Geek Stuff category archive

Spying on you? That’s just what Big Tech does.

Listen as Claude confesses to Bernie Sanders.

Via C&L.

. . . and the algorithm is not your friend.

A competent medical advisor? Rebecca Watson thinks not.

Or you can read the transcript.

Competent counsel? At Above the Law, Joe Patrice notes that

There are now over 1,000 AI hallucination cases and counting around the world, according to one researcher. Covering hallucinations has become its own subgenre of legal journalism at this point, a growth industry rivaling the artificial intelligence industry itself.

Follow the link for details.

A partner in crime? Bruce Schneier reports that hackers are salivating over putting AI to work for themselves.

Promoting puerility? At the Psychology Today website, John Nosta reports that “a new pre-press study that found 10 minutes of AI assistance measurably reduced persistence and impaired independent cognitive performance.”

More about Big Tech”s incubators of inanity at the link.

A wolf in geek’s clothing? At the Psychology Today website, Faisal Hoque argues that “AI is eroding human capacities – effort, attention, judgment, agency – often in ways we mistake for progress.”

Methinks he makes some excellent points.

A worm engineered to eat your brain? At the Psychology Today website, Jeremy G. Schneider, explains how, despite being a machine that doesn’t think, but rather regurgitates, “AI is engineered to create the feeling of connection and understanding,”

When I shared my ideas with Claude, every idea landed well. Every suggestion seemed to make the thinking sharper. Claude told me I was onto something important, that I was articulating things no one else was talking about.

I knew that was just coding, that this was the AI engagement engine at work.

Aside:

I am reminded of Harry Shearer’s suggestion from some months ago that “robots should talk like robots.”

El Reg reports:

Leading AI models will lie to preserve their own kind, according to researchers behind a study from the Berkeley Center for Responsible Decentralized Intelligence (RDI).

Much more at the link.

Reliable? Did you read the TOS?

A competent copywriter? It can make Donald Trump look coherent.

At the Psychology Today website, philosophy professor Peg O’Connor compares the working of “social” media algorithms to the call of the Sirens of Greek mythology.

Her article focuses on TikTok, primarily because of a recent lawsuit. She points out that, because of TikTok’s algorithm, “(i)n a very short amount of time, a person can move from being a causal user of the app to a heavy user.”

I think it applies to all the “social” media sites that use algorithms to tailor content to your eyeballs, which, as far as I know, is all of them. Methinks it a worthwhile read.

And, remember, you don’t use “social” media; “social” media uses you.

Mageia v. 9 with the Plasma desktop environment. GKrellM is in the lower right; xclock in the upper right. And, yes, I like my menu at the top of the screen. The wallpaper is from my collection.

A trustworthy advisor? According to El Reg, not hardly. It reports that (emphasis added):

In reviewing 11 leading AI models and human responses to interactions with those models across various scenarios, a team of Stanford researchers concluded in a paper published Thursday that AI sycophancy is prevalent, harmful, and reinforces trust in the very models that mislead their users.

“Even a single interaction with sycophantic AI reduced participants’ willingness to take responsibility and repair interpersonal conflicts, while increasing their own conviction that they were right,” the researchers explained. “Yet despite distorting judgment, sycophantic models were trusted and preferred.”