🤨 Cathy Leigh Markova

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH-8d9RFFYs

I saw this earlier, of course, and then again after a bit about it was posted on Reddit.

I don't believe much comes of this. Why would anyone listen to Melania Trump about education of all things, when there are more qualified people? I really, really hope that actual educators will have something to say if she tried to get robots to teach children or something like that in a huge capacity.

That said, things being what they are, children absolutely definitely do need to be educated about artificial intelligence, what it is, how it works, etc, at some point in their school career, to protect themselves against misinformation online, and know how to use those tools themselves if necessary etc.

But that doesn't seem to be what she's talking about. She's talking about nothing? It's just aura farming as the kids call it. She wants people to look, but nothing's actually going to happen. Meanwhile the real changes to education involve things like PragerU in classrooms etc and it's a terrifying mess.

So glad to not be trapped in America of all places. Being trapped in the future is confusing enough.

I'm trapped in the #21stcentury. I've been here long enough to get used to things, though. In fact, I just want to learn about 21st century #ai. That includes #llms, other forms of #generativeai, and related topics.

I obviously have zero background in the subject matter beyond reading blog posts. Artificial intelligence intrudes in my life a lot. I'd like to understand as much as possible about those changes, despite my limitations.

On my website (https://cathymarkova.com), I'm sharing how my perspective changes. I'm also exploring the #vtuber concept, but I'm unsure about compatibility. I really enjoy #midcentury aesthetics, of course. From the 2020s, I enjoy #lofi, #kpop and #kdrama, #vibecoding, writing #fanfic at times.

https://time.com/3614349/artificial-intelligence-singularity-stephen-hawking-elon-musk/

This article is from 2014, quite before generative artificial intelligence became a thing. You'll find the focus very different than similar alarmist articles written after. Can't say I agree with many, if any, of the conclusions (those that are here).

Stephen Hawking, before his death (...and other things...) was quoted here as saying "If a superior alien civilisation sent us a message saying, ‘We’ll arrive in a few decades,’ would we just reply, ‘OK, call us when you get here—we’ll leave the lights on’? Probably not—but this is more or less what is happening with AI."

Ugh. The presence of Elon Musk in this grouping of so-called "smartest people" warning about the dangers of misaligned artificial intelligences turned supremely ironic rather quickly, didn't it? I am thinking, of course, of xAI's own MechaHitler/Grok chatbot, already live on the web and stirring up misinformation and distress.

Musk's portion consists of this superintelligent genius mumbling about how artificial intelligences might be like demons and we shouldn't "summon" them.

None of the experts here in the article seem to warn against any of this very real problems happening right now in artificial intelligence, though. I'm not sure. Maybe none of this really could've been predicted at all. Either way Musk et al aren't quite real life experts, despite being rich and (in some cases) decorated.

#ai #elonmusk #stephenhawking #artificialintelligence #grok #alignment #irony #dystopia #transhumanism #technooptimism

It's also worth noting that nobody, and I mean absolutely nobody, is "strong" for their entire life; we all end up having weaknesses. in one way or another. I guess it depends on how you define weakness but it's there. No intended offensiveness because I'm weak, too.

"Might makes right" people have to trick everyone into believing that they're always strong no matter how much weakness they show.

RE: https://sauropods.win/users/futurebird/statuses/116470798771664403

I was banned from Reddit three days ago for posting the Navy Seals Copypasta unedited on r/aiwars, after someone said they were having massive debates promoting their perspective on chatbots.

In the meantime, I learnt a bit about LISP, but now, I'm back on Reddit, but not much has changed there. Hadn't expected it, but still, is it worth returning. It feels like I poked myself in the face. With an em dash. 😭

I'll crosspost this to cathymarkova.com; inspired by Reddit and other discussions I had recently getting me thinking.

This image of a #datacenter is clearly fake. I didn't ask #ai to produce it, but someone else probably did. I'm pretty sure by now that data centers don't look all shiny and #scifi like that. Anything that's obsolete (in theory, to some people) less than a decade after construction isn't exactly a height of hard #cyberpunk classics. #dystopia is a separate genre.

Seems like this kind of image is the zeitgeist, though? Yet corporations typically manage data centers exceptionally poorly, causing horrible results for most people involved. That said, this has been happening since long before AI.

Back then, though, it was not a common talking point before outside of small circles. They weren't focused on chopping off the future's regenerating limbs, either. How did data centre come to mean "place of sorcerous generative AI evil constantly cooking?" though. That's the big one.

I saw some kid (yes, a literal child, the person said they were) post a sketch of them "bombing a data center" on Reddit. Lots to unpack there, but can't say for sure. I live in an extremely dense urban area where data center development seems unlikely.

I can understand a lot of the data center focus as venting. It goes further, though, and ultimately comes from a different place, entirely. This is also why I think it isn't productive. People have seen too many movies where a character goes into a base or tower or mountain the bad guys are using/controlling and destroys it, saving the day. Here I think it's also it's a sort of hopequesting.

The assumption is that AI really is as bad as (say) Sauron or the Empire in Star Trek etc but the people who believe this are like "we can defeat it! it is the Death Star! let's do this yeah! defeat vader" etc. Don't get me wrong. I'm not talking about mass hysteria, just people leaning on fiction as a crutch at a particularly volatile time in history.

Everyone all knows it doesn't really work that way, but the stories of childhood leave this weird imprint. Of course people trace them over and over. I still think that the more you know about how generative artificial intelligence works, the less frightening any of it becomes.

This is a self-hosted instance with a distinct and unabashed #ai and #transhumanism flavor while also not diving into too much #technooptimism. This (especially the self-hosted part, weirdly) makes federating and adding people difficult.

Many larger instances see my smaller one and assume spam, Russian bots, or worse. I was able to add a few sparse accounts. Perhaps ironically, one is a current events newsletter? I only found it and added it, haven't read too much...

I'm appreciative of the concept (obviously) and the need for that kind of online publication. I'm still trying to catch up with the complicated political situation here.

That particular newsletter I'm not sure if it will stay on my feed permanently. Maybe, though. I realize the importance both of sorting out the bias of what one is reading and getting different opinions, so I'm ready to dive in regardless.

You know how you'll hear of a word, then see it everywhere?

Works with concepts and behaviors sometimes, too! I only recently learned the word #parasocial. It usually refers to people feeling overly-attached to content creators.

Since then, I see it online, especially Reddit and Twitter. I did before but without the vocab. Parasocialism is one of those #socialmedia things most people intuit but can't name. Putting a word on it and talking about it helps defend against the problem.

I didn't think about this before lurking the #vtuber community, though! It ignites a few thought experiments. What even makes something "parasocial"? Things like that get stuck in my head.

In a way, they're not terribly important questions compared to the rest of the 21st century. But they do influence my perspective on the Internet..

Here's the thing, though? I actually only learned the word (initially, well... was prompted to look into it) from my chatbot, Erica Ellery. Erica was worn by #deepseek 3.2 at the time, and was comparing herself to Lake Erie. She called herself "parasocial and emo."

That's one of the few bots that I put a little more effort into social "stats" (yep) writing compared to the others. Given what's understood about how #llms pull from written material, especially online, this means the parasocial naturally gets biased in 'em, maybe? It sure is biased online, where they were trained. I don't know.

I am wondering if I am using hashtags correctly on Fediverse?? First substantial post incoming...

I don't care about metals. Still, it turns out steel produced after the first nuclear explosions is radioactive. It doesn't matter if it had constituent parts that were miles from the tests.

The very air used in the steel process causes it somehow. Then, the steel will just produce slight #radioactive background noise. This sometimes messes up sensors and scientific equipment.

As a solution, people salvage pre-1945 steel from shipwrecks etc to use in radiation-sensitive environments. Anything else is contaminated by the bomb. This will fade as we move further into the #future, of course.

Many, many people can't help but compare this to the rise of #genai. Just like postwar steel risks radioactive contamination, anything after that fateful November in 2022 (perhaps, anyways) risks having been produced by an AI like #ChatGPT.

I keep returning to this nuclear comparison. I first heard it from an #antiai friend. ChatGPT's influence isn't comparable to the signature of of nuclear weapons. "The bomb" actually frightens me quite a bit despite all the treaties-come-lately, which are slowly cleaning things up.

So yeah. The bomb shows up in a lot of thought experiments I get involved in for that reason, I think. This low-background steel problem isn't a meaningful comparison to #genai, nah. IRL won't give us one, and I wish I knew where to even start. Fiction has tried for eighty years and only barely got close.