i guess my point is that I understand why the researchers are doing it - the UN gave them money to research ways the UN could use AI, so that is what they did. It’s not like the research is unethical in the sense that it directly harms participants. Maybe it’s a dumb waste of money, but at that point, the question is more for the UN leaders that said “we should give someone money to research AI”. And I don’t know that 404 Media has the pull to interview those people.

I feel like the article answers the question, or rather it gives the researchers a chance to answer the question:

When I spoke with them, both Albrecht and Fournier-Tombs were clear that the goal of the workshop was to spark conversation and deal with the technology now, as it is.

“We’re not proposing these as solutions for the UN, much less UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). We’re just playing around with the concept,” Albrecht said. “You have to go on a date with someone to know you don’t like ‘em.”

Fournier-Tombs said that it’s important for the UN to get a handle on AI and start working through the ethical problems with it. “There’s a lot of pressure everywhere, not just at the UN, to adopt AI systems to become more efficient and do more with less,” she said. “The promise of AI is always that it can save money and help us accomplish the mission…there’s a lot of tricky ethical concerns with that.”

She also said that the UN can’t afford to be reactive when it comes to new technology. “Someone’s going to deploy AI agents in a humanitarian context, and it’s going to be with a company, and there won’t be any real principles or thought, consideration, of what should be done,” she said. “That’s the context we presented the conversation in.”

The goal of the experiment, Albrecht said, was always to provoke an emotional reaction and start a conversation about these ethical concerns.

“You create a kind of straw man to see how people attack it and understand its vulnerabilities.”

So if you read the headline and have the obvious visceral reaction, if you are asking yourself that question from the article, it kind of sounds like that is the point. They’re doing it now so that if people see it and say “that’s stupid”, hopefully that stops xAI or someone else from trying this to profit on the suffering of poor people. Alternatively, if people see it and say “wow this actually helped me understand”, that is also useful for the world at large. It doesn’t sound like the latter is the case, but that’s why you test a hypothesis.

Question: what would happen if the server implemented something like Anubis on the application and/or create post pages? Would that not block most bots from completing these forms? Is that just not feasible at our scale?

This snip at the end is so good:

Iaso said she thinks AI companies follow her work, and that if they really want to stop her and Anubis they just need to distract her.

“If you are working at an AI company, here’s how you can sabotage Anubis development as easily and quickly as possible,” she wrote on her site. “So first is quit your job, second is work for Square Enix, and third is make absolute banger stuff for Final Fantasy XIV. That’s how you can sabotage this the best.”

i mean…they already have the versions with e/OS? Does that not fit that bill?

I think Fairphone would say that they want you to keep using the FP4 forever, replacing individual parts as they fail. Their goal is the reduce waste in the smartphone industry, that’s why they make it so easy to maintain your device. Maybe eventually the main processor on your FP4 will be too slow to keep up with even those light apps. At that point, you come back to Fairphone and buy whatever the latest one is.

And as Sunshine said, continually releasing new generations of phones keeps them enticing to the vast majority of smartphone consumers that don’t already use a Fairphone. I’m literally looking at this new one and considering if that will be my next smartphone when my Pixel 7’s battery starts to turn. Seems like a pretty good deal to me, tbh. Might finally rip me from Google’s grasp.

thx for adding the context

Hell yeah, this is cool. Anyone have experience using O Maps or CoMaps for day-to-day navigation? I’ve never thought of going FOSS for this sort of thing, I would love to give Google one less piece of my data.

yeah maybe those people need their own work requirements and accountability structure

yeah that’s different from what I am describing. That’s the bs work requirement for welfare/TANF - in that case, they don’t care at all about finding a good match for you, they just care that you are doing something to find any job. EDIT: My bad you were talking about unemployment work requirements, which are similar but not exactly the same thing. Still bullshit imo - if they aren’t going to actually try to match you with a job that is a good fit, they might as well just let you search on your own. The unemployment has a time limit, and you can only qualify for it in specific situations. I don’t get why they have to also enforce a work requirement, as if you chose to be laid off from your previous job.

I mean sure except if I don’t want to do violence and I don’t want to adhere to rigid military standards then there is no place for me in the military. That leaves out most people.

Where the hell are you shopping that you have to make small talk?

Basically anywhere in the US besides Aldi. And Aldi works fine because the cashiers are trained to skip small talk, scan everything quickly, drop it directly into the cart, and then leave me to go bag my groceries in peace without having to rush.

If people can’t even interact with each other on a surface level like that it’s no wonder we’re all so lonely and depressed.

I’m happy for you extroverts to go use the cashier checkout lanes if you are that desperate for small talk. I can small talk, but I don’t like it, esp in scenarios like this where i’m focused on other tasks. The interaction is not fun, it does not liven up my day. It’s just draining.

Now social interaction with my friends? Social interaction at a party? That shit fills me up, but i’m not going to the grocery store to get my social fix.

From the article:

Instead, the future of hiring may require abandoning the résumé altogether in favor of methods that AI can’t easily replicate—live problem-solving sessions, portfolio reviews, or trial work periods, just to name a few ideas.

Are those the best solutions? I don’t exactly know, the problem is bigger than any one person can solve. But any of those would probably be better solutions than what we’ve been doing the past 20 years.

In my ideal world, people don’t have to go through any this bs to get a job. People don’t have to become their own salesperson just to get a job with a living wage. Maybe this is too communist for some people, but it would be nice if some government body just matched me with a job that matched my skillset and education, and then they guaranteed a living wage. If I work the job and I don’t like it, they let me pick one of my secondary matches. I don’t want to have to think about this shit, I’m not entrepreneurial and I don’t want to be entrepreneurial. In this scenario, I would think employers would also save a mint on recruiting costs.

Right there with u man. If LLMs mean the death of the modern resume process, I say good fucking riddance. Maybe the only good thing we’ve gotten out of LLMs.

Good. Even if it doesn’t have a hope in hell of passing this Congress, they need to impeach this motherfucker everytime he reaches for the fascism button. The more the better. We need to document every violation. Think about the previous two articles - if it wasn’t for those impeachment attempts, we probably wouldn’t even remember the quid pro quo with Ukraine or the Jan 6th insurrection. Hell, it seems like most voters have already forgotten those past crimes.

i’m right there with you. i’m at the point where i will go self-checkout even if the line is shorter for the cashier. I checkout faster than most cashiers. I don’t like having to rush with laying everything out and then rush to bag it before the next person. I usually have headphones in at the store to tune all the bs out, I don’t want to take them out to make small talk with an 18 year old for 2 minutes while they fumble with my groceries. Self-checkout is just better at this point.

I need to unsub from this feed

they got nukes, ig

as others have pointed out, this article is from February, which is like a year ago in techbro-time. If Nadella truly meant what he said, Microsoft would have scaled back AI spending by now.

Controlling women’s bodies is how they control women. The best way to fight it is to remind all the people in our lives that all body shapes are beautiful, and weight is not an accurate indicator of health. Spread the word, and the skinnytok message loses its power.