It would be brilliant if we could get to that point here in the UK. Beggars are a plague on many towns and cities, and in 99.9% of cases it's a *lifestyle choice*. Even homelessness here (noting most beggars aren't homeless) is mostly by choice - there are plenty of beds in hostels available, however they won't accept you if you're drunk or on drugs. So people end up sleeping on the streets because they prefer that to being sober or drug free. Beggars exist because some people actually give them money, wrongly thinking they're helping somehow. If no-one carried cash any more, the beggars would stop begging and might even make some kind of attempt to get clean. Please bring your Swedish ways over here!

Absolutely 100% this! If you can only respond to my questions with answers from a company-approved script, then you are literally no better than an "AI" system. You're a flesh-based decision tree, not a genuine human being demonstrating understanding of my problem and a willingness to solve it. There's a nasty part of me that feels I *should* be able to treat this person like an unfeeling, unemotional inanimate object, and rant at it until I feel better. But then I remember that it's not the agent's fault they are restricted to a script, it's the company's. I just don't see the point of paying someone to do the ONE THING a computer CAN do, i.e. respond to various scenarios with pre-programmed information and never deviate from it, even if the responses are completely illogical, unfair, or somehow nefarious.

Pay humans to be human... they're surprisingly good at it you know...

The thing about those "license agreements" is that they're generally unenforceable for many reasons, a major one being contract law (in the UK, at least). To be legal, a contract has to be "fair" (a tricky legal term, a bit like "the man on the street") as well as other steps such as both parties must have had the opportunity to contribute to the agreement, with negotiated terms that must be made on an equal footing. A typical "license agreement" that is *forced* on you by making you click "yes" on receiving a software update is not valid because there was no option to add proposed terms nor to negotiate, nor was it made on the basis of two parties of equal footing entering an agreement - one is simply told "sign this bit of paper or you don't get to use the software you have already paid for" and isn't even given the chance to add their own terms (such as "you will pay for the man hours of our staff you use in any such audit").

It is my understanding that software companies have never (except in very specific exceptions) tested the enforcement of such a "license" in court as most of them know they aren't valid from the most basic legal perspective of what constitutes a fair agreement between two parties.

Personally, I'd re-write the sentence as:

although there's an argument going on in my head to write it as:

But yeah, it's just a horrible sentence. In fact, initially I thought they were considering the lemons, limes, radishes and lettuce as berries. Totally confusing! I work in publishing in the UK BTW, and my job involves editing and proof-reading, so really I should be getting this right, but... this is actually quite a difficult one IMHO!

I have found over the last ten years that so many authors don't know how to use semicolons. Also ellipses, which they often use where an em-dash should go, for example at the end of a line of interrupted speech (as opposed to someone's sentence trailing off gradually into nothing).

So forgiving and devout that he jumped out of his own car and, on foot, approached someone stopped behind him at the lights? Sure, that's definitely the action of someone pious, friendly and non-combative. Jeez, Why the lies always?

This is the bit that I'm confused by. Was she presumed guilty prior to conviction? I don't believe so. Why does the presumption of innocence need bolstering? And what would that look like?

Don't get me wrong, I think the American criminal justice system is insane, but... just like how I believe the worst person to give HIV safety advice is someone who has AIDS (I think people at risk would pay far more attention to someone who actually followed said advice than someone saying "I didn't do this but you should"), I don't think it's right for a criminal who has been proven guilty to be proposing legislation that bolsters the presumption of innocence. You *weren't* innocent, so what's your beef? Crazy.

I know this is Slashdot, but I DID actually look at the linked examples whereby the AI tool replicated entire (or almost entire) articles. And... as long as the evidence isn't completely fabricated, it's genuinely surprising. People who take the position LLM operators always say that it's just statistical data points and the model doesn't contain enough of the original to be able to spit out anything that would count as infringing. Well... not in this case, no sirree - we're talking multiple paragraphs of text lifted verbatim. For one, I cannot see any "fair use" defence (or any other kind) here. And two, a question: is there something about this specific model that enabled it to quote such large chunks of text, or is this an eye-opener that ALL LLMs might do the same thing?

Lots of discussion here about WHAT to actually teach the kids, and whether they need to know HOW computers work, rather than just a quick course in MS Office. From an employers point of view - though here in the UK - we take on a number of (what I call) kids for their first office-based job. Age range normally 20 to 22. What frustrates me most of all is that they have no idea of simple logic. We do use Excel a fair amount, and also things like InDesign - for which we design our own custom scripts. I often start the new employees off with some basic spreadsheets, for instance I'll give them a spreadsheet with two columns and ask them to make a third column that highlights where a row contains different values for each column. Easiest solution is a simple "IF" statement... yet I'd say only one in ten of them figures it out. And it amazes me that in a world where every kid has a computer in their hand, they don't even know this! So... I don't care if they know Excel itself, or if they can type fast. But... please, for god's sake, introduce them to the CONCEPT of logic. In my view, once you understand the basics of logic functions, and that computers *do exactly what you tell them to do* (uhhh with some exceptions haha) then learning the "advanced" stuff (for them) becomes a lot simpler. I'm just glad my mum was a teacher, and brought the school computer (yes, one, lol) home for the holidays, allowing me to teach myself all kinds of things...

Don't worry, I'll step in and do the legwork here. Angeli Rose Gomez endangered an entire lockdown operation when (against orders from a policeman) she ran INTO a school that was at that point in lockdown due to a shooter. This hampered the effectiveness of the effort to locate and subdue the shooter by law enforcement (a woman blindly running around is less than ideal at such a time) and not only put herself at risk but also the children (including hers) she "rescued" - which actually meant leading them from the relatively safe locked-down room they were in at the time through corridors and rooms where the shooter could have been, eventually by sheer luck making it out of the school building alive. Despite her ridiculous actions, other parents who think they know how to deal with an active shooter situation better than the trained experts have gone on to award the idiotic woman "hero" status.

So there you have it, folks, The best thing to do when there's a school shooting is for all parents with children in the school to go running in, lead their children through random un-cleared rooms and corridors, and to simply hope and pray that they get lucky.

No idea why this is a good example of why kids needs cellphones though...

Listened to this yesterday. I've always loved the "singing pig" solo...

Here's a solution: make the prompts inputted to the AI copyright, but the artwork itself in the public domain. Surely then everyone is happy - the author gets what he wants (copyright protection for HIS part in the whole thing) and we aren't left with any complicated "is it or isn't it?" questions.

Exactly this. Here in the UK, you literally CANNOT waive your legal rights. Even if you sign a document saying "I absolutely promise 100% that I cannot take this company to court if anything bad happens" it means nothing, as taking court action is an unalienable right.

You Americans talk a lot about this "constitution" thing. Surely there's something in there that confirms a similar principle?

Oh, THAT's ok then... they were fake product reviews, but at least they weren't written by AI.

Seriously... the fact that a CEO can happily admit that the entire purpose of their website - to provide product reviews - is being completely undermined by behind-the-scenes fakery, essentially pushing people towards products that in reality have not been reviewed by satisfied customers is just... disgusting to me. I'm sure it's not a surprise to anyone reading this that reviews are faked, but... the CEO of a product review company brazenly saying "yeah, our website - our product - is completely and utterly meaningless because the information it contains is tainted... but hey, don't shout at me, cuz it's not AI-based fakery"? It's like no-one gives a shit about anything anymore, and all truth has been drained from the world, and the internet is just one big lie. It's really depressing me today.

Oh I long for the days of my youth where you could ask A/S/L over mIRC and if it happened to be 14/f/Sweden, you could still have an interesting non-sexual conversation without fear of being called a paedophile and it not actually being a 38/m/basement.

The above comment is extremely helpful, and should definitely be modded insightful even more. I'm just shocked that the US doesn't already have an employment law that bans non-competes (and also gives 28 days paid holiday, but that's a whole different complaint I hear). Growing up, the "viewpoint" in the UK was that America was ahead of everyone else, top of the world in terms of the American Dream and how its people were treated (and protected) by the government. As an adult, that view has been shattered by so many things like this. I used to dream of moving to America and starting a life there. I now won't even book a holiday there. It's kind of sad, really. (new dream is New Zealand btw).

I'm not sure how it works in the US, but a lawyer once gave me some advice about my UK employment contract. He said that my employment contract can be enforced from the day I start work for the company to the day I leave (after serving out any notice period). He said that the day I stop working for the company, the contract is no longer in effect. Therefore any "non-compete" type clauses - or anything the contract says about my conduct after leaving is unenforceable. Quite simply, if the company went to court and said "He went and worked for X! Waaah!", the judge would want to see a contract stating that I couldn't do that. The only thing they could show would be my contract of employment. As I no longer worked for the company, this contract would not be accepted due to it having ended when I left, and any terms it stated would be no longer enforceable. This concept was made very clear in the Bosman ruling.