Transparency around the training process and sources. Transparency around guardrails, the history of successes and failures thereof, bad outcomes that might otherwise be swept under the rug, and specific details that allow comprehensive testing by third parties. Disclosure of all 'hallucinations' so that independent parties can look for repeat misbehaviour, repeated patterns, etc. I think all of these, and probably more, would be useful from a safety point of view.

Although they're "private AI models", they can have larger public consequences. So even though they're black boxes, they should still undergo testing and qualification processes equivalent to those of foods, drugs, automobiles, line-powered electrical devices, child seats in cars, etc. We didn't have to know all the specific details and mechanisms of how various drugs vaccines work and affect the body, in order to test them and to give or withhold approval based on the results. AFAICT, the same is true of LLMs.

I envy your ability to do that. I just can't stand Apple - I get hives merely accompanying my wife into one of their stores. Like you, I don't want a fucking "ecosystem". I want a phone that's also a pocket computer - one whose applications and update schedule I determine. And I don't want all my personal shit in the Cloud - that stuff is my business, not the business of my fucking hardware provider.

I'm wondering if LineageOS will remain a way of getting around Google's bullshit.

I'm on Lineage, and I don't have Play or any other Google services installed. Everything on my phone came from F-Droid, from websites hosting APK downloads, or from my own computer via ADB.

I have a Pixel 7a that I plan to wipe so I can install Lineage. If LineageOS goes away, or if I lose access to the apps I'm used to, then when the time comes I'll either get a feature phone, or get a Pinephone and live with its poor battery life and its texting and phone problems. I WILL NOT rejoin the Google ecosystem, and I WILL NOT get a Fruitphone - my wife is on Apple and I hate that damned patronizing, locked-down, curated, excessively prettified bullshit ecosystem.

BTW, fuck Google with a running chainsaw inserted sideways. Google needs to Just. Fucking. Die.

It's hard to imagine that their stance will survive legal challenge, but with essentially infinite money, they must have good lawyers who have done the relevant risk analyses.

One aspect of which I can imaging being that once they have trained on copyrighted work, it's effectively impossible to *untrain* the network, so they might be required to pay some modest royalty, but will be able to argue that it is technically / financially infeasible to remove said material.

That's also not how the US presidency works - yet here we are.

Slashdot readers aren't the ones you need to worry about. And the folks you DO need to be careful of, already know who you are.

Simulator? Hell, why not extend the gaming into the real world via robotics and AI? We're already living in a world seemingly inspired by dystopian Science Fiction. We might as well go whole hog and create the equivalents of movies like Death Race and of historical "games" such as Gladiators vs Lions. Kill your (least) favourite journalist by remote control, and win cash prizes!

FWIW, I live in Canada. Trusting the government is "more reasonable" here as well - but it's less reasonable than it used to be. As for the UK, I found this on the New Zealand Daily Telegraph site:

The Times highlighted the case of Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine, who were arrested on January 29 after raising concerns in a private parents’ WhatsApp group about the hiring process of their daughter’s school. Six uniformed officers arrived at their home, detained them in front of their youngest child, and took them to a police station. The couple was questioned on suspicion of harassment, malicious communications, and causing a nuisance on school property after the school alleged they had “cast aspersions” about the chair of governors. They were fingerprinted, searched, and locked in a cell for eight hours.

I recall hearing about this at the time, and I'd be happy to let it pass as an anomaly if I hadn't heard so many similar - if less egregious - tales of overreach.

It wasn't that long ago that "rounding up immigrants" was also "unthinkable" in the US. Then, one day, it started happening. So - as always - I think "trust, but verify" should be the absolute minimum amount of wariness when it comes to governments. And if things such as the story I quoted above start happening, then trust in government - at least in some part - needs to be withdrawn.

until I read what Wikipedia has to say:

"... lingering side effects like nausea and mood disturbances, which may persist for days. Long-term risks include mania and heart issues such as long QT syndrome, and potential fatal interactions with other drugs".

I can see taking those risks for really intractable consequences of traumatic brain injury, but only after safer alternatives have been tried. And recreational use seems a really bad bet, unless you're looking for either runner-up or first place position in a Darwin award competition.

Fair enough - you're right, and I should have checked. My bad.

That said, there are plenty of examples of governments being co-opted by corporations, and making false promises to their citizens. So as 'registrations_suck' implied in his own reply to your comment, some skepticism toward government assurances is definitely in order.

Well, that sounds very much like, "I can't think of a way it could be otherwise, so it must be true." Here are some counter-examples:

Smoked and dried meat keeps indefinitely.
Salted meat keeps indefinitely.
Water in a slightly porous jug is cooled from evaporation, making it more refreshing.
Snow and ice in a clay pot melts into water when near a fire.
Clay pots are excellent for carrying things from point A to point B, no matter what they are.

And that's with 30 seconds of thinking. Thus, I assert that your assumptions are incorrect.

In the UK, you won't be able to be an employable adult citizen unless you own a smartphone. Hoo-fucking-ray. And for Android users, does "digital wallet" meant that users must have Google services installed and running? If so, then I'm really glad I'm not a Brit. I have a de-Googled phone, and if I had a choice between putting G-Crap on it and sticking a pencil in my eye, I'd probably have to flip a coin.

I am getting so sick and fucking tired of governments - which are supposed to have their citizens' best interests at heart - cucking themselves and, by extension, their constituents, to the broligarchs. I'm starting to think it's time to burn this whole fucker we call modern civilization to the ground and start again.

/rant

Do you think the brogligarchs haven't thought of that? They feel secure enough in their positions and their power to believe they hold all the cards and that they can "handle" even full-scale opposition.

How do you imagine that opposition of the scale to overthrow the broligarchy - over such large geographic areas - can be organized by the proletariat? Who utterly controls the communication infrastructure that is absolutely necessary for such a revolt? Who has its hooks into law enforcement, a whole lot of which has devolved into thinly-disguised security guards for the elites? Who has eyes on every monitor in the panopticon?

The last opportunity to fight this successfully may have been 25 years ago, when they started making us take our shoes off before boarding planes. Positing that 9/11 was engineered by higher-ups in the US may be a crazy conspiracy theory. But saying that the government and the corporations took advantage of it to put into place some of the machinery that they planned to use to take over? At this point I'd hardly even call that theoretical, never mind crazy...

I hadn't thought of that until you mentioned it, but you're absolutely right. I was born in '58 and I remember bopping four-year-old style to "The Duke of Earl". When the TV wasn't turned on, the radio often was. It would have been difficult NOT to hear music.

Then again, maybe kids living in very small towns and having religious parents wouldn't be exposed to radio and TV, nor to record shops.

"It'll pass anything else on the road - except a charging station".