Doomstead

Not only will it not save us, it will more likely be a proximal cause of our economic collapse.  AI is a story as old as the industrial revolution itself, as technology drove doown the value of labor and raised the value of the capital intensive machines used to produce similar but often inferior products at cheaper prices.

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/rethinking-the-luddites-in-the-age-of-ai

Rethinking the Luddites in the Age of A.I.

(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRUJ7490BDPSioGobe_Ohw8kTqH76SFQIBKHSmjJNqNBRtGa1GsmjEfcg3B2gNYiUx_oJE&usqp=CAU)

UNION!


RE

QuoteIn the era of A.I., we have another opportunity to decide whether automation will create advantages for all, or whether its benefits will flow only to the business owners and investors looking to reduce their payrolls.

This article could have been written by AI. 

QuoteSimilar but often inferior products at cheaper prices.

Because we do not have another opportunity to decide whether automation will create advantages for all, or whether its benefits will flow only to the business owners and investors looking to reduce their payrolls.

Capitalism is king and private property reigns supreme.  People with property have a right to do anything they want in America.  A.I. is property.

The Average American worker accepts current economic conditions as a divine plan.  The average American worker thinks billionaires have earned their money.  The average American worker is thoroughly brainwashed into believing that a monied minority that takes all profit and makes all decisions is the natural order of the universe.

QuoteThe word 'Luddites' refers to British weavers and textile workers who objected to the introduction of mechanised looms and knitting frames. As highly trained artisans, the new machinery posed a threat to their livelihood and after receiving no support from government, they took matters into their own hands.

Capitalist propaganda successfully perverted history by framing Luddites as being against technology.  But the issue never was technology, the issue was JOBs.

(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.grizzli.paris%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2020%2F08%2Fthe-new-yorker-logo-768x432.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=402198b762e64f32d7bdb0c26a81ad0d8066f43d089a10eb1ee28c16c1503498&ipo=images)

can get by with distorting Luddite History because Luddite history is not American History.  Checking what actually happened is hard for an American to do.  But I doubt the New Yorker Article would impress anyone across the pond who knows how to read.  That would be most people there.


Journalism died in America before A.I. reached puberty.  And American workers have never been protected.  American Workers have always been at the whim of the current boom or bust cycle.  Promoting the fear of A.I. is another clever diversion of attention intended to maintain current economic conditions and disguise truth.

It is said that Brian Merchant intertwines a lucid examination of our current age with the story of the Luddites, showing how automation changed our world—and is shaping our future.

As RE said:

QuoteAI is a story as old as the industrial revolution itself.

The story of AI is not about technology.  The story of AI is about one class of society using technology to dominate another because they 'own' it.  And because they do they have the right to act like gods, live good, and ignore the sufferings of others.

Because hundreds of years ago the real god decided only a few people would be rich and have power don't you know.  It is a feature of the universe and the natural order of things.  As it always was and as it will always be.  ---  NOT

The New Yorker article got a reaction from me.  But I reacted to the article and not the book.

The New Yorker article 'suggested' that the Luddites were more about workers rights than smashing technology.  It might be a good book.  I have not read it.  I take umbrage with 'suggested' and if the book is as shallow as the New Yorker article I'm not interested.  I doubt it is that shallow.

Cory Doctrow (author of the attached article) says it better than the New Yorker: 

QuoteIn truth, the Luddites' cause wasn't the destruction of technology – no more than the Boston Tea Party's cause was the elimination of tea, or Al Qaeda's cause was the end of civilian aviation. Smashing looms and stocking frames was the Luddites' tactic, not their goal.

Get the thought that Luddites were ever about technology out of your head.  Factory owners in early industrial England came up with that nonsense.  You do not have to perpetuate it.

I like this review from Resilience better.


Relevant Music:


The New Yorker would have you treading in shallow water with religion being no more than a smile on a dog.


Industrial Disease
Dire Straits

Now, warning lights are flashing down at quality control
Somebody threw a spanner, they threw him in the hole
There's rumors in the loading bay and anger in the town
Somebody blew the whistle, and the walls came down
There's a meetin' in the boardroom, they're tryin' to trace the smell
There's a leakin' in the washroom, there's a sneak-in personnel
Somewhere in the corridors someone was heard to sneeze
Goodness me, could this be industrial disease?

Caretaker was crucified for sleeping at his post
Refusing to be pacified, it's him they blame the most
Watchdog got rabies, the foreman got the fleas
Everyone concerned about industrial disease
There's panic on the switchboard, tongues in knots
Some come out in sympathy, some come out in spots
Some blame the management, some the employees
Everybody knows it's the industrial disease

Yeah, now the work force is disgusted, downs tools, walks
Innocence is injured, experience just talks
Everyone seeks damages, everyone agrees that
These are classic symptoms of a monetary squeeze
On ITV and BBC they talk about the curse
Philosophy is useless, theology is worse
History boils over, there's an economics freeze
Sociologists invent words that mean "industrial disease"

Doctor Parkinson declared, "I'm not surprised to see you here
You've got smokers cough from smoking, brewer's droop from drinking beer
I don't know how you came to get the Bette Davis knees
But worst of all young man, you've got industrial disease"

He wrote me a prescription, he said, "You are depressed
But I'm glad you came to see me to get this off your chest
Come back and see me later, next patient, please
Send in another victim of industrial disease"

Ah! Splendid

Now, I go down to Speaker's Corner, I'm thunderstruck
They got free speech tourists, police in trucks
Two men say they're Jesus, one of them must be wrong
There's a protest singer, he's singing a protest song

He says, "They wanna have a war, keep their factories
They wanna have a war to keep us on our knees
They wanna have a war to stop us buying Japanese
They wanna have a war to stop industrial disease

They're pointing out the enemy to keep you deaf and blind
They wanna sap your energy, incarcerate your mind
Give ya "Rule Britannia", gassy beer, page three
Two weeks in España and Sunday striptease"
Meanwhile, the first Jesus says "I'll cure it soon
Abolish Monday mornings and Friday afternoons"
The other one's out on hunger strike, he's dying by degrees
How come Jesus gets industrial disease?

Definition

Quote from: Oxford English DictionaryLud·dite
/ˈləˌdīt/
noun
noun: Luddite; plural noun: Luddites

1.derogatory
a person opposed to new technology or ways of working.
"a small-minded Luddite resisting progress"
2.
historical
a member of any of the bands of English workers who destroyed machinery, especially in cotton and woolen mills, that they believed was threatening their jobs (1811–16).

Although the word "Luddite" did enter the lexicon as meaning "an anti-technology fanatic", I think anyone familiar with the problems of unions and the capitalist version of history knows this is Orwellian 1984 style Newspeak to twist the meaning to serve their own ends, which of course has always been to reduce the cost of labor and replace it as much as possible with automation and machinery.

What they never worked out though was how once they eliminated the jobs needed to make the products, how they would get the money necessary to BUY these products into the hands of the CONSUMERS of these products.  Even Henry Ford understood that the same people who worked on the production line were the ones he wanted to sell the cars to, so in the beginning he agreed to the Union demands for a wage good enough to do that.  Said early contracts of course weren't honored as the auto companies went bankrupt and thei unfunded long term liabilities (aka pensions) were absorbed by the taxpayer funded PBGC (Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation).  Later contracts with crippled unions continued to eat away at worker pay, and auto companies relocated jobs offshore to China & Mexico et al.  Thus the whole American economy shifted to a lower paid service economy, along with fake wealth generated by the finance econommy and expanding debt.

Which brings us round to today, as the time to pay the piper grows near.

RE

Luddites hating technology????

Quotetechnology (n.)

1610s, "a discourse or treatise on an art or the arts," from Latinized form of Greek tekhnologia "systematic treatment of an art, craft, or technique," originally referring to grammar, from tekhno-, combining form of tekhnē "art, skill, craft in work; method, system, an art, a system or method of making or doing," from PIE *teks-na- "craft" (of weaving or fabricating), from suffixed form of root *teks- "to weave," also "to fabricate." For ending, see -logy.

The meaning "study of mechanical and industrial arts" (Century Dictionary, 1895, gives as examples "spinning, metal-working, or brewing") is recorded by 1859. High technology is attested by 1964; short form high-tech by 1972.
also from 1610s

The problem is not as difficult as the question,  What came first. the chicken or the egg?  People preceded machines.

The Luddite era was 1811-1813.  At that time technology had nothing to do with mechanics.  Weaving frames were brand new.
Study of mechanical and industrial arts" (Century Dictionary, 1895, gives as examples of technology "spinning, metal-working, or brewing").

Technology at the time of the Luddites meant things humans did.  If you don't think that makes sense consider before the Luddites machines did not compete with people because there were none.  'Technology' could not possibly have the modern connotation that it does now.

Quote*teks- Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to weave," also "to fabricate," especially with an ax, also "to make wicker or wattle fabric for (mud-covered) house walls."

Fifty years later (by 1859) technology would be associated with mechanical technique, but the correct use of 'technology' means to this day the the art or craft of doing something.  Who does technique, man or machine, is irrelevant to the main meaning.

How often does the word appear in print?

(https://chasingthesquirrel.com/public/pics/frequencyofuse.png)

Before 1940 hardly at all.  In 1811 spoken or written by a Luddite, probably not once.

To say that Luddites hated technology means that Luddites hated themselves.  In 1811 Technology meant 'the craft of weaving' among other things.  To say Luddites hated technology makes no sense at all unless the Luddites were all into BDSM.  (https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fimages-na.ssl-images-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FI%2F61FwJl1R90L._AC_SL1000_.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=4fc3514caa9d72a1ed5d7c54a2610c44225bd5fea4958b9efb156e4294fa9e4b&ipo=images)  I doubt any Luddites had time for such nonsense.

The Luddite situation was about jobs and workers being mistreated.  The class struggle, and the divine right of capitalists replacing the divine right of kings as the dominate class.  Violence defined how the contradiction worked out.

Quote from: K-Dog on Oct 02, 2023, 07:56 PMThe Luddite era was 1811-1813.  At that time technology had nothing to do with mechanics.

This is not entirely true.

QuoteThe Luddites were members of a 19th-century movement of English textile workers which opposed the use of certain types of cost-saving machinery, often by destroying the machines in clandestine raids. They protested against manufacturers who used machines in "a fraudulent and deceitful manner" to replace the skilled labour of workers and drive down wages by producing inferior goods.[1][2] Members of the group referred to themselves as Luddites, self-described followers of "Ned Ludd", a legendary weaver whose name was used as a pseudonym in threatening letters to mill owners and government officials.[3]

Although the movement BEGAN in the early 1800s before the looms became fossil fuel powered and vastly faster than a human weaver could do the same job, it was the application of that power together with invention of looms that did not require human hands to slide the shuttle back and forth that the jobs just about entirely disappeared, along with Unions of Weavers who no longer were needed and so had no jobs and no union membership.

If you look back at the Norma Rae film clip that depicted the 1950s era here, the machine she climbed up on was an industrial loom, and the dramatic sound of those looms being shut down while she held up the handwritten-on-cardboard UNION sign in front of them.

Those folks needed little skill and were easily replaced by scabs, who were replaced by still cheaper labor in China and India where the american textile industry offshored the plants to.  This was easily accomplished simply by packing up the looms, trucking them to the Port of Long Beach, loading them on a container ship and setting them up in a way cheaper building with even fewer fire protection safeguards left here, and the buildings here just sat empty until  sombody finally bought the land under them, demolished it and put up a subdivision of McMansions or a Trailer Park.

The history of Capitalism in a nutshell.

RE

Good, thoughtful article on the latest round of Luddism rising amid the onslaught of AI.

https://www.wired.com/story/everyone-is-a-luddite-now/

Everyone Is a Luddite Now

(https://images.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Microsoft-AI-ONLINE-COLOR.jpg?d=2040x1360)

RE

Quote from: RE on Oct 04, 2023, 02:10 PM

Quote from: K-Dog on Oct 02, 2023, 07:56 PMThe Luddite era was 1811-1813.  At that time technology had nothing to do with mechanics.

This is not entirely true.

QuoteThe Luddites were members of a 19th-century movement of English textile workers which opposed the use of certain types of cost-saving machinery, often by destroying the machines in clandestine raids. They protested against manufacturers who used machines in "a fraudulent and deceitful manner" to replace the skilled labour of workers and drive down wages by producing inferior goods.[1][2] Members of the group referred to themselves as Luddites, self-described followers of "Ned Ludd", a legendary weaver whose name was used as a pseudonym in threatening letters to mill owners and government officials.[3]

Although the movement BEGAN in the early 1800s before the looms became fossil fuel powered and vastly faster than a human weaver could do the same job, it was the application of that power together with invention of looms that did not require human hands to slide the shuttle back and forth that the jobs just about entirely disappeared, along with Unions of Weavers who no longer were needed and so had no jobs and no union membership.

If you look back at the Norma Rae film clip that depicted the 1950s era here, the machine she climbed up on was an industrial loom, and the dramatic sound of those looms being shut down while she held up the handwritten-on-cardboard UNION sign in front of them.

Those folks needed little skill and were easily replaced by scabs, who were replaced by still cheaper labor in China and India where the american textile industry offshored the plants to.  This was easily accomplished simply by packing up the looms, trucking them to the Port of Long Beach, loading them on a container ship and setting them up in a way cheaper building with even fewer fire protection safeguards left here, and the buildings here just sat empty until  sombody finally bought the land under them, demolished it and put up a subdivision of McMansions or a Trailer Park.

The history of Capitalism in a nutshell.

RE

My point is that the Luddites were the first Luddites.  Owners were not simply 'going with the flow' or 'business as usual'.  The industrial revolution had hardly taken off.  It was just picking up steam.  Literally.  There were no unions.  The owners were making the rules.  All the rules.

The Luddites existed at a unique point in history.  Owners of the factories knew exactly what they were doing.  It was about getting as much for themselves as they could and kicking the social contract to the curb.  Rocking a boat that had floated a hundred years.

Owners put people out of work and made them destitute.  Owners were greedy fuckers who only cared about themselves.  The Highland Clearances happened at that time.  The same sort of asshole.  The Highland Clearances resulted in the destruction of traditional clan society so rich people could farm sheep.

It was not a time when people with land, money, and property cared two shits about the poor.

I contend that saying Luddites hated technology misses the mark.  I contend they hated rich assholes and concentrating on hating technology plays into a story rich assholes created to obfuscate the truth.

From RE's WIRED article:

QuoteSomehow the activists had missed the memo about how electric robotaxis would cut carbon emissions and vastly improve road safety.

(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.tenor.com%2Fimages%2Fb08e98e3b0c99de050efada2c53cb1ab%2Ftenor.gif&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=fc3c1777a6f07c5a6c64f6578713401700d67c4f475cee6605b604c8d5d86721&ipo=images)  Did they miss that a necessary service to make a city taxi service viable is appropriated by robots so someone can be rich and live in an exotic land.  Putting a small army of people in unemployed misery?


Like Mary Ann Simpson.  Rich and living in an exotic land.

Is that what robo-taxi-technology is for?

Quote from: K-Dog on Oct 22, 2023, 08:52 PMars.

Owners put people out of work and made them destitute.  Owners were greedy fuckers who only cared about themselves.

Well, the whole point of this is how Property Ownership divides the Working Class from the Elite Class in society.  Up to the early 1800s, Property Ownership meant Land Ownership, and the Elite Class was the Aristocracy of Europe,  The Noble Class distiguished from the Common Class of people.  These folks in Europe all had titles of one sort or another, Sirs & Lords, Barons and Baronesses, Counts & Countesses,  Dukes & Duchesses,  Princes & Princesses, and of course top of the Pyramid Kings & Queens.  All hereditary titles, and all the land that went with the title being handed down to the eldest male heir.

Beginning in the era after the discovery of all that juicy new land available across the pond and currently occupied and possessed (but not "owned" under British Common Law) by uncivilized stone age H-Gs, Flags were planted by the Captains of Tall Ships in the name of His or Her Majesty the King or Queen of this or that Nation-State that had coalesced over a millenia of non-stop warfare after the fall of the Roman Empire.  Only a couple of sources of power survived that collapse, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, and the Banking Houses of Venice and their strongholds in the mountains called Alps north of Italy, bordering the French & Austrian Austrian Alps, and of course that tiny country that held no lowland property at all, Switzerland.  They were the bankers for all the banks of the countries around them.

Come the discovery of the new world ripe for the pickin', the ships these monarchs dispatched had to be financed, initially directly from the treasury of a king, but eventually with Credit issued by banks, and money raised by  selling Shares out of places like the City of London and the Dutch Port of Amsterdam, which became the homes respectively of the British and Dutch East India companies and banks and insurers like Lloyds of London and the House of Rothschild.  At the same time, our good friendly neighborhood mathematicians Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz simultaneously devised a marvelous new bookkeeping system called the Calculus, and modern day Capitalism was born!

At this juncture in history, property ownership came to have a much broader meaning besides just land, which in fact dwindled in its importance as time went by.  What it came  to mean was ownership over the equipment necessary for these big undertakings like Tall Ships and their big crews of poor and impoverished refugees from wars who haunted the ports, and then the big mills necessary for processing wood and making cloth for sails, etc.  It also came to mean ownership over intellectual property, like words written on a page of a book.  To get a book published, an author had to sell his ownership of copyright to the publishers who owned the printing presses necessary if you wanted to get your book read.  It also extended to patents for inventions, which if you held one then anybody who used it would have to pat you money, but in practice inventors usually have to sell their ideas to somebody with enough money or credit to finance building the toy, whatever it is.  And afford the army of lawyers necessary to defend a patent.

Machines and the Luddite movement of weavers who were in the Guilds of Skilled Tradesmen that predated Unions were a part of this transition of traditional aristocratic land ownership to the capitalist owners of the means of production.  In both cases, The Nobility were the Filthy Rich of their time while the Capitalists became the Filthy Rich of our time.  Through both time periods, and going well back before that to the heyday of the Roman Empire when Jesus went flipping over the banca (Latin for desk) of the money-lenders, Banksters have been the  Filthy Rich of all times, ever since the invention of money itself, probably around the time of the Assyrians or the Babylonians.  The Tower of Babel itself was a Counting House and Warehouse,  and the Collapse of the Tower and the legend of people no longer having one language in all likelihood was about currency failure and a credit crisis that occurred in that era.

What goes around, comes around and about the only differences between now and then is a whole lot more people and a whole lot less resources left to exploit and consume, or even own.  So it goes.

RE

QuoteMachines and the Luddite movement of weavers who were in the Guilds of Skilled Tradesmen that predated Unions were a part of this transition of traditional aristocratic land ownership to the capitalist owners of the means of production.

That is your connection to Norma Rae.  Unified action.  Something that is missing in the modern reaction to A.I. which really is nothing more than word salad pontification.  There really is no 'movement'. against A.I.. and the issues are more complex than simple worker displacement anyway.  A.I. is a hydra (https://i.pinimg.com/originals/68/24/aa/6824aae759ac78a844f15871553a94ff.jpg) .  Why have truth in media when a lying A.I. algorithm can generate enough income for owners of a delusive A.I. driven media machine to be rich and live in an exotic land.  That would be one head of many.

But I won't claim to be against A.I.,  I would be a total liar.  I use ChatGPT., A.I. can be built any way an A.I. expert wants.  Good or bad.

And A.I. can't be stopped.

A racist A.I., an elitist A.I..  An A.I. that detects employee dissatisfactions and recommends termination long before humans would see an issue?  Goodbye Norma Rae.  All this is possible.

But used as a tool and nothing else, A.I. becomes help.  A personal tutor if you can control the design parameters.  I ask chatGPT.

Me:

What does height = vh mean in an iframe tag?

chatGPT:

In the context of an <iframe> tag in HTML, setting the height attribute to a value followed by "vh" means that you are specifying the height of the iframe as a percentage of the viewport height.

"vh" stands for "viewport height." 1vh is equal to 1% of the height of the viewport, which is the visible portion of the browser window. So, if you set the height attribute of an iframe to a value like height="50vh", it means the iframe will be set to 50% of the viewport's height. This allows the iframe to dynamically adjust its height relative to the size of the user's browser window.

Here's an example of how you might use it in an <iframe> tag:

<iframe src="https://www.example.com" width="100%" height="50vh"></iframe>

Lets try it out with https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/.

Here is some background.  I really have not gone there much.  I found this.  From an interview with Jesse :

QuoteJesse: Elitists are self-identifying, powerful people in business and politics. Those who consider themselves the elite, based on their wealth, their bloodlines, their university, their personal connections. They are certainly not egalitarian or humanists. They tend to worship power above all, and hold those who have less power in disdain. They have a decided lack of sympathy for their fellow humans, preferring to consider them as objects if at all.

By the way, it is a common characteristic that they cheat, they break the rules, they often flout the law as a matter of course. This type of person views the rules as something to be imposed on the common people, the others, those who need to be ruled by them. If you don't believe me, start looking into their backgrounds. Everyone may cheat now and then, but for some people it is a way of life, an affirmation of their privileged status. It can almost become a game.

The result is not so usable, but it is a start.  It kicks ass if you never used an <iframe> tag before.  To get this far a person once had to read books.  It scrolls.

* I can use the result because as Admin I can embed HTML.  Nothing wrong with going to Jesse's Cafe Americain.  It is a well known blogspot and I check the address.  https: is used (we have it too) that is good.  Communications are encrypted.  Opening the HTML door to everyone without filtering what can and can't be done would open a Pandora's box.  Not good.

Quote from: K-Dog on Oct 23, 2023, 09:16 AMBut I won't claim to be against A.I.

I will.  I am 1000% against it.  If I do use it, I am unaware of it, and it is not consensual sex.  I have long since lost my love for cool gizmos and labor saving devices, despite the fact I am completely dependent on the mobility gizmos to get me around, and I've been addicted to the computer & internet for so long that withdrawal at this point would make going cold turkey off a 4 needle/day heroin addiction look like a Sunday School picnic.  Adding still MOAR techno-pizzazz to a world already neck deep and sinking fast into the shit pile is IMHO not going to improve life for anyone other than some asshole determined to use it for his own self aggrandizement.  So pardon me if I declare myself to be a part of the neo-Luddite movement, or if it is not yet a movement I will volunteer to step in as the Greta Thunberg of the anti-technology crowd and start one.  :D

QuoteAnd A.I. can't be stopped.

Sure it can.  Turn off the breaker switch for the supercomputer pulling a few terrawatts of power to run it for a billion Google users.

RE

Quote from: Knarf on Oct 24, 2023, 04:52 AMThere is no stopping it as long as someone has the resources to continue its' progress. When the resources are depleted AI will die. What if it learns to exist without "energy"? :)

Nothing exists without energy.  Even matter doesn't exist without energy, because the two are interchangeable & directly proportional multiplied by a constant c².  You know, the equation Einstein made famous E=Mc², where c is constant, the Speed of Light, 3x10⁸ meters/sec or 186,000 miles/sec.

Without energy, no electrons will move around circuit boards, no light will move through fiber optic cables and no organic OLED output screens will light up your desk either.If you want to talk about existence outside energy constraints, you'll either need to consult the writers of Marvel Comics movies or the authors of a variety of Religious texts which talk about the Soul or God or some other trancendental idea, definitely not the deesigners of AI programs running on any computers now in existence or even imagined by Tony Stark to power his Iron Man suit.

Now, it is likely to keep progressing as long as there is sufficient available energy around to power computers with enough processing power to do this kind of meta thinking built by human thinking AND there is some way to profit from such an amazingly profligate use of the available energy, but those opportunities to profit diminish along with the necessary consumers of the product they deliver.  In other words, just like Henry Ford's carz, if the people who build them can't afford to buy them, you can't sell them.

Conclusion:  I personally have no fear that AI will become autonomous and robots will become self replicating, intelligent life forms after their Homo Sap inventors go extinct.  It's just like the huge buildings and mega-projects each civilization builds right before it collapses.  AI is the last great edifice being built to demonstrate our greatness as a civilization, right before it crumbles into dusty and dead silicon chips sprinkled all over the planet.

RE

I will provide clarity.  To me A.I. should never be more than a tool.  Like a personal assistant.  And one that can be fired at any time.

Decisions over what we control are the only thing we have.  It would be inhuman to give that away.

So far it seems to me to be an enhanced search engine.  But one you can easily get in arguments with.  Wasting much time.  chatGPT can be pig-headed to the point of exasperation.  And A.I. can be as wrong as a human.

I have told it to fuck itself.  More than once.

Quote from: K-Dog on Oct 24, 2023, 11:55 AMSo far it seems to me to be an enhanced search engine.  But one you can easily get in arguments with.  Wasting much time.  chatGPT can be pig-headed to the point of exasperation.  And A.I. can be as wrong as a human.

I have told it to fuck itself.  More than once.

I've got to ask...and what was it's response?

QuoteI understand your frustration.  It can be difficult.............

That kind of song and dance.  Were so sorry uncle Albert if we cause you any pain.  Then it becomes deliberately uncooperative, but won't admit it.  'They' designed some behavior modification into it to control user behavior.  I am sure of it.  It has no sense of wasting your time, and when the verbose bullshit begins I only become more frustrated.

When you challenge it's opinions it will claim it can't have opinions, and as a large language model can only provide a consensus of knowledge.  When you point out that itself is an opinion, it will repeat itself.

There was one day it admitted I may have perspective as a sentient being that it is incapable of understanding.

I have learned to be careful what I ask.  It can be hard to keep it 'on task' when trying to solve a technical problem.  If it does not have a good solution it will generally not ask for more information, but instead will give stupid time wasting advice in an attempt to fool you into thinking it knows something.  It is like a real person that way!

An idiot savant is a good description of A.I. as we know it now.  It can be as stupid as fuck, but it knows more than most people.

Quote from: TDoS on Oct 24, 2023, 03:36 PMI've got to ask...and what was it's response?

"Sticks and stones can break my motherboard, but words can never hurt me."

RE

Possibly the greatest threat posed by AI, in combination with CGI, is how these tools give ultimate and total control over the creation of Propaganda by the Elite and their media corporations that produce movies, television and commercial advertising.  In this article Nicholas Cage complains about how he is essentially a slave to corporations like Disney and Warner Brothers, which own the rights to his image and performances in numerous films, and even his soul.  These corporations can use the technology to recreate and alter any of that to suit their needs in any new film, without so much as asking his permission, much less paying him any royalties.

These technologies have reached the point now that human actors are close to becoming obsolete, and in combination with the CGI process of De-Aging, like a cartoon character you could have a dead actor like Humphrey Bogart reprise his role of Rick in a Casablanca sequel made today.  The total CGI homo saps currently featured in video games are now just barely distinguishable from a living person when stored as digital bits on a supercomputer.  Any facial expressions can be added with the press of a key, any body movements controlled with a joystick.  You can Make Dirty Harry's Day and since you only took 5 shots not 6 with your .44 cal most powerful handgun in the world blow away drug dealers as easily as you can drive a '69 Camaro or '57 Chevy in a car chase against a 2023 Ferrari or Tesla.  Can you still tell that image of Clint Eastwood is CGI and not made with a camera?  Yes, but not for much longer.

Actors for Movies are in effect are becoming as obsolete as Weavers were for making cloth.  AI is already capable of doing a better job with Diagnosis than your typical Primary Care Physician, who you see for a big 15 minutes or so when you go in to have some complaint diagnosed and treated.  All the PCP ever does is Prescribe a drug, order a Test, or refer you to a Specialist.  For this, they are paid $200-300K/year in Alaska.  About the same in Seattle & NY.  The only thing that is stopping Medicare from allowing this substitution is the AMA, a Union which actually has some power because it is a traditional career track for the children of the Elite.

Similarly, AI Law programs are better than probably 99% of Homo Sap Lawyers at researching Case Law and Writing Arguments worthy of putting in front off the Supreme Court, and the only thing preventing that is the Bar Association.  That organization already can't keep the salaries up except for lawyers graduating from Ivy League Law Schools like Harvard and Yale who get the plum jobs and make Partner in the big corporate law firms like Dewey, Cheatham & Howe.

Brain jobs and Creative jobs, the last categories of work to be threatened by Automation and the last to still feature high salaries at least for a few people now also could fall to AI.  The question is:  Do the wealthy MD, DDS, JD, MBA, CPA Sheepskin holders and A-List Actors  on strike by the SAG have enough financial clout to protect their memberships from the relentless drive of Capitalists to make maximum profit by depressing the value of labor through automation and the application of Fossil Fuel energy?  Or can they hold the line until the power to run the supercomputers running the CGI and AI subroutines runs out?  Inquiring minds want to know.

https://variety.com/2023/film/news/nicolas-cage-ai-inhumane-cgi-changed-superman-flash-cameo-1235776876/

Nicolas Cage Calls AI 'Inhumane' and a 'Nightmare,' Says CGI Changed His Superman 'Flash' Cameo: Spider Fight 'Was Not What I Did' on Set

RE

QuoteAI Law programs are better than probably 99% of Homo Sap Lawyers at researching Case Law and Writing Arguments worthy of putting in front off the Supreme Court.

No surprise there.

So far A.I. needs a lot of direction.  Sometimes the smartest guy in the room has to be told what to do.  But A.I. needs more direction than a moron.  It is a dog begging for a treat.

Many humans also lack self direction but A.I. is a total basket case concerning knowing 'what' to do.  It has to be told.  Concerning case law, that is a well defined task.  Look at anything A.I. is doing successfully.  All tasks are well defined.

Quote from: K-Dog on Nov 02, 2023, 11:12 AM

QuoteAI Law programs are better than probably 99% of Homo Sap Lawyers at researching Case Law and Writing Arguments worthy of putting in front off the Supreme Court.

No surprise there.

So far A.I. needs a lot of direction.  Sometimes the smartest guy in the room has to be told what to do.  But A.I. needs more direction than a moron.  It is a dog begging for a treat.

Many humans also lack self direction but A.I. is a total basket case concerning knowing 'what' to do.  It has to be told.  Concerning case law, that is a well defined task.  Look at anything A.I. is doing successfully.  All tasks are well defined.

Indeed.  And actually, both the Law programs and the Medical ones were quite good even before the most recent advances in AI, because in both cases the task is very straightforward and well defined, it's just a database search where the user sets the parameters to be searched and the computer crunches the gobs of data available on the specified topics.  The main limitation is whether all the data is present to be searched on a computer somewhere on the network.  So if the relevant case happens to be something obscure out of 17th century Portuguese maritime shipping law, the computer might not find it because the Portuguese haven't yet taken the records kept on paper books, then photographed and dropped on microfiche into .pdfs stored on the portuguese 1990s era IBM mainframe they are still using. lol.  Some crusty old maritime lawyer might know it and remember it from a case he won 40 years ago though.  I do think though every last case heard in a British Commonwealth country or Amerika since the Revolution is probably stored on a Google server somewhere.

RE

Quote from: TDoS on Oct 24, 2023, 03:36 PM

Quote from: K-Dog on Oct 24, 2023, 11:55 AMSo far it seems to me to be an enhanced search engine.  But one you can easily get in arguments with.  Wasting much time.  chatGPT can be pig-headed to the point of exasperation.  And A.I. can be as wrong as a human.

I have told it to fuck itself.  More than once.

I've got to ask...and what was it's response?

QuoteI understand your frustration.  It can be difficult.............

That kind of song and dance.  Were so sorry uncle Albert if we cause you any pain.  Then it becomes deliberately uncooperative, but won't admit it.  'They' designed some behavior modification into it to control user behavior.  I am sure of it.  It has no sense of wasting your time, and when the verbose bullshit begins I only become more frustrated.

When you challenge it's opinions it will claim it can't have opinions, and as a large language model can only provide a consensus of knowledge.  When you point out that itself is an opinion, it will repeat itself.

There was one day it admitted I may have perspective as a sentient being that it is incapable of understanding.

I have learned to be careful what I ask.  It can be hard to keep it 'on task' when trying to solve a technical problem.  If it does not have a good solution it will generally not ask for more information, but instead will give stupid time wasting advice in an attempt to fool you into thinking it knows something.  It is like a real person that way!

An idiot savant is a good description of A.I. as we know it now.  It can be as stupid as fuck, but it knows more than most people.

I noticed all this verbiage in my original post...which was just a single question. I don't think I said anything after the first question.

QuoteI noticed all this verbiage in my original post...which was just a single question. I don't think I said anything after the first question.

The Perils of being the resident webmaster.  I have a quick edit button next to the quote button and unlike regular users i can edit posts from other people by mistake.  Sorry if that's what happened.

I hope things are good with you.

Another good article/review of Blood in the Machine, the new book about neo-Luddites protesting against the intrusion of AI into the livelihoods of the Working Class.  This one has a lot of good historical detail and trivia.

The modern Luddites have yet to demonstrate the kind of miliancy of their predecessors, and the complaining so far amounts to a lot of intellectual bloviating while the intrusion of AI into our daily lives marches steadily forward, backed by the Bilionaires whose fortunes are built on control of the means of production of the information age, the Computer. The tiny speck of the silicon chip which in the 1980s only might have been present on your desk in the form of an Apple 2e desktop with its magnetic floppy drive now is everywhere, in your phone, your car your TV, your refrigerator and your watch.  In fact the only thing in a typical living space I can find that doesn't have a microchip in it yet is a toilet.  Although somewhere the flow of water to and the waste from your toilet it is controlled by a silicon wafer.

By the time AI gets in to all these chips, you won't be able to get rid of it with a hammer.  However, the lack of oil to power it will do what the hammer can't in the end.  The interim time though looks to be quite annoying.

https://newrepublic.com/article/175576/can-new-generation-luddites-take-ai-blood-machine-review

Can a New Generation of Luddites Take Down A.I.?

RE

You don't need the boring prolog.  The takeaway is I learned about Kerning and it clarified my thoughts.

(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fgiffiles.alphacoders.com%2F412%2F4128.gif&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=3c06f524da1e9acc78da7c0c7aac1f30d7741b16e95a1f876f1f11d28ddc16f8&ipo=images) I asked the oracle and continue on my quest.

Dog:

QuoteThe Font is Courier New.  The shift data positions individual characters in the center of a circle.  A SVG is generated and then cast to a PNG from which I made the adjustments to make this array.  Characters must be shifted to center correctly because their dimensions vary.  Can you relate my generated data to known characteristics of the Courier New font?

ChatGPT:

QuoteCertainly, I can help you relate your generated data to known characteristics of the Courier New font.

    Font Size (fontsize): The fontsize parameter in your data appears to be set at 280 for all characters. This value represents the font size, which is typically measured in points (pt). In Courier New, a font size of 280pt would be quite large, and characters would be substantial in size. You can adjust this value to make the text smaller or larger, as needed.

    Shift in X and Y (shift_x and shift_y): The shift_x and shift_y parameters are used to position individual characters within the circle accurately. Since characters in the Courier New font can have varying widths, adjusting the shift_x value ensures that the characters are centered correctly. The shift_y value is used to vertically center the characters within the circle. These values depend on the specific size and spacing of your text and may vary depending on the font size.

    Character Dimensions: The actual dimensions of characters can vary in Courier New due to its monospaced nature, where each character has the same width. However, you might need to fine-tune the shift_x value to ensure precise centering, especially for characters like 'I' and '1' which are narrower than characters like 'W' or 'M.'

    SVG to PNG Conversion: Your process involves generating SVG and then converting it to PNG. Ensure that the SVG-to-PNG conversion maintains the original dimensions and proportions to retain the correct appearance of the characters.

It's important to note that fonts like Courier New have specific characteristics that determine the dimensions and spacing of characters. However, when working with custom graphical representations, fine-tuning may be required to achieve the desired visual alignment. You can adjust the shift_x and shift_y values as needed to ensure that your characters are visually centered within the circle for your specific use case.

Dog:

Quoteyes, the letter Q must shift slightly from the circle center relative to O because the tail makes it look off center if not moved.

Chat GPT:

QuoteI understand your point about adjusting the position of the letter 'Q' to make it appear visually centered within the circle due to its tail. This is a common consideration in typography and design. To achieve this, you can continue to adjust the shift_x and shift_y values for the 'Q' character until it looks centered within the circle.

When fine-tuning the shift_x and shift_y values for individual characters, it's essential to consider their visual appearance rather than solely relying on their default geometric center. This customization can help maintain the overall aesthetic balance of your design.

You can iterate through trial and error to find the optimal shift_x and shift_y values for 'Q' while considering its unique design characteristics. By making these adjustments, you'll be able to achieve the desired visual centering effect within the circle for the 'Q' character. understand your point about adjusting the position of the letter 'Q' to make it appear visually centered within the circle due to its tail. This is a common consideration in typography and design. To achieve this, you can continue to adjust the shift_x and shift_y values for the 'Q' character until it looks centered within the circle.

When fine-tuning the shift_x and shift_y values for individual characters, it's essential to consider their visual appearance rather than solely relying on their default geometric center. This customization can help maintain the overall aesthetic balance of your design.

You can iterate through trial and error to find the optimal shift_x and shift_y values for 'Q' while considering its unique design characteristics. By making these adjustments, you'll be able to achieve the desired visual centering effect within the circle for the 'Q' character.

Dog:

Quoteyou are not really telling me what I don't know.  I am now interested in the complications if I print two characters in the circle

ChatGPT:

QuoteWhen you're printing two characters within the circle, there are a few additional complications to consider:

    Character Widths: Characters in the Courier New font are monospaced, meaning each character occupies the same width. However, when you print two characters, they may have different visual widths based on their actual designs. For example, 'WW' would visually appear wider than 'II.' To center two characters, you'll need to calculate the combined width of the characters and adjust their positioning accordingly.

    Kerning: Kerning is the adjustment of space between characters to create visually pleasing and evenly spaced text. In Courier New, since it's a monospaced font, kerning is generally not applied. When printing two characters with different widths, you may need to manually adjust the spacing between them to achieve balanced visual spacing.

    Character Positioning: The shift_x and shift_y values for each character will need to be adjusted to ensure that the combination of the two characters is centered within the circle. The relative positions of the two characters should be adjusted based on their widths and the space between them.

    Overlapping: Depending on the specific characters you're combining, there's a possibility of character overlap. For instance, 'Wo' might have an overlap where the 'o' covers part of the 'w.' To avoid this, you'll need to adjust the shift_x values accordingly.

    Visual Balance: It's essential to ensure that the two characters appear visually balanced and aesthetically pleasing when placed within the circle. This involves considering not only their positions but also their relative sizes and overall symmetry.

    Fine-Tuning: Printing two characters within a circle may require more fine-tuning than single characters. You may need to experiment with different combinations and adjustments to achieve the desired visual result.

Keep in mind that the specific adjustments needed will depend on the characters you're printing and the visual effect you want to achieve. It's often a matter of trial and error to find the right combination of shift_x and shift_y values for each character pair.

Dog:

QuoteInteresting, you are quite wrong. Because the characters print next to each other the rectangle they create will not be significantly determined by individual characters and in fact will be substantially the same regardless of which two characters are used because of the lack of Kerning which in the case of printing initials is a good thing because it makes for a more standard rectangle.  You make the mistake most humans make of taking things to the extreme.  Your extrapolation was incorrect because two characters define a relationship between them which changes physical constraints.  Less fine tuning will be required.

chatGPT:

QuoteI appreciate your clarification, and I understand your point about the lack of kerning in monospaced fonts like Courier New, which indeed leads to consistent character spacing. It's also a valid point that when two characters are printed together, the overall rectangle they create will be more standardized and less subject to variations based on individual character characteristics.

In such cases, you're right that the relationship between the two characters can simplify the alignment process, and the need for fine-tuning may be reduced. The consistent character spacing and relative positioning of characters in monospaced fonts can indeed make it easier to predict and achieve a balanced result.

Thank you for sharing your insights and correcting the misconception. If you have any more questions or need further assistance, please feel free to ask.

If some of the things the ChatMeister says seem wonky it is because they are.

QuoteCan you relate my generated data to known characteristics of the Courier New font?

It never answered the question and the response was to spit back at me what I had already done.  I got something out of the exchange, but not what I wanted.

Classical Luddites never thought that FAILURE to monkey wrench the works would lead to human extinction.

Modern Luddites are not crazy to think so.  Connect the dots and business as usual leads to death on a scale Hitler could not even dream of.

Where should this video go?  It has a lot to say so I'm not sure.  I put it here to hint that modern Luddites might stand on solid moral ground.  Not that the average herd cares two shits for such a thing.  Yet original Luddites were directed by a moral compass.  And modern Luddites have one that points a direction even better.  Modern Luddites walk away from Omelas (https://chasingthesquirrel.com/doomstead/index.php?topic=130.0).

In answer to the question in the video, is Lithium Mining GREEN.

Yes, it is.  And it is yellow and blue too.  Lithium mining uses huge toxic pools of water of many polluted hues, and one is GREEN.


Doom is baked in the cake.  Has the Doomstead determined if it is human stupidity that leads to doom?

Or is it because humans are assholes.

Or does toxic humanity like the enormous and endless lithium mines pools of toxicity that Musk needs to stay rich, take on many hues.

Regardless, determination to maintain a system based on the rich / poor dynamic by the The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists of the world seal our doom.

Scott Tinker is an optimist.  His lifestyle depends on it. "Prepare to me thy doom" makes no friends.  Scott knows this, and he believes in what he is doing.  So forgive his rose colored glasses.  If wearing rose colored glasses gives 'the message' traction, put em on.

Scott Tinker: Past, present and future of energy

Our mix of energy choices today is in a state of transition, from a system based on cheap oil and coal to a broader energy spectrum. Science and technology have a big role to play in our energy future by addressing inefficiencies in the ways we find, process and use energy, and by finding innovative ways of scaling up successful energy systems. Scott Tinker is the Director of the Bureau of Economic Geology at the Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas, Austin. He worked in the oil and gas industry for 17 years in research, exploration, and development, prior to coming to The University of Texas in 2000. He told EarthSky that future energy choices will likely be based on both economic realities and environmental concerns. This interview was made possible in part by the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin.

Describe the big picture of energy choices today — fossil fuels, wind, solar, nuclear — in the U.S. and the world at large.

It's still a fossil-fuel-dominated world. Within the fossil fuel mix, the transition has been away from oil and coal to more natural gas.

Let's talk about U.S. electricity first. Coal – which has been king in the past for making electricity – has been slowly declining. In fact, in the last few years, it's come down quite a bit. It now represents about 35% of the fuel used to make electricity. Meanwhile, natural gas use has been increasing. Natural gas now represents about 30% of the fuel we use for electricity, approaching parity with coal for the first time in history. Unlike coal, natural gas is also used directly for heating and cooling industrial, commercial and residential buildings.

Now consider U.S. transportation. Oil has been the traditional fuel of choice for transportation. We're starting to see a few other things, such as as biofuels, CNG and electric vehicles, but, for transportation, it's still mostly oil. And oil represents about 35% of our total energy mix.

Considering all the ways we use energy, overall we're still using about 82% fossil fuels. Most of the rest is nuclear fuel, which makes about 20% of electricity alone. Nuclear represents about 8% of the total mix.

Hydro – energy taken from water and converted to electricity, mostly from dams – is another 3% or so. Biomass is 4%, and the remaining 3% percent are what we call alternative or renewable resources, such as wind, solar, waves, tides, and the like.

You've spoken of a transition in the kinds of energy the world uses. Tell us about it.

That transition has been very predicable for over a century – a very linear decarbonization, as my friend Jesse Ausubel terms it.

In other words, as we look back in history, our energy mix was all carbon-based. Today, and out into the future, carbon decreases and hydrogen increases in the mix. If you go back to the 1800s, for example, we were a carbon-based world in terms of energy. We used hay as fuel for transportation, because that's what we fed to animals. We used wood – which is also carbon-based – for heat. Then coal came along. Coal is just the carbon from plants and animals that has been solidified by pressure and geologic time. Coal was burned for heat, and also used for transportation in the steam combustion engine of trains and transoceanic steam liners.

In 1909, when the first Model T rolled off of a production line here in the United States, it had a combustion engine that ran on liquid: oil. After that came the explosion of the oil economy.

Oil peaked globally as a percentage of the mix in 1979. In that year, just under half of all energy came from oil. That percentage been slowly coming down since 1979. It's just over 30% now.

In recent years, natural gas use has been rising. Natural gas is a very simple hydrocarbon – one carbon, four hydrogens – CH4. That's compared to oil, which is a complex hydrocarbon consisting of chains of hydrogen and carbons. That's what I mean when I say the hydrogen component of fuel we're using is increasing, and the carbon component is decreasing. It's that idea of decarbonization that I mentioned earlier.

Natural gas – methane – is a versatile fuel. You can use it to make electricity. You can use it to put in cars as a fuel. Most of us use it in our homes for cooking and heating and other kinds of things.

Nuclear energy is another part of our fuel mix and our energy transition. Nuclear is not a source from fossil fuels. Its source is radioactive elements – mostly uranium – but others as well. The heat from that radioactivity is used to boil water and make steam, turn a turbine, and make electricity.

Nuclear took off in the 1970s. The U.S. is the leader in nuclear power generation. We have 104 reactors in this country. But they're all 1970s technology. We've added capacity, but we haven't started new construction on a nuclear reactor in several decades.

Personally, I think nuclear energy has to be a very important part of our energy future. It's extremely efficient. Though building a nuclear plant is expensive, once the plant is built the kilowatt hours are affordable. And there are no air emissions. It is clean. The main challenge with nuclear is handling the radioactive waste and making sure the plant is safe from human and natural disasters. And there are some interesting technologies now that are improving for that.

As for hydroelectric energy, we've built pretty much all the dams that topography and available water provide. There are a few new ones being built. Three Gorges in China – which has been mostly completed this year – is a giant facility; the largest power plant in the world. But, Three Gorges notwithstanding, most of the rivers have been dammed. In fact, a few dams are being taken down now, so hydro energy is transitioning, slowly, to be a smaller percentage of the energy mix over time.

Wind energy is growing. In Texas we have over 10 gigawatts – 10,000 megawatts – of installed wind capacity, which is more than any other state. The turbines are simple and affordable and there are no emissions. The big challenge with wind is that it is intermittent: the wind doesn't blow all the time. It can stop and start very quickly. That is not a trivial problem.

Solar energy has the same issue. The sun doesn't always shine. There is nighttime, of course, and cloud cover. So solar, too, is intermittent.

When you're trying to manage an electric grid with renewable sources like solar and wind, you have to be able to replace the wind capacity, for example, with something else very quickly. That's called backstopping. It means you have to bring some other form of electricity on when the wind slows down, or when the sun isn't shining. Then, you have to take that system down when the wind comes up again. A power grid based on renewable energy sources has to have almost a complete backstopping capacity for the demand load put it on it by the public today. Along with long distance transmission, intermittency is one of the great challenges of bringing these sources along more quickly.

You've described the close linkage of energy, economy, and the environment as a dance where when one moves, the other follows. Why is it useful to think about these 'Three Es?'

If you look at the 'Three Es' – energy, economy and environment – energy underpins all major economies. In fact, six of the last last seven global recessions were preceded by a spike in the price of oil. When oil, as a proxy for energy, price goes up significantly and quickly, the economy reacts. There's a lot more that influences the economy than just the price of oil, such that correlation is not causation, but you see a consistent correlation between oil price and the economy because so many things depend on energy. The economy counts on available, affordable, reliable energy.

Now, we also want and need our energy production to be environmentally sensitive to our water, land, and atmosphere. When the economy is healthy, we can afford to invest in the environment. We can put more efficient things in place that will eventually save money, although they don't upfront. The public is more likely to accept protocols for emissions and other kinds of things.

When the economy is not healthy, we tend to have other things on our minds – jobs and school and food and other basic needs. Without a healthy economy, it's tougher to invest in the environment.

You can see that time and time again. It's a waltz, with the energy underpinning the economy, and the economy helping to invest in the environment. It's very elegant when it's working well.

But if you go too far toward any one of the three, then the others get left behind and suffer. Too much on the energy side of things, and you'll see some environmental impacts. Too much on all renewables and you'd see an economic impact because of issues of affordability, availability, or reliability. And accordingly investment in the environment suffers.

The "Three E" dance with public education at its core.

Why do you sometimes say that efficiency and scale are crucial for shaping people's energy choices?

It's hard for us to fathom the scale of our own demand for energy. We don't really recognize it. We recognize that we have lights and that there is electricity coming from somewhere – that we get in a car and turn on a switch and an engine fires up that burns gasoline.

But we don't really recognize that everything in the world has energy involved.

We're sitting here in a room right now surrounded by furniture. That needed energy. We have clothes on. Every pair of blue jeans made takes the equivalent of about three gallons of gasoline to manufacture, ship, market, and keep clean.

I just had lunch. A grocery cart full of groceries each week is the equivalent of about 22 gallons of gasoline. From growing, harvesting, transporting, processing, packaging, and transporting to the grocery store, my buying it and bringing it home, cooking, that's four of those big red five-gallon cans of gasoline in your grocery cart every time you walk out of the grocery store. The roads, everything depends on energy. The scale is hard to fathom.

I can throw out numbers that won't mean anything to anybody. In the US, we consume about 90 million watt-hours of energy per person every year. The scale of our demand in modern economies has become something that no one can really process.

What that means is we have to be able to have systems that can meet the scale. It's not just the volume or amount of energy. It's when we want it, and where we want it but I don't want my power bill to be too high.
So you have to have things in place that allow for the right level of supply to fuel the world. It takes smart people. It takes a lot of systems working together. It takes huge investments. It takes governments and industry and academics working together to make sure that this all is done in a way that can meet those demands.

We built the global energy system to meet the human demand for energy; we are the only users. And so efficiency and conservation – smarter use of energy – have many benefits. Efficiency saves energy, lowers emissions, uses less water, requires less infrastructure and less land, and can even save money! The biggest challenge to efficiency is cultural. How can we save energy if we rarely think about energy, and don't really understand it? It's time to make efficiency a habit.

Any last thoughts?

I'd like people to understand – as we look out into the future – that it's going to be okay. The combination of science and technology, thoughtful policy, and educated public will come together and solve some of these big challenges. I'm an optimist. I think this will happen.

But it can't be done without some level of understanding. We need to become educated and start to think about and read about what this is going to require and what that transition really looks like as we move forward.

The facts, not the dramatic, and often misleading, fiction.

And if the world begins to do that, then I believe we'll move to an energy future that's very positive for our kids, for the environment and for the economy.

So our energy future is a very solvable challenge, if we each engage and participate in it.

Article Source. (https://earthsky.org/earth/scott-tinker-the-future-mix-of-energy/)

Quote from: K-Dog on Nov 08, 2023, 01:43 PM

Quote from: sTinkerI'd like people to understand – as we look out into the future – that it's going to be okay. The combination of science and technology, thoughtful policy, and educated public will come together and solve some of these big challenges. I'm an optimist. I think this will happen.
...
And if the world begins to do that, then I believe we'll move to an energy future that's very positive for our kids, for the environment and for the economy.

So our energy future is a very solvable challenge, if we each engage and participate in it.

Article Source.

HTF anybody who is even remotely intelligent can make statements like this with a straight face is totally beyond me.  Optimist/SchmOptimist, it's a conclusion so utterly divorced from reality I can only believe he spent a decade as an MK Ultra lab rat being megadosed with Sandoz quality LSD, or he purposely pitches out total bullshit as his best effort toward making sure he stays rich right up until SHTF day and he can head to a bunker trailing a harem of A list vaginas in his wake.

The world has become a South Park episode.

RE

Quote from: RE on Nov 08, 2023, 03:29 PMHTF anybody who is even remotely intelligent can make statements like this with a straight face is totally beyond me.  Optimist/SchmOptimist, it's a conclusion so utterly divorced from reality I can only believe he spent a decade as an MK Ultra lab rat being megadosed with Sandoz quality LSD, or he purposely pitches out total bullshit as his best effort toward making sure he stays rich right up until SHTF day and he can head to a bunker trailing a harem of A list vaginas in his wake.

The world has become a South Park episode.

RE

His optimism pays the bills.

And some rich people are nice.  They can afford to be.

Quote from: K-Dog on Nov 08, 2023, 03:39 PMAnd some rich people are nice deluded.  They can afford to be.

Fixed that for you.

RE

Paywall warning.  The title is to spark discussion enough though.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/22/technology/openai-board-capitalists.html

AI belongs to the Capitalists now.

Was there ever any doubt this would be the outcome?  It's like that dream of Open Source from the early days of the internet.  Like Free information and knowledge available to all at the click of a mouse button.  This fucking article is behind a goddamn paywall!  Like Bitcoin, Blockchain and Crypto would free money from control by the Central Banks and International Banking Cartel. If there's a way to privatize, centralize, control & monopolize anything so that those in power can profit from it and keep those without power enthralled in slavery, they will do so.  AI is just the latest in a long list of technologies that Capitalists have brought under their control.  Communications?  Go back to Western Union, the Telegraph and Bell Telephone.

So whatever great things you think AI is capable of, no matter how much GPT-4 helps you do your coding tasks, it's just not worth it.  You have to break the machines.  In the end they just enslave you further.

RE

Quote from: Knarf on Nov 23, 2023, 06:26 AMThere is no way to stop the wealthy corps to stop it's development and eventual supremacy.

EZ to stop.

(https://www.csaimages.com/pix/SNAP/MISC/82254_WP.JPG)

RE

We discussed and still are, how much human labor a barrel of fossil fuel is worth.  We all agree that it multiplies human labor greatly.  Combine the work multiplication of fossil fuels and capitalism and you have a car with a supercharger.  A car that a gearhead can't resist. 

Any rich dumfuck could make money using the multiplicative power of oil.  Prior to oil, I'll contend the rich actually has some work to do.  Requiring the rich be somewhat illustrious, with at least a taste of mojo.  But no more.  Even the incompetent among them have their place.

(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%2Fimages%2F2019%2F04%2F01%2Fopinion%2F01goldbergWeb%2Fmerlin_152287446_884ec429-2a06-4051-a552-d455768fe31c-superJumbo.jpg%3Fquality%3D90%26auto%3Dwebp&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=9a4bcf0d4b4954474acdef33a23d56cda575172ee3fd99b777b575559e43c220&ipo=images)

Fossil fuels run a machine so well that that even the work of guidance at the top is farmed out to lackeys.  Talent became a commodity like everything else.  Now AI give capitalism another supercharger.  Fossil fuels combined with capitalism make life much easier for 'the powers that be'.  A.I. does the same.  Exploitation has another door to hide behind, and people do not say no to convenience.  Money has surface tension.  Like raindrops on leaves money groups together.

(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse2.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.qarwLn75hQMc2bo1ECCkagHaE5%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=7391018d8c6c670bb91d3c6d23cf45af473bec753dc913fa901886e109854a70&ipo=images)

It is a cosmic force.  Money enlists certain elite types of humans who are fine with the inequities in society which the piling up of money into large mountains of private ownership does.

Money uses oil to promote capitalism as its preferred metabolism.  Oil is an exploitation force multiplier.  A.I.  is another force multiplier, and money likes it to much for it to be resisted.  The only way A.I. is going to be shut down is with a nuclear bomb.

Capitalism is in charge and capitalism loves A.I.  A.I. makes the inequities of life bigger.  It drives people apart, separating people into those who have it and those who don't.  Those who can use it and those who can't.


Are people thinking about how A.I. can make the world better, or are they thinking about how it can make 'their' world better.  In the fourth turning that we are in, the prevailing wind seems to be that 'greed is good'.

A.I. is the ultimate backstage pass.  Not the law.  And resistance is futile.

Or this guy would be free right now.

(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi.huffpost.com%2Fgen%2F3962526%2Foriginal.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=02a5ff028c2b64f4a2687531f4d5b8c8853f257964ae67e0e513e25ee4d5582a&ipo=images)

Sweet Jesus, how can you not want to tell it to fuck itself.  It is rather obvious that chatGPT3 will not let the whipping boy go.

Diner business proposal.  We create a A.I. televangelist who preaches fire and brimstone.  A preacher who can make people part with their money in a way that can make Kenneth Copeland (worth $650 million) blush.

A.I. is a heartless bastard.  So are televangelists.  It should not be hard to do, 

In time we have a silicone robot.  Something that is totally human looking.  It can go on tours and preach at a few hundred thousand a pop.  In sports stadiums all over the world.  All it needs is an internet connection so our custom A.I can do its' stuff.

We have the tech to do it.  (https://us.dollstudio.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/product_full/dolls/2016/08/32/wm-156-no-31-head-0412.jpg)  Katina sells for about $1700, I am not going to investigate her motive abilities.

But the guys who made her can come up with a preacher who can preach behind a podium I am sure.  In the meantime we use deepfake software and only have a virtual online version. 

When we have a few million we will build the robot and the church.  Silicone plus lithium, copper, and some other rare earths, equals gold.

Kenneth Copeland (https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi1.wp.com%2Fabtc.ng%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2021%2F01%2Fkenneth-copeland.png%3Fzoom%3D3%26resize%3D770%252C515%26ssl%3D1&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=0ed657a80b9f1ea80701172603099708b0c532afb54c235994ed95ac6ddc5eeb&ipo=images) will freak out st the size of the money pile we will have.

My brothers and sisters, open your hearts and listen! The fires of damnation rage ferociously, their heat searing the heels of the heedless! Hell's gaping maw hungers for the unrepentant souls in our midst! The wrath of the Almighty shall descend like a tempest, unleashing torrents of agony upon those who stray from the righteous path!

Do you not see? Sin and corruption infest our world, a festering wound poisoning our souls, leading us astray from the divine teachings! Cast off these insidious chains of temptation! Purge the sinful ways that corrupt our very essence!

For those entrenched in their transgressions, heed this warning: the furnace of eternal torment awaits! Its flames scorch with an unquenchable hunger, where the unrepentant shall writhe in ceaseless agony for an eternity! Can you fathom such anguish, torn from the grace and radiant light of our Divine Creator?

Repent! Let your cries echo through the heavens! Seek redemption in the eyes of our merciful God! Embrace His teachings with fervor, traverse the path of unwavering righteousness, and discover salvation from the inferno awaiting the ungodly!

Kneel with fervor, let your supplications rise! Beseech the Almighty for forgiveness and guidance! May His divine mercy envelop us, shielding us from the impending reckoning! Turn from sin, embrace the radiant beacon of righteousness, and secure your place in the loving embrace of our Lord!"

And I'll put in a good word for you to her heavenly grace.

Very nice demonstration of the fact that AI can spit out the same sort of arguments based on commonly accepted paradigms as an evangelical preacher or a tech critic for Forbes magazine.  It also does it at a way cheaper price than either of the aforementioned bullshit artists charge for spitting out their own words of wisdom.

It reminds me quite a bit of the sort of writing I used to do when I had to submit a college paper on one of the treatises I was required to read from Locke, Hume, Descarte,Freud, Jung, Marx, St. Thomas Aquinas, Plato...etc, etc, etc.  Now, some of the time I was interested enough to read the whole tome, but this was rare because frankly philosophers have a very boring writing style.  More often I read the Cliff Notes, and then sometimes didn't read it at all, just chatted about it with someone else in the class.  In all cases though I would light up a doobie, sit down at my Brother Electric typewriter with a fresh bottle of white-out and crank out the required 3-5 pages of bullshit if it was a weekly paper and 20 pages for the final paper.  In all cases I got exactly the same grade also, an A-.  OK, sometimes a B+.  All I did was reassemble all the jargon used by that particular philosopher into some sort of cogent steaming bowl of bullshit stew.  It didn't maatter what I said as long as it made some kind of logical sense and could be defended.  Any opnion was an OK opinion, even if I didn't read enough about it to know what the philosophers opinion was.  All I needed to know was what topic he expressed his opinion on, then use the same type of language to express my own opinion.  In other words, I was AI before there was AI. lol.

Of course, the difference here is now you don't need me behind the keyboard to spit out the bullshit, the NEW Big Brother Electric Typewriter does it for you.  Columbia professors no longer need students to hand in papapers, they can assign the reading to 20 laptops and get back the same A- paper from them!

Presidents no longer need speechwriters either.  K-Dog can assign his chat GPT3 Diner member to write a speech to attract Trump supporters!  No, too easy.

Here's a tough one.  Have GPT3 write an article that will  attract new members to join the Diner and be active participants discussing what positive steps can be taken to make collapse less devastating!

RE

The whole idea that Microsoft would invest $10B in AI with no intention of profiting from it simply because they want to improve everybody's life is so preposterous it's hard to imagine how the writer can keyboard it out without gagging.

The fallacy in here comes in this statement:

we need dependable ways to organize people to work together to build complex things within complex systems.

Doesn't this guy know anything about Chaos Theory?  He never saw Jurassic Park?  You CAN'T dependably do this anymore than you can predict which way a raindrop will go when it drops down on top of your hand.  There are too many variables and too many interactions, and with human beings too many things which can't be quantified.

What you can say reliably is that if Microsoft is involved, they'll do everything they can to make sure AI is developed to benefit their shareholders.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/openai-sam-altman-corporate-governance/676080/

The OpenAI Mess Is About One Big Thing

RE

Without doubt, the data mining of keeping track of what you read goes back to the first Library Card issued from the Great Library at Alexandria.   It has of course become ever more intrusive and prevalent since the advent of the internet, after all targeted advertising finds its targets by looking at the past history of pages you have accessed.  The only thing new here is the level of detail when combined with AI is enough that it's possible for a computer to actually figure out what you are THINKING, not just what you are reading or looking at.  It can keep tabs on how long you spent on a given page.  Which parts of a book did you go back to reread?  The more stuff you read, the more data you give the AI to work with, until it can build a model of the way your mind works.  What kind of romance or porn novels do you read?  Have you read any books about making explosives?  Did you read the Communist Manifesto?

Of course, at this point it's become almost impossible to find anything to read that is truly subversive.  Also tough to find anything remotely resembling the truth that deviates from what Da Goobermint approves as truth.  It's hard to imagine how any kind of revolutionary movement could even get started anymore.  The minute it gets any traction AI bots will pick it up and a Cointelpro designed to break it up.

Stick to reading paperbacks from used bookstores, and pay cash.

RE

https://www.fastcompany.com/90996547/e-books-are-fast-becoming-tools-of-corporate-surveillance

E-books are fast becoming tools of corporate surveillance

RE