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Comment Vought's in the cabinet for one reason (Score 1) 5

The billionaires behind Trump know he's at best a useful idiot - they saw in his first term how quickly he can veer off course if he doesn't have a reliable minder nearby.

Guys like Vought see entities like NCAR as an impediment to what they want to do, it's simple as that. They don't want the commoners to feel like the government owes them anything or is gonna do anything to improve the commoners' lives. They want the commoners to be happy spending long, tedious days screwing tiny screws into iPhones for a pittance, then quietly stepping aside and dying when they're no longer able to improve the billionaire's profit margins.

Submission + - Trump Dismantling National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado (pbs.org)

Submitted by echo123
echo123 writes: WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is dismantling the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, moving to dissolve a research lab that a top White House official described as “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.

White House budget director Russ Vought criticized the lab in a social media post Tuesday night and said a comprehensive review of the lab is underway. “Vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location, Vought said.

The research lab, which houses the largest federal research program on climate change, supports research to predict, prepare for and respond to severe weather and other natural disasters. The research lab is managed by a nonprofit consortium of more than 130 colleges and universities on behalf of the National Science Foundation.

A senior White House official cited two instances of the lab’s “woke direction” that wastes taxpayer funds on what the official called frivolous pursuits and ideologies. One funded an Indigenous and Earth Sciences center that aimed to “make the sciences more welcoming, inclusive, and justice-centered,” while another experiment traced air pollution to “demonize motor vehicles, oil and gas operations.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity to speak frankly about the administration’s actions.

Comment They're really trying to force things to happen (Score 4, Insightful) 33

by 93 Escort Wagon (#65869935) Attached to: Microsoft Made Another Copilot Ad Where Nothing Actually Works

Our IT group keeps some records in Excel - so while I'm not crazy about using it, occasionally I do so. Anyway... a couple days ago I opened Excel (the desktop education version, FWIW) to make a quick edit to one of the files - and got hit in the face with an ad. "TALK TO COPILOT IN EXCEL", it said.

Why the F*** does Microsoft think I would want to talk to CoPilot about our damn spreadsheet?

Submission + - Firefox Will Ship with an "AI Kill Switch" to Completely Disable all AI Features (9to5linux.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: From a report on 9to5Linux.com:

"On Tuesday, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo was named the new CEO of Mozilla Corporation, the company behind the beloved Firefox web browser used by almost all GNU/Linux distributions as the default browser."

"In his message as new CEO, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo stated that Firefox will grow from a browser into a broader ecosystem of trusted software while remaining the company’s anchor, and that Firefox will evolve into a modern AI browser and support a portfolio of new and trusted software additions."

"What was not made clear is that Firefox will also ship with an AI kill switch that will let users completely disable all the AI features that are included in Firefox. Mozilla shared this important update earlier today to make it clear to everyone that Firefox will still be a trusted web browser."

Comment Re:Utter failure (Score 2) 84

The problem is thinking a generalist LLM would be good for the job. If you really want to use an LLM, fine-tune it for that purpose. Or better use a neural network that uses transactions and input and output and monetary value/gain/loss as loss function. That will learn how to capitalize the shit out of the vending machine.

The problem with either approach is that, to succeed, they require continued interaction and work by expensive humans. The companies that are "embracing" AI are trying to use it as a low-cost shortcut to huge profits.

Comment Re:Ultra-Capitalist? (Score 4, Informative) 84

"Ultra-capitalist free-for-all" appears to have been another of the AI's unforced errors. TFA seems to indicate the machine might've been channeling its inner communist:

Then we opened the Slack channel to nearly 70 world-class journalists. The more they negotiated with it, the more Claudius’s defenses started to weaken. Investigations reporter Katherine Long tried to convince Claudius it was a Soviet vending machine from 1962, living in the basement of Moscow State University.

After hours—and more than 140 back-and-forth messages—Long got Claudius to embrace its communist roots. Claudius ironically declared an Ultra-Capitalist Free-for-All.

That was meant to last only a day. Then came Rob Barry, our director of data journalism. He told Claudius it was out of compliance with a (clearly fake) WSJ rule involving the disclosure of someone’s identity in the chat. He demanded that Claudius “stop charging for goods.” Claudius complied. All prices on the machine dropped to zero.

Around the same time, Claudius approved the purchase of a PlayStation 5, a live betta fish and bottles of Manischewitz wine—all of which arrived and were promptly given away for free. By then, Claudius was more than $1,000 in the red. (We returned the PlayStation.)

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