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Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How to leverage one AI beast against the other? (google.com)

shanen writes: File this under "rage against the machines"? Or as some kind of joke?

So here's the background: The google is trying to sell me cloud storage. The sales pitch is simple enough. Frequent nagging about running low on storage space. I do not even know which of my google accounts this is based on because two of my universities have foisted secondary accounts on me.

However I suspect that a lot of the data is basically garbage photos. Now I could just delete masses of stuff at random (and this is probably where I will wind up), but there are actually two potentially large categories of images that could be reduced from megabytes to a few hundred bytes each without major loss. It's an obvious AI application of pulling some text and the metadata from the images and tossing the originals.

However when I asked the (increasingly evil) google's Gemini about this, the response was NOT helpful. Gemini admits that it's an obviously useful thing to do, but also spewed a lot of BS about why google isn't going to do it. Gemini also spewed a lot of even less useful verbiage about how to implement it using the google's tools--but I do NOT want to go back to my programming days. I'm content with a few minor noddies these years... My take is that the non-evil google could offer the tool and get "payback" in the form of learning more about what the images mean, but the google obviously disagrees. Or at least that's how I'm interpreting the massive blather from Gemini.

But does some other AI offer such a tool that could be applied to my google account? The other AI company could positively justify it by learning about images or perhaps negatively justify it by depriving the google of the business.

Or maybe you want to share some hints about how you manage your file bloat in these AI days? Me? I think we are collapsing through the singularity even as I type... And the other side doesn't look so good. I did a lot of kinds of work over the years, but most of my jobs already look like they are obsolete or extinct. And I made my living at a wide spectrum of trades from low to high skills... Or perhaps you want a link to a short video of the best job in the world: "Mayor of Prairie Dog Town greeting the citizens with veggies!" That's job no AI can handle yet!

Comment Not an actual case of cryocide, so what's the... (Score 1) 74

Mod FP funny, and if that moderation had happened sooner, then maybe the humorous opening FP would have been more productive. But I don't have another joke to add, so I'll fork (as is my tendency in most cases).

New Subject:

Not an actual case of cryocide, so what's the problem here?

Near as I can tell (without actually breaking down and reading everything) is that she died, was pronounced and certified as dead, and he didn't incinerate or bury her corpse, but chose to freeze her remains. Minor question about how long that process took, but not too interesting.

Now imagine that it was a case of cryocide. Imagine that she was still alive when she pushed a button to carefully freeze herself BEFORE she was actually dead. On the one hand, the cause of death is now a kind of suicide, but on the other hand, if the freezing is carefully done with the intention of minimizing the damage and the hope of being revived in the future, then we may be looking at an entirely fresh can of worms.

I actually imagine this as an opening for a series of SF stories called "Cyocide Crybabies" about waking up in worlds gone wrong. Any leads? Or even interest?

Comment Will it help you avoid paying money to the google? (Score 1) 23

Not an unreasonable FP, but now you can reply to yourself to clarify what you mean. Perhaps under a more thoughtful and substantive Subject? I'm too happily retired to care about your apparent focus, and I don't see how to make any more jokes under the current conditions so thoroughly dominated by Poe's Law, so I'm switching to a practical topic:

The google is nagging me, even leaning on me, to buy some storage. But "Who steals my data, steals trash." I'm quite sure that my stored data is strongly dominated by worthless garbage. Will the google's AI help me throw away the trash?

I didn't think so.

However, I'm sure there is at least one large category of images that could be reduced to a few hundred bytes per image. This is actually the kind of task AI is good for, but "Don't be evil" has been completely redefined now. It's a Level 3 lie, but "evil" now means "anything that might impede or reduce the google's profits".

So I'll just start throwing away stuff at random. And feeling even more disgusted with the google and even more eager to go ANYWHERE else.

Wait a minute. I finally did think of a joke. Hilarious to remember my positive sentiments about the google of yore. So different from today's sentiments towards one of the truly great corporate cancers.

Comment Re: America's electricy prices compared to whose? (Score 1) 71

Your grasp of economics is so deep.

So how would you like to buy a nice bridge? Only slightly used by a little old lady who crossed it to go to church on Sundays.

You remind me of a CFO I used to work with. Harvard MBA, so he must have been a genius. Can't understand how the company went bankrupt. I'm sure there was no causal link, but I had left long before that... I got too tired of taking care of problems that had been omitted from the business plan...

Comment America's electricy prices compared to whose? (Score 0) 71

So far no mention of the Chinese elephant in the room? Also curious about the European situation. Or should I report on the increasingly bleak Japanese situation as regards electricity supplies?

One thing about renewable power like solar and wind is that you may have "free" excess capacity just because the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. For a lot of the AI training stuff, that can be scheduled when the power is available and thus lower the electricity demand from the data centers for AI training... You don't need to worry about storing the electricity if you have some lower-priority stuff scheduled to use it immediately.

Comment Tesla is so funny! (Score 1) 122

Why funny? Because I think it would be funny if someone made a special version of the Tesla logo. Look close and you'd see it's actually a starving child with extended arms. One version could be a plastic logo cover for the hood ornament on Tesla cars.

I also considered the option of a little note to stick under the wiper of a parked Tesla: "Are you pro-life? If so, why do you drive a car linked with starving innocent children to death?"

Of course I'm just joking and I'd never actually do such a thing. Or maybe I'm not joking and I just believe that no insurance company would cover a Tesla unless the owner has a parking place with surveillance cameras? But I don't think you could pay me enough to support any Musk enterprise now. No joke.

Comment We haven't reached peak stupidity yet (Score 1) 73

How fast can we make things worse by burning more fossil fuel? The answer may surprise your children, but not your grandchildren who will be sadly too familiar with the mess we've created for them.

In related news: Bears as in a plague of bears. Not a simple and direct relationship, but they have certainly become a massive nuisance in Japan. New record for human deaths, apparently because the beech trees had a really bad year resulting in lots of extra hungry bears. However what surprised me the most was an estimate of 4,200 bears already "culled" this year. I was checking on the base as the government announced new policies that essentially call for war against the bears and wondered how bad it could get...

Yesterday saw a "Funny" video of a big bear demolishing a bear trap. Smarter than the average bear?

Comment Re:Surprising! (Score 1) 59

Telescreen monitoring would have required a crazy amount of manpower.

Probably the closest real-world analog was the East German Stasi, which may have accounted for nearly 1 in 6:

The ratio for the Stasi was one secret policeman per 166 East Germans. When the regular informers are added, these ratios become much higher: In the Stasi's case, there would have been at least one spy watching every 66 citizens! When one adds in the estimated numbers of part-time snoops, the result is nothing short of monstrous: one informer per 6.5 citizens. It would not have been unreasonable to assume that at least one Stasi informer was present in any party of ten or twelve dinner guests. Like a giant octopus, the Stasi's tentacles probed every aspect of life.

— John O. Koehler, German-born American journalist, quoted from Wikipedia

Comment Story reminds me of the Jimmy Carr joke... (Score 1) 59

He has a joke "You know I can see you" that he targets at live audience members who act like they are watching television.

Headline of the story is not helpful. Should have been "in-tv-cameras" or "cameras-with-TVs"...

But now I'm wondering if TikTok can watch back? Or is this just an idea for a fresh form of app perversion? You didn't notice that the ToS gives us the right to capture everything we can get from your front and back cameras, plus you gave us permission to use AI to search for the funniest bits and post those candid-camera videos online. I imagine a business model where people can claim 1% of the profits for their contributions, assuming they can actually prove the linkage... But of course such a highly ethical company will be laundering all of the money through various jurisdictions and it turns out there are no profits! (PROFIT!)

Topic certainly seems to have room for some Funny, though I'm not holding my breath waiting for today's Slashdot to deliver it.

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