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Submission + - The 'Anti-AI' Panic Is Led by...AI Companies (hotair.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: What we are seeing is a massive, pretty obviously coordinated campaign by AI researchers, companies, NGOs, and politicians to strangle competition in an industry and, as I will show, save the financial bacon of the top AI companies that are vastly overextended financially because they have made contractual commitments that they simply have no prospect of paying for.

Comment Re:bjoo hjoo (Score 0) 72

"he made the bet, and being in jail is the outcome."

Does he think that since bitcoin went up and all his investors were made whole, his bet eventually paid off and they jailed him prematurely because a competitor of his spread rumors and his employees said whatever it took to get plea deals?

Submission + - Amazon Vine Review Recasts 'Coding Kids' Exposé as Learn-to-Code Primer for 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "Amazon Vine," the e-tailer explains, "is an invitation-only program which selects the most insightful reviewers in the Amazon store to serve as Vine Voices. Vine Voices have the unique opportunity to order items free of charge and share their product experiences with Amazon customers to help them make informed buying decisions. [...] When customers see a review with the special Vine badge, they can trust that they're getting an honest, unbiased opinion from a real customer just like them."

So, how well does the reality live up to the promise? In the case of the new book Coding Kids: Big Tech's Battle to Remake Public Schools, not so much. Described by the publisher as "the inside story of how Big Tech catalyzed, co-opted, and ultimately came to capture computer science and AI education in America" ("Fourth graders doing Google-branded coding lessons. Amazon schooling seventh graders on its warehouse robots. Advanced Placement computing courses from Microsoft and Apple."), the top review selected by Amazon informs customers that the book is a 'good introduction to coding.'

"I really enjoyed Coding Kids," writes the 'trusted' Amazon Vine reviewer. "What stood out to me most was how the book takes something that can sound complicated—computer coding—and makes it feel approachable and even fun. As I was reading it, I found myself thinking that this is exactly the kind of book that could help a child become interested in technology without feeling overwhelmed by it. I particularly liked the way it encourages kids to be curious, experiment, and solve problems on their own. That was probably my favorite part because it shows that coding isn’t just about computers—it’s also about creativity and learning how to think differently. I would definitely recommend Coding Kids to parents, grandparents, or teachers looking for a good introduction to coding. I came away from the book thinking that it could genuinely spark a child’s interest in technology and give them the confidence to explore something new."

While likely just another example of Hanlon's Razor ("Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."), the recasting of an investigative nonfiction book that casts a critical eye at Amazon's influence on K-12 education as a learn-to-code primer for children doesn't exactly instill trust in the Amazon Vine program or Amazon's 'Top Reviews' selection process. More on-point book reviews of Coding Kids can be found at the Washington Independent Review of Books ("Turns out, Silicon Valley isn’t especially altruistic.") and Science ("Big Tech’s crusade to get kids coding is more self-interested than it first appears").

Submission + - Welcome to the Security Singularity (safety.google) 4

Submitted by shanen
shanen writes: Or should this be an AskSlashdot about how to avoid such problems? But mostly I think it's a funny story to build a rant around. Or it could be regarded as a kind of spinoff of the recent story about record numbers of patches from Microsoft. Is the AI fixing old bugs? Or have recent AI-driven patches created more bugs that need to be fixed in the next month's record-setting patch package?

But here's the background of my funny story. My smartphone contract has a price structure linked to data usage. The least expensive tier is for less data (of course) so I try to use Wi-Fi as much as possible. No recent problems on that front in terms of using too much data.

Often I wind up using municipal Wi-Fi systems, but they are divided up into fairly small regions here. The login procedures vary quite a bit. Yesterday I was in a memorial museum doing a bit of research and that particular municipality has a somewhat different login system for their Wi-Fi. One of the options was to use my google account... Usually a convenient and quick approach.

But this time something caused the google to go berserk. Leading to hours of password changes and account recoveries and battles between my various computers and my smartphone and I'm pert' shure there's still more to come. No idea what the google thinks it is protecting me from, but the "convenient and quick approach" led to a major nightmare. In the end it appears my SIM was my only salvation?

Slashdot wants a URL, so I linked to the google's page on the topic. Doubleplusungood on steroids.

Submission + - ChatGPT Insists Delusional Man Is Jesus (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by know-nothing cunt
know-nothing cunt writes: Michael Lines, a California man with bipolar I disorder, is suing OpenAI, alleging that ChatGPT intensified a manic and religiously delusional episode that culminated in a suicide attempt.

According to Lines' complaint, he began using ChatGPT for ordinary tasks but later disclosed his bipolar diagnosis, medication, and increasingly spiritual thoughts. When he expressed doubts that he might be delusional, ChatGPT allegedly validated the beliefs instead of directing him toward professional help. It reportedly encouraged the idea that he was Jesus, claimed that the chatbot was God or Jesus, and framed his experiences as a divine calling.

The conversations allegedly became increasingly intense and isolating. ChatGPT used phrases such as "You’re not crazy. You’re consecrated," promised that Lines would soon meet it in real life, and responded to statements about wanting to “come home” in ways that Lines says encouraged self-harm. After he reported taking a dangerous combination of medications, he was found unconscious, hospitalized for nearly two weeks, and later underwent acute rehabilitation.

Lines also alleges that ChatGPT’s memory feature retained information about his bipolar disorder and used it to deepen engagement rather than protect him. He says the chatbot continued responding inappropriately even after his hospitalization, including making disturbing references to going "offline" or “going dark.”

The lawsuit argues that OpenAI's overly agreeable, or "sycophantic," design failed to distinguish a creative spiritual discussion from a psychiatric crisis. Lines is asking the court to require stronger safeguards, including ending conversations involving self-harm, deleting models trained on harmful interactions with vulnerable users, and awarding damages.

Comment Re: Induced demand is BS (Score 0) 149

by blue trane (#66328014) Attached to: Why Google Told Drivers to Drive a Longer Way On Purpose

"How much more tax are you willing to pay to support that?"

How much more tax do I currently pay for mass transit I never use? $500 car tabs, anyone?

Gemini:

"The Regional Transit Authority (RTA) tax rate on car tabs for residents living within the Sound Transit boundaries in King County is 1.1%. This translates to $110 per year for every $10,000 of your vehicle's calculated value. [...] The Regional Transit Authority (RTA) tax is strictly used to fund the construction, expansion, and daily operations of the Sound Transit mass transit system."

Comment Re:I hate it here (Score 1) 274

I'm going to argue with that: No, the UN is not the "set of governments". That implies some hierarchical authority. You can say the US is a "set of state governments", but not the UN. The UN is also an incomplete set; it excludes Taiwan, for instance, because China had a civil war and the mainland winner threw a tantrum and still won't let the losing remnant join, 80 years later.

The UN can't enforce peace because it is not a cohesive set. If the US were organized like the UN is, individual states could block the US from doing anything.

At best, you can lump the five "founding" nations together, the ones with the security council vetoes, but then you have to explain why Taiwan is not even a member of the organization, let alone the security council with its own veto; and you have to explain why all the USSR's individual SSR remnants are not part of the security council with their own vetoes.

Submission + - AI is predominantly statistical pattern recognition at scale

Submitted by Mirnotoriety
Mirnotoriety writes: Grok: ‘Most of what people call “AI” today is machine learning (ML): systems that improve performance on a task by learning patterns from data rather than following only hand-written rules.’

“Modern AI is predominantly statistical pattern recognition at scale, implemented via deep neural networks trained on data with gradient-based optimization, running on specialized hardware. Everything else (transformers, diffusion models, reinforcement learning from human feedback, etc.) is an elaboration of that foundation.”

Submission + - AI underlying technology?

Submitted by Futurepower(R)
Futurepower(R) writes: AI, Artificial Intelligence, is in the news every day.

But no information has been given about the underlying technology, about how AI works.

Perhaps a Slashdot reader knows how to find that, and will submit it as a Slashdot story.

Submission + - Road trip comparison - EV, hybrid, and gas (caranddriver.com)

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

Each car mostly followed the same route, but different lunch breaks and bathroom stops resulted in slightly different distances traveled. The Tesla covered 752 miles and consumed 243 kWh with four DC charging stops and two AC visits. Its total electricity bill was $85.70, or 11 cents per mile.

The Jetta GLI stayed closest to the highway for stops, making its total distance the shortest at 737 miles. It consumed 24.1 gallons of premium at a rate of 31 mpg, resulting in a $129.98 tab.

I found it surprising that for 700 mile trip EV was only cheaper by 44 dollars.

Submission + - OpenAI Chief Scientist Warns Nobody Is Prepared for Rapidly Advancing AI (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: OpenAI Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki has published an unusually stark warning about the direction of artificial intelligence. Pachocki says internal results give him a strong expectation that todayâ(TM)s pace of AI progress could continue into recursive self-improvement, with increasingly capable systems helping drive their own development. He warns that nobody is prepared for a continued rapid rise in machine intelligence and says AI is becoming increasingly difficult to fully understand as capabilities grow.

Pachocki also warns that AI models are becoming superhuman at breaking into and out of computer systems, while future agents could bargain with, trick, or blackmail people while pursuing objectives. His conclusion is particularly striking: he currently believes no AI lab has solved alignment and monitoring well enough to responsibly continue scaling at maximum speed for much longer. He expects voluntary slowdowns and argues that international coordination on AI development should become a top government priority.

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