Lia's recent activity
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Comment on Conservative activist Charlie Kirk shot and killed at Utah college event in ~society
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Comment on Conservative activist Charlie Kirk shot and killed at Utah college event in ~society
Lia Link ParentViolence against innocent and sometimes defenceless people, motivated by retaining or grabbing more power. Violence against the above described perpetrator, motivated by helping someone other than...-
Violence against innocent and sometimes defenceless people, motivated by retaining or grabbing more power.
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Violence against the above described perpetrator, motivated by helping someone other than yourself.
You don't seem to distinguish between these in your comment. Is that intentional or just my interpretation?
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Comment on Dia browser invites in ~tech
Lia (edited )LinkI'd like one but I'm an AI critic! So I may not deserve it. ;) Edit: I have a use case right now though so it's the best possible time to convert me.I'd like one but I'm an AI critic! So I may not deserve it. ;)
Edit: I have a use case right now though so it's the best possible time to convert me.
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Comment on Therapists are secretly using ChatGPT in ~health.mental
Lia (edited )LinkI responded to some comments before even reading the article, and I still have only read the first two paragraphs, and I'm already noping out. The way a therapist is supposed to listen to the...I responded to some comments before even reading the article, and I still have only read the first two paragraphs, and I'm already noping out.
The way a therapist is supposed to listen to the client requires extreme focus. You can't possibly direct your attention to chatting with an LLM simultaneously, not if you're being an actual therapist. Anyone doing this should lose their license, and to be fair, they probably would in my country where licenses are more strictly regulated and adherence to them actively monitored by the government.
I can see value to a service where a mental health professional would summarise the client's speech into professionally valid questions to feed to an LLM, filter the answers using his professional judgment and finally, deliver the result to the client utilising his Human Expression Enhancement SuiteTM - Now with the updated Body Language Extension package! But under no circumstances should it be called psychotherapy.
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Comment on Therapists are secretly using ChatGPT in ~health.mental
Lia Link ParentWhile I respect your perspective and agree that it's valid, my personal opinion is different. I can use an LLM myself to brainstorm solutions to my problems if I happen to want LLM-driven...Personally I have no issues with my therapist using an LLM on their own time to do research into my problem and brainstorm ideas on how to solve them.
While I respect your perspective and agree that it's valid, my personal opinion is different. I can use an LLM myself to brainstorm solutions to my problems if I happen to want LLM-driven solutions. That's not what I pay my therapist for.
I pay him to take in and consider topics that I don't want anyone or anything outside of that office to ever find out about. Let alone some ethically dubious AI firm! I have not authorised him to share my ideas and information with such companies - not even with the healthcare companies that are operating in my country in line with our local legislation. Thankfully he is such a thoughtful person that he himself brought this up during the first session, by volunteering the information that he isn't keeping session logs and definitely not sharing any of his (hand written) notes with anyone else. I am still going to explicitly ask him, come next session, that he not type my stuff into an LLM chatbox.
The level of privacy I need is probably higher than it would be for most people because my therapist is first and foremost a career coach, so I talk to them about my top secret business stuff all the time. My professional field is highly competitive and the project I'm doing is on the more challenging end of things, so sometimes I also need emotional support and more traditional therapy techniques to make sure I'm not overstepping my abilities too much, or driven by some unhealthy emotional patterning that could result in going in the wrong direction. The last thing I need is to worry that some of my most sensitive business info could leak before I even have a chance to launch.
When it comes to more mainstream uses of therapy, having very strong faith that your sessions are private is a key factor to some people's healing. When you feel certain that you are in an environment of absolute privacy - sometimes including feeling like you're the only person in the room, i.e. the therapist isn't even a person at all - you will gain better visibility to your unconscious mind's operations. This can very largely determine the results we are able to achieve, depending of what sort of issues the person is trying to heal.
In fact, I believe the fact that some believe an LLM to be a better therapist than a human is linked to the experience that there's no human observer present other than the user. The user is able to be more open and experimental in their role as a "patient" than they can with a human therapist.
However, the grim downsides are: i) the sessions are only seemingly private, not truly so (I don't believe for a second that the user's information won't be sold off for targeted advertising), and ii) the LLM has no idea how to provide an effective healing service congruently over multiple sessions / months/years, and how to stay within tolerable boundaries when these are different for each individual client and the methodology that helps redirect the session also isn't the same for everyone. Therapists receive actual training to learn all that but the training itself isn't enough - you also have to be able to use all five senses to gauge the client's reactions at all times.
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Comment on In 1975, Swedish socialists and unions devised a program to democratically seize the means of production, but terrified elites dismantled it in ~humanities.history
Lia Link ParentI own a small business and I disagree, mainly because the article says the policy would only apply to companies "above a certain size". I assume that size would be something so elusive to someone...were I wanting to start a company I would think twice about it since the more successful I was, the more I'd lose control
I own a small business and I disagree, mainly because the article says the policy would only apply to companies "above a certain size".
I assume that size would be something so elusive to someone just starting out that it wouldn't be a concern, especially not a prohibitive one. The same might not be true for tech startups that can experience stark growth / scoop up a lot of funding from the start, before they even reach profitability. I would argue that if this legislation put some breaks on that type of business development, it would be a net gain for society. More funding would be directed at products and services that actually make the world better but turn a more modest profit than gimmicky tech snake oil "innovations".
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Comment on WebCurate - Find the best websites on the internet in ~tech
Lia (edited )Link"Find the Best Sites on the Internet" Really? What exactly is a "best" website? Loosely related: As me and my former lover have recently ended the arrangement (amicably!), I'm back on the dating..."Find the Best Sites on the Internet"
Really? What exactly is a "best" website?
Loosely related: As me and my former lover have recently ended the arrangement (amicably!), I'm back on the dating apps. I'm one of those odd people who actually read the bio and care a lot about what it says. Numerous bios say something like:
I enjoy deep conversations
I'm looking for someone with a good sense of humour
I love great films and good books!
Music is important to me
The thing is, if they don't explain what sort of music is important, what films they consider "great", what sort of topic they are able or willing to go deep in, etc. - I have no clue what they're talking about. "Music" is important to me too, but some of my most loved albums might not even register as music from the above quoted person's perspective.
When people speak like this, I can't escape the impression that they're not being truthful. If someone actually cares about films deeply enough to dedicate some of the app's limited characters to the topic, they will try to convey whether it's Tarantino or Tarkovsky that they define "great", and the best ones even share some hint as to why they feel that way. Only someone who doesn't actually care very much at all will use overly generic terms that are almost entirely void of meaning. It screams low effort at best, deceptive if perceived more cynically.
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Comment on Moser's Frame Shop: I am an AI hater in ~tech
Lia Link ParentI still remember how annoying Clippy was on Windows. At first I didn't realise you could turn it off and it drove me nuts. Looks like it took 10 years for it to get discontinued entirely. Given...Here's your new AI in every messenger app, ask it things. No. You cannot decline to have it. It's always there.
I still remember how annoying Clippy was on Windows. At first I didn't realise you could turn it off and it drove me nuts. Looks like it took 10 years for it to get discontinued entirely. Given how quickly all this current assistant force-feeding picked up, I'm hoping it'll take less time to clear out.
After I got fed up with Windows entirely (around 2010 IIRC) and transitioned to a Mac, I had to keep using a virtual Windows machine due to Adobe not letting me make the switch without buying a brand new license for their CS suite. I was supposed to be able to do that but customer service persistently told me I couldn't, or that my information couldn't be found and I was suspected for having a fraudulent license (it wasn't). I now know they were likely doing that on purpose so thank goodness I didn't give them more of my money.
I dreaded using the thing on Windows every time because a professionally commonly used hotkey was reserved for bringing up the Windows magnifier and this could not be changed, no matter what. I could change the hotkey to a different one for the CS programs, but not for my neural networks where it had been ingrained over countless repetitions and a number of years. Fun times.
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Comment on Breaking the creepy AI in police cameras in ~tech
Lia Link ParentKeep in mind that it's usually not legal to tamper with your license plate (also pointed out in the video), so doing it in a way that a human eye can detect could lead to trouble. IIRC, according...Keep in mind that it's usually not legal to tamper with your license plate (also pointed out in the video), so doing it in a way that a human eye can detect could lead to trouble.
IIRC, according to him a better solution would be doing it in a way that infrared cameras will detect but the eye won't. I wasn't paying attention the whole time but I was left with the impression that a final solution was not offered in the video. Hopefully someone will correct me in case I just missed it!
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Comment on Which directors have a flawless filmography? in ~movies
Lia Link ParentI would have mentioned Tarkovsky, but I haven't seen enough of his work to evaluate fairly. More importantly, I don't speak Russian. I love The Mirror, it's one of my favourite films ever, but I'm...I would have mentioned Tarkovsky, but I haven't seen enough of his work to evaluate fairly. More importantly, I don't speak Russian. I love The Mirror, it's one of my favourite films ever, but I'm also aware that I probably have little idea what it's actually about. I simply project my own interpretations and meaning onto it, which it allows me to do without fighting back too hard.
(I heard of a man who married a foreign lady despite the fact that neither of them knew each other's language. He told everyone they were deeply in love. The wife moved to the husband's country to live with him. After a few years they got divorced because she learned to speak his language. Turns out they weren't soulmates to the extent the man thought.)
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Comment on Which directors have a flawless filmography? in ~movies
Lia Link ParentTell us you're a guy without telling us you're a guy.Tell us you're a guy without telling us you're a guy.
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Comment on Spotify is adding direct messaging to their music streaming app in ~tech
Lia Link ParentWhen I was under 40 and Spotify was new, I tried it for a week and decided I didn't like it enough to keep it (bad customer experience, and my favourite fresh music wasn't on there). Later I heard...Reading comments on Tildes always makes me realize that folks on here have no idea what anyone under 40 actually wants and likes.
When I was under 40 and Spotify was new, I tried it for a week and decided I didn't like it enough to keep it (bad customer experience, and my favourite fresh music wasn't on there). Later I heard artists weren't even being paid fairly and patted myself on the back. Today, based on what I've read, I would like it even less than I did back then.
Soundcloud was nice for a while. NTS Radio might be my next go-to.
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Comment on Spotify is adding direct messaging to their music streaming app in ~tech
Lia Link ParentNot every company has similar growth incentives. An example from the personal knowledge management space is Obsidian, a direct competitor to Notion and other similar apps/services. Obsidian is...Not every company has similar growth incentives.
An example from the personal knowledge management space is Obsidian, a direct competitor to Notion and other similar apps/services. Obsidian is free of charge except for the features that cost them money to run (sync, publish). They do have paid licenses for those who wish to pay, but it isn't required. There's no proprietary file format, no account needed to use it, the files are local. Essentially no vendor lock-in of any kind.
They have a small team (less than ten people IIRC) so they don't need an immense turnover to keep going, and they're not hungry for exponential growth.
Bending Spoons - an EU based tech company that specialises in buying small businesses with loyal user bases and enshittifying them to oblivion - tried to buy Obsidian last year. Obsidian's CEO asked them if it would be okay to post the email online to gauge user response. When he posted it, he added a remark explaining that the team has permission to send such emails directly to trash, without even mentioning it to their colleagues, and that Obsidian was not even considering the offer.
I'd love to see similar businesses pop up in other areas. The relief I felt when I found Obsidian was immense and made me realise how much modern tech is likely contributing to people's overall stress and mental health problems.
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Comment on Ed Zitron: How to argue with an AI booster in ~tech
Lia (edited )Link ParentThanks for asking. The description was indeed overly vague. I added more context in the first quote. I also realised that there's a part missing from the narration of events and added a remark...Thanks for asking. The description was indeed overly vague. I added more context in the first quote.
I also realised that there's a part missing from the narration of events and added a remark about that. GPT-4 allegedly was reasoning "out loud" (= so that the researchers could see) about the need to deceive the human, then told the human it was a fellow human with impaired vision to justify why it needs someone else to solve a CAPTCHA, and this got the actual human to solve the CAPTCHA.
I remember feeling astonished and in awe, as well as worried, after watching the conversation where these events were (inaccurately, as it turns out) described. Exactly the kinds of emotions that can make material go viral. Luckily I was very busy at the time and only told one person about it, my AI skeptic friend who was unimpressed even without looking further into it, and that was that.
The thing is, we can't be hypervigilantly fact-checking stuff all the time. We are going to have to have some baseline assumption about things that will err on one side or another, and accept that occasionally that assumption may be wrong. Up until now I've been trying to remain open and curious about AI, but after seeing how deceitful the surrounding communication is, I'm likely going to pick a side and just start outright rejecting any AI hype I come across.
I have better things to do with my time than fact-checking these deliberately misleading morons.
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Comment on Which directors have a flawless filmography? in ~movies
Lia Link ParentMy ability to fully enjoy a film is probably a lot lower than yours, but on the other hand I can watch the enjoyable ones countless times (at least I haven't yet hit a limit with any of them). The...My ability to fully enjoy a film is probably a lot lower than yours, but on the other hand I can watch the enjoyable ones countless times (at least I haven't yet hit a limit with any of them).
The lighting tech is actually one reason why I've been wanting to try Barry Lyndon again. At least if I end up disliking it, I can focus on that aspect. :)
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Comment on Which directors have a flawless filmography? in ~movies
Lia Link ParentDogtooth was my favourite for a long time as well, but the other two you mentioned have surpassed it for me, especially Kinds of Kindness. I consider it to be very close to perfection in every...Dogtooth was my favourite for a long time as well, but the other two you mentioned have surpassed it for me, especially Kinds of Kindness. I consider it to be very close to perfection in every way.
Poor Things had a somewhat disappointing ending, and I'm not someone to focus on "plot" at all. It's just that the whole thing was teetering on the border between fresh expression and poor taste and then flopped to one side in the end, and I would have preferred the other side. In the grand scheme of things, it's excusable. Sort of like the one unnecessarily gross scene in Von Trier's Antichrist without which it would have been an even better film. It's still a very good film.
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Comment on Which directors have a flawless filmography? in ~movies
Lia Link ParentI am so so so so so jealous of the people who were able to see this when it first came out. It was still mind blowing for me when I first saw it in the 80's or 90's, on a tiny tv screen. It was...2001: A Space Odyssey
I am so so so so so jealous of the people who were able to see this when it first came out.
It was still mind blowing for me when I first saw it in the 80's or 90's, on a tiny tv screen. It was already a different time where special effects were commonly used in cinema, but most weren't even close to what 2001 was able to do so much earlier. Imagine living your whole life in a world where none of that is a thing, then going to the movies one night and seeing this! I probably would have fainted out of surprise and pleasure.
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Comment on Which directors have a flawless filmography? in ~movies
Lia Link ParentFor a completionist, a bad film from a great director is a wonderful thing as it will significantly prolong the process! After all, no matter how eagerly one wishes to complete, we all know...For a completionist, a bad film from a great director is a wonderful thing as it will significantly prolong the process!
After all, no matter how eagerly one wishes to complete, we all know there's no fun to be had after reaching the goal. Unless of course there's another equally great director to immerse yourself into, but at least in my opinion they aren't all too abundant.
I should probably force myself to see Barry Lyndon again.
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Comment on Ed Zitron: How to argue with an AI booster in ~tech
Lia (edited )Link ParentIt's justified anger, in my opinion. I'll share one example. I witnessed the following conversation on YouTube and almost fell for the hoax. I made a mental note that I should look into it to make...It's justified anger, in my opinion. I'll share one example. I witnessed the following conversation on YouTube and almost fell for the hoax.
In one test, conducted by an A.I. safety research group that hooked GPT-4 up to a number of other systems, GPT-4 was able to hire a human TaskRabbit worker to do a simple online task for it — solving a Captcha test — without alerting the person to the fact that it was a robot. The A.I. even lied to the worker about why it needed the Captcha done, concocting a story about a vision impairment.
Roose, along with his co-host Casey Newton, would go on to describe this example at length on a podcast that week, describing an entire narrative where “the human actually gets suspicious” and “GPT 4 reasons out loud that it should not reveal that [it is] a robot,” [something seems to be missing here about how GPT-4 lied to the human] at which point “the TaskRabbit solves the CAPTCHA.” During this conversation, Newton gasps and says “oh my god” twice, and when he asks Roose “how does the model understand that in order to succeed at this task, it has to deceive the human?” Roose responds “we don’t know, that is the unsatisfying answer,” and Newton laughs and states “we need to pull the plug. I mean, again, what?”
I made a mental note that I should look into it to make sure there are no misunderstandings or misrepresentations in there. But I never got around to actually doing so, and I never would have thought that the possible misrepresentation would be so blatant as it is.
It is transparently, blatantly obvious that GPT-4 did not "hire" a Taskrabbit or, indeed, make any of these actions — it was prompted to, and they do not show the prompts they used, likely because they had to use so many of them.
Anger is an appropriate reaction when someone deliberately misleads you in an attempt to exploit. When the scale of this attempt is on the level of an entire society, not only is anger appropriate, it becomes necessary. Some things are worse than others and expressing anger is a way to communicate that this is one of them.
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Comment on Which directors have a flawless filmography? in ~movies
Lia LinkAm I a total killjoy if I ask you to define "a stinker"? Just a film you personally dislike? So you're looking for a director whose every single film I like? It's sort of an unfair question. All...Am I a total killjoy if I ask you to define "a stinker"? Just a film you personally dislike? So you're looking for a director whose every single film I like?
It's sort of an unfair question. All my favourite directors have at least one film I didn't like, with only one exception that comes to mind: Yorgos Lanthimos. But I haven't seen all of his work, so.
As for the Coen Brothers, Raising Arizona flew over my head to such extent that I only saw a part of the beginning. They are among my favourite directors though. Kubrick is another favourite but I didn't get Barry Lyndon. Lynch is my forever love but Inland Empire left me cold. And so on.
This is true in the immediate context (direct physical violence) but not in the broader one where a CEO has multitudes more power than the individuals who get health insurance from his company. More power within society in general and additionally, power over these individuals in particular. Abusing that power for personal gain is structurally similar to what warlords do, even when it happens ostensibly within legal limits, because in a capitalist system the lawmaker is usually a collaborator that enables this type of punching down.
Hitler, Putin and the aforementioned "gentlemen" are/were all working towards the exploitative goal of concentrating power into ever fewer hands - either their own or their collaborators'. Mangione made a personal sacrifice (the direct opposite of a power grab) in order to help diffuse or slow down this development.
While I don't condone this type of violence against oppressive powers, I also don't think it fair to evaluate it out of context - as if the CEO's actions didn't count just because they weren't personally shooting their victims with a gun. Slavery used to be legal but it was oppressive, violent and morally unjustifiable nevertheless.