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Comment Re:Real reason (Score 3, Interesting) 185

I don't know about you, but when I search for things I search for facts.
Google already deliberately edits it's search results based on who is paying them to advertise in that space, and that is a large reason I use other search engines.
However, to get back to the point. If your search engine knows that a piece of information you are looking for is non-factual, it should show you the information you are looking for along with the facts. Clearly labeled somehow. ie: this is what you were looking for. It has been clearly established that this is false information, here are the facts too: bla bla foo bar

Comment How are these contracts allowed? (Score 2) 87

The type of contract that both Microsoft and Google are in, where they specify that their software is the default or only software / search engine pre-installed with penalties if a competitors software or search engine is installed should be illegal, and come with a fine huge enough to erase all benefits to such a contract.

Basically, any contract that has a penalty in for utilizing anything from an unrelated third party should fall under this clause.
That should stop this silliness.

Comment This is true... (Score 3, Informative) 102

Way back when, before the internet there was a similar sentiment to "Every computer is going to be connected to the internet"

As a case in point, I have copies of both piper-tts and whisper on my laptop, both of which are AI tools for dealing with voice generation and recognition respectively.
I imagine people using more imagery or videography to have AI tools installed to aid in their workflows.

AI is here, it is useful, and it is likely to get more advanced and inclusive.

The kicker here is that you want the AI to be running on your own machine... If you use some free web-based service, you are the product to some advertiser.

-Evert-

Comment Re:It is a form of lying... (Score 0) 39

Thank you for making my point.
The fact that you are free to lie in the US, and that it is viewed as protected speech is mind-boggling.

Lying is lying.. but when you write down that lie it somehow becomes fraud, which is illegal?
If you lie about someone's character it is libel, which is punishable by law?

It should be illegal to lie. Sure, you can say what you want, but you should also be held to account for the consequences of those words. The first amendment does not give you a get out of jail free card to say what you want without consequence.

Comment It is a form of lying... (Score 1) 39

As is fraud, slander and a whole host of other names for the same thing.

If intentionally misleading people is criminal, then using AI to mislead people is criminal.

Of course then so should the right to lying to the public be criminal, and from all I can see it seems to be protected under the first amendment. (If you are a US person, at least)

Comment A way to transition away from fossil fuels (Score 1) 207

If the various world governments are serious about transitioning away from fossil fuels, it should at first stop artificially reducing the price of carbon based fuels with subsidies, and start to apply those same subsidies to renewables so that the price of that energy comes down.
The subsidies are a cost to all the taxpayers in a country, and please explain to me why the tax payers should subsidize something that is provably destroying the environment?

With this change implemented, the price of fossil fuels will rise, and the cost of electricity will come down.
Once the gas-guzzing monsters become less economical to run than EV's, people will naturally switch.

After a few years, fossil fuels can be taxed even more to make up for the costs of cleaning up the environment.

Comment I read the heading wrong... (Score 1) 46

Thinking that this is a whitepaper on using AI to govern.

Honestly, I don't think it is such a bad idea, either. AI typically do not suffer from greed, and can take a huge amount of data and boil it down to it's bare essentials quickly.

Anyways, and more on topic, this whole we have to regulate AI is just a rehash of people being afraid of computers. There are enough laws on the books for the users of these programs already, just enforce those and nobody gets hurt.

Comment Ads are a scourge (Score 5, Insightful) 212

Google got used more precisely because they reigned in the really intrusive ads of the time, and provided a good browsing experience. No matter how targeted, people do not want ads.

I my opinion, since I am paying for my bandwidth, I can decide what it gets used on, and downloading ads that I don't want to see is not what I want to spend my bandwidth on.

Google is now opening the door to competition, as the next organization that offers fight against advertisers will take huge amounts of the market share in a very short time... just like Google did. I guess the more things change the more they stay the same.

Comment Non-profit versus for profit (Score 2) 28

It almost goes without saying, but seeing that the CEO of a very large company seems to be missing the point, here it is:

Non-profits benefit society as a whole.
Ripping that out to benefit a couple of money-hungry "investors" just drags down whatever the non-profit is for.

In my humble opinion, non-profit of AI needs to be enshrined into law worldwide. Anecdotally, the internet is a great help to all people, precisely because it is made for all people, and the underpinnings of it is free. Of course you can build for profit things with it, but the building blocks is available to everyone that is willing to expend some effort in learning how it works.

AI should be the same way, not held hostage by a privileged few who make terrible decisions to line their pockets. See slave trade as only one example of many.

Comment Beginning of the end for Google. (Score 4, Insightful) 286

Some things to consider:
Google sells targeted ads.
People with ad-blockers do not want to see ads.
Forcing people to watch ads just turns them off of your service, and definitely against the product the advertiser is selling.
So, preventing ad blockers from working is just a bad idea.

One other thing, ads on the internet are not like ads on a tv channel or in a newspaper, as the bandwidth and hence the cost is to the user, and not the advertiser, you then have a right to choose what you download, and if you don't want to waste your bandwidth on ads, that is your right.

I remember a time before Google, and Google is turning into exactly the type of service which prepares the ground for the next company that promises a ad-free internet experience.

Google, fire your managers who bring you these shit ideas, while you still have time. You are losing your market and opening the door to competition.

Comment Wayland has been ready for a while now. (Score 3, Insightful) 57

The only way to find the last bunch of bugs is to actually use it. Wayland has been my daily driver for a few months now, and the number of issues on it is about the same as the number of issues on X11.

Of course this is anecdotal, and with my sample size of 1 it's not quite representative of the Linux using population, but consider this:

There will never be a time when any piece of software is perfectly free of bugs... right about now it is more about which set of bugs you want to accept.

It is also quite easy to have both X11 and Wayland installed at the same time, so users can switch between the two as they find showstoppers in their favorite bits of software.

Comment How about making lying illegal? (Score 1) 267

Let's say that there was a law that punished someone for consciously telling a lie. The punishment for which should scale with the lie. You would have to be accused, go to court and be found guilty, just like with any other law, but this sort of thing would severely limit the idiots who seem to think that lies are protected speech.

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