genai

This is an excellent video. This is the message. Perhaps we need to refine it more. Find ways to communicate it more clearly. But this is the correct take on LLMs, so-called-AI and the proliferation of these tools to the general public. #LLM #llms #ai #genAI #video #slop #slopocalypse #enshittification

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lKyNdZz3Vw

So, more #genAI pain. By and large, the bubble's a bubble because the number of people out there in the business community who like it enough to be willing to pay for zillions of tokens, in aggregate trillions of dollars, is pretty small despite frantic pushing, and thus eventually it all pops.

There is an exception…

Lots of people foolishly use chatbots to get medical information and advice. So now some hospitals are rolling out their own chatbots. What could go wrong? /s

And oh no, Sutter Health (where a number of my docs practice as its the giant around here) is testing it out!

https://www.statnews.com/2026/04/13/hospitals-launch-chatbots-creating-new-funnel-for-patients/

#AI #GenAI

The US AI economy #llm #llms #genai

Massive compute power applied to massive data sets can produce outcomes that are worse at the task they’re (ostensibly) intended for than much simpler, easier to understand, less wasteful, and less intrusive data-light methods. It requires an extreme form of bias to believe that big compute + big data is always better.

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLMs #tech #dev #DataScience #science #ComputerScience #EcologicalRationality

The present perspective outlines how epistemically baseless and ethically pernicious paradigms are recycled back into the scientific literature via machine learning (ML) and explores connections between these two dimensions of failure. We hold up the renewed emergence of physiognomic methods, facilitated by ML, as a case study in the harmful repercussions of ML-laundered junk science. A summary and analysis of several such studies is delivered, with attention to the means by which unsound research lends itself to social harms. We explore some of the many factors contributing to poor practice in applied ML. In conclusion, we offer resources for research best practices to developers and practitioners.

From The reanimation of pseudoscience in machine learning and its ethical repercussions here: https://www.cell.com/patterns/fulltext/S2666-3899(24)00160-0. It's open access.

In other words ML--which includes generative AI--is smuggling long-disgraced pseudoscientific ideas back into "respectable" science, and rejuvenating the harms such ideas cause.

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLMs #MachineLearning #ML #AIEthics #science #pseudoscience #JunkScience #eugenics #physiognomy

Mel Andrews on the connections between a naive belief in scientific objectivity (facts and data are "real" and "correct" and "neutral") and eugenics:

Francis Galton, pioneering figure of the eugenics movement, believed that good research practice should consist in “gathering as many facts as possible without any theory or general principle that might prejudice a neutral and objective view of these facts” (Jackson et al., 2005). Karl Pearson, statistician and fellow purveyor of eugenicist methods, approached research with a similar ethos: “theorizing about the material basis of heredity or the precise physiological or causal significance of observational results, Pearson argues, will do nothing but damage the progress of the science” (Pence, 2011). In collaborative work with Pearson, Weldon emphasised the superiority of data-driven methods which were capable of delivering truths about nature “without introducing any theory” (Weldon, 1895).

From The Immortal Science of ML: Machine Learning & the Theory-Free Ideal.

I've lost the reference, but I suspect it was Meredith Whittaker who's written and spoken about the big data turn at Google, where it was understood that having and collecting massive datasets allowed them to eschew model-building.

The core idea being critiqued here is that there's a kind of scientific view from nowhere: a theory-free, value-free, model-free, bias-free way of observing the world that will lead to Truth; and that it's the task of the scientist to approximate this view from nowhere as well as possible.

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLMs #science #DataScience #ScientificObjectivity #eugenics #ViewFromNowhere

The rhetoric that limiting or banning AI/generative AI/LLM/diffusion model use is "ableist" or "gatekeeping" is the latest desperate attempt to find an angle through which to force this technology into our lives against our collective will. We need to reject this narrative. Common as it is it simply doesn't scan. It reads to me as an attempt to co-opt the language of social justice to shame people into accepting an unjust and largely failing technology that they are rightfully rejecting.

Think it through. If you don't accept the use of climate-destroying, electricity-and-fresh-water-sapping, job-destroying, economy-thrashing--and yet mediocre or poorly performing!--technology created by multi-trillion-dollar sociopathic entities, then you are preventing people with less privilege than you have from living their best lives. You are preventing them from learning how to code. You are preventing them from obtaining coveted jobs in the tech sector. You are preventing them from having access to information. You, personally, are responsible for all this. Not the multi-trillion-dollar sociopathic entities who've not only created this technology and forced it on us but contributed to creating the less-privileged conditions of the people you are supposedly responsible for with your individual choices. Not the governments that neglected to enforce existing laws that would have prevented such multi-trillion-dollar sociopathic entities from forming in the first place, let alone creating such a technology--while also creating the conditions that led to people being less privileged. No, they are not responsible. You are. I am.

That doesn't make any sense.

Neoliberalism's greatest trick has been to shift responsibility for any problems away from the powerful and onto individuals who are not empowered to fix anything, all while convincing everyone that this is right and proper. Large corporations do not cause a plastic pollution problem; you and I do, by not separating our recycling. Large corporations, governments and militaries do not cause CO2 pollution and climate damage; you and I do, by using incandescent lightbulbs and non-electric/non-hybrid cars or eating meat. Lack of regulation and large agribusiness practices are not to blame for poor food quality; you and I are, for buying what they sell instead of going organic and joining a CSA. Etc. ad infinitum. Large, powerful entities routinely generate a problem, then tell you and me that we are responsible for the problem as well as for fixing it. Never mind that these entities could nudge their own behavior a bit and move the needle on the problem far more than masses of people could no matter how organized they were. Never mind that these entities could be constrained from causing such problems in the first place.

We are watching a new variation of this pattern come into being right in front of our eyes with AI. We should stop accepting these fictions. You are neither ableist nor a gatekeeper for resisting AI. You are, instead, attempting to forestall the further degradation of conditions for everyone, which starts this same cycle anew.

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLM #DiffusionModels #neoliberalism #depoliticization

Before the automobile industry invented the catalytic converter, the costs of reducing air pollution seemed astronomical, enough to bankrupt the entire industry. After they invented the catalytical converter, the costs were manageable. And they only invented it because they were faced with the threat of being shut down.

Industries creating harms often claim that controls and regulations are impossible, would bankrupt them, etc., trying to make their existence into a zero-sum game (for some people to have the benefit of our industry, other people must suffer). AI companies claim they must steal copyrighted works because they could not exist otherwise; or be allowed to use as much electricity as they demand in spite of the costs. But it's B.S., and we should stop accepting this rhetoric. Forced to innovate to reduce harms, these industries have innovated, and made themselves even more profitable than they were when they were dragging their feet about it like children who don't want to clean their rooms.

From Is Climate Change An Externality

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #law #copyright #pollution #climate #innovation

So-called "generative" AI is the opposite of generative. The word "generative" in the name "generative AI" is a piece of jargon that is, even then, arguably misused in some applications. But as an anti-imagination, remix-only technology, it's just not generative at all, and cannot be. On top of this it impedes creative expression in multiple ways: co-opting it, devaluing it, directing energy away from it, etc.

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #creativity

Mozilla's new CEO is all-in on AI regardless of what Firefox users want: https://lwn.net/Articles/1050826/

Third: Firefox will grow from a browser into a broader ecosystem of trusted software. Firefox will remain our anchor. It will evolve into a modern AI browser and support a portfolio of new and trusted software additions.

He says the word "trust" a whole bunch of times yet intends to turn an otherwise nice web browser into a slop-slinging platform. I don't expect this will work out very well for anyone.

"It will evolve into a modern AI browser" sounds like a threat. Good way to start off on the right foot, new Mozilla CEO (sarcasm).

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #AntiFeatures #DarkPatterns #AISlop #firefox #mozilla #NoAI

#Romancelandia @bookstodon #GenAI #Libby #Audiobooks

ICYMI: how to spot GenAI audiobooks on LIbby

https://mashable.com/article/how-to-spot-ai-audiobooks-libby

Here's where you go to tell GitHub that it can’t train CoPilot on your code & interactions: https://github.com/settings/copilot/features

Just sayin’

#GenAI

Ist generative »KI« die neue Zwangsreligion, eine kollektive Wahnvorstellung oder das trojanische Pferd des aufziehenden Technofaschismus? Oder alles zugleich?

Solche Fragen gehen mir durch den Kopf, seit ich den Vortrag »Zauberhafte KI-Welt« von @Katika online sah.

Am kommenden Donnerstag ist Katika Kühnreich in Bielefeld, wo sie ab 19:30 Uhr eine aktualisierte Fassung dieses Vortrags halten wird. Wir @Datenpunks haben sie eingeladen und laden euch ein, dazuzukommen:

Wann? Do., 21.05.2026
Wo? Buchladen Eulenspiegel, Hagenbruchstraße 7, 33602 Bielefeld

Wer einen Sitzplatz will, sollte sich anmelden (gern pseudonym): https://datenpunks.de/event/zauberhafte-ki-welt-energie-und-arbeit-der-ki-und-was-sie-mit-gesellschaften-macht/

#kiKritik #KatikaKühnreich #Bielefeld #OWL #Ostwestfalen #Veranstaltung #Vortrag #genai #antifa #Technofaschismus

FWIW, having read a whole bunch of stuff, I'm coming around to the belief that it's likely enough that Mythos is close enough to what Anthropic claims that it should be taken seriously. If you ship code that, if compromised, could result in serious negative impacts, try to point Mythos at it. (No idea how to do that just now.)

#genAI #anthropic #mythos

Regarding last boost: "Firefox For Web Developers" is out here urging me to stop using Firefox.

#Mozilla #Firefox #DarkPatterns#antifeatures #AISlop #NoAI #NoAIWebBrowsers #AICruft #AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLMs #tech #dev #web

The US Democratic party has been abjectly failing in so many ways. This is such a sad and frustrating read on the failures with respect to cryptocurrency regulation: https://lpeproject.org/blog/inside-the-failure-to-regulate-stablecoins/

What was and still is at stake is the balance between technology and humanity struck by the US federal government. The same incoherence that led us to where we are with crypto is almost surely also at play with the apparent lack of movement around generative AI.

#USPol #democrats #DemocraticParty #crypto #cryptocurrency #StableCoins #ShadowBanking #regulation #AI #GenAI

Finally, after an epic battle against Gitea CI:

https://areweaiyet.taffer.ca

The definitive answer to the question, "Is AI intelligent yet?"

#ai #genai #agi

It has been know for a long time that, when it comes to AI training, quality is much more important than quantity. Yet Big Tech goes for quantity because it is cheaper and takes less time to train a model on non-curated garbage scrapped from the internet than taking the time and the (human) effort of curating the data. That is one of the problems with their models: Garbage in, garbage out.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-13/openai-google-and-anthropic-are-struggling-to-build-more-advanced-ai

#AI #GenAI #generativeAI #BigTech

Thread 1/3

The domain name Galate.ai is available if anyone wants to do the funniest thing.

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #FakePeople #AICharacters

Criticism of OpenAI/LLMs

"Hey ChatGPT, I want a new TV. I heard that LG TVs are good. Which LG TV is the best?"

"Good choice! You are absolutely right that LG TVs are a popular choice. But have you heard about [brand] TVs? [brand] TVs are [advertisement here]. Do you want me to show you where you can get a good deal on the [brand] XY-1234?"

This is the future.

ChatGPT will soon generate answers that have advertisements woven into them. What ChatGPT will tell you will be influenced by which company paid OpenAI the most.

I wonder how many people won't be bothered by that at all and continue to use ChatGPT, just as many people (boomers mostly) aren't bothered by advertisement breaks when watching cable TV and continue to find excuses for using the product.

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/openai-chatgpt-sponsored-ads

OpenAI is still struggling to make profits off of this crappy technology. And that after announcing an "erotic chat mode", making ChatGPT "more horny". In a last effort to prevent the AI bubble from inevitably bursting, OpenAI is turning to the only reliable profit model they know: enshittifying products with ads. The LLM technology is a dying techology, similar to how nobody hears of 2021's NFTs anymore. Maybe the AI bubble won't burst in 2026 just yet, if enough naive people keep using ChatGPT so that the new ad revenue can keep OpenAI afloat for a little while longer. But the bubble will burst. Businesses betting on this technology, in 2026, isn't an intelligent move, to say the least. If your employer is fully committed to the AI hype, consider looking for a new job … while you still receive a salary and can take the job search more casually.

#LLM #GenAI #OpenAI

Folks, I need to talk about this Grok/X/ #AI thing. I will not give details. But the vile aspects of these news, added to the downfall of mainstream journalism quoting Grok as if it was a real entity... I think all of this should give people pause. Like, where are we fucking going. It's been several years now and we have not seen any glimpse of a bright future with this #GenAI shitshow. Consider this an exercise of screaming into the void 🧵

I thought the Ronan Farrow/Andrew Marantz New Yorker article on OpenAI and Sam Altman in particular reveals many important details and helps settle several speculations (e.g. about what happened when Altman was briefly fired from OpenAI). The overall portrayal of Altman as frankly a compulsive liar is much needed.

However, like many Farrow and Marantz seem to take the so-called "existential risk" framing of AI seriously. I really wish people would stop doing that. In this case it makes the article feel incoherent in places.

This technology by itself does not pose a unique risk. It's the people, organizations, and governments around it, and their behavior with respect to it, that generate risk. Treating the technology alone as uniquely existentially risky provides cover for a wide variety of bad actors to both continue doing their work as well as to shrug and say "oops" if something goes catastrophically wrong or if smaller harms accumulate into intolerably large ones. The very framing provides an accountability shield, which by my read contradicts what Farrow himself suggests is needed, namely more accountability. I take this from this article, his previous work, and comments he makes in interviews (e.g., this one with Decoder.

We need to stop catastrophizing. It's thought and action terminating.

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #OpenAI #SamAltman #RonanFarrow #AndrewMarantz #NewYorker #xrisk #ExistentialRisk #AISafety

I was just watching a YouTube video with I presume auto-generated captions, and the speaker said "the world doesn't trust the US" but the caption read "the world doesn't trust the AI".

Make of it what you will.

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #USPol #USAI

This article in The Register about "Poison Fountain" looks to be crithype, and the Poison Fountain project looks to be misdirection, scam, art project, or some other thing, but almost surely not a serious data poisoning proposal.

AI industry insiders launch site to poison the data that feeds them: https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/11/industry_insiders_seek_to_poison/

Poison Fountain starts with "We agree with Geoffrey Hinton: machine intelligence is a threat to the human species". This is a tarball of wrong. (1)

The rest of the website is absurd, and the "Poison Fountain Usage" list doesn't make any sense. There are far more efficient and safer ways to poison data that don't require you to proxy content for an unknown third party. Some of these are implemented in software, as opposed to <ul> in HTML. That bullet list reads like an amateur riffing on what they read about AI web scrapers, not like industry insiders with detailed information about how training works.

Recommend viewing the top level https://rnsaffn.com , which I suspect The Register may not have done.

The Register:

Our source said that the goal of the project is to make people aware of AI's Achilles' Heel – the ease with which models can be poisoned – and to encourage people to construct information weapons of their own.

Data poisoning is not easy, Anthropic's "article" notwithstanding. Why would we trust Anthropic to publicly reveal ways to subvert their technology anyway?

None of this passes a smell test. Crithype (and poor fact checking, it seems) from The Register it is.


(1) Hinton stands to gain professionally and financially from people believing this. Hinton personally bears a large amount of responsibility for setting off this so-called species level danger. Hinton, like all of us, cannot possibly know whether "machine intelligence" is even possible, let alone dangerous to people; that's a fanciful notion that serves the agendas of the wealthy and powerful quite well. In other words, crithype. Etc.

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #Anthropic #PoisonFountain #UncriticalReporting #crithype #TheRegister