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BanTheBastards

18 karma · joined November 22, 2023

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BanTheBastards··on The AI industry turns against its favorite philosophy
> Effective altruisme is a smoke screen term to make legislators and the public believe that tech companies have humanities best imterest at heart.

I think it's a smoke screen term to convince wealthy people they have humanity's best interest at heart—pretty trivially. I find it impossible to believe that anyone else believes this.

BanTheBastards··on We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO
> They are registered as a 501(c)(3) which is what people commonly call a public charity.

Why do they do that? Seems ridiculous on the face of it. Nothing about 501(c)(3) entails providing any sort of good or service to society at large. In fact, the very same thing prevents them from competing with for-profit entities at providing any good or service to society at large. The only reason they exist at all is that for-profit companies are terrible at feeding, housing, and protecting their own labor force.

BanTheBastards··on Can we deter tech monopolies through reformed open source software development?
No. Proper "reform" entails reorganizing our economy. We will all die before this happens.
BanTheBastards··on I think C++ is still a desirable coding platform compared to Rust
I completely disagree; discipline is only optional in C++ if you want to ship broken code. Even the top poster in this thread that actually cops to the productivity overhead of C++ admits (albeit obliquely) they still make memory errors
BanTheBastards··on Minification Is Evil
Doesn't really matter after compression unless the bulk of your code can be culled from the end product. Tbh the largest business value this has is slowing down people trying to use your internal APIs.
BanTheBastards··on I think C++ is still a desirable coding platform compared to Rust
Speak for yourself: I'm not returning to the world of "discipline" (aka lost productivity) without a damn good reason to carry on existing codebases. It's just a waste of a good coder and certainly of good time.
BanTheBastards··on Ridley Scott: Our Anglo-Saxon Maximus
I'm pretty surprised to see Scott mixed in with these folks. I love me some Alien, but his other works have a noticeably looser quality and shallow worldviews. As a director or to a lesser extent as a producer I suppose I tepidly agree with his mastery, but he's more of a Michael Bay than he is a Kubrick as a filmmaker overall: he makes puerile but engaging blockbusters.
BanTheBastards··on Margaret Mead, technocracy, and the origins of AI's ideological divide
Penrose is obviously wrong and has been repeatedly criticized for his shoddy thinking when it comes to cognition.
BanTheBastards··on Sam Altman, OpenAI board open talks to negotiate his possible return
It would help if anyone believed Silicon Valley was capable of producing a non-profit of any value to begin with.
BanTheBastards··on Sam Altman, OpenAI board open talks to negotiate his possible return
Hat tools does any of us plebs have in this country have to compel reasonable behavior from board members? As far as I can tell in this country you're not even legally allowed to be on a board if you're not a narcissistic, antisocial cretin.
BanTheBastards··on FTC authorizes compulsory process for AI-related products and services
I mean that's at best a wildcard when it comes to saving us from our own laws; it's not like our judicial system has literally ever consistently demonstrated good judgement. It's by far the most conservative and reactionary of our branches of government. That's not even touching the absolute disgrace that is our current generation of judicial staff.