QOTD 0
Flemming Rose:
I pray that we will not forget this lesson, though some amongst us seem to have done so.
Laugh Fest 0
David looks at right-wingers’ reaction to the possibility that Kamala Harris might be the Democratic nominee for president and finds them laughable.
Me, I echo Half Empty. I’d vote for a refrigerator before I’d vote for Trump.
Twits Own Twitter X Offenders . . .
0
A fellow Tech Billionaire calls Elon Musk to task. A snippet:
“Hard for me to support someone with no values, lies, cheats, rapes, demeans women, hates immigrants like me,” Khosla replied. “He may cut my taxes or reduce some regulation but that is no reason to accept depravity in his personal values. Do you want President who will set back climate by a decade in his first year? Do you want his example for your kids as values?”
Coup de Nah 0
A Harvard professor points out that one thing is not like the other thing.
The Track Record 0
At the Las Vegas Sun, Tom Harper points out:
Yeah, I know he misplaced a modifier, but methinks he has a point. Follow the link for context.
This New Gilded Age 0
Farron looks at the “Heritage” Foundation’s Project 2025 plan to raise taxes for the poor, who have litle money, and lower taxes for the rich, who have lots of money.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Societty” 0
Celebrate birthdays with politeness.
Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Not So Much. 0
Sam Uretsky looks at the current iteration of Large Language Models (LLMs). He is not impressed.
A snippet:
The abstract begins, “In reinforcement learning, specification gaming occurs when AI systems learn undesired behaviors that are highly rewarded due to misspecified training goals. Specification gaming can range from simple behaviors like sycophancy to sophisticated and pernicious behaviors like reward-tampering, where a model directly modifies its own reward mechanism.” That is, if the program of the AI includes rewards for giving the answers that please the questioner, the LLM will tell a white lie to get a reward, the way a white rat in a maze will learn to get a treat.
Follow the link for context.
Aside:
Just because you shouldn’t believe it just because you see it on a computer screen, you shouldn’t believe it just because it comes out of a computer’s speakers.
The Fear Factor 0
Methinks Rat has a point.
Aside:
In the late 1990s, I was working for a company that manufactured security software. Their programmers were working like mad to make sure their software made it into 2000 without any issues.
One of my neighbors was so freaked out by the hype around Y2K that he bought a generator. It was I swear the world’s loudest home generator with the world’s most sensitive auto-switch. The slightest little blip in the current–one that you didn’t even notice if you were watching TV at the time, one so small that it didn’t even make the lights blink–would cause it to come on and wake the neighborhood.
