RE: https://mastodon.social/@Edent/117483785620327786

Not directly about PHP, but this article raises an interesting problem with GenAI/LLMs:

"The strangest thing is that so many people have independently made this extraordinarily weird defect in judgement. That is because they haven't independently made this decision. Claude/Etc. has done all of the judgement for them, hence the bizarre distribution in logical errors."

...in other words, if many people use GenAI/LLMs then the diversity of opinions will be drastically reduced, and the odds of a correct opinion existing will go down as a consequence. Knowledge can only evolve with diversity, whereas GenAI/LLM use stagnates knowledge.

Good grief this is depressing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCvPPaIN5Ew

TL:DW - Social media advertisers are paying people to make pro-Nazi videos because these drive engagement from their target audience of rich white people. (This obviously isn't the only reason bigotry is online, but this advertising money is pouring lots more fuel on the fire.)

GenAI is then making this a million times worse, as it's so cheap and easy to swamp platforms with propaganda.

Perhaps engagement-based monetisation/advertising needs to be banned? It is literally paying people to promote the most evil horrific things possible.

#SocialMedia #Advertising

Some progress on broken computer, should hopefully get FediTips etc back to speed later this week. Sorry for the gap in posts!

I used to have two computers (a laptop and a desktop) to prevent this kind of scenario, but they've both broken in the past year and new ones are stupidly expensive due to the AI bubble 😞

(NOTE: The websites and accounts are all hosted remotely, so my computer breaking down doesn't affect them. The main problem is I can't access my notes without a working computer, so it's difficult to do updates.)

Apologies, no FediTips etc for time being as my computer is broken (am typing this on my phone). Am working on fixing it!

Saying you need to use AI to "polish" your text is really weird. All it does is blandify it. Your own human words are so much better because they're yours.

There's an account called Vecinos which is making English-language history videos about Latin America exclusively for PeerTube.

If this sounds interesting to you, you can follow them at:

@vecinos_latin_american_history_vids

#History #LatinAmerica #PeerTube

The more you use GenAI/LLMs, the more likely you are to become dependent on them. If you become dependent on GenAI/LLMs, they will subtly control what you do, whilst also stealing labour, burning the planet, enabling fascist billionaires, destroying discourse, erasing culture, and deskilling devs who might otherwise create better alternatives.

The more you become dependent on GenAI/LLMs, the harder it will be to quit them because by design they erode your ability to do things without them. They're going to burrow into your brain so tightly that one day it will seem impossible to give them up, even if you want to.

#GenAI #LLM #AI

RE: https://dair-community.social/@ZekuZelalem/117329108621364702

There is potentially a new genocide about to begin in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. You might want to follow Zecharias Zelalem to help get the word out about what is going on, as the western press is not giving this much priority.

A previous genocide in the same region in 2020-2022 killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.

RE: https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/117325137427138728

The LLM pretends to be coming up with these ideas when it is in fact just presenting pre-written stuff. This is a really old trick going back decades, but no one in previous decades thought it was actual intelligence.

RE: https://social.coop/@cwebber/117321242779306632

One of the excuses that comes up again and again about GenAI/LLMs is "It's okay to use as long as a human is checking the output."

In the real world, as the thread attests, humans *aren't* checking outputs, because their money-grabbing bosses are telling them to hurry up, time is money, why so slow etc.

If GenAI/LLMs are used to make something, the most realistic assumption has to be that it will be used as sloppily as the company can get away with.

(And even if this was solved, it would still leave environmental problems, labour theft, energy theft, water theft, deskilling, dependence on fascist CEOs etc.)

#AI #GenAI #LLM

p.s. To make clear, none of these bans happened straight away, and the respective industry fought them all, but they were forced to give way in the end because of people who fought back to protect human life.

Industry is not invincible, it can be regulated. That's why they spend so much time and money lobbying politicians, because they're terrified of the power that governments have over them.

When CFCs were destroying the ozone layer they were removed from society.

When leaded petrol was rotting children's brains, it was phased out in favour of unleaded alternatives.

When asbestos was found to cause horrible deaths it was banned.

When radium was found to be incredibly dangerous for general use, it was restricted to just a small niche of medical applications.

Technology is not something that has to be accepted forever, no matter how popular it seems. It can be recalled and restricted if it is found to cause a lot more harm than good.

#AI #LLMs #GenAI

p.s. I've added a list of the kinds of mysteries it DOES cover to the book's description, forgot to mention them 😅

Types of mystery include historical, missing treasures, uncracked codes, mysterious writing, strange broadcasts, lost artworks, music, literature, cinema, aviation, seas, space, the Cold War, missing nuclear weapons (yes really!), missing submarines and a few other things.

Hello there 👋

I've written a short book about real life mysteries (real life as in no ghosts, no UFOs, no creepypastas, no AI, no conspiracy theories etc). The book itself is 100% human-made, no AI of any kind has been used in any way.

You can buy the book at this link, it's a DRM-free epub file and the price is "pay what you want, 1 euro minimum".

📗 https://payhip.com/b/EhfU2

(If you want a free open source ebook reader app, I'd recommend Readest on mobiles and Foliate on desktops. This book also works sideloaded onto eReaders.)

If you have any problems or feedback, let me know and I'll try to fix it.

#Books #eBooks #Mysteries

Hey ebook people!

If someone wants to publish an ebook, which bookshops would you recommend selling from?

(And yes this is for a human-written book, no AI.)

#AskFedi #EBooks #Books

There's a really dangerous talking point floating around that goes like this:

"Poor voters, they are being forced to vote for Nazis because of the incompetence of mainstream parties."

This is a lie, especially in countries with a proportional voting system where every vote is counted and even tiny parties can get into parliament.

There are many, many parties which are alternatives to the mainstream and most of them are not Nazis. If you're a good person fed up with the mainstream, vote for one of the non-Nazi alternatives.

If your choice is to vote for Nazis instead of other alternatives, you are doing something really evil.

RE: https://social.coop/@cwebber/117236126658335889

OpenAI talking like gangsters while threatening an academic's career if he doesn't play along with their lies.

Smartphones have a very narrow range of OSes you can install, and it's extremely difficult to install them.

PCs have a wide range of OSes you can install, and it's relatively easy to install them. PCs can also use mobile internet connections through cellular modems.

Given this situation, would it be viable to switch to a pocket-sized PC instead of a smartphone? What is holding back pocket PCs?

(I've tried asking this before but I phrased it really badly so the responses in the original thread weren't what I was trying to ask about. I've tried to phrase it more clearly now! 😅 )

The heirs to Hitler's Nazi party have almost captured a German state for the first time since WW2 and the first thing they did was thank Elon Musk 😞

Please, even if this seems a really tiny thing, stop using Twitter/X, stop linking to Twitter/X, stop doing anything that gives Twitter/X accounts visibility of any kind. Tell others to leave, especially organisations and media. He is using Twitter/X to promote actual full-on fascism by manipulating media discourse, and simply being there or sending traffic there helps him do that.

#Musk #Twitter #TwitterX #X

In case anyone missed it, here's the archived version of posts from Proton's official account where they praise JD Vance and Trump's Republicans:

https://web.archive.org/web/20250115190623/https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy/113833073219145503

They deleted these posts after the backlash.

At the top of the thread you can also see Proton's CEO praising Trump, saying he "stands up for the little guy".

#Proton