AI
Matt Ross and
AI
We’ve regulated many things online, right? The amount of fraud and criminal activity online is minimal. We’ve done a pretty good job with spam. You know, in general, [the problem of] revenge porn has got better, even though that was in a bad place three to five years ago. It’s pretty difficult to find radicalization content or terrorist material... See more
Will Douglas Heaven • DeepMind’s Cofounder: Generative AI Is Just a Phase. What’s Next Is Interactive AI.
I think he has a very rosy view of the future. Most of this cannot really be backed up, and radicalized content is even increasing. We can see Twitter's struggle to moderate content.
But the pleasant surprise: It has been enormously helpful in my attempts to resurrect and improve my rusty engineering knowledge, and level up my middle-aged forays into maker-ing things. The killer app for me is the ability to go deep in a domain for remedial learning. The most immediately helpful use-cases for me have been:
- Getting back into
Venkatesh Rao • You've Been Matrix-Multiplied
scientific investigations of the boundaries between conscious and unconscious systems are urgently needed, and they cite ethical, legal and safety issues that make it crucial to understand AI consciousness. For example, if AI develops consciousness, should people be allowed to simply switch it off after use?
Mariana Lenharo • AI consciousness: scientists say we urgently need answers
Bad actors want to sort out what bot styles get the most responses for engagement farming. Bluesky is light on algorithms that filter what you can see, but spammers got in the habit of exploring how the algorithms work on Twitter, Facebook, and Threads so they could exploit them.
A polite disagreement bot ring is flooding Bluesky — reply guy as a (dis)service
Sloppity slop slop
AI agents will outmaneuver salespeople by optimizing persuasion
Subsequent research by Gerstgrasser and colleagues at Stanford and MIT (arXiv:2404.01413) provides important qualification: model collapse is not inevitable if synthetic data accumulates alongside real data rather than replacing it. The pathological scenario assumes complete substitution—thoughtful data curation can prevent the worst outcomes.
Substack • The Cognitive Collapse Thesis: How Polluted Information Loops Are Degrading Both Machine and Human Intelligence—And What It Means for Capital, Power, and Civilization
Announcing Grok
x.ai
interesting to see every AI imbued with a different set of values.
Grok is an AI modeled after the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, so intended to answer almost anything and, far harder, even suggest what questions to ask!
Grok is designed to answer questions with a bit of wit and has a rebellious streak, so please don’t use it if you hate humor!
A unique and fundamental advantage of Grok is that it has real-time knowledge of the world via the 𝕏 platform. It will also answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems.
Quanta interviewed 19 current and former NLP researchers to tell that story. From experts to students, tenured academics to startup founders, they describe a series of moments — dawning realizations, elated encounters and at least one “existential crisis” — that changed their world. And ours.
John Pavlus • When ChatGPT Broke an Entire Field: An Oral History | Quanta Magazine
Agrawal et al. argue that the framing of AI automation versus augmentation is wrong. Rather than being distinct they are often one and the same. They say that AI, initially intended for automating tasks, inadvertently acts as a force for augmentation of the broader workforce. For example, automating diagnostic skills in healthcare could diminish... See more