“A palentir is a dangerous tool, Saruman,” Gandalf said. “We do not know who may be watching.”
Beware if you gaze into a palentir long…
March 23, 2026
Hacker finds he can control 7000 vacuum cleaners..
March 5, 2026
Incredible! What did he do with such power? As I said, he took his findings to the Verge. One of its reporters gave Azdoufal the serial number of a DJI Romo vacuum he’d just been testing for review; within minutes Azdoufal could see it cleaning the reporter’s living room, that it had 80% battery life remaining, and had it generate and transmit a floor plan of the house.
And the Internet of Things seemed like such a good idea…
Who is this “WE” and what do “WE” want AI to do?
March 5, 2026
“WE will decide the fate of our Country – NOT some out-of-control, Radical Left AI company run by people who have no idea what the real World is all about,” Trump wrote.
Hmm. OK, what did this “Radical Left AI company” want?
US defense officials have pushed for unfettered access to Claude’s capabilities that they say can help protect the country, while Anthropic has resisted allowing its product to be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons systems that can kill people without human input.
So the WE is actually just ME, then.
I’ve written repeatedly about the dangers of AI: it’s not really AI, it repeats very human bias and mistakes, and it will become potentially extremely dangerous to humanity if left unregulated.
But go on, keep using these programs. I’m sure it’ll all work out…
Today’s quote
April 3, 2024
A bad administrator is more concerned with reports than with decisions. He wants the hard record which he can display as an excuse for his errors.
Lord Leto II
Today’s quote
March 2, 2024
Show me a completely smooth operation and I’ll show you someone who’s covering mistakes. Real boats rock.
Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune
When AI becomes actual AI…
October 26, 2023
We compared current scientific theories of what makes humans conscious to compile a list of “indicator properties” that could then be applied to AI systems.
We don’t think systems that possess the indicator properties are definitely conscious, but the more indicators, the more seriously we should take claims of AI consciousness.
https://theconversation.com/why-chatgpt-isnt-conscious-but-future-ai-systems-might-be-212860
Last year, an engineer for Google who was working on what was then called “LaMDA” (later released as “Bard”) claimed that the software had achieved consciousness. He claimed it was like a small child and he could “talk” with it.
He was fired.
Bard, ChatGPT, Baidu, and so forth are advanced chatbots built on what’s called “Large Language Models” (LLM) and can generate text in an instant.
But the programs are not AI, strictly speaking. They have no sentience.
Continue ReadingLanguage = Power; Censorship = Fragile Ego
September 9, 2023
The short story accused of violating the national security law, “Our Time,” is set in a dystopian 2050. It tells of an authoritarian future in which vast swaths of Hong Kong history have been erased from both the city’s structures and the public consciousness, and all aspects of life are subsumed under the Chinese Communist Party.
https://qz.com/hong-kong-s-new-public-enemy-the-cantonese-language-1850780591
I’m not sure this is science fiction. Seems more like reality.
Every political entity wants power. When people resist being controlled, and they use a dialect or another form of the “official” language, those in charge try to eliminate the language of resistance.
When people write about a dystopian future in which they have no right to their own language, customs, ways of thinking and behaving, and political representation — and those in charge respond by banning the fiction — it really only shows the reality. And the reality is this:
Those in charge have small, frail, male egos that need constant stroking. Poor frail eggshell minds.
Language is power, because language is identity. Those in charge are always afraid of losing control over all three. And whenever they respond this way, they always get exactly the opposite of what they want.
UA what?
July 28, 2023
US Congress: We want the truth!
Former military pilots: UAP is real!
Me: Wtf is a “UAP”?
Destination: Red Planet
June 27, 2021
Like other nations, China “regards Mars exploration as the preferred destination for deep space exploration,” Wang said.
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Technology/china-unveils-ambitious-roadmap-human-mars-exploration/
China’s plan calls for setting up a permanently occupied base and a fleet of interplanetary craft. Probably it’s a good idea to first see whether it can meet its goal of landing people on Mars in 2033.
Of course, China is “willing to join hands with our counterparts and partners all over the world,” but it’s unlikely NASA, JAXA, ESA, and the UAE and other countries not named Russia will “cooperate.”
The next space race is here. Just wait until multinats actually decide asteroid mining is worth the risk and expense.
Artificial intelligence-created medicine to be used on humans for first time
January 31, 2020
“This year was the first to have an AI-designed drug, but by the end of the decade all new drugs could potentially be designed by AI.”
Philip K Dick would have had a field day with this. Imagine what will happen once we start ingesting nanobots…
I, for one, welcome our AI drug overlords.
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