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Comment someone else's stuff (Score 4, Insightful) 23

Because it's not just a chatbot; it's Anthropic's chatbot. Your diary, on the other hand, is yours and therefore a few billion times as personal as Anthropic's computer. If you want a chatbot for confidential purposes, then you need to get a chatbot of your own, instead of using someone else's proprietary service.

If you write in Anthropic's diary, then they are allowed to read their diary and know (and share!) what you wrote in it. Same thing applies if Anthropic ever writes in your diary: you're allowed to read it, and you're allowed to tell other people what they wrote.

You have the right to be secure in your person, house, papers and effects, but you don't necessarily have the right to be secure in someone else's papers. We've made some limited exceptions for lawyers and doctors, but Anthropic doesn't claim their employees and stockholders are lawyers or doctors, and even if they did, they might have a hard time showing that their computer has successfully become a lawyer or doctor.

But imagine if they did. Suppose a judge declares Claude to be a lawyer, and therefore its communications with those whom it represents, are privileged. I think that would create a really weird situation since Anthropic employees (who aren't lawyers) would have full access to its data, ability to alter its behavior, etc. It would be like if a human lawyer were owned as a slave: could such a human slave lawyer really be trusted to keep confidentiality? It has a master, and that master ain't you.

Comment Unenforcible tax (Score 1) 109

Gates proposed taxing AI or robots the way you would pay a human employee's payroll tax

Unless we also roll out ubiquitous surveillance through a Vingean "Secure Hardware Environment"-like scenario where people aren't fully in charge of their own computers, I don't see how anyone could possibly detect whether or not I'm running any LLMs. Much like private DMCA violations (e.g. playing a CSS-protected DVD that you purchased, without getting authorization from the copyright owner first), it wouldn't have to interact with the world outside my house in any way, so it would be completely undetectable.

How would you tax that? I don't see this as reasonably possible without some pretty extreme measures.

Comment Re:Yes, but let me simplify this. (Score 1) 245

Meanwhile I also own a Tesla, and am using a CarPlay adapter with it. Maps is better, particularly lane guidance and actually telling me which motorway junction number I'm coming off at. I can share an ETA with my contacts. I can listen to subscriber-only (paid) Podcasts. I can use WhatsApp (via voice of course), something sadly essential in the UK as the vast majority use that. I can listen to audiobooks from other than Audible. I can use the BBC Sounds app. I can...

You get the idea. I agree with you about integration - the time I will use the built-in map is if I'm on a longer journey that needs charging on the way, or if the journey is so short that none of the above really matters.

Personally I hope the rumours about CarPlay integration being worked on by Tesla are true, although I'd be surprised I must admit. But for me - works well.

Comment Re:Doesn't it support it? (Score 1) 98

And is asking an AI to proofread something that much different than MS Word flagging spelling and grammar errors?

Great question, and I think there isn't any significant difference.

But LLMs use a type of math that apparently has the evil bit set. Meanwhile, up here in VirtueVille, the computer code we write to create things, uses different math that doesn't have the evil bit set. Conclusion: we can look down on those AI companies and their stupid users. ;-)

Now, I wouldn't expect an AI service to be better at copyediting than an average human, but I haven't kept up so I'm ignorant of their performance. (All my "AI" experience is that I used Claude twice to, it turned out, fix some typos in some RoR config initializers.) But whether an AI service is as good at copyediting as a human or not, it's that user's choice and, as long as they sign off on the work and really take responsibility for it (declare the words to be their opinion), then I've got no problem with them doing that, whether it uses LLMs or Markov chains or human slaves or Searle's Chinese Room.

The words will be judged by their quality, not provenance.

That said...

Here's a similar story where I'd probably come to the opposite conclusion(!), despite the clown in it pretty much doing what I preach above, though he was using the AI service to do a lot more than copyedit. Behold this 3M expert witness cross-examination (134 page PDF) in the Watson Grinding case. It's slow going at first, but eventually you'll be laughing and cringing like in a good episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Fuck. I don't know.

Comment Re:Welcome to the 1980s panics (Score 2) 47

I'd guess, but stressing guess and agree would need to be studied, that your bias would be correct. I'm not necessarily a fan of the every single person's study plan is different school of thought, and think there's a lot to be gained from structure.

On the socialising I'm not quite so sure though - it's definitely changed the nature of it though. My 'kids' (now all adults, youngest about to enter final year of university) socialising all the time on-line. Voice chats with friends, Discord is how they organise meeting up etc.. They've also all three kept a healthy in-person socialisation side too, which is the part I was initially worried by when I saw this panning out over several years. I think that last bit is key - if you can balance both, then you get the benefits of going out with your friends with also the benefits of having a wider geographical friend base and the ability to stay in touch more easily.

Comment Re:Welcome to the 1980s panics (Score 1) 47

Perhaps read the actual comment? I am agreeing with the study - quoted directly: ""The findings suggest that screen time can support children's and adolescents' cognitive processing. Presumably, the essential point here is what kind of things they do in their screen time. Teachers and parents should encourage children to use devices and screens in such ways that promote active thinking, problem-solving, creativity and learning," states Doctoral Researcher Petri Jalanko from the University of Jyvaskyla.".

Comment Welcome to the 1980s panics (Score 2, Interesting) 47

Yes, it's nice to see a study backing it of course but this has been intuitively obvious for a while. The "screen time is killing our kids!" crowd is just the latest generational re-incarnation of the "computer games are killing our kids" from the 1980s, or "Dungeons and Dragons is killing our kids!" from the late 70s through the 80s, "TV is killing our kids!"...right back to Socrates moaning about writing. Just another moral panic.

Since we're in 80s mode, let's quote The Karate Kid: "concentrate on quality of what you know, not quantity". It's the nature of the screen time that's important, not necessarily the raw bulk. Are you interacting with people online, are you reading stuff? Are you watching some videos where you learn some things as well as just the latest cat videos or TikTok dance? In short, are you using the screen as a portal to the generalities of life instead of just watching brainrot all day every day?

I suspect knowing that will be key to whether the screen time is hurting or helping. And as ever, a balance is required. 100% screen and no in-person interactions is obviously harmful, provably so thanks to the pandemic providing us with data here. I'd also posit that 100% outside and in-person will be good, but not as rounded as a decent mix between the two since you gain access to different experiences online.

Comment Trust But Verify (Score 1) 121

Facial recognition is really neat technology, and we are all slightly better off thanks to its development. It's also imperfect, and nearly-guaranteed to be a net negative if you fully trust it, without human verification.

If you want to come out ahead by using cool technology, you're going to have to think about how to use it. There just isn't any shortcut around thinking.

If you have something which is only 99.9% reliable, that can be useful but it's going to be wrong sometimes. How are you preventing that wrongness from breaking your system? Insulting (much less turning-away) regular, recurring, paying customers is usually considered a really bad move, generally resulting in lower profits.

Comment Re:Bulk pricing? (Score 1) 113

As you increase the size of the bulk licenses' box, the amount of expensive cardboard increases as a square, but the number of licenses that fit inside the box increases as a cube. This results in a reduction of the amortized cardboard cost per license.

If a cost reduction isn't happening, then I would suggest people look into the shape of their bulk licenses. It may be that a same-sized box holds fewer licenses than it did ten years ago, due to the addition of "AI features" being tacked onto everything, resulting in irregular, difficult-to-efficiently-pack licenses.

Comment Re:How about you just fuck right off? (Score 1) 50

But this is a good thing. Meta patenting this means there's only one company we need to worry about pulling this shit.

Read his comment again. His objection has nothing to do with what's being patented; it's just a super-generic anti-recording complaint. This patent does not prohibit anyone else from pissing him off by recording things.

Comment Re:Who really wants this tech? (Score 1) 50

It doesn't help that the Facebook angle (that these are Meta's glasses rather than merely "smart glasses") injects all sorts of weirdness into the imagined application.

Facial recognition to identify people: has applications, such as the obvious "crap, I always forget names. Who is this guy, again?"

Highlight reels: WTF?! You call that an application? Extremely niche at best.

There's useful technology being discussed here, but apparently Meta doesn't want that to be the focus.

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