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clucas

1,037 karma · joined June 22, 2018

Email: the "c" is for Carl, and my address is first name dot last name at gmail.
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clucas··on Google has removed Conversations_im from the Play Store
Right, I understand about wear, but my point is that the behavior described in the links doesn't indicate that Chrome was scanning backup or media drives - only things like the registry, files directly related to Chrome, etc. If I have a drive with a bunch of random files on it, Chrome wasn't scanning those, was it?
clucas··on Google has removed Conversations_im from the Play Store
This is interesting, I didn't know Chrome did this. But it doesn't back up the claim that "[i]f you have media or backup drives [Chrome] just constantly adds wear to them." Does anyone have anything on that?
clucas··on On the Proposed California SB 1047
Actually I take it all back, the car is a really good model for how we should handle AI safety.

With cars, we let most people use some very dangerous but also very useful tools. Our approach, as a society, to making those tools safe is multi-layered. We require driver's ed and license drivers to make sure they know how to be safe. We register cars as a tool to trace ownership. We have rules of the road that apply to drivers. We have safety rules that apply to manufacturers (and limit what they are allowed to let those tools do). If a user continues to break the rules, we revoke their license. If the manufacturer breaks the rules, we make them do a recall.

I actually agree with you 100%, this is probably a good way to think about regulating AI. Some rules apply to individual users. Some rules apply to the makers of the tools. We can come together as a society and determine where we want those lines to be. Let's do it.

clucas··on On the Proposed California SB 1047
> not trying to come up with convoluted regulations on tools just because of their potential to be used badly

and

> You'd just be increasing the costs of producing software and distribution means (thinking of stuff like YouTube). It's just setting up already powerful companies to become even more powerful by raising the bar on what potential competition must be ready for from the get-go.

These arguments could be made against any "custom" regulatory scheme like what we have for drugs, cars, airplanes, etc. But sometimes the unique harms presented by certain classes of products require unique regulatory schemes.

Maybe you're right (I hope you are) and the potential harms of AI are not really significant enough to warrant any special regulation. But I don't think that is _obviously_ the case, and I would be careful when it comes to talking with normies about this stuff - AI does seem to be really scary, and hearing a techie hand-wave their concerns over technology they don't understand has the potential to make it worse. Good luck out there buddy.

clucas··on On the Proposed California SB 1047
> Someone using deepfakes to e.g. hide facial disfigurement from their employer isn't someone I mind using deepfakes.

I agree here. But what about the harder questions? Do you think deepfake porn of celebrities should be allowed? What about deepfake porn of an unpopular student at the local high school?

If these aren't allowed, where is the best place to prevent them, but still has minimal impact on the allowed uses? At the root level of the software capable of producing them (what seems to be proposed in TFA)? At the user level (car analogy)? At the distribution level (copyright-style)? I don't know the answer to these questions, but I think we should all be talking and thinking about them.

clucas··on On the Proposed California SB 1047
As I said down-thread a bit... the issue with your car analogy is that we force everyone to get a license and register their car before they can drive around. Do you want to have to get a license and register your AI model before you're allowed to start generating images or text? If so, maybe that is a solution. But I doubt anyone would accept that sort of system. So, saying "you can't sue Honda if someone drives into you," while true, doesn't really get us anywhere in addressing the issues with AI.
clucas··on On the Proposed California SB 1047
This analogy is strained, because when it comes to motor vehicles, aside from the concept of "street legal" cars that limit what you can do with the vehicle, we also have cops that patrol the streets and cameras that can catch people breaking the rules based on license plate. Theoretically you can't drive around without being registered.

What's the equivalent of that for AI? Should there be a watermark so police can trace an image back to a particular person's software? If that isn't acceptable (and I don't think it would be), how do we prevent people from producing deep fakes? At the distribution level? These are hard problems, and I don't think the car analogy really gets us anywhere.

clucas··on Trains were designed to break down after third-party repairs, hackers find
>It's then only "silent sabotage" to the extent that said docs were ignored.

From what I've read, the maintenance company did scour all documentation and found no explanation for why the train was disabled. It was an entirely undocumented feature. Maybe they were just lying, but this idea you have in your head that it was just a fly-by-night operation who couldn't be bothered to read the documentation is contradicted by the available public record.

clucas··on Trains were designed to break down after third-party repairs, hackers find
You are putting forth some general rules that seem reasonable, but they don't really apply in this situation.

From what I've read, the train operator bid out the maintenance for these trains, and the manufacturer lost the bid to a third party. So your "opt-out" system should absolutely have been triggered here.

If there was some reason to believe that the low bidder would be incapable of safely performing the maintenance, the train manufacturer should have raised that issue publicly, not silently sabotaged the low bidder's ability to perform the maintenance.

clucas··on X Won't Demonetize Russell Brand, the Company Tells Pro-Censorship British MPs
Do you think it should be illegal for companies to make advertising decisions based on the politics of the content their ad might run on?
clucas··on Ron Patrick's Street-Legal Jet Powered Volkswagen Beetle (2006)
Having an ICE that drives a generator (alternator?) to power a traction motor(s), without being mechanically linked to the drivetrain, is how diesel locomotives operate. I believe the concept also has been (is being?) explored for linehaul trucks. But I'm not sure what constraints there are on passenger vehicles though... I'm also curious.

If I had to guess, I would bet that the constraints are more commercial than physical... hybrids are already very efficient, so the market for such a vehicle would probably not justify the engineering costs. But that's just a guess!

clucas··on I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser
I have no idea if the story is true or not, hence the "if true" clause in my post. I was just pointing out that focusing on the technical aspect is missing the point of the story... the degradation could have been triggered by any number of things, the point of the story was the allegation that Google purposely triggered it and disingenuously used that degradation to claim their browser was faster.
clucas··on Authors sue OpenAI for using their works without proper licensing
What about the second part of my post, where the LLM has NOT been trained on the specific meter, but it does have some "concept" (maybe not the right word, but bear with me) of what meter is, so the human prompter can say "write a poem about subject S, with meter M" and get something in the style of that poet, without having been trained on it... sounds like you're OK with that scenario?

Full disclosure: I think I probably disagree with you on some points you've made in this thread, but I'm not going for any gotchas right now, I am just trying to map the contours of what you think is OK and not OK. We're all sort of flying blind on this stuff, so getting a sense of what others are thinking is really important in my mind. Appreciate the engagement.

clucas··on Authors sue OpenAI for using their works without proper licensing
> copyright owners can dictate how their work is used (with some exceptions), and if that use hurts the copyright owner, the owner should have the right to forbid it.

Consider a poet who publishes poetry in some unique meter, or has some other unique stylistic structure for which they are well known... should they be allowed to sell copies of their poems that can be used for reading only, but prevents usage of those stylistic devices by other authors?

I'm going to assume that we agree the answer is "no, the author should not be able to prevent those uses" at least for human consumers of their works. This is how art has always developed... even though that use "hurts the copyright owner" by diluting the market for works with that style, the owner does NOT have the right to forbid it.

Now, let's say that same poet drew a lot of inspiration from a bunch of out-of-copyright poets. Let's also say that I train an AI model on the poet's inspirations, but NOT on the poet's work directly. Then I ask the AI to write a poem in the style of the poet's inspirations, and to include the unique stylistic device for which that poet is famous. In your world, is this OK?

clucas··on I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser
You are picking the least important detail of the story. The deal is, Google found a simple way to kill the performance of a rival browser... so they exploited it and immediately started advertising how slow the rival was. By the time the rival fixed the performance issue, the damage was done. If true, that's pretty dirty, and it directly contributed to the growing browser monoculture.
clucas··on On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations
I think you should go back and re-read the post I initially replied to.
clucas··on On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations
OP claimed it was reasonable to say "Russia won't invade" because he claimed the US does things similar to Russia's buildup, but it doesn't invade.

I was saying that, whatever your thoughts about US military policy, its deployment patterns are not, in fact, anything like what Russia did in late 2021/early 2022.

Pointing out that the US has troops in other countries, and a massive military in general, does not address the point.

clucas··on On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations
I think this situation is different from hundreds of thousands of troops and thousands of pieces of armor and artillery being moved to the border over the course of a couple months.
clucas··on On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations
So... zero on the border with Russia or China.
clucas··on On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations
What are you talking about? Can you provide one example of the US doing a buildup on the Russian or Chinese border that was even a quarter the size of the Russian buildup ahead of their full-scale invasion?
clucas··on Adding water to Martian soil samples might have been a bad idea
I see. The OP article doesn't say anything about throwing away planetary protection guidelines... are you saying that there is no way to do the mission discussed in the article without relaxing or eliminating these guidelines?

I feel like I'm wading into the middle of a lover's quarrel, where the words have nothing to do with the actual fight...

clucas··on Adding water to Martian soil samples might have been a bad idea
On a quick scan, I'm not seeing anything in your linked article that counters either your selected quote, or the thrust of the OP. Can you help me out by pointing to a section or summarizing the argument?
clucas··on Iowa School District is using ChatGPT to determine banned books
Do you see a difference between a library choosing to sell old books to make room for new ones, and being forced to remove books for political reasons? If not, then I guess I cannot help you. Good luck out there buddy.
clucas··on Iowa School District is using ChatGPT to determine banned books
The article indicates that they are actually removing books that are already in libraries. So it's more like I just got kicked out of the party and you're playing ridiculous word games saying I wasn't "banned" because there's a party down the street I can go to.

Also, you didn't answer the question: would Facebook removing my ability to post be considered "banning"?

clucas··on Iowa School District is using ChatGPT to determine banned books
Would you consider Facebook preventing a user from posting to be "banning" or "censorship"? Even though they can still post on, say, Twitter?
clucas··on Bots can complete CAPTCHAs quicker than humans
Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/810/
clucas··on Your computer should say what you tell it to say
> as if they already operate effective mind control at systemic scale.

If the logical conclusion of your reasoning is a mass mind control conspiracy, you should revisit your assumptions.

> somehow they can bully into submission basically the entire universe

I don't think anyone is bullying all of society. I think most people just don't care. It's really not that crazy, no mind control involved. Just good old fashioned apathy and ignorance.

clucas··on Help the Library of Congress create games to improve public knowledge of civics
StateCraft
clucas··on A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
Thank you!
clucas··on A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
Added to cart, thank you!
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