Australis13

“‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’”

George Orwell, 1984.

In a sane world, this lawsuit would be laughed out of court.

I honestly wouldn’t put it past Trump to say something like that.

He probably doesn’t even know that the flight recorders (black boxes) are orange. I’d imagine he’ll take credit for making them easy to find (the reason for the colour) once he learns that they’re not actually black.

If that’s an example of your typical writing, then I would encourage you to apply!

That has to be one of the best Onion articles I’ve read in a while.

The big win I see here is the amount of optimisation they achieved by moving from the high-level CUDA to lower-level PTX. This suggests that developing these models going forward can be made a lot more energy-efficient, something I hope can be extended to their execution as well. As it stands currently, “AI” (read: LLMs and image generation models) consumes way too many resources to be sustainable.

What?!

Is this really as dystopian as my inner cynic thinks? That this is to keep people from understanding how technology works?

Actually, I’m unclear on that point - do foreign companies actually have to comply, or is it just limited to government communications and government-published maps (e.g. the USGS, etc.)?

Pathetic. Hopefully the rest of the world doesn’t follow suit. Renaming it just for one of Trump’s ego trips is not a good reason.

This sounds like a really bad idea:

The “most charismatic” application of AI, said Ellison, would pertain to electronic health records, which would let doctors monitor best practices in far flung places. For instance, a doctor in Indian River reservation would be able to see how a doctor at Memorial Sloan Kettering would a treat a patient, he said.

Do we really want to give a black box unfettered access to everyone’s medical records? It’s a privacy and security nightmare waiting to happen.

Just send him offworld and close the iris.

IIRC, there are quite a few episodes of Voyager showing the hypospray being loaded/reloaded with a cartridge. It’s unclear how many doses are contained in the cartridge, but typically more than one. I would think that for most treatments the Sickbay replicator just produces a ready-to-use batch of cartridges, whereas for more specialised medication the EMH has to actually make it up manually.

I guess I’ll be avoiding those models when I’m next in the market for a TV, or work out how to disable it/block it at my router if I am forced to connect the TV to the Internet for firmware updates, etc.

Interesting. I can imagine a scenario where the resolution of CCTV is low enough that a mask would impede recognition in that instance. It’s definitely not something I would want to rely on, though.

Sorry, but facial recognition software has basically caught up. I would not rely on a mask to prevent me being recognised today:

https://privacyinternational.org/news-analysis/4511/can-covid-19-face-mask-protect-you-facial-recognition-technology-too https://www.ft.com/content/42415608-340c-4c0a-8c93-f22cdd4cc2d6 https://www.techtimes.com/articles/304431/20240508/new-software-shows-promise-facial-recognition-underneath-mask.htm

Indeed not. So using language specific to binary systems - e.g. bits per second - is not appropriate in this context.

Some parts of the paper are available here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0896627324008080?via%3Dihub

It doesn’t look like these “bits” are binary, but “pieces of information” (which I find a bit misleading):

“Quick, think of a thing… Now I’ll guess that thing by asking you yes/no questions.” The game “Twenty Questions” has been popular for centuries as a thinking challenge. If the questions are properly designed, each will reveal 1 bit of information about the mystery thing. If the guesser wins routinely, this suggests that the thinker can access about million possible items in the few seconds allotted. Therefore, the speed of thinking—with no constraints imposed—corresponds to 20 bits of information over a few seconds: a rate of 10 bits/s or less.

The authors do draw a distinction between the sensory processing and cognition/decision-making, at least:

To reiterate: human behaviors, including motor function, perception, and cognition, operate at a speed limit of 10 bit/s. At the same time, single neurons can transmit information at that same rate or faster. Furthermore, some portions of our brain, such as the peripheral sensory regions, clearly process information dramatically faster.

Yeah, that and “gingerbread people” (I think “gingerbread them” not only reads more awkwardly, but also is more likely to be misheard and Uncle Dimwit will assume you said “gingerbread men”).

Ugh. I hope they clearly flag AI content and allow users to filter it.

Thankyou. When I asked the question, I was not aware that The Onion repeatedly posted this and it was too realistic for the Onion’s usual take on things.

I also agree that satire doesn’t need to be funny.