Geek Stuff category archive

At Psychology Today Blogs, Ian MacRae suggests that observing how AI Chatbots and LLM’s deal with humor can tell us a lot about just how “intelligent” they are. He notes that “(a)Apparently, large language models have a Rickrolling problem,” and goes on to make four main points (emphasis added):

• LLMs struggle to fully grasp the deeply embedded trends and language patterns of internet culture.
• Rickrolling, a classic internet prank, reveals the limitations of machine intelligence in understanding.
• Machine intelligence mimics human communication but lacks true understanding, especially in humor.
• We don’t yet fully understand the impact of training machine intelligence on vast datasets of online language.

Follow the link for his exploration of these issues.

An accessory before the fact? Most definitely!

At Above the Law, Olga V. Mack talks with Richard Finkelman of the Berkley Research Group about the recent ruling by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta finding Google guilty of monopolistic practices.

Given the extent to which we rely search engines and Big Tech in our daily lives, I think it a worthwhile read.

I woke this morning to a broken blog. The error message told me that one of the database tables needed repair.

Quick like a bunny, before even having a cup of coffee, I logged into my hosting provider, started phpMyAdmin, and ran a check, repair, and optimize on on the primary database. (As a matter of routine, I do a check, repair, and optimize, as well as a database backup, at least once a week, ever since I had major database crash back when this blog was still a toddler.) The process took less than two minutes.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Marc Wittmann argues that, as far as AI is concerned, the “Singularity” remains a fever dream He makes three main points, the most important being that hardware cannot evolve. Follow the link, where he explores each one.

Some scientists and philosophers have the opinion that artificial intelligence could one day become conscious.
A computer remains the same physical structure from one moment to the next.
A living organism, in contrast, is never the same entity from one moment to the next.

Afterthought:

Mechanical processing speed is indeed impressive, but it’s not the same thing as intelligence.

Per security maven Bruce Schneier, it may well not be.

Security maven Bruce Schneir takes a look at last week/s CrowdStrike computer failure and concludes that the potential for such an event is a feature, not a bug, fostered by the fee hand of the market.

Here’s a bit from his article (emphasis added):

Imagine a house where the drywall, flooring, fireplace, and light fixtures are all made by companies that need continuous access and whose failures would cause the house to collapse. You’d never set foot in such a structure, yet that’s how software systems are built. It’s not that 100 percent of the system relies on each company all the time, but 100 percent of the system can fail if any one of them fails. But doing better is expensive and doesn’t immediately contribute to a company’s bottom line.

Follow the link for the context of that comparison.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Dr. Lantie Elisabeth Jorandby reacts to Surgeon General’s recent proposal that “social” media should come with warning labels for young persons by looking at the ample evidence that “social” media isn’t. Here’s a small piece of her piece:

A key piece of damning evidence cited in the advisory was a recent study of 6,595 adolescents. Researchers found that those who spent more than three hours a day on social media had double the risk of mental health problems. These included depression and anxiety.

Given that the average daily social media use among that age group is now 4.8 hours, and that 3 hours a day is associated with twice the depression and anxiety risk, you have to ask: What effect could 4.8 hours a day have on young people?

The entire article is worth your whiles.

In related news, the EFF wants you to know that your car may be watching you.

Mageia v. 9 with the Fluxbox window manager. The wallpaper is from my collection.

I’ve been using Mageia on various boxes since v. 3. I find it quite a nice piece of work.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Alain Samson takes a deep dive into how and why “clickbait” works, noting, among other things, that it

. . . exploits cognitive and emotional traits, triggering impulsive clicks

I must warn you that it’s not the best-written piece, but I think it still worth at least a skim. It might help you protect yourself against the nattering nabobs of nonsense trying to suck(er) you down their rabbit holes of rubbish.

One more time, “social” media isn’t.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Russell Ramsay reports on a study documenting how and why “social” media is not a reliable source of information. He notes that the study focused on TikTok (studies to have to focus, after all), but that its findings extend to “social” media in general.

In that context, he reminds us that

. . . social media platform algorithms are driven by popularity, not accuracy.

I commend the entire piece to your attention.