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Comment by robbyiq999 | Hacker News Reader

The internet is very different from how it used to be. Free flowing information is no longer free, except that censorship has a new word now, 'ai-safety'

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This view, while understandable, I believe is misaligned.

All these companies care about is making money without getting sued for teaching people on the internet how to make pipe bombs or hallucinating medical advice that makes them sick.

Can’t this be fixed with “Advice is provided as is and we’re not responsible of your cat dies”?

Yes, it is likely that a liability disclaimer would address this, but it doesn't address the deep psychological need of Google psychopaths to exercise power, control, authority, and to treat other people like children.

AI "safety" is grounded in an impulse to control other people, and to declare oneself the moral superior to the rest of the human cattle. It has very little to do with actual safety.

I vehemently disagree with Eliezer's safety stance, but at least it's a REAL safety stance, unlike that taken by Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, et. al. Hell, even the batshit crazy neo-luddite stance of nuking the datacenters and blowing up the GPU fabs is a better stance on AI safety than this corporate patronizing bullshit.

Nobody there cares about reducing the risk of grey goo. They just want to make sure you know daddy's in charge, and he knows best.

I doubt any major tech company is going to take that risk. Even if legally binding, the PR nightmare would hardly be worth the minimal reward.

> or hallucinating medical advice that makes them sick

If your LLM hallucinates your diagnosis at a rate of 20%, and your doctor misdiagnoses you at a rate of 25% (I don't recall the real numbers, but they are on the order of this), who is the real danger, here?

Preventable medical errors, including misdiagnosis, murders nearly a quarter million Americans per year, and these "safety" enthusiasts are out here concern-trolling about the double bad evil LLMs possibly giving you bad medical advice? Really?

But a doctor is distributed and an AI is monolithic.

Deeper pockets and the like.

> If your LLM hallucinates your diagnosis at a rate of 20%, and your doctor misdiagnoses you at a rate of 25% (I don't recall the real numbers, but they are on the order of this), who is the real danger, here?

And if your LLM hallucinates your diagnosis at a rate of 95%, and your doctor misdiagnoses you at a rate of 25%, then who is the real danger, here?

Google’s poorly-thought-out half-baked 1-day-old product isn’t the internet.

> poorly-thought-out half-baked

Like the 'DHS Artificial Intelligence Task Force'?

https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/artificial-intell...

I don’t see how the US government investing in national security tech that seems likely to make the world a worse place is news, and more relevantly, I don’t understand the connection to the anti-woke criticism of the industry.

In this case Google’s bot won’t even answer “who won the 2020 US presidential election” so it’s at least a little centrist lol - I don't think the cultural marxists (supposedly) behind the green curtain would do that on purpose.

But also super likely I’m misunderstanding! I’m saying all this bc this is what I took away from that link, might be looking in the wrong spot:

  Key areas of S&T’s AI research include computer vision for applications such as surveillance and screening systems and biometrics, and natural language processing for applications such as law enforcement and immigration services. Key use cases for AS include transportation (automotive, aerospace, maritime, and rail), utilities (water and wastewater, oil and gas, electric power, and telecommunications), and facility operations (security, energy management, environmental control, and safety).

> cultural marxists

What is a cultural Marxist? I know what a Marxist is. I don’t know what a cultural Marxist is.

I believe it's a modern update of Cultural Bolshevism, an old Nazi term for Jewish influence on German culture, movies, etc. It was coined or popularised by Anders Breivik in his manifesto.

It’s simply Marx through cultural influence. All this class and oppressor-oppressed theory, reliably useless and counterproductive nonsense (except for causing the people who embrace it to suffer in a bizarre application of reflexivity, if that’s your bag), falls in this category.

Let’s just say, if you look at this and say “I don’t understand any of this, I will have to invest more time and maybe talk to some experts,” then this body of work is servicing its intended purpose: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_...

Similarly, if you say “got it, how silly of me, this is so obvious,” the construction is also supported.

Can you clarify…? I’m a bit slow. Like, believing that the conspiracy is true? By body of work, do you mean Marx / Frankfurt School, or the anti-cultural Marxism writings?

By “body of work,” I reference the wiki piece. Basically, it’s easy to indoctrinate people into this cult of Marx. The way you do that is to foment hatred toward a theoretical enemy and make your cult feel really superior about themselves. You must have a priesthood. The supposed academic theory behind this represents the inner school of the priesthood. It’s not always clear if they’re “in on the joke” or merely indoctrinated, but it is safe to say anyone doing anything other than theft and usurpation based on Marx is not inside the circle.

Thanks for clarifying! You’re a good writer, I hope you know. As someone who grew up with a sickle-shaped milk bottle I disagree, but I’m sure you’re used to that on the internet.

If you ever scroll back and find this, I have one refutation/followup/confusion: cultural Marxism isn’t a theory proposed by marxists, it’s a term that anti-marxists used. Eg https://www.breitbart.com/tag/cultural-marxism/. So in that context it’s a little justified to have a wiki page on it.

Can't give you a proper definition (if it exists) but I do see a parallel between the idea of a society shaped by economic class struggles (which will eventually end with a defeat of the current dominant class by the currently oppressed class) and the idea of a society divided in identitarian classes (white, black, man, woman, straight, gay, trans, etc.), and an ongoing struggle between oppressors and oppressed classes.

In fact it seems pretty reasonable to infer that identity politics is a descendant- transformed, but still recognisable- of a marxist analysis of society.

It’s a general term people on the right-ish use for what they see as the other side of the culture war. It’s originally an anti-Semitic conspiracy thing, but now it’s so widely used that I think it comes down to something closer to “the deep state” or “the leftist elite”. So I was using it in that sense

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th...

... yet. Isn't the internet yet. Wait until their only interface is through their AI model. Some of my friends call me cynical but I prefer skeptical because I have a lot of proof and experience behind me that somehow, in almost every case without regulation, these "innovations" wind up mostly benefitting the elite 0.1%

Google’s poorly-thought-out half-baked 1-day-old product is another data point in an existing solid trend that is now months in the making. The conclusions people are coming to are not on the basis of one data point but quite a few, that form a distinct trend.

Still, closed/locked-down/restricted/censored systems/products/platforms existing don't prevent open and free systems/products/platforms from existing.

This is why open source models must continue to develop, because I guess google (et al) don't just want information to show and sell ads, now they want to be the sole arbiters of it. That is scary, thanks for the morning heart attack/realization. "No Dave, that information wouldn't be good for you. Here are some pandas playing bongos"

I cant wait for the bittorrent "pirate" models without censoring or strings attached.

It was nice to see that hackernoon just released their whole history to free open source use so it's a small but meaningful counterpoint to people circling their information wagons and putting up fences.

Microsoft already "works with journalists to create the newsrooms of the future with AI": https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2024/02/05/journal...

So, I'm not sure if I want to know how the world and the Internet will look like in 10-20 years to come with all these "safety brakes".

it looks already like that. Chomsky and manufacturing and all.

false factoids flooding Facebook forever, contextless crowds' cries coming continuously.

the culture war. those who have the luxury to put in time and effort to get the correct picture are just watching from the sidelines.

Because previously, if a forum poster, website or chatbot refused to divulge information, you'd force them to?

Yeah, that's how I got through college... I'd ask my homework assignments in a public forum, and if someone responded "I'm not doing your homework for you", I'd proceed it with "sudo" and they'd have to do it. It's the law.

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