Researchers are using Shoggoth, a monster out of HP Lovecraft, as a mascot for AI.
Kevin Roose at The New York Times:
@TetraspaceWest, the meme’s creator, told me in a Twitter message that the Shoggoth “represents something that thinks in a way that humans don’t understand and that’s totally different from the way that humans think.”
Attempts to train AI to be more human-like are like putting a smiley face or human mask on Shoggoth. It’s still inscrutable, but it creates the appearance of understandability.
That some A.I. insiders refer to their creations as Lovecraftian horrors, even as a joke, is unusual by historical standards. (Put it this way: Fifteen years ago, Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t going around comparing Facebook to Cthulhu.)
And it reinforces the notion that what’s happening in A.I. today feels, to some of its participants, more like an act of summoning than a software development process. They are creating the blobby, alien Shoggoths, making them bigger and more powerful, and hoping that there are enough smiley faces to cover the scary parts.
Adam Engst at TidBITS writes an in-depth review of the new, experimental Arc browser for Mac. Lately I’m switching off between Arc, Orion, and Safari.
Cory Doctorow: The FDA literally granted pharma company Ferring a monopoly on shit. More precisely, the FDA rescinded its “discretionary enforcement” guidance relating to fecal microbiota transplants (FMTs), where doctors implant a small quantity of processed poop from one person to another, which turns out to be a powerful, safe treatment for serious and potentially fatal intestinal infection. The FDA ruling makes it illegal for doctors to source their poop from Openbiome, a nonprofit that coordinates between doctors, patients, and donors to provide safe FMTs. Ferring conducted clinical trials on FMTs and received approval for an FMT product called Rebyota, which charges $20,000 per treatment, compared to Openbiome’s $1-2k per treatment. So sick Americans will have to pay 10x higher for shit.
We recently learned about “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” a 2017 movie directed and written by Luc Besson of “The Fifth Element,” which Julie and I both love. The previews have the same look and feel as the other movie. It stars Dane DeHaan (never heard of him), and Cara DeLevingne, who appeared in “Carnival Row”—we enjoyed the first season of that—along with a hell of a supporting cast: Clive Owen, Rihanna, Ethan Hawke, Herbie Hancock, Rutger Hauer and John Goodman.
Guidelines for Brutalist Web Design:
The term brutalism is derived from the French béton brut, meaning “raw concrete”. Although most brutalist buildings are made from concrete, we’re more interested in the term raw. Concrete brutalist buildings often reflect back the forms used to make them, and their overall design tends to adhere to the concept of truth to materials.
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A website that embraces Brutalist Web Design is raw in its focus on content, and prioritization of the website visitor.
Panpsychism is the view that the mind “or a mindlike aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality.”
Possibilianism is a religious philosophy that’s open to exploring possibilities. Neuroscientist David Eagleman described it this way:
Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet we know too much to commit to a particular religion. A third position, agnosticism, is often an uninteresting stance in which a person simply questions whether his traditional religious story (say, a man with a beard on a cloud) is true or not true. But with Possibilianism I’m hoping to define a new position — one that emphasizes the exploration of new, unconsidered possibilities. Possibilianism is comfortable holding multiple ideas in mind; it is not interested in committing to any particular story.
The iPhone will auto-reply to text messages—but only when you’re in Driving Focus. I want auto-reply in all Focus modes. I hope that’s coming in the next version of iOS.
What novel should I read next? 📚
Mr. Davies Giddy rose and said, that while he was willing to allow the hon. gent. who brought forward this every degree of credit for the goodness,of his intentions, as well as for his ability and assiduity; still, upon the best consideration he was able to give the bill, he must totally object to its principle, as conceiving it to be more pregnant with mischief than advantage to those for Whose advantage it was intended, and for the country in general. For, however specious in theory the project might be, of giving education to the labouring classes of the poor, it would, in effect, be found to be prejudicial to their morals and happiness; it would teach them to despise their lot in life, instead of making them good servants in agriculture, and other laborious employments to which their rank in society had destined them; instead of teaching then subordination, it would render them factious and refractory, as was evident the in the manufacturing counties it would enable them to read seditious pamphlets, vicious books, and publications against Christianity; it would render them insolent to their superiors and, in a few years, the result would be, that the legislature would find it necessary to direct the strong arm of power towards them, and to furnish the executive magistrates with much more vigorous laws than were now in force. Besides, if the bill were to pass into a law, it would go to bur-then the country with a most enormous and incalculable expence, and to load the industrious orders of society with still heavier imposts. It might be asked of him, would he abolish the Poor-Laws altogether? He had no hesitation to declare he would; for, although they relieved many persons, who were certainly objects of compassion, they were also abused by contributing to the support of idleness and profligacy; and he never could admit it to be just or reasonable that the labour of the industrious man should be taxed to support the idle vagrant. This was taxing virtue for the maintenance of vice.
— Saying the quiet part aloud.
When I read this I thought it was from a Dickens novel but nope it’s from UK Parliamentary debate over the Parochial Schools Bill of 1807.
Last night I got up for the reason one usually gets up in the middle of the night and walked into a wall forehead-first. Someone had moved the wall in the night.
Then, today, I accidentally kicked the sunroom heater and said, “Sorry,” my phone woke up, and Siri said, “Hmm?”
How is your weekend going?
The staff weren’t asking for money. They wanted adequate staffing and more training.
Callers to the hotline often spoke with staff who could emphasize because the staff had their own personal experience with eating disorders.
The chatbot isn’t even AI. It’s just a scripted bot.
Via jwz, who says: “Perfectly normal, non-dystopian timeline.”
A Day in the Life of a Woke Third-Grade Teacher, as Imagined by a Far-Right Politician
I pull into the parking lot and say hello to the drag queen we recently hired as the school librarian. As we walk into Socialist Snowflake Learning Center (previously called Robert E. Lee Elementary), we schedule a time for her to visit my class and expose my students to sexually explicit material.
We are five episodes behind on Succession, and I am wondering if I have the willpower to avoid news and social media Sunday and Monday, to avoid series finale spoilers.
“I tried the AI novel-writing tool everyone hates, and it's better than I expected”
I wrote this: Red Hat brings AI to IT operations. Red Hat is putting artificial intelligence (AI) to work in IT operations and event remediation, showing the technology is good for more than designing novelty socks or creating an endless Seinfeld parody.