True, I would say that there’s multiple issues dealing with AI that are more pressing:

• The massive amount of exploitation used to power AI
• The use of AI to distance the creators from the accidents the AI causes
• The danger of mass-proliferation of hazards across the web and globe
• the massive amount of waste created by AI

These aren’t all of them. One thing I’ve noticed, however, is that these aren’t really AI-specific issues - these are all issues caused by automation and lack of regulation. This lack of proactive regulation is also very likely a failing of our currently neoliberal government systems.

I think that is why so many AI hype-mongers draw attention towards A(G)I safety, because they don’t want attention drawn to the actual danger which is automation safety in general.

Alright, I see what you’re saying now. We’re on the same page.

As an additional thing regarding AGI, I think it should be noted that ‘human-level’ and ‘human-like’ are importantly distinct when talking about this topic.

In reality, if an AGI is ever created, it will most likely not be human-like at all. Humans think the way we do out of an evolutionary conditioning for survival, a history an AGI will not be coming from. One example given by Robert Miles is a staple making machine becoming an ASI, where it essentially would exist solely to make as many staples as it could with its hyperintelligence.

We mean to say that this AGI is a ‘human-level’ intelligence in that it can learn to utilize abstractions and tools, be able to function in a large variety of environments without intervention or training, and be able to learn in a realtime fashion.

Obviously, these criteria for any AI shows just how far away we are from achieving anything right now.these concepts are very vague and the arguments for each one’s impossibility or inevitability are equally vague and philosophical. It’s still mostly just stuffy academics arguing with each other.

One statement I agree with, though, comes from the AI safety collective: We don’t know what we’re doing, and we should really sort that out. If any of this is actually possible and we accidentally make an AGI/ASI before having any failsafes or contingencies, it could be very bad.

I am not bait-and-switching here. The switchers were the business-minded grifters which made the term synonymous with LLMs and eventually destroyed its meaning completely.

The definition I gave is from the most popular and widely used CS textbook on AI and has been the meaning used in the field since the early 90s. It’s why videogame NPCs are always called AI, because they fit the conventional CS definition, and were one of the major things it was about the most.

As for your ‘1’, AI is a wide-but-very-specialized field and pertains from everything from robots to text autocomplete. If you want the most out of it, you need to get down into the nitty gritty and really research the field.

On a Seperate note, while AI safety, AGI, and the risk of the intelligence explosion are somewhat related to computer science’s pursuit of AI systems, they are much more philosophical currently, and adhere to much vaguer definitions of AI, Such as Alan Turing’s.

IIRC, within computer science, which is the field most heavily driving AI design and research forward, an ‘intelligent agent’ is essentially defined as any ‘agent’ which takes external stimulai from a collection of sensors in some form of environment, processes that stimulai in a dynamic fashion (one of the criteria IIRC is a branching decision tree based on the stimulai), and then applies that processing to a collection of affectors in the environment.

Yes, this definition is an extremely low bar and includes a massive amount of code, software and scripts. It also includes basic natural intelligences such as worms, ants, amoeba, and even viruses. One example of mechanical AI are some of Theo Jansen’s StrandBeasts

Right on the money. One of the big things with AI safety is “we have no fucking clue how AGI can originate so we are constantly in the dark.” If we ever did create it, we likely would not immediately know it was AGI, and that creation could go very terribly in a number of ways.

I think this is coming from a “plugins enshittify projects” mentality where the assumptions are:

• code bases should be as succinct and stable as possible.
• plugins add large amounts of unused code and obfuscate many granular aspects of program execution, increasing debug and research time.

Seems that the author views that the above devs chose to use plugins instead of writing their own code and shot themselves in the foot by doing so. The final portion seems to suggest that the person pushing all these changes then bobs out before any of the problems caused by these changes actually get solved.

You’re upset that it’s sunrise at 06:00 somewhere and not that some other lucky bastard landed sunrise at 00:00?

(that might actually happen over the ocean, I have not checked)

Between the two, months is much harder. With time, you just set your clocks to UTC. To get months fixed you need mass adoption, rewriting calendar software, etc.

There’s dozens of us! Yeah practically it’s almost entirely an aesthetic effect. I’ve kept it that way and haven’t had any problems from it, though.

UTC has leap seconds to keep it aligned with earth’s rotation. Otherwise all timezones would slowly shift away from having any correlation with solar time. Between UTC and IAT, UTC is the more human-useable and thus better.

Eh, I think the article blows the situation out of proportion. Overall you’re still in the same situation as before. Instead you would just be looking up a timetable of sunrises/sunsets, instead of a timezone chart. It ends up mostly reframing the question from “what time is it there?” to “what time of day is it there?”. The real version of “after abolishing time zones” is “google tells me it is before sunrise there. It’s probably best not to call right now.”

I’ve been using UTC on my own clocks without issue, and the change is not some completely reality-breaking thing - not anymore than DST. From a matter of personal perspective it just shifts what time correlates to what time of day.

using UTC also simplifies the questions “what times can I call you at?” And “when should we have our call?” since you have the same temporal standard. Even before that, I was scheduling calls with family by stating the call would be at such-and-such time UTC.

The biggest difference is with when the date changes, and I think that ultimately is the hardest pill to swallow, and that’s even compared to stomaching the sun rising at 2 AM. Having it change from June 5th to June 6th in the middle of a workweek, or even jumping to another month would bother alot of folks in a significant fashion.

Ultimately it’s just a personal practice. No nation is going to abolish time zones if everyone still uses time zones. I just prefer it for various reasons.

If you haven’t already, folks, switch your default search engine over to a searx. You’ll gain back the ability to actually find useful results. It’s not so good for shopping, though.

If you have a solidarity network in your city, join it and help them however you are able.

If you don’t have a solidarity network where you are, consider attempting to form one.

The reason this kind of thing can happen unchallenged is because landlords know they can drag legal battles out in court with no other repercussions for a long time. Don’t let them think that. Get involved, get organized.

It criticises science for profit. They literally invite various scientists who know their stuff and they all tell Hammond he’s a fucking idiot. It’s much clearer in the books, though, where you get to read where they notice all the enclosure mistakes that were made by Hammond’s team.

Yep, the alt-right playbook. That dude has a dozen videos covering all that stuff.

Imagine if you saw someone who looked exactly like you and mimicked your exact actions, but they were just 3 or 4 feet to the left of you. That’s by reference (I think)

Contrasting an exact copy of you that can think for itself and has autonomy, which is by value (I think)