BertramDitore

@BertramDitore@lemmy.zip

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sir Tim Berners-Lee doesn’t think AI will destroy the web⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  To me it definitely has gotten much worse, though everyone’s internet experience is radically different. 20 years is too far back, definitely not. But 5 or 10 years? Absolutely.

  I don’t have accounts on and completely ignore all social media other than this, and have all my ads blocked everywhere. I don’t use streaming services, so no exposure to ads there either. That all makes my web experience (and I’m sure most other Lemmy folks) arguably way cleaner and content-focused than the vast majority of people who just use the mainstream internet as it is.

  And yet it’s pretty difficult to find out basic things, and I think that’s a very recent development. It has always been nontrivial to figure out what’s true and what’s not and sometimes you had to dig a bit. SEO did a great job of poisoning things before LLMs. But now? I feel like 99% of what I find is unconvincing and just bad, and the sheer volume of rehashed bullshit makes it super hard to find something useful, let alone something real and truthful.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sir Tim Berners-Lee doesn’t think AI will destroy the web⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Just because he invented the WWW doesn’t mean he’s always right. In fact, he’s already wrong about this. The internet as a whole has gotten noticeably worse over the last few years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨LAPD Eyes ‘GeoSpy’, an AI Tool That Can Geolocate Photos in Seconds⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah I get that, and your frustration is totally valid, it’s just an insane uphill battle to continue producing original content without some evilcorp swooping in to steal all your shit and then resell it as their own. This is the only “solution” they’ve found to still making enough money to eat. But the extra friction is definitely a bit annoying, and they know that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨LAPD Eyes ‘GeoSpy’, an AI Tool That Can Geolocate Photos in Seconds⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Their reporting is often based on FOIA requests, which are a public service, so they give free access to those articles without a paywall.

  They have been open and transparent that they require a free account to read their free articles because it prevents LLMs from illegally scraping and plagiarizing their original reporting. Logging in to a free account is a small price to pay to ensure these actual journalists continue to produce excellent work.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A corporate recruiter in Toronto who spent 3 weeks convinced by ChatGPT that he was essentially Tony Stark from Iron Man, agreed to share his transcript after breaking free of the delusion.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, it’s really frustrating that we’re watching the grift in real time, and influential outlets like the NYTimes are making all the predicable mistakes and further inflating the bubble to the point where I’m starting to think it won’t be allowed to pop. It feels like there’s nothing we can do about it, because enough people have slurped up the slop and are convinced they already can’t live without it.

  I argue with coworkers every day about the useless generated shit they put in front of me. I argue with friends who believe the grifters have their interests in mind. I’ve started arguing with executives at my company who are hinting that everyone has to start using LLMs. I argue with anyone any time they mischaracterize ChatGPT as AI and not an LLM. I argue with my colleagues who work in environmental sciences that they of all people should understand the practical harms these tools are causing.

  It’s an uphill battle, and I feel like we’ve already lost. It’s exhausting seeing the direction we’re going, knowing it’s the wrong way to go, and yet being stuck on the stupid train going there.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google co-founder Sergey Brin calls U.N. ‘transparently antisemitic’ after report on tech firms and Gaza⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you intend to profit from the murder of innocent people by helping governments develop weapon systems, then you don’t get to feign innocence and act like a biased dictionary when the world notices the evil you’ve contributed to. As a fellow Jew, I wish he would understand that we don’t have a monopoly on being the victims of genocide.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨E Ink is turning the laptop touchpad into an e-reader for AI apps⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I couldn’t care less about what this has to do with “AI,” but e-ink is horrendously underutilized. It should be so much more ubiquitous.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Downhill is a fourth wall breaking action RPG whose protagonist knows you exist, and might not agree with your actions⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Such a cool concept. I could see myself really getting into a game like this.