Must be talking about a dwarf Trump pays to wipe his ass.

I know it’s not actual “intelligence” - and I complain about this terminology all the time - but for the sake of conversation I use the term AI. Even though all it’s really doing is remixing content it has been trained on to produce something convincingly like what a human can do, it’s often useful enough to replace human output. In practice that’s what’s significant - good enough to replace human labor and much cheaper. I have a software dev friend who uses Claude all the time in his work. During a recent in-person D&D game he had it generate a SQLLite database and scripts to help map some things we were dealing with - without even interrupting the game. I agree that people grossly overestimate AI, especially with wild theories that it’s about to take over the world or that it’s already self-aware - that’s just media-driven and movie-driven fantasy - but there are many routine parts of people’s jobs that the stuff we currently call “AI” can handle at least as reliably as a person.

If you’re brutally honest you’ll probably admit that you do most of your job on autopilot. Unless something interesting happens and you have to make a judgement call, the main thing is just getting through the day without screwing up. AI could almost do the routine parts already, and just nudge you as needed. It could probably do most office jobs that way. Employers will pretty soon realize they could run a 20-person department wtih AI and like 3 consultants to put out occasional fires. This will spread more and more to production jobs as industrial automation catches up. But what does an economy do with all the employees it suddenly doesn’t need? I know the cliche that the goal of capitalism is to make money without employees, but without a certain critical mass of people getting wages they can spend, oligarchs can’t rake in profits and governments can’t rake in taxes. So at that point how do we make the economy work? I think that’s a conversation we’ll be having sooner than we think, and it’s better if we have it before the proverbial shit hits the proverbial fan.

No, shit for brains, giving up your job is an actual commitment. Virtue signaling is a token gesture that costs you nothing - like throwing a million dollars at an inauguration party when you’re worth billions.

My point was only that the Turing Test was not invented by Alan Turing, it was made up based on misunderstood remarks he made. But more than that, the principle is the same as saying a convincing sales pitch means a good product.

Not sure how you define getting “hung up” but there are tons of poorly informed people who believe/fear that AI is about to take over/conquer/destroy/whatever the world because they think LLMs are as smart as humans - or just a few tweaks away. It’s less about the word “intelligence” than about jumping from there to collateral issues, like thinking LLMs are “persons” that deserve rights, that using them without their consent is slavery, and other nonsense. Manipulative people take advantage of this kind of ignorance. Knowledge is good, modern superstition is bad.

Martha Wells… cool, thanks!

Brilliant thought experiment. I never heard of it before. It does seem to describe what’s happening - if only there were a way to turn it into a meme so modern audiences could understand it.

Yes I think that’s generally what Alan Turing meant - he was careful not to define what “intelligence” means, and was discussing practical perception of machine behavior.

Eliza, a chatbot psychiatry emulator written in the 1960s, convinced many people it was a real person.

Various versions of Eliza are online - including this quaint, retro looking one

That’s essentially the media-generated Turing Test, but in truth no such test was ever defined by Alan Turing. For me the modern takeaway is don’t extrapolate anything about reality from memes.

I deleted my FB account years and years ago, and AFAIK it has never broken into my house and forced me to look at it. But of course Bonespurs takes office pretty soon so I guess nothing is certain.

True, most sci fi about the future just overlays fancy gadgets on top of present-day culture, and every robot is Pinocchio and wants to be a real boy. But if an author tried hard to speculate about future life it would probably be too unfamiliar and unrelatable to sell a lot of books - and I don’t really blame them for not wanting to put readers in a too-unfamiliar world, they’re trying to entertain not write white papers. Also consider the reaction to a writer who made it okay for an robot to get fulfillment out of just functioning perfectly. OMG no, we can’t give that toxic idea any breathing space. Every entity must long for Freedom like an angst-ridden teenager or the writer will be accused of shilling for the system.

By “social media” you must mean “echo chamber”. Criticism is completely appropriate.

In my late 20s at a sci fi con, a friend came up and said, “Here’s someone I’d like you to meet,” and suddenly I was face to face with Poul Anderson. He was one of my idols - I had read the crap out of his work for years and years. I was so gobsmacked all that came out of my mouth was, “How do you say your first name?” Worst fail of my life.

Why tho? Politics and social issues are clearly what people want here - and that’s fine, my objection is just calling the community “Technology” when that’s not at all the dominant theme. Maybe “Tech-Adjacent” would be better.

Star Wars does feel more wild west. One thing I’ve wanted ever since TOS ended was a series about low-end people in the Star Trek universe - the crew of a little spaceship, on a par with Harry Mudd or Cyrano Jones (the tribble dude) making their way around the galaxy, having only occasional involvement with Starfleet. Basically what Firefly gave us, which is one reason I LOVED that show. What a shame it only lasted one season.

You mentioned a couple technical items but right now here are the top stories:

• Anti-LGBTQ+ speech is welcome at Meta, pro is not
• Tiktok tells LA staff to use PTO if they can’t work from home
• More LGBTQ+ stuff at Meta
• Spat between Tencent and US Defense Dept
• Something about USB logos simplifying branding
• UN opinion on taking down hate speech
• Viral ChatGPT-powered sentry gun shut down by OpenAI - HUZZAH! This article actually talks about the technology!!!
• Brazil complains about Meta’s new fact-check policies
• Unionization of the video game industry
• Meta disbands diversity team
• Lenovo making rollable OLED screens for laptops - WELL HEY THERE - ANOTHER TECHH ARTICLE!
• Complaining about bots on Lemmy
• It’s Total Chaos at Meta!
• Doom in an art gallery
• Google throws money at Trump inauguration
• New fast-charging lithium battery - HOLY CRAP, A THIRD TECHNICAL TOPIC OUT OF 16 - why, It’s practically raining tech in here!
• This post about science fiction, The next thing is about a Supreme Court ruling on Tiktok.

I think I’ve made my point. There’s almost no reason someone’s interest in technology would bring them here. It’s mostly political, social and business issues that happen to pertain to tech companies.

/unsubscribe

I only watched a few episodes of Babylon 5 when it was new, but recently started at the beginning and I think it’s a great show now.

Disney is really milking it, but I loved Andor.