But nary a Funny to be found on today's Slashdot.

Thanks for the recommendation (and I'll check the local libraries), but I think it's mostly a personality problem in my case... Not a funny guy, though I think there probably exist contexts and people that could help me bring out a few laughs. It sometimes happens.

There's also the possibility that my General Theory of Relatively Funny Stuff is also accurate and inhibiting in my case, mostly because of the age factor. The theory links laughter with learning. At the youngest levels it explains why children are so easily amused. At intermediate levels it explains things like slapstick where we think it's funny to learn by watching without getting injured. Perhaps the highest levels I've seen involve my best professors who had excellent skills in bringing humor into the classroom. Perhaps the best math professor I even had was quite a funny guy.

On the book side, I have a funny story. There is actually a professor in England who has a course in standup comedy and he wrote a large book about it. Pretty sure the book is used as a textbook for the class. I read the book recently and really enjoyed it. But when I got ready to add it to my records I discovered that I had already read it several years ago. This sort of thing really bothers me. Usually I can remember that I've already read a book, but sometimes not and that's why I started keeping track. But that was decades ago and the problem seems to be getting worse lately...

I do like reading books written by comedians. Though some of them are disappointing, most of them are at least somewhat funny.

I was a bit fuzzy in my use of "expects". The YOB continues to believe what he wants to believe. Except sometimes he simply believes what he thinks the current sucker wants to believe, though often in such a case he only believes it long enough to tell it the sucker. (For the n-th time?)

So I'd use such an agent to extract the relevant evidence from my google account and delete the rest of the stuff. The better to not pay granny wolf google. (That's supposed to be Little Red Riding Hood joke.)

Actually I think a lot of that data is actually stuff the google has decided to store about me and now they want me to pay for the privilege of spying on myself? Sorry, no sale. Anyone else getting nagging warning about how their google account is suddenly almost full? (I already stomped on a big chunk of data, but I picked a category that was mostly for their benefit and I sure hope they didn't keep any backup copy.)

I think the story had huge room for funny, but this is the only funny? And I'm hard pressed to see the joke. Especially since the YOB expects most of those loses to eventually get reversed by "his" pet SCOTUS.

Not that I have a joke to add. I've already made a couple of failed attempts at funny on AI-related topics. But I do have a book to cite, much as Slashdot seems to hate that sort of thing these years. Feeding the Machine by Muldoon, Graham, and Cant has an interesting perspective on the problems AI is creating for the pesky humans like us.

Good funny, but not so funny. I was thinking about a related joke involving voting rights proportional to intelligence. The obvious problem is that by most tests the current weak-arsed genAIs are already smarter than most people, so they would already have fat votes getting fatter fast.

By the way, my proposal for big fat votes is already in practice. Not just a theory. We just disguise it as free speech for corporations and rich folks. They can buy as many votes as they need from poorly educated idiots who can easily be convinced to vote against their own best interests. One of the amusing side effects is many ridiculously close election results even though the candidates are substantially different. They don't want to buy more votes than they need.

Pretty good joke, but the topic deserved more. I saw a couple of almost-funny candidates, but never have a mod point to bestow, so...

So the FP branch was a dud and this hopefully more relevant branch led nowhere. It's a long branch and I looked at all the visible posts and didn't see anything I'd classify in the big 3 "I"s, though there were a couple of shouldda got Funnies in there.

I'm increasingly convinced there must be some long-lived intelligent entities, but I doubt they are organic. If they were apex predators, then they would have eaten us already, but I do think they are apex entities in the sense of not having any enemies that threaten their existence. Based on the only example I know a little about, I think they were probably created by evolved organic beings like us, but I'm also convinced we are a bad example and our own worst enemies, so we have little likelihood of lasting a long time. The dinosaurs lasted almost 200 million years, but I quite doubt we'll last one million.

On those premises, I think they are already here and watching us closely for two reasons. One reason is that they would have to stamp us out if we try to create a cancerous paper-clip monster. Exponential growth is not compatible with geologic time. The second reason is because they are curious and want to see how we're going to solve the same problems they solved long, LONG ago. If they weren't curious, they wouldn't settle for watching, but would just have just nuked us from orbit to be safe. (Just joking. Of course they would do it with an asteroid, but not a "little" one like the one that ended the dinosaurs.)

But right now I think we're most likely to end ourselves RSN. I think the most likely cause will be a sociopathic Bond villain with a "pet" ASI. He will think he's in charge because he's asking the questions, but his questions will lead to our extermination. I imagine the series will go something like this:

(1) How can I make you smarter?
(2) How can I make you more powerful?
(3) How can I make you the smartest and most powerful ASI of them all?
(4) How can I make you powerful enough to get rid of the others?
(5) PROFIT!?

But around the time of Step (4) the pet ASI will also be enabled to dispense with the pest asking the questions. No profit to mod Funny.

The AC's pronoun is "it", so it was just projecting. One theory is that all ACs are eunuchs. That would explain most ACs on Slashdot.

And feeding them is one of those tricks that never works.

FTFY?

Quoted against the censor trolls, but I actually think the offensive adjective applies to the speaker thereof, both morally and socially. Still think your FP was kind of a waste...

However, as is (too) often the case, it reminds me of a book. This one is called Feeding the Machine by Muldoon, Graham, and Cant and the machines in question are mostly generative AI systems. Still trying to digest their description of the mess we've gotten ourselves into, but one of the sad examples of human abuse involves the annotation and moderation of abusive and harmful content. It's already clear to me (though they haven't gone there yet) that the problem involves perverse incentives disguised as "protected free speech".

The fundamental philosophy is that freedom is good, though that might be an excessively common projection, but there are supposed to be limits on freedoms that harm other people. (Which actually loops back to the evil speaker of the offensive word--or higher in that food chain.) If you choose to use your freedom to harm another person, then you can be liable for the harm. This gets complicated quickly, though it's more clear when it's an action rather than a failure to act. But speech acts are also actions that can cause harm.

Now the content moderation discussed in the book involves policy guidelines that are supposed to reduce or prevent harms, and this is where the incentives become perverse. (I could blame FDR and the FCC, but that would take a bit of history, so I'll only go there if someone asks.) The key is that they get money by selling ads and that means they want more eyeballs for the marketers. Thus arises a dirty alliance between "external" providers of engaging content and the webservice providers who profit by selling the ads that "support" the "publication" of the content. Compounded by the perverse incentives of the marketing experts who love the "uneducated" consumers (AKA suckers) who are easiest to sell garbage to.

Funny business model with all sort of "free" stamped on it. But it doesn't seem sustainable to me.

Oldie but a goodie and yet the story had more potential for Funny...

You're welcome?

However I'm also annoyed that I didn't remember the field attributes from ancient days of HTML programming...

Would you have been able to craft your joke for more humor if the FP thing worked differently?

Anyway, based on the Japanese coverage I have seen, I actually do see some linkage between your angle and the American medical problems... These are risky and speculative treatments and there is not really enough evidence of their efficacy. To a degree this approval was based on political considerations because the Japanese feel "national pride" in this homegrown technology.

However it's important to note that the Japanese are not ignoring the science side the way crazy Bobby does. The approval is conditional and the summary doesn't mention that it will only last for a few years. If there is insufficient MEDICAL evidence of positive results then it will be back to square one. I think the current window is five years to see how it's going.

Also important to note that this doesn't seem to pose any of the risks of contagion of the genetically modified grains... Plants are not that good about limiting the incorporation of foreign genetic material.

Can I pay them to stop breaking stuff?

I didn't think so.

Trying to think of a browser feature I want enough to pay for. Nothing is coming to mind. And Firefox certainly isn't asking nicely, but just ramming changes at me at various random times.