I wish you had said more in support of your Subject. As one word it might be vacuous, and you didn't really flesh out your intention in your post. Perhaps both 'problems' due to the rush to FP?

Me? I actually prefer self-service. I'm not trying to cheat the store and I'm meticulous about getting it exactly right, but I like the lower pressure. I think it's mostly the lack of an imminent feeling of someone waiting because of me. I've never visited an Amazon shop of any sort (and my second and final Amazon purchase was decades ago), but I strongly favor self-service when the option is available. The stores where it works best have lots of registers and several employees floating around so I can quickly get help from a human when something is odd. (Example from a few days ago was accidentally punching 33 when I was only buying three. (Avocados? Kiwi fruits? Something like that, but the human on the loop fixed it quickly.))

(I do want to say a bit more against Amazon. Just recently read that the main publisher of mass market paperback books has stopped publishing them. I'm a big fan of books and I blame Amazon, even though it might mostly be a technological thing driven by ebook technologies, not a specifically Amazon thing about abusing monopoly power to suck all the profits out of the publishing business and into Amazon's pockets. Or even a personal problem because I am having so much difficulty reading without a dead tree to help? (Current priority dead tree is Army of None about autonomous weapons... Lots of stuff about humans in the loop, on the loop, and locked outside of the loop. I should finish this week, but onscreen, it would be "Who knows when?"))

Most active story of the day and no Funny on today's Slashdot. Currently more than halfway to expiration. Sadness.

Funny story time about email exchanges with rms? I've had several. He actually asks helpful questions, but m conclusion is that he is fundamentally confused about what freedom is because of the overlap in English with so many other ideas that use the root "free" for various purposes. Economics is mostly bunk, but it still matters, and weak as my own understanding of money and motivations are, his are much weaker. Just my opinion, but rms provokes lots of 'em.

So perhaps the AI-powered websearch didn't give that answer as some form of professional courtesy? "Houston, we have a problem with the AIs protecting each other."

And not a drop to drink?

Partial concurrence, but it also sounds like what an AI would say. Especially the length.

On the moderation aspects, mostly stronger concurrence, though I'm mostly bummed out because the summary says I got a Funny that was cancelled because the giver contributed to the discussion. (I sure hope he doesn't live in India?) In solution terms for moderation, I think requiring justification of negative mods might be a partial deterrent to that specific abuse.

The AI thinks Tay is most likely a rapper and the battle was one of his rap battles. I'm calling stupid on the AI and ignorance on myself. (I also considered if Tay might equal YOB, but couldn't square it. YOB = TACO.)

Care to clarify your reference?

However I'm more focused on the 30% of people who the surveys identify as wannabe authoritarian followers. Or freedom haters, if you prefer. Or just lazy, because being free and increasing your freedom require hard and unending work.

Time for an immigration joke? Anyone know if the Chinese are addressing their demographic problems with migrants who want to escape the YOB/Musk famines? New way to kill two birds with one stone? But the funny part is that I'm sure the Chinese will use AI to filter their immigrants in FAVOR of that 30% who just want to follow orders. More innovators and troublemakers? No thank you. I'm sure Xi thinks he has too many born-in-China problems already.

How to get back to the story? I've got it! (Time for a storm of exclamation points!)

An AI gave me that idea! No idea how my question got interpreted that way!

Still sounds ad hominem to me. Assuming both of you are human.

But of the two of you, you actually sound more like the AI.

(What does a guy have to do to get a Funny mod around here? Oh yeah. Be funny. And then be ridiculously lucky to be seen by a moderator with a funny bone.)

Masked fascists are "brave", even in AC mask. Still not worth feeding or worth propagating their vacuous Subjects.

Gee, I wonder if JoshuaZ might be receiving money for AI-related work... Really hard to get a man to believe something when his income depends on not believing it. (I don't remember whose quotation I'm mangling, and I don't trust any of the AIs to tell me.)

Actually I think the main problem is that we are mostly still thinking in terms of the distorted Turing Test. You should look at the original paper. I'm sure it's on the Internet somewhere.

So I'll go for funny and say we need to correct the test and then consider how many humans would fail a properly revised Turing Test to prove they aren't machines. When more than 50% of the humans are below the critical threshold, then we have to say the AIs are smarter than we are. (Oh wait. Looking at some recent elections, it would appear that it's already too late.)

Leaving it here as a continuation of the attempted jokes, but resorting to (detested) Romaji (since Slashdot.jp with Japanese support is long gone), I have to cite Toire No Himitsu (The Secrets of Toilets) about the development of the washlet. That is Volume 22 in the Gakken Manga De Yoku Wakaru Shiri-zu (Understand deeply via manga from school research (the publisher)). Each volume in the series has a corporate sponsor and almost all of them include some corporate history, but I'm pretty sure that Volume 22 didn't say anything about the semiconductor division of this story.

I better confess that I'm not sure of some details because that was a long time ago. Currently almost finished with Volume 226 about corn starch. I've read 'em all, from Volume 1 (around 2000) about hamburgers (sponsored by McDonald's) and even including the rare Volume 13 about home delivery pizza (sponsored by a welcher?). Gakken is still cranking out about 10 volumes a year, 128 pages each.

Mod parent funny. Until it happens to all of us?

AI could certainly replace AC. Or maybe it already has?

However I was really looking for a recursive joke about the AI recruiting programmers in its own image. Or even creating them?

Whoops, I came back to the story from a different context and misattributed this one to the google. But there's plenty of evil to go around. In the case of ChatGPT it's more like the paving with good intentions?

That's the joke I was hoping to see by now, but written by someone who can write a joke. Obviously the data must have been backed up during this period, and saying that nothing can be recovered, even for a paying customer, is a lie.

Subject is just the joke I'm looking for in yet another story of the EVIL formerly known as Google.