Geek Stuff category archive

Mind-numbing? At Psychology Today Blogs, Cornelia C. Walther warns that relying on AI can dumb us down. A snippte:

We notice that AI helps us write emails faster but miss that we’re losing language construction facilities. We appreciate AI research assistance but don’t recognize our declining information synthesis capacity. We enjoy AI-generated entertainment but overlook our reduced tolerance for ambiguity that characterizes authentic human creativity.

She goes on to offer some techniques to negate the negative.

In related new, El Reg reports on the newly-instituted AI Darwin Awards.

A tool for learning? At Psychology Today Blogs, Michael Hogan warns us that “(o)ver-reliance on AI risks eroding students’ knowledge and skill development through reduced cognitive effort.”

Accomplished? Not really.

An accomplice? Who we knockin’ over, boss?

Always sure of itself? Is a hot air balloon high on its own supply?

At Psychology Today Blogs, Mona S. Weissmark cautions, “Don’t be fooled by bloviating bots.” She notes:

People often trust AI because it is authoritative, articulate, and seemingly objective. But confident-sounding information can still be completely wrong. The result is an illusion of credibility.

Follow the link for some tips as to how not be taken in by over confident-sounding erroneous bots.

Hackable? With the right prompt, you can make it stomp.

Bubblelicious? At El Reg, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols argues that the AI bubble of hysterical hype is about to burst. A snippet:

You see, now that people have been using AI for everything and anything, they’re beginning to realize that its results, while fast and sometimes useful, tend to be mediocre.

Follow the link for context.

A competent source of medical advice? At Psychology Today Blogs, David Weitzner suggests that you’d best duck the quack.

The Zuckerborg’s AI is involuntarily assimilating celebrities without their permission.

Words fail me.

An illusion created by an algorithm? At Psychology Today Blogs, John Nosta notes that “AI’s fluency creates the illusion of thought, but no cognition lies behind it.”

He goes on to point out

At its core (dare I say heart), AI is a machine of probability. Word by word, it predicts what is most likely to come next. This continuation is dressed up as conversation, but it isn’t cognition. It is a statistical trick . . . .

His whole piece is worth a read.

Able to take responsibility for its actions? Per Joe Patrice at Above the Law, we may soon find out.

Writing at Psychology Today Blogs of a scam from two centuries ago, Matthew Facciani sees similarities with today’s online scams.

Secure? That bridge in Brooklyn is still on the market.

Security maven Bruce Schneier points out (emphasis added):

Any AI that is working in an adversarial environment—and by this I mean that it may encounter untrusted training data or input—is vulnerable to prompt injection. It’s an existential problem that, near as I can tell, most people developing these technologies are just pretending isn’t there.

Details at the link.

As a matter of fact, let’s make that bleeping stupid.

Hazardous? Per Timothy Cook (no relation to Tim Apple), “New research shows how prolonged AI interactions distort some users’ sense of reality.”

Fostering fantasy? Per Joe Pierre, “When psychosis-proneness meets AI sycophancy, delusional thinking can result.”

The guilty plea.

Mageia v. 9 with the Plasma desktop. The wallpaper is from my collection.