Aaron

Apparently some Anthropic researcher is going around explaining LLM language tendencies and styles by comparing them to autistic people. Unacceptable. *Very* not cool. We've already had enough of this crap, being compared to computers and robots. We aren't fucking language models. We are living, breathing, multifaceted *human beings* who happen to have a different wiring plan than the majority of other human beings. Learn the fucking difference and stop comparing us to automated, unfeeling, unthinking, non-conscious, unnuanced, unnatural systems. #autism #LLMs #AI #GenAI #ActuallyAutistic #Anthropic #Claude

Does anybody else feel like LLMs completely destroyed not only the job market, but the job hunting process itself? I apply to dozens of jobs and it's like I just don't exist. Nobody even notices me jumping in the back yelling, "Ooh, me! Pick me!" because of the throng of LLMs auto-applying and the other throng of LLMs doing the actual candidate selection. The game has changed. IDK how to play it anymore, and I'm literally going hungry as a result. #LLM #jobs #JobMarket #HR

Also, if you have job leads, please please shoot them my way! I have over 20 years of experience with Python and SQL, and almost as much in machine learning. I'm a very talented guy, but nobody seems to be hiring. #JobHunt #FediHired#GetFediHired #GetFediBHired

My dog just died. He was old and blind and adorable, and I am really torn up over it. He drove me up the walls with his grumbling, but somehow I couldn't help but love him, the grumpy little old man.

My CV & resume can be found here: https://hosford42.github.io/

@ChristineMalec @ClimateJenny The reason is that alt text is scraped in order to train multimodal text + image models. But for anyone who actually listens to the blind community, it doesn't take long to learn that these models are pretty important to a lot of people for accessibility. And regardless, alt text is directly helpful. I'm happy to put my displeasure with big tech on hold for things that genuinely improve people's lives.

Things that often happen to you when you're autistic:

• You have no friends.
• You have lots of enemies.
• People blame you for things you didn't do or didn't intend.
• People infer maliciousness or negligence where there is none.
• People are violent without instigation.
• People do not care about your welfare because they believe you do not deserve or need care.

@inthehands@hachyderm.io Craft your words carefully, to map out your ideas and thereby shape the thoughts of another and synchronize your perspectives. Just playing with alternative metaphors. Really enjoyed the article you linked to! I actually think of language as a serialization protocol. You take a complex structure and encode it using grammatical rules as a sequence. The listener then decodes (what we hope is) a similar structure using supposedly the same rules. The obvious source of communication failure is when the structural encoding rules, learned entirely by example, differ between two people. The less obvious one is when it come times to integrate that structure into the larger semantic model: The structure might integrate at the wrong place. And the most frustrating one is when the listener's mental model doesn't even have a similar enough shape for the new structure to be incorporated. This is when you find yourself staring at the person, trying to understand how the words they just uttered can possibly make sense (metaphor!) to them. Often in the last case, you don't even know how to ask clarifying questions (another metaphor!) to make any progress. I built an NLU engine that worked on these principles, back before LLMs existed, and it could actually connect the dots (metaphor!) between things you said to it, integrating the information so that it could then answer questions that bridged (metaphor!) across them. If only I had had billions of dollars in investment, instead of being some autistic guy that nobody took seriously, we might have had language models today that didn't hallucinate.

And this is especially relevant: "For people with high levels of early adversity, early-onset depression played a massive role in paving the way for later physical decline." I had my first encounter with major depression at age 12. As of the time I was diagnosed with diabetes, I had spent more time with major depression than not.

And the violence... I won't go into details this time, but I can't count the number of times I was punched for literally minding my own business, helping someone, or conducting myself neutrally. I have a fake tooth -- for helping someone -- for example.

@dilmandila Maybe, IDK. It depends on what they're training the model for, and how they're using it. But do we really want to make it unusable for training the model, when those models are then used for accessibility as well? @ChristineMalec @ClimateJenny

This happens when you're a kid, not just when you're an adult. And as a kid, you don't have the benefit of wisdom learned from the "school of hard knocks" so it's not clear how to defend yourself, nor why it's even necessary. You end up internalizing the social signals you receive to mean that you, as a person, are inferior and undeserving of love, not just by one person, but by *all* people.

@CynAq@beige.party I think they are both legit. Added this one too. Thanks!

@CppGuy I still think that's working against the public good. If the models being trained on this data are used for accessibility by the blind community, and we are intentionally working to lower their accuracy, we are hurting the blind community. We should fight the AI vendors on a front where there aren't innocent bystanders who will be hit. @dilmandila @ChristineMalec @ClimateJenny

@EmilyEnough "squishy" computing

@the5thColumnist@mstdn.ca This is interesting to me. I'm not even trans, but I reject the stereotypes. I do maleness my own way. I wonder if I'm scary to them when they learn that. Or maybe it's just the visual stereotypes that matter? @CosmickTrigger@social.edist.ro

@modulux I'm sure it's scraped even from here. But that doesn't negate the actual purpose of alt text for real human beings. These folks need to take 2 seconds to think through the consequences of their decisions. @arfy @ChristineMalec

@liliedubh@medievalist.masto.host Not a bad idea. Any specific ones you can recommend?

@CppGuy@infosec.space @noodleawa@mastodonapp.uk "Drop that hot potato in someone else's lap! Not my problem!" Only it is, when it reaches the scale of economic collapse.

@Tattooed_Mummy This is how far you'd have to go to actually stop it from happening. Or at least you can't post *publicly* without it happening. This is not to say that it's right for that to be the case, or that it's the individual's responsibility to curb bad behavior from these corporations. We need laws for that. But if people are going to take it upon themselves to disrupt this behavior, picking on alt text in particular is severely misguided. @ChristineMalec @ClimateJenny

@junesim63 Palantir is a national security threat here in the US, too.

@DeliaChristina@sfba.social honestly, it's not shocking at all. Of course they think this way

@frang @ifixcoinops And now you are ready to forget it exists again. :)

@pojntfx@mastodon.social I use a different set of tools but I am definitely catching that "vibe" myself. Software quality, in general, is backsliding. And it's not just the frequency of bugs. It's their blatancy. Before, a bug would mercifully show up in some rarely encountered corner case. Now the bugs show up in the main areas of activity. @mitchellh@hachyderm.io

@ljwrites Sure, that's poisoning the image itself, not for the purpose of ruining models that could generate alt text, but ruining models that could generate othe images of the same style. I say go for it. @dilmandila @ChristineMalec @ClimateJenny

@WatchingTVnFilm My parents, years later when I brought up why they never even tried to talk to me: "We thought you were just being a moody teenager, so we gave you space." I was dying inside.

@WatchingTVnFilm I tried to kill myself *at least* 5 times before I turned 19.

@MostlyHarmless@thecanadian.social I suppose it depends on which player you're talking about. The one that started the war, or the one that has kompromat

@MiaWinter I have never used it. If the whole gay-hating bigot CEO thing somehow hadn't already been enough to ensure it stayed that way, this would. That's just about the most damning quality comparison I can imagine. @ifixcoinops

@ljwrites I think the core problem here is that the laws need to catch up to the reality -- and be enforced, too. Someday we will live in a world where we each have irrevocable ownership of our own data, and can choose to donate it all or in part to those causes we deem just. I have no idea how long it will take us to get there, though. Probably not our lifetimes, from the look of it. @dilmandila @ChristineMalec @ClimateJenny

@Byte You didn't even specify generative AI and you know it. Your accusational aggressiveness tells me I should go ahead and pre-emptively block you. In the future you should try actually talking to people instead of jumping down their throats. Bye! @ChristineMalec @ClimateJenny @cybervegan @dilmandila

@_elena No advice to give, but they are considered to be good luck.

@humdrum@social.lol I'm always nervous to ask for sources for fear of coming across as a sea lion, but I also think it's good for people to check sources in general.

@humdrum@social.lol I was curious. Thank you @lienrag@mastodon.tedomum.net @mhoye@cosocial.ca

@humdrum@social.lol I wasn't aware of that. Valuable context! Thank you. @lienrag@mastodon.tedomum.net @mhoye@cosocial.ca

@virtuous_sloth -Busch

@alineblankertz It could have been so much different. We could have built something by the same name through collective, voluntary contribution and bottom-up organization, instead of extractive top-down processes. Something that wasn't ethically compromised from its very inception and warped by wealth inequality and power dynamics. I do think it has its uses, one of them being accessibility for the blind community, which is something I've heard directly from quite a few of them. As I see it, we might as well make the best of an awful situation. But one day, I hope we can tear down capitalism and replace it with cooperatives and do away with this twisting of everything and everyone into subservience of a handful of sociopaths and narcissists who care nothing for the rest of humanity.

@sindarina@ngmx.com @catsalad@infosec.exchange What...is the moment you should stop petting? I don't know that! Aaaaaaaaaah! [bloody hand flies into the gorge]

@liiwi @gknauss opens notepad, types a choice word and then backspaces through it 500 times instead of tapping a finger while deep in thought

@serriadh lmao You can't unsee it, can you? @frank @ifixcoinops

@luckyboy162@mastodon.social Thank you!

@LevZadov@kolektiva.social IDK how to do that, either. I have a startup I cofounded, but we have made a grand total of $0 in revenue to date. I'm like the antithesis of a salesperson.

@Heliograph@mastodon.au I save this every time I see it because it's so fitting. There's a meta joke in there, if I can only recall it.

@crankylinuxuser@infosec.exchange If you could change it -- without the ability to stop the bad behaviors of individual people, but only the process or system itself -- how would you make the job market work?