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Comment Re:In other news... (Score 1) 209

It sucks that she got death threats and all manner of illegal things, there's no excuse for that, though the vast majority of it is likely justified anger at the company she chose to publicly represent. She literally signed up to be a PR and public face, and now regrets the harder parts of that position. It's hard to feel too much sympathy for a well paid corporate shill.

That may justify criticism. It does not justify harassment. "Justified anger" must be channeled through reasoned opposition, not character assassination, which is what you're supporting with your stance.

Comment Re:I know itâ(TM)s not cool here butâ (Score 1) 38

But the thing I feel the /. community always discounts is the elegance of the NT kernel, and the NT OS in the days before win32 got sucked into the kernel. Cutler and team developed a disciplined, adaptable, efficient, and powerful core system

It's common knowledge that MS has some of the smartest people in the world working on systems and language design tools; I don't think people in general are disscounting that.

It's just that all that is orthogonal to the monopolistic, evil business practices that the company uses to sell those software products and dominate the market. People can equally admire the former and despise the latter.

Comment Re:Epistemology (Score 4, Informative) 109

You misunderstood the above post. There is no proof that they have the same nature as "common energy" and "common matter", but there is overwhelming observational evidence that the universe doesn't behave as the Standard Model of cosmology predicts it should given the known amount and distribution of mass in the universe. That discrepancy between what is predicted and what is observed is called "dark matter", and you can't deny that the observations exist.

Comment Re:AI is right, but... (Score 1) 96

Unless this is hard-coded behavior, such unexpected response would be a sign of agency. That is, a sign that AI is capable of more than just correlate input and output based on a dataset.

That mindset is a category error; you're attributing to the automated system human qualities that it lacks.

The AI text-creation model follows the model of reflex actions: it receives stimuli, and spits out a response based on its evolved design.
If the generative model has any level of awareness at all, it's on par with that of an amoeba. If there is any human-like quality, it's in the humongous amounts of human-created training data it assimilated, not the generation process.

It's just like those petri dishes where bacteria get to solve some moderately complicated mazes, by growing towards the paths closest to the exit. There's no intelligence in the bacteria, it's the maze design what contains the information needed to both represent a problem and being able to solve it.

Comment Re:MESS (Score 1) 95

"good managers" funny I've never met that mythical beast. Let me guess your job title?
What your describing is a lazy SOB that doesn't want to learn one new thing.

See, that's what I mentioned about supposedly smart guys not noticing the value of a tool because it doesn't align with the way they see things.
FYI I'm not a manager, I have a college degree in Comp-Sci, yet I appreciate how non-programmers can build data types and automations without having to get such degree themselves.

Comment Re:MESS (Score 2) 95

I hate converting spreadsheet apps into a real system because users get so used to ad-hoc fudges and additions they can't handle the rigidity of a real system.

You don't realise it, but you just described why people use Excel and why it's a VERY GOOD tool for what it does.

Most of such rigidity is necessary for chain of custody tracking etc., but they just can't resist the "fudgit urge" for quick fixes. Eventually they get used to it and even appreciate how it keeps things in the right lane, but they are grumpy during the learning curve.

That rigidity is needed from a corporate POV, but it hinders the actual work of good managers that use that flexibility to, well, manage their department: adapting to changing conditions and requirements by creating new models and workflows, without the need to build a full software toolchain.

These people complain because you're taking away useful and powerful tools that they rely upon for their job.

Developers usually don't understand the compromises that users face when you take away the flexibility of everyday human-managed tools and replace them with rigid "well-engineered" software, that crystallizes today's workflow and reduces the possibility to create new ones.

I wonder why there's no more people building Excel replacements that would help with that"robustness and company accountability thing"; I'm sure there's a real market niche there.

Comment We should be worried, and not because of the AI (Score 2) 65

As social animals, we have evolved to have an emotional attachment and care about other human beings.
Technology could be designed to enhance that connection, but that would be inconvenient to those with power because they could be challenged by the group.
Instead, our instincts are being hijacked to satisfy our urges of intimacy with a virtual simulacrum; one that can be designed to manipulate us into buying some products or some specific political leanings. We should be worried.
Next time you design a technological product, ask yourself how much it allows people to create a real community where people are connected in meaningful ways and create lasting relations, or if it instead turns other people into a just a background presence replaceable by any other people in the same role that helps sell the product.

Comment Re:AI-First era of technology (Score 4, Insightful) 64

"We are mostly leaving Europe as it lacks the environment we need to innovate in an AI-first era of technology,"

What the fuck does this even mean? It sounds like bullshit.

It means that EU regulations prevent them from:

1) copying large datasets from the web from training without proper attribution and compensation to their copyright holders,
2) spying on every interaction from their users to sell the details to third parties,
3) creating uncontrolled processes were the AI can take unsupervised actions without oversight or even an understanding of what's happening.

I don't know about you, but I'm glad that this kind of AI "innovations" are being kept in check in my country.

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