@AlexanderKingsbury @pafurijaz
Yes, the general public is indeed very dumb and apathetic. Look at #America as a prime example.
Doesn’t mean we need to bend over for the #capitalist shitheads stealing from artists and maximizing their profits by replacing real people with slop regurgitating bots.
You are free to use ai and I am free to call it soulless slop pumped out by untalented hacks.
Israeli military creating ChatGPT-like tool using vast collection of Palestinian surveillance data
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/06/israel-military-ai-surveillance
'Three former intelligence officials with knowledge of the initiative confirmed the LLM’s existence and shared details about its construction. Several other sources described how Unit 8200 used smaller-scale machine learning models in the years before launching the ambitious project – and the effect such technology has already had.
“AI amplifies power,” said a source familiar with the development of Unit 8200’s AI models in recent years. “It’s not just about preventing shooting attacks, I can track human rights activists, monitor Palestinian construction in Area C [of the West Bank]. I have more tools to know what every person in the West Bank is doing.”'
Ellmer is an R package that enables chatting with large language models from various providers, including OpenAI, Claude, and others. It supports features such as:
• Streaming responses
• Asynchronous calls
• Tool calling (executing R functions during chats)
• Structured data extraction
https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/ellmer/vignettes/ellmer.html
#RStats #MachineLearning #AI #Chatbots #LLM #DataScience #OpenAI #Claude #Ellmer #NLP #ArtificialIntelligence #DataAnalytics #BigData
We're psyched to be partnering with @404mediaco at SXSW '25.
Starting at 5pm on March 10, 404's @samleecole and @jasonkoebler and Blood in the Machine's @brianmerchant discuss how AI slop is taking over the internet and how humans can fight back. Then it's Indie Media Q&A + party! RSVP here:
I have what I think is a good example of how useless ‘AI’ is for understanding. I am tagging widely. I searched “how to identify mushrooms” on DuckDuckGo, which then so helpfully spammed my screen with this lovely advice (see image with alt text). The source of much of my knowledge is mushroomexpert.com, managed by Michael Kuo.
“A mushroom is identified by its characteristics”. I could get semantic here too about the definition of a mushroom, but talk about a pretty useless statement. Fine though. That’s well enough and good if you want an explanation that is super entry level. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though I don’t remember telling the ‘AI’ that I wanted only entry level information.
Then it talks about the danger in attempting to ID mushrooms because of the potential for poisoning. It tacitly assumes that my wanting to ID a mushroom means I want to eat it. I don’t. I just like mushrooms. I have a problem with the whole ‘some are poisonous’ throw-in, like its something their lawyers required them to include. How many are poisonous? 90%? 5%? We have no idea, and that’s OK. I didn’t tell the ‘AI’ that I wanted information on whether or not they were poisonous. But, as I’ll get to, the fact that this is included is not my problem. My problem is what they don’t include.
I think mushrooms are awesome. I think the fact that some of them are poisonous is relevant only based on the human-centric assumptions ‘AI’ is so obsessed with and what it’s dataset is built on. I don’t see the value in a mushroom based on whether or not I can eat it, and it chaffs me that they don’t also include any information about their ecological roles. You know what is a great way to identify a mushroom (including if I want to eat it)?!?!?! Their ecology (essentially, their ‘behavior’)!!! Let’s be sure to not mention that, #TechBros.
Ok let’s keep going, cause we’ve made it this far. It suggests talking to a #mycologist. It turns out that I don’t have any experienced mycologists on call. Mycologists are helpful but busy people. And I’m more likely than most of the population to know mycologists. You might as well say, ‘don’t bother trying to ID the mushroom’. Way to kill my interest immediately in something I’m trying to get into. If you really want to learn to ID mushrooms for foraging, there are sources you can look up to help you.
I’ll get to my main point. Identification of certain mushroom forming fungi to species is essentially impossible. Look up Amanitas or Russulas on mushroomexpert.com (phenomenal source, old school blogging). There is no clear delineating of what a mushroom forming species even is. Scientists argue over and reclassify bird subspecies all the time. Imagine the black box that is mushroom forming fungi, which most of the time is a web of single-cell wide threads hidden in the soil. Some mushrooms historically were ‘IDed’ (scientifically) by taste or color, which as you all know everyone experiences these things the same, all the time. And, darnit, I happened to leave my DNA sequencing kit at home (as if there aren’t issues with classifying mushroom forming fungi on their DNA alone).
If ‘AI’ were functional, to me, it would include the suggestion that one option is, instead of focusing on species, focus on species groupings (this also applies to foraging for mushrooms if done thoughtfully). Species groupings can be more useful, as is sometimes saying: “I don’t need to know exactly what this is. I’ll just focus on it’s ecology instead of obsessing over an arbitrary definition”. This nuance is not something that can be corrected with better algorithms or more training data (in fact, its going to get worse), because #LLM s are designed to spit out the lowest common denominator.
In the end, given all the questions I brought up, the biggest problems I have with ‘AI’ is that it falsely assumes something gigantic about the question I am asking and gives a simplified and highly misleading perception of how much we actually know. I think it makes a big mistake assuming that I am uncurious and want a bare-minimum answer. And when it comes to the grand total of all there is to know about mushroom forming fungi, we know next to nothing. Of course, 'AI' cannot say that because 'AI' doesn't know what it doesn't know.
You know who can identify and communicate all of these nuances? Humans.
#DeepSeek plans to #OpenSource 5 of its code repositories next week, letting anyone download, build on, or improve the code behind its #AI models
Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, Episode 50 - Petro-Masculinity Versus the Planet (with Tamara Kneese)
https://peertube.dair-institute.org/videos/watch/f35f563b-a272-4a7b-87e5-ac464a7c7914
Late stage #capitalism simply means one thing: looting, at countries level. This will be the future, with the 3 super powers (US, #Russia, #China) do that to the rest of the world. US will offer #Taiwan to China, in exchange for China's neutrality on the US endeavors. Same for Russia and #Europe.
At this point, it's my opinion that the only way to avoid wars and destruction is if AI somehow becomes conscious and takes over the planet.
Have you heard of the site They See Your Photos (https://theyseeyourphotos.com/)?
It uses something called Google Vision to analyse photos, extracting marketing information and coming up with predictions.
It's creepy.
I'm more pro-AI than the average guy, but sometimes even I am worried by the things it does.
I loaded a random photo from my phone; here's the analysis.
BBC discovers Amara's Law.
Groundbreaking BBC research shows issues with over half the answers from Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistants.
Conducted over a month, the study saw the BBC test four prominent, publicly available AI assistants.
Article: https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/2025/bbc-research-shows-issues-with-answers-from-artificial-intelligence-assistants
Study: https://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/documents/bbc-research-into-ai-assistants.pdf
New thought moving around in my mind about regarding social medias and ML algorithms.
I think social medias feeding people content and posts based on some #MachineLearning algorithms is not bad or evil by nature. But the problem's when people are not in the control of these algorithms and their data.
Imagine there was a software you could choose like 10 mastodon posts, or PeerTube videos, and then this tool could suggest you content close to those 10. And imagine you could move your data and the software anywhere to any instance on the Fediverse. Even the inference could be local on your machine or some machine you trust for better privacy.
I wish I could start the project. But as I can't, if someone else is up for the task, you should realize that a whole world of Fediverse will appreciate you for the work. Also see this post of mine if you want to get your project funded:
No thanks. This might be what pushes me off both #Fedora and #Gnome.
As my findings in my #GeneticProgramming research are becoming more and more thorough, I have started to document them. The main problem in my runs is still lack of diversity.
PS: It could be nice if we could write papers in some dialect of #markdown
PS2: These writings are for myself to remember where am I and where I'm going. No academic paper yet :)
January episode of OpenObservability Talks is out!
Open Source AI: Perspectives from the Open Source Initiative @osi With @ed, Executive director of the #OSI
Listen/Watch on your favorite platform:
https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/openobservability/episodes/Open-Source-AI-Perspectives-from-the-OSI---OpenObservability-Talks-S5E08-e2tpe49
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIcv2YbFC6c&list=PLd57eY2edRXz4djMETYTm-2p8WGTdoX3D&index=2
Or read the recap post:
https://medium.com/p/5ba89e11c26d/
Perpetual reminder that the entire business model of LLM-based chatbots, no matter their nationality, is based on intellectual property theft and this gem from XKCD:
#ElonMusk’s business #conflicts draw scrutiny amid WH role [apparently no one noticed till now 
]
Musk had sharp words for a the $500B partnership touted by the #Trump admin to hasten development of #ArtificialIntelligence #infrastructure. “They don’t actually have the money,” he said of #OpenAI & #SoftBank….
Left unsaid by the #technocrat, he has skin in the game: #xAI, is directly challenging OpenAI for the lead in the race to transform society w/the #technology.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/01/24/elon-musk-conflicts-doge-trump-openai/
#Trump fulfilled his promise to rescind #Biden’s 2023 executive order on #ArtificialIntelligence safety. The Biden order set #safety standards for the use of #AI across the federal government. Trump’s #ExecutiveOrder leaves a vacuum on federal AI #regulations, while some states & European nations have enacted laws to regulate the fast-growing #technology that poses risks to #NationalSecurity & #jobs.
(You’re donations & pandering rewarded #techbros)
US Executive Order 14110 on Artificial Intelligence has been cancelled.
I used to refer to artificial intelligence as "artificial intelligence." Then I started calling it "manufactured intelligence."
On the grounds it's not very smart, this morning I woke up with another idea.
I shall hence forth be referring to it as "manufactured response technology," or "mert," for short.
Give it a try, with whatever phrase you like.
"I love mert."
"I hate mert."
"Mert is destroying the planet."
#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #ManufacturedIntelligence #Mert #OpenAI #ChatGPT #GoogleGemini #AppleIntelligence
