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
April 3, 2024
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.
Boldly going where we already went fifty years ago
January 24, 2020
A brief rant about Netflix: No, that’s NOT what “original” means
August 6, 2019
This is not a complaint about Netflix in general (well, not necessarily, but anyway). Without Netflix, I might have gone, shall we say, a little…
…this past winter. I’ve been working temporarily in Montréal, several thousands miles of miles apart from my family, and being able to watch movies and older TV shows has been a great escape from the depressing monotony of single life.
But I feel the need to tell Netflix that I do not appreciate their use of the word “original.” Continue Reading
Indie writers, Amazon is not your friend
June 26, 2019
As if writers hadn’t already figured this out, Amazon really couldn’t care less about the books of yours they sell.
Notice I didn’t write “the books they sell for you.” Because they’re obviously not interested in you making any money. Not when they can allow random “companies” to download your manuscript, slap on their own label, and market it again as a “third party.”
Amazon takes a hands-off approach to what goes on in its bookstore, never checking the authenticity, much less the quality, of what it sells. It does not oversee the sellers who have flocked to its site in any organized way.
Naturally, the reason is that Amazon can’t be bothered policing illegal copies and illegal sales, since, in their minds, all’s fair in the Wild West of the Net.
Even the technically legal copies that are for sale are often copies acquired from people who received copies for review. Which is why I no longer give out books for review (also, services like Goodreads started charging for the privilege of random strangers to steal your book and sell it to a third party).
NONE of these “companies” wrote my book, and I did not give permission to ANY of them to resell my book. So why do they get to sell it for up to four times the price I set? Because Amazon doesn’t bother and couldn’t care less.
I used to wonder why my books often appeared in the “available from a third party” menu, with prices varying from twice to even five times the original amount. And why none of the “sales” from these copies showed up in my account. The answer is, of course, Amazon doesn’t really care who gets the royalty as long as they get their cut of the sale.
But we’re trapped, aren’t we? We can scream “fake!” and “unfair!” until we’re blue in the face. In the end, Amazon has grown in power to the extent that the entire world relies on it as a global distributor of, well, pretty much everything.
Except, of course, Amazon, itself, can’t be bothered shipping its own products these days. (More on that in a later post.)
Which is why I’ve started to port my books into other platforms such as Smashwords — but they’re all digital. It’s a shame, because I enjoy (and prefer) reading paper copies of books. But I know I will never be able to stop the Amazon Pirates from stealing my work and my friends’ work.
Shame on Amazon. And shame on all of us for going along with the system.
www.nytimes.com/2019/06/23/technology/amazon-domination-bookstore-books.html
M Thomas Apple Author Page 