Algorithms are used to dictate speed, behaviour and, ultimately, the wages of gig workers, resulting in different payments for the same work conducted at the same time, with the same skills
This is exactly the sort of thing I’m worried about with AI.
Let’s take a quick step back. AI/Machine Learning is a program that is set to learn how to accomplish one specific job, and to do that job very well. For this example, let’s say the AI needs to be able to identify any picture with a cat in it. Programmers develop the framework for this code, and then feed the AI with test cases aimed to “teach” the AI how to do this job with minimal errors. It will be fed correct pictures as well as incorrect ones (some with other animals, or paintings rather than pictures). With enough test cases and human confirmation that the results were correct or incorrect, the AI can successfuly identify pictures of cats with little to no errors.
But thing is, and this is important, the developers of AI generally don’t know exactly how the AI program is able to make these determinations. They just feed it test cases and confirmation when the bot is right. AIs obviously don’t have human brains and think the way we do, so the connections they make are through various patterns that people may not be able to determine. This is fine with identifying cat photos, but let’s apply this back to the Uber and DoorDash payment methods. This means that these companies are not paying their employees based on human standards and expectations of a job well done, but based off of pattern recognition from an AI that may lower or raise pay based off of elements that are completely unknown to the worker and the company, and may not even be items the company wants to encourage (they just don’t know what the AI is rewarding).
I have no concerns of the unrealistic “robots cause the apocalypse” nonsense that hollywood loves, my concern is people assigning AI jobs that AI shouldn’t do and assuming AI is some master super intellect instead of the trained program it is.
Meta has launched a twitter alternative called “Threads”. The application allows Instagram accounts and followers to be migrated directly. From what I can find, there are already over 90 million users using threads.[1] It is Meta’s plan to allow Threads to interact via ActivityPub with other platforms in the fediverse....
Hey I just wanted to say thank you for this, I understand how generally anti-defederation you are based on past posts and I really appreciate someone who can re-evaluate their stance on a case by case basis like this as new information comes up.
Exactly what the title says. I used to look at Reddit and spend 2+ hours minimum every single day, more on the weekends. Once the API changes were announced and the protest date hit, I decided I would stop using it regardless of what happened moving forward....
Hah, fair enough. I was using that more as the generic “go do something that’s not just reading Reddit posts on a computer all day”. But I have also been hiking!
Utah scientists knew that the Great Salt Lake has been drying up, and they have been warning the politicians for years about it. But nothing’s been done, the alfalfa farmers suck up water like nobody’s business and the politicians don’t want to do any major actions that would actually solve the issue. I don’t have the exact figure off the top of my head, but the water level has dropped over half the original height now. A bit frightening to see, I’m convinced the lake will be gone entirely within my lifetime.
The dust causing the snow to melt is the least of our worries, the Great Salt Lake is absolutely nasty. Who knows what kind of dangerous pollutants will now be kicked up by the air?
I saw someone recommending Aether aside from Lemmy and Kbin, what is it ? googling Aether give me...
"According to ancient and medieval science, aether, also known as the fifth element or quintessence, is the material that fills the region of the universe beyond the terrestrial sphere. "
I am looking for a community that recommends purchases for items that last a long time, are durable, generally worth their money. For example clothing brands that avoid fast fashion, pots and pans that don’t lose their coating after one year, things like that.
That’s a bummer, I hope you heal up quickly! I am curious while we are on the topic though, do you make use of any bots to assist with the number of posts, or do you just frequent certain news/scientific journals?
This is really interesting. One of my family members has ADHD and I was about to say “huh I have this cycle and I don’t have ADHD.” I guess it’s possible I have it but never got it diagnosed because it’s mild enough that I’m functioning without medication/support, but at the same time I wonder if this is actually truly unique to ADHD or a behavior that’s just commonly classified with it.
Politics aside, why debate Joe Rogan about vaccines? He’s not a scientist, he’s an entertainer. I don’t get my medical advice from a person without trained medical knowledge. I wouldn’t take mechanical advice from someone who’s not a mechanic or works heavily with cars in their freetime, that’s how you can mess up your car. Why would this be different? People need to stop giving his opinions so much value when he has zero related education/experience to back them up…
Some researchers have suggested that women’s role as hunters was confined to the past, with more recent foraging societies following the paradigm of men as hunters and women as gatherers. To investigate that possibility, Anderson and colleagues analyzed data from the past 100 years on 63 foraging societies around the world,...
To be fair, this assumption didn’t come from nowhere. This was based on existing hunter/gatherer communities. From this interview on it:
“This is the period starting roughly 200,000 years ago when we first emerged as a species that ended about 9,000 years ago when humans started to develop agriculture and settlements. But all over the world, there have been a fair number of people in remote areas who still live this foraging life, and so scholars have looked to them as a sort of window into humanity’s past. Anthropologists would go live with them, produce detailed reports, and the sense was that all these accounts pointed to men mainly hunting and women mainly gathering with occasional exceptions.”
While this aspect is pure speculation on my part, it also likely fit the culture’s perception of women back when the original “men hunt, women gather” hypothesis came out, people tend to want to believe what fits their worldview.
Hello! I posted a few days ago on !houseplants and one of the comments mentioned there was this succulent-specific community so I figured I would post here as well! So for a bit of background I have a black thumb, I’ve tried caring for plants in the past and they always seem to die on me. I’m trying to change this! I bought...
Usually neglect, and then when I realize (seeing wilting or things like that) an over-compensation of watering. Which is why I think succulents may be the better call because apparently they generally require less frequent watering
As if we didn’t have enough to worry about with microplastics… I try not to be pessimistic but it’s hard not to when more plastic is being made and chucked into the ocean every day
My dad and I did the same thing in our woods, except for us the invasive species was buckthorn! Buckthorn was brought in as a nice bush/hedge plant and ends up taking over. It’s incredible how many different plants grew in their place.
Below are the current succulents I have! I generally have a black thumb, but I’m trying to change that. Any gotchas to keep in mind when taking care of succulents? I already learned the hard way that I need to keep the dwarf jade indoors because direct sun causes the leaves to brown....
Oh no worries! The succulents I have are a split rock, dwarf jade, panda plant, echeveria elegans, and I forget the name of the last one but it looks spiky (I’ll look it up later). Three of them are in classic terracotta pots with the single large hole in the bottom, so I could likely do the bottom-up watering method with those :)
Yeah I’ve noticed that one growing a little taller lately, been putting it in direct sun so hopefully that helps it out! But yeah my current goal is to keep them alive first, so if the plant gets unnaturally tall but still otherwise happy I’ll take that as a win.
I wanted to quickly plug one of my favorite YouTube channels for quick summaries of mythology. OSP does make adjustments for entertainment purposes, but generally does a pretty good job representing various myths, folklore, and origins of such in digestible chunks.
I used to be an avid reader, but years of high school and depression completely ruined that. I haven’t been able to complete a novel since senior year six years ago. It’s frustrating to me and I want to know how I can overcome my lack of focus and anxiety. I’ve heard I’m not alone when it comes to this sort of thing at...
While I can’t speak to the mental health mentioned in this post, I used to read all the time, but by the time high school years hit that dwindled and I could barely read a chapter without wanting to do something else. I think that social media really took a toll on my attention span (though I can’t prove that).
What helped me was making a book club with some friends of mine! When I had a deadline in place where if I didn’t finish chapters at a set time (otherwise I wouldn’t be able to properly have a conversation about it with them) that really helped motivate me. This also had the added benefit of exposing me to books I wouldn’t normally read (this is how I was introduced to House of Leaves). I still don’t dive deep into a book as easily as I used to, but it has been improving and like anything else just generally comes with practice.
Honestly I never truly understood the appeal of cryptocurrency in general.
If you want to make an anonymous deal, cold hard cash gets the job done and doesn’t have nearly as poor of an environmental impact. I guess if you really want to make sure online purchases are anonymous then it can be hard to do that with cash, but unless you are buying something blatantly illegal that shouldn’t be too large of a concern (at least if you are in a first world country). The whole “decentralized” currency argument also falls pretty flat when some of the top used cryptocurrencies are not decentralized (Tether, Usd Coin).
Cryptocurrency feels less like an innovation to fit a need, and more like somebody created something cool as a concept and tried to figure out a use case after the fact.
Apps like Uber and DoorDash use AI to determine pay. Workers say this makes it impossible to predict wages (archive.is)
Algorithms are used to dictate speed, behaviour and, ultimately, the wages of gig workers, resulting in different payments for the same work conducted at the same time, with the same skills
Defederation (at least temporary) with Meta's new project [Threads.net]
Meta has launched a twitter alternative called “Threads”. The application allows Instagram accounts and followers to be migrated directly. From what I can find, there are already over 90 million users using threads.[1] It is Meta’s plan to allow Threads to interact via ActivityPub with other platforms in the fediverse....
Leaving Reddit unironically made me touch grass
Exactly what the title says. I used to look at Reddit and spend 2+ hours minimum every single day, more on the weekends. Once the API changes were announced and the protest date hit, I decided I would stop using it regardless of what happened moving forward....
Dust From the Drying Great Salt Lake Is Wreaking Havoc on Utah's Snow (www.smithsonianmag.com)
A community for long-lasting purchases?
I am looking for a community that recommends purchases for items that last a long time, are durable, generally worth their money. For example clothing brands that avoid fast fashion, pots and pans that don’t lose their coating after one year, things like that.
The ADHD Burnout Cycle (mander.xyz)
Joe Rogan wants a "debate" on vaccine science. Don’t give it to him. How to have better conversations about contentious scientific subjects. (www.vox.com)
Shattering the myth of men as hunters and women as gatherers (phys.org)
Some researchers have suggested that women’s role as hunters was confined to the past, with more recent foraging societies following the paradigm of men as hunters and women as gatherers. To investigate that possibility, Anderson and colleagues analyzed data from the past 100 years on 63 foraging societies around the world,...
Trying to learn how to take care of plants, advice welcome!
Hello! I posted a few days ago on !houseplants and one of the comments mentioned there was this succulent-specific community so I figured I would post here as well! So for a bit of background I have a black thumb, I’ve tried caring for plants in the past and they always seem to die on me. I’m trying to change this! I bought...
Microplastic Exposure Breeds Antimicrobial Resistance | Laboratory research shows that someway, somehow, PVC plastic makes microbes more virulent and resilient. (hakaimagazine.com)
We have forgotten what a 'natural' river even looks like (theconversation.com)
What medicine-related charities/research do you donate to or keep a close eye on?
I am curious what everyone else is focusing on or supporting in research and why....
Growing Succulents! Advice welcome.
Below are the current succulents I have! I generally have a black thumb, but I’m trying to change that. Any gotchas to keep in mind when taking care of succulents? I already learned the hard way that I need to keep the dwarf jade indoors because direct sun causes the leaves to brown....
Good YouTube channel for quick myth summaries (www.youtube.com)
I wanted to quickly plug one of my favorite YouTube channels for quick summaries of mythology. OSP does make adjustments for entertainment purposes, but generally does a pretty good job representing various myths, folklore, and origins of such in digestible chunks.
Need help learning how to read books again
I used to be an avid reader, but years of high school and depression completely ruined that. I haven’t been able to complete a novel since senior year six years ago. It’s frustrating to me and I want to know how I can overcome my lack of focus and anxiety. I’ve heard I’m not alone when it comes to this sort of thing at...
This boi is 111 years old (www.aaas.org)
New data proves almost no one uses Bitcoin as currency. It's actually more like gambling (theconversation.com)