I got myself a ticket to see [@Mer__edith](

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Meredith Whittaker (@Mer__edith@mastodon.world)

1.17K Posts, 312 Following, 32.6K Followers · President of @signalapp

) in Berlin soon. Get them while they last.

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Publix Berlin (@publix@mastodon.social)

Attached: 1 image Join us to see Meredith Whittaker, President of Signal, in conversation with Maria Exner and Matthias Spielkamp, to discuss why ...

I was talking to someone yesterday (let's call them A) and they had another "AI" experience, I thought might happen but hadn't heard of before. They were interacting with an organization and upon asking a specific thing got a very specific answer. Weeks later that organization claimed it had never said what they said and when A showed the email as proof the defense was: Oh yeah, we're an international organization and it's busy right now so the person who sent the original mail probably had an LLM write it that made shit up. It literally ended with: "Let's just blame the robot ;)". (Edit: I did read the email and it did not read like something an LLM wrote. I think we see "LLM did it" emerging as a way to cover up mistakes.) LLMs as diffusors for responsibility in corporate environments was quite obviously gonna be a key sales pitch, but it was new to me that people would be using those lines in direct communication.

Microsoft Research is at it again: Advait Sarkar, a Microsoft Research employee got a paper published at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in computing systems: "AI Could Have Written This: Birth of a Classist Slur in Knowledge Work" https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706599.3716239 Now I am all for calling out structures and language of oppression and discrimination but this is really something special. "AI shaming arises from class anxiety in middle class knowledge workers" ... yeah no. It's about shaming people (usually from the middle or upper class) who don't want to put in actual work but get credit for having done it. Like what is the argument: Lower class people can only compete while using AI and therefore should not be shamed? What kind of a view on lower class people does Mr. Microsoft Research communicate here?

I don't think that "give beginners LLMs to get them started so they can actually learn to do it later" checks out. (Original title: But will they?)

Smashing Frames

But will they?

Armin Ronacher, who is quite a well-known open source developer (especially in the Python community) and who would probably consider himself a very...

Democracies should stop focusing on efficiency: Lack thereof and friction are important parts of what defines a healthy democracy. Efficiency will always sacrifice participation, representation and meaningful political discourse. The focus on it is a path into authoritarianism. In the essay ...

A few thoughts on LLMs and the super-rich

Smashing Frames

Never hearing No

If you are very rich – think multi-millionaire or billionaire – there is a thing you no longer experience really: Hearing no. Sure ther...

New shirt. (https://octophant.threadless.com/designs/destroy-a-i/mens/t-shirt/premium?variation=front&color=black )

That's literally the kind of behavior that sparked the Luddite uprising. And it's why you should not collaborate when being asked to train "AI" at work.

I built this cupboard with space to put in towels. I was so naive. As if it were up to me.

"AI is a tool (sorry!) that people who are bad at their jobs will use badly and that people who are good at their jobs will maybe, possibly find some uses for. People who are terrible at their jobs (many executives), will tell their employees that they “need” to use AI, that their jobs depend on it, that they must become more productive, and that becoming an AI-first company is the strategy that will save them from the old failed strategy, which itself was the new strategy after other failed business models." (Original title: The Media's Pivot to AI Is Not Real and Not Going to Work)

404 Media

The Media's Pivot to AI Is Not Real and Not Going to Work

AI is not going to save media companies, and forcing journalists to use AI is not a business model.