘s frenzied, ultraviolet genre spectacle....Shot and choreographed with a kineticism that never veers too far into the sleekly balletic, the fight scenes here are often enthralling...
If you follow me, you know by now that I love wildlife. Closup encounters, bring em on. However this closeup kinda creeped me out. These are Barbary Macaque Apes. We were able to walk right with them. They were pretty aggressive if you had something wanted. They watched you and snuck up behind you and would grab you. This was on Gibralter. Anyone been there?
#AI#GenerativeAI#LLMs#Automation#Hallucinations: "The only reason bosses want to buy robots is to fire humans and lower their costs. That's why "AI art" is such a pisser. There are plenty of harmless ways to automate art production with software – everything from a "healing brush" in Photoshop to deepfake tools that let a video-editor alter the eye-lines of all the extras in a scene to shift the focus. A graphic novelist who models a room in The Sims and then moves the camera around to get traceable geometry for different angles is a centaur – they are genuinely offloading some finicky drudgework onto a robot that is perfectly attentive and vigilant.
But the pitch from "AI art" companies is "fire your graphic artists and replace them with botshit." They're pitching a world where the robots get to do all the creative stuff (badly) and humans have to work at a robotic pace, with robotic vigilance, in order to catch the mistakes that the robots make at superhuman speed.
Monkey Man review: a thrilling ultraviolent spectacle (www.bfi.org.uk)
Its multiple story threads and attempts to satirise India’s government sit awkwardly with the action, but there’s much to admire in Dev Patel‘s frenzied, ultraviolet genre spectacle....Shot and choreographed with a kineticism that never veers too far into the sleekly balletic, the fight scenes here are often enthralling...