Mammon category archive
Emoluments, Reprise 0
Josh Gay follows the money.
Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Not So Much. 0
Capable of critical thought? Zeynep Tufekci argues that (emphasis added)
Large language models are not reasoning machines. They’re plausibility engines. They can only assess which answers are probable, based on the data on which the models have been trained.
Follow the link for his arguements.
And, in more news of AI . . . .
This New Gilded Age 0
Are we possibly seeing the return of the sweatshop?
Carnage Nation 0
Rebecca Watson discusses a recent report showing that the increasing size of cars and trucks, particularly the height of their front ends, in contributing to increase accidents and pedestrian deaths.
Or you can read the transcript.
Still Rising Again after All These Years, Reprise 0
Ring of Fire’s Josh Gay discusses Louisiana’s decision to bring back slave labor involuntary servitude.
Facebook Frolics 0
Politico reports:
One more time, “social” media isn’t.
The Privatization Scam 0
PoliticalProf looks follows the money.
Medicare Disadvantage 0
Thom talks with Wendell Potter about how Medicare Advantage has turned out to be just another part of the privatization scam. (Warning: Short commercial at the end.)
This New Gilded Age 0
It appears that the Trump maladministration is on the side of those who like to play monopoly.
Fight Night, Emoluments Dept. 0
Mary Trump follows the money.
It’s All about the Algorithm 0
Via The Charlotte Observer, Northwestern University professors William J. Brady and Eli J. Finkel remind us that artificial “intelligence” is not intelligent. It’s engineered, and it’s engineered by humans to benefit the companies that they work for.
After looking at the damage that “social” media algorithms have done to dis coarse discourse (and that section alone makes their article worth reading), they explain why they fear that AI will have similar effects, especially now that AI designers are turning to advertising as a source of revenue. Here’s a tiny bit:
We are not opposed to AI – far from it. The evidence we’ve cited suggests it can be a powerful tool for improving reasoning and reducing prejudice. But those benefits depend on what the chatbots are optimized for.
The argument that AI is fundamentally different from social media, that it will elevate expertise rather than amplify outrage and moderate views rather than entrench them, is seductive precisely because we want it to be true. But that argument deserves scrutiny, not credulity. If anything, the case for skepticism is stronger here than it was for social media.