What's been driving me nuts recently is when coworkers send me clearly AI-generated blocks of text in otherwise-human conversations. Like I'll ask in a chat window "hey, Jim, what's the difference between these two deployment pipelines," and I'll get back a block of text with markdown and headings in the style of our team's AI, and I get this sad feeling where I thought I was going to be having a conversation with a colleague, but instead my colleague was just playing as a chinese room.
There's a particular sting to being passed raw, unfiltered output from the LLM hose. I think you're onto something with the mismatch in expectations (I was expecting a conversation that led to insights we might both share, and the other party was expecting to answer a question quickly without much thought).
I think there's something deeper than that, too. Almost a feeling of betrayal? I cared in part because I thought everyone else cared, too, like we were working towards a common goal. Asking a question in search of shared understanding only to be passed the modern equivalent of a LMGTFY link hurts in a very particular way. I thought they cared about this, too, but they're only trying to get the bag. I get it, times are difficult right now, but it doesn't make it hurt less.
I must be lucky or work in a great company, because I've never seen this, and I think it would be totally unacceptable for a coworker to even think about doing this. What kind of horrible company culture normalizes this kind of behavior?
I wonder if this toxic "Why are you talking to me? Just RTFM or ATFLLM (ask the fucking llm)" attitude can be filtered out during interviewing.
And the response back will be "If you could've asked the AI, why did you ask me then?"
In some cases, it may even be the appropriate response. Interrupting somebody to ask something that could be cleared up by an AI is in the same ballpark as asking them something that could be cleared up if you read the docs.
You're way overthinking this. The administration told Anthropic to let them do something, Anthropic said no, and then they got pissy and started throwing rocks and wouldn't back down because the defining trait of this administration is that they walk into stupid positions and then refuse to back down because backing down would make them look weak and wrong.
Sure, but there's a difference between a fear being tenuously plausible but overblown/stoked, and a fear being flatly incorrect and inverted. The former is harder to counter. The latter still has the standard problem of lies propagating faster than the truth, but it at least theoretically should be countered by the truth.
At least in theory, many people perpetuating this myth are at least nominally convinced that it must be obviously true, because the zero-sum thinking is simpler than the reality.
Of course, the other problem is people going "my anecdote beats your study", because they personally know someone who blames immigration for losing their job, and a study of people in general still lets someone go "ah, but that's not always true".
I also think that the main fear - at least where I live - is not job loss but national identity and crime. At least that's what the anti-immigration political messaging is about. I haven't seen the job loss argument in the decade I've lived here.
Facts are much lesd helpful here because half of the perceived problem is emotional.
> Facts are much lesd helpful here because half of the perceived problem is emotional.
Well in countries like Denmark and Sweden the facts do show over representation of MENA immigrants (and their descendants) in violent crime. I don't think it's something that could or should be wished away. But I also don't think it's the main issue , it's for sure also a cultural/religious clash.
I work with immigrants for a living. It's a wonderfully complex issue, but one that I rarely enjoy discussing because it either makes racist people go mask-off, or makes progressive people think you're a racist person going mask-off.
I think that the issue is less cultural and more socioeconomic. Being "other"ed your entire life sucks. Making it in another country with far more limited resources sucks. It's hard to ignore the toll it takes on the people I interact with.
> I think that the issue is less cultural and more socioeconomic. Being "other"ed your entire life sucks. Making it in another country with far more limited resources sucks. It's hard to ignore the toll it takes on the people I interact with.
You can look at it like that. Another way to look at it is those accepting countries possibly saved your life (if you're claiming you're a refugee) or in the very least gave you a much much safer existence and better healthcare and standard of living. And it's really quite a big expense on the hosting countries who aren't doing that great themselves lately.
The socioeconomics explanation irks me - when you accept a refugee / low skilled worker they are almost by definition going to be poorer than the locals. There's absolutely no way you could equate their wealth to the locals. This is no one's fault, just the reality of taking in people from poorer countries and/or with low skills. I'm also not sure it's fair to say poorer immigrants are always more violent (you didn't say this but it was implied); immigrants from Thailand, India, Philipines into Europe are actually underrepresented in crime.
So yeah , this is complex I agree.
Why do you think the distinction matters ? Whether they're refugees, low skilled economic migrants or some kind of status holders like family renuions, they get a safer and better standard of living than what they had before and they get big budgets thrown at their integrations. Otherwise - why would they come ?
Because that's the word you're using and the people you're talking about, so it's what I'm addressing.
Economic migrants didn't have their lives saved. They were not welcomed to their host country as an act of charity. The conditional and transactional nature of their presence is made very clear to them.
> Economic migrants didn't have their lives saved. They were not welcomed to their host country as an act of charity.
There's lots of people who are not refugees and getting into Europe. They can come from places like Morocco, Turkey, Somalia or even Syria as it is now. The strict definition of refugee won't apply to many of them - yet they are able get in and stay (how is another discussion). The best definition would be economic migrant - they are not fleeing immediate war, their main motivation is getting a better standard of living.
I have no idea who you're working with but the definition refugee / legal migrant is not enough there's a lot of in between.
Is it crazy to expect at least a little gratitude from such people, or in the very least no hostility ? To me it is not crazy, you can disagree.
It's interesting to see people castigate the host country while wholly absolving their actual home countries from any fault. Like they expect the host country to be better at treating a person who migrates than the actual country the migrant leaves. If anything, people should focus on the faults of the country of origin and get them to treat and accept their own people as their own that they are. And if there is a problem that's driving people from their home countries, fix that. Don't add fuel to the fire where the country is left with the worst of all people with little chance to recover.
I mean, people worry about crime even in places where study after study shown that immigrants have lower crime rates. People see immigrant and assume crime. And I intentionally put "in places" in there, immigrant crime rates do differ between places.
And as similar data point, you see certain Americans scared of going to UK assuming some super high crime levels there ... while it has overall smaller crime levels then where they like. And you see rural people feeling super afraid the moment they step into a low crime city, because they are predisposed to think city = immoral crime.
You got it reverse - people look at prison populations and deduce criminality rate from there. Switzerland almost 3/4 are foreigners, Germany its 50% and so on.
Unless given country has similar % of foreigners (and of course they don't), you get where they come from and where the emotion 'foreigners bad' stems from. Even if one ignores flashy news about high profile attacks/criminality, which of course are impossible to ignore. Right or not, this statistics is primary level math that anybody can do in their head and even folks following populists will do.
Now what would you say to these people in such case? Bear in mind the topic is in western Europe, ie Germany so toxic that even saying above got high ranking people like police chiefs fired on spot. Exactly kind of dumb over-corrected setup that makes things like ADF thrive quietly, till election come and then folks are 'shocked' that they don't understand their own population at all.
> Now what would you say to these people in such case?
The honest thing would have been to tell them - you're right, yes there's an overrepresenation in crime - but we're working on it , it will get better in the 2nd and 3rd generation (it does but very slowly), etc. But lots of the establishment doesn't seem able to even do that - they have to completely deny the problem, by for example pulling tricks like counting immigrants from India, Thailand and MENA together, or by not allowing the collection of data at all. This is really bad policy imo.
>it will get better in the 2nd and 3rd generation (it does but very slowly)
What about african americans?
What about african amercians?
It's like I'm the stupid goose in the meme.
African americans were on track to be more wealthy and less crimey, same as every other poor ethnic group in the US has done before. Irish, Italians, Poles, etc. Something went off the rails.
What happened? It ain't the skin or some societal factor that gets applied because of the skin. We got plenty of African and Caribbean immigrants to use as control groups.
(I don't expect you to answer this question, I expect this question to make a lot of people around here uncomfortable.)
>by for example pulling tricks like counting immigrants from India, Thailand and MENA together, or by not allowing the collection of data at all. This is really bad policy imo.
>> It ain't the skin or some societal factor that gets applied because of the skin. We got plenty of African and Caribbean immigrants to use as control groups.
Are you saying that Jim Crow never happened? Pretty sure the violence was applied on the basis of skin color. Can you understand how a century of oppression and expropriation might retard your wealth and likelihood of ending up in jail, relative to an Italian or a Pole?
Why would (more recent) African immigrants be an appropriate group to compare against? They have a completely different economic and cultural history.
As for Caribbean people -- they have their own experiences of slavery and genocide. Migrants to the colonizing nations have not necessarily thrived.
And even if that would be a reasonable argument it would still be an argument for stopping more migration because otherwise you continue to have new first generations.
As someone who happens to be a descendant of one of the very rare pre-1965 immigrants from the subcontinent, I assure you I am not writing this from the inside of a jail cell.
> it is not said honestly out loud, because it is absolutely insane, and would be rightfully rejected
I don't think not saying it out loud is helping the current policy makers; the right and the far right understood right away this was their biggest point. By not engaging them in the discussion , or engaging with hand wavy trickery, you kinda lose the debate I think.
> people look at prison populations and deduce criminality rate from there.
They don't do that. They do not do that for local population either.
> Exactly kind of dumb over-corrected setup that makes things like ADF thrive quietly
Yeah, the far right exists only because of supposed left claim pops up again. The fact it, far right fans themselves tend to be more criminal and more violent then general population. And you make that claim in relation to Germany from all the places. AfD has large popularity roughly where Hitler was popular and roughly where communists led the country for years.
And their big things are more into "Russia should be our friend, actually", "we dont like modern art" and "the retirees will have super large pensions if we win".
1. Immigration to the U.S is very different than immigration to Europe in terms of outcome , and even immigration to Europe could be further disected; lots of differences if you come from MENA or come from Thailand
2. Not everything can be answered by gdp; there is a real issue of culture and values that could become eroded by huge influx of immigration causing societal strife.
> So the trade is your country gets (sort of) richer overall and the elites get richer while the average person gets poorer.
While the average salary decreases in this scenario it is entirely down to composition effects and does not necessarily mean anyone gets poorer.
Everyone existing employee's wages stay the same. The new immigrant paid less than the previous average but more than they were being paid in the country they moved from.
What I'm trying to say which doesnt seem obvious is that all models are x% correct at benchmarks until they get saturated, and then new benchmarks get made.
> I don’t like the idea that anything I say in a public setting...could end up in a transcript summary on someone’s personal device.
My friend, if there's a reporter standing behind you, it could end up on the nightly news. And it's been that way forever. Certainly, a plethora of terrifyingly broad data collection greatly exacerbates the problem, but it's not a new problem.
> bla bla bla...Amazon Echo...listening in on us without our knowledge or consent. I've lost track of how many times I've experienced or heard others...discussing a particular topic...and then as soon as they get on Facebook...they see posts and ads featuring the very topic they were discussing.
There are lots of real problems with surveillance tech, but the stuff about smart speakers specifically is still a dumb conspiracy theory. People are CONSTANTLY testing the hardware in these things and watching network activity. They really are not listening to you, and blindly repeating this claim greatly harms your credibility.
> bla bla bla...George Orwell envisioned in his dystopian novel 1984
Okay, new rule, these articles need to pick at least one other dystopian novel. There are so many. What's wrong with Fahrenheigh 451, where the government had everyone look out their doors in a mass manhunt? That's a good one! Use it to talk about Ring cameras or something.
>My friend, if there's a reporter standing behind you, it could end up on the nightly news. And it's been that way forever.
Can't tell if this is meant to be ironic or not. Are you seriously comparing a future consumer product to be potentially sold in the hundreds of millions with TV news reporters?
That’s simply not possible with the announced Apple products. Afaict, Apple will let people save *transcripts* of last 15s and save *summaries* of transcripts.
Re smart speakers / Google Assistant etc I think there have even been some lawsuits about inadvertent recording. I think they get it right most of the time, so my impression has been the lawsuits are about the mistakes.
That all said, as a technologist in the past I could say "of course they aren't recording you and data mining your conversations" because that's obviously an expensive and complicated proposition when much cheaper forms of data mining exist. But with AI advancements I think that calculus could change - the systems that could do this are already being built for other reasons; the main reason to not do it is cost but that's being eroded.
Performative nitpicking is tiresome, why equivocate? Either you agree with the thrust of the argument and are looking to strengthen it, or you disagree. Which is it?
> Certainly, a plethora of terrifyingly broad data collection greatly exacerbates the problem, but it's not a new problem.
I argue that this is a false equivalence. When the scale of something changes by an order of magnitude (or multiples thereof), it’s no-longer the same problem/circumstance.
Every single time any article about how terrible things are / how its getting worse, someone always pipes in about how "this has always been a problem" - which is a completely useless observation that in practice only has the effect of normalizing the terribleness.
We also know that there have been multiple instances of employees and low paid contractors listening to people having sex and talking about very personal things.
The NYT watches an event like Trump making a crowd of supporters swear to "cheat like hell" and to vote even if they're not registered, and they turn it into headlines like "Trump leads supporters in a pledge to vote." They are no longer a reliable source of accurate information.
I am misunderstanding, I am seeing direct quotes, is it an unserious the tone that’s not in the article? Because they seem to be reporting his words accurately.
Plausible. Figure 100 GB each of search index for Stack Overflow, Wikipedia, and GitHub issues, then add a dozen more for docs of all your favorite techs. So maybe half a terabyte. Download and build updated dumps of those once every week or two, and it'd work pretty well. Impractical, but possible.
They didn't go after Gore because he was wrong. They went after him because he committed the cardinal sin of really, earnestly taking a stand on a big issue. That is NEVER okay in South Park. There is never a correct side. Both sides must always be bad, on every issue. The "correct" view in South Park is always to not really take a stance on anything, and any character who is strongly on one side or the other on any issue will always be portrayed as wrong to do so.
That's not to say that South Park doesn't have some great episodes poking fun at some very deserving targets. They absolutely do. Some real gems in recent seasons.
As an example, you do realize that in the South Park episode where Gerald starts farting into a wine glass after buying an electric car, they're not making fun of people who buy electric cars, but rather people who think they're special for having bought an electric car, right?
And with Gore, it's not that he took a huge stance, it's that his messaging was goofy and ineffective.
That's just it, though. The people who buy electric cars because they want to help the environment are wrong. They're only doing a good thing because they're self righteous pricks who are full of themselves. They're just as bad as the polluters.
The people who want to stop smoking are wrong because they're self righteous pricks who are full of themselves. They're worse than the cigarette companies.
The guy who want to help the environment is wrong because he's a self righteous prick who is full of himself.
The folks raising awareness about North Korea are wrong because raising awareness isn't actually helping people directly. It's just a bunch of self righteous pricks who are full of themselves.
Any one of those episodes has a perfectly valid point to make. But taken as a whole, the overarching message is that both sides are always bad, and the one that sounds like it wants to make the world a little better is probably worse than the evil they're opposing.
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
Pedantry is a double-edged sword, I replied to a comment beginning with the unequivocal: "They have not changed."
In fact they've changed a lot, their sense of humor, how they make the show, their willingness to embrace a broader viewpoint, and yes their ability to admit that they screwed up something important. It may not be as much change as you'd like, but that's a different question.
That's ridiculous. It is perfectly reasonable to live a normal life by the current standards of the world while advocating for political change that will change those standards to be better for the environment.
What if the mansion had balloons and the jet was grounded? /s The point of shows like SP taking on targets like Gore were their eco-shaming angles; these people we know of and hear of are polished products of Corp. Inc. and if they have a green angle it's accompanied by green-washing, which will have anti and pro groupies alongside stirring up discourse that is both helpful and non
Your observation of the contradiction is correct, but reductionist to a fault. If Gore would have been better than Dubya, and if campaigning requires travel, etc.
I take it you don't decry hydro for the use of concrete?
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