RickRussell_CA

joined 2 years ago
 

Watch the video; it's not a chaotic fracas. The officer behind the journalist quite carefully aims and fires and hits the journalist

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

the most generous reading of your arguments is that you are philosophically defeatist

That's probably a fair assessment.

But I feel like the core of my argument remains: I'm not disputing that MS or Google or Amazon or Apple services are sold to people and orgs who use them to commit evil. Of course they are.

But these aren't munitions. They are general-purpose computing products being turned to evil outcomes by bad actors. The article, for example, cites Microsoft's open-source LAVENDER, which is a general purpose image and video analysis tool for AI. Describing it as:

‘Lavender’, an AI-powered system designed to identify bombing targets

This simply isn't true. Somebody in the Israeli military used LAVENDER to process video data to identify bombing targets, like somebody might use a hammer to smash someone's head in. The articles you cite are full of rhetorical tricks to imply that Microsoft corporate had some hand in the decision making, but it's genuinely all "well the Israeli military has some Azure servers, therefore Microsoft killed people".

Which militaries should Microsoft (or Google or Apple or Amazon, etc) be allowed to sell products to? Who makes that determination? A cohort of employees or consumers? NGOs?

If government makes the call -- distilling a public consensus on the matter, one hopes -- then I can see some reasonable way to approach this question.

EDIT: Details on LAVENDER:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/lavender-unifying-video-language-understanding-as-masked-language-modeling/

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I just don't see it doing any good. Why would Israel's military, supplied with US military hardware, care about Microsoft? Or Apple or Google or Amazon or... I'm sure none of their critical military infrastructure is in danger if one or several of these companies turn on them.

And how does Microsoft even enforce this ban? Turn off Windows remotely? It's not even clear how such a ban on Israel-linked business would work.

If world governments want to put sanctions on Israel and Gaza to try and make the two governments come to the table, I think that's a much better strategy.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

Honestly, I struggle to draw a connection between world conflict and non-military technology like Windows or cell phones or whatever.

Is every single Israeli resident complicit in what their government is doing? None of them should be allowed to use Windows? What about Israelis outside of Israel? What about people who support Israel? What about (gasp) Jews? How do you even enforce any of this without massive overreach by the companies?

Call on Microsoft or Apple all you want, ultimately I don't think a company should ban sales to customers on the argument that those customers might not have morals aligned to the company. Not that it's even possible, with world supply chains being what they are.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago

Capitalism does an extremely poor job of planning beyond the next accounting period.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (2 children)

With respect to the article, it's wrong. AI help desk is already a thing. Yes, it's terrible, but human help desk was already terrible. Businesses are ABSOLUTELY cutting out tier 1 call center positions.

LLMs are exceptionally good at language translation, which should be no surprise as that kind of statistical chaining is right up their alley. Translators are losing jobs. AI Contract analysis & legal blacklining are going to put a lot of junior employees and paralegals out of business.

I am very much an AI skeptic, but I also recognize that people who do the things LLMs are already pretty good at are in real trouble. As AI tools get better at more stuff, that target list of jobs will grow.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

Took them 30 seconds to throw animators under the bus to make their point.

It's hopeless. We're all just gonna eat each other so the billionaire class can go live in a giant space station.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

It was the style at the time.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Unfortunately the strike ended just a few days ago -- organizers have vowed to come back with a new plan, since Amazon refused to negotiate.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Well, game journalists need to sell gaming hardware and AAA games. Those guys have the ad money.

Just play what you like.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Perhaps, but I don't read anything on Substack unless I'm subscribed. Reputation is the entire point on Substack, without it, the content will get no traffic.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (2 children)

AI with dedicated nuclear power? I can't imagine anything that could possiblye go wrong in this scenario.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago
 

Article includes an interactive & searchable map of commercial air pollution hot spots

 

Avram Piltch is the editor in chief of Tom's Hardware, and he's written a thoroughly researched article breaking down the promises and failures of LLM AIs.

 

Excerpt:

Batteries are going to transform transportation and could also be key in storing renewables like wind or solar power for times when those resources aren’t available. So in a way, they’re a central technology for the two sectors responsible for the biggest share of emissions: energy and transportation.

And if you want to understand what’s coming in batteries, you need to look at what's happening right now in battery materials. The International Energy Agency just released a new report on the state of critical minerals in energy, which has some interesting battery-related tidbits. So for the newsletter this week, let’s dive into some data about battery materials.

 

Excerpt:

Ibadan, 16 July 2023. – Andøya Spaceport is building Norway’s first Spaceport on Andøya, from where it can launch payloads with orbital launch vehicles into polar and sun-synchronous orbits. The Spaceport will provide the ground infrastructure for launch operator companies to launch small satellites into orbit. Furthermore, the initial capability includes a new launch pad, an integration hall where users can assemble and integrate their payloads into the rockets. The facility will also offer control rooms for operating tests, launch operations, and range activities.

 

Excerpt:

In the past few years, museums around the world have started to grapple with questions about the origins and ethics of their collections. This includes the acquisition and maintenance of natural history specimens. As museums examine their missions and processes, it seemed like a good time to talk to Sean Decatur, the new president of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City. ...

Determining the proper home for objects from Indigenous groups in the United States is governed by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. I asked Decatur how the museum views compliance with these regulations when questions are raised about whether objects or specimens should be in New York. For items that belong to North American Indigenous groups, he emphasized that a clear process exists for repatriation and that the museum has resources to work with Indigenous groups who claim ownership of objects that are in the museum’s collection. But he also wants to make sure that commitments are “more than lip service” by ensuring that the museum returns items that are not now, and were not in the past, collected under terms that do not meet today’s ethical standards. Moreover, Decatur is focused on building fulsome partnerships devoted to healing and moving forward from the past. “There’s more to returning items as a repatriation process than just putting them in the mail,” he said.

...

 

Excerpt:

Astronomical radio sources, while intrinsically intense, are also far away. What little of their signal reaches Earth is therefore really faint: A single mobile phone on the surface of the Moon would outshine all but the very brightest of them.

Communication signals of Earth-orbiting satellites are much stronger but are by regulation limited to certain wavelengths. They’re also known to radio astronomers, who can filter them out. However, leakage radiation may result in artificial signals at unintended wavelengths. Leakage typically comes from human activity on the ground, but with the number of satellites literally skyrocketing, astronomers are becoming concerned about the effect from space. Now, a team has announced the first detection of this electromagnetic interference from satellites.

“Leakage radiation from artificial satellites as a possible interference first appeared in our minds only about two years ago,” recalls Benjamin Winkel (Max-Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, Germany, and Committee on Radio Astronomy Frequencies, France). “Back then, nobody knew how strong such an effect would be, and if this was more than just a theoretical problem.”

...

 

Excerpt:

More than 61,000 people died because of Europe’s record-shattering heat wave last summer, scientists have concluded. And that’s probably still an underestimation.

The figure is just shy of the 70,000 excess deaths researchers attribute to another exceptional heat wave that swept Europe in 2003. That disaster helped raise awareness about the dangers of climate change and the continent’s general lack of heat action plans.

Yet the new findings suggest that in the two decades since, efforts to prepare for a hotter future and protect the continent’s most vulnerable populations have fallen short.

...

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