It’s not just that these things aren’t reliable, though that is certainly true. It’s that they cannot ever be reliable. See, generative “AI” systems don’t actually know anything or reason about anything. They produce words (or pictures, or whatever) without…
Big Sister: Forecast Is Cloudy For Alexa
I’m kind of at a loss today for not-climbing-a-clock-tower style approaches to our current political situation. So let’s talk tech instead. I’ve written before about the privacy issues with voice assistant systems; they’re … not good. I mean, they’re basically…
School Yourself: The Means Of Academic Production
I mentioned yesterday that I had some thoughts on folks with PhDs setting up new universities. I do indeed. I’ve been contemplating this for a long time, since U.S. universities started reducing traditional tenure-track positions and replacing them with short-term…
Showing Their Work: Laws Should Be Version-Controlled
The tech industries appear to have provided most of the foot soldiers, many of the generals and pretty much all the lunacy behind Musk’s ongoing coup attempt. For which many of us in the industry sincerely apologize. For the most…
Cars Or Politics: Show Off The Alternatives
I’m all for folks picketing business whose owners they don’t like, or picketing government offices whose officials they don’t like. Fine, traditional American First Amendment stuff there. But I think it’s more useful to say what you want to happen…
Time Is Money: So Let’s Make Money Be Time
I was discussing the coup with a neighbor this weekend, and said that I would not be surprised if in 6 months we had no functional organizations left above the state level; their response was “no, in 3 months”. So…
British Eyes Are Watching: Apple Caves On Private Encryption
Looks like it’s time to set aside that iPhone: the U.K. has demanded that Apple compromise iCloud backup encryption. And Apple just announced that they will comply. Now, in theory, the way they’ve said they’ll comply will only affect users…
You Should Read This: The Generative AI Con
I’ve made no secret here of my, let’s say disdain, for all the generative A.I. hype. Ed Zitron (at Where’s Your Ed At) is also no fan, which is very clear in his latest post: The Generative AI Con. We…
American Kakistrocracy: Rule By Plausible-Sounding Bullshit Generators
The Minions taking over the U.S. government have been connecting a Large Language Model (LLM), referred to as an “A.I.” by people who don’t know what words mean, to various government databases. This is truly History’s Stupidest Coup. I have…
Getting Real: Artificial Intelligence Is Not The Problem
Let’s put aside for the moment whether the current crop of trainable software that’s causing all the furor is actually “Artificial Intelligence”, much less whether it even works reliably at all. (It isn’t, and it doesn’t.) It makes no sense…