I’m curious to get a general pulse on how people here view the rapid evolution of AI, specifically on lemmy. On one side, there’s growing interest in local open-weights models, self-hosted setups, and practical developer/productivity tools. On the other, there seems to be a growing list, I can't keep track of, that are seen as major concerns. I'm not here to pick sides or be biased in one corner. Im genuinely curious what people have to say about AI in general. And maybe it will help me and other get a better handle on how we perceived it in our ever changing world.

Looney Tunes, for me. When I was growing up through the 90s and 2000s, Looney Tunes was about as large as life itself. Bugs, Daffy, Taz, Sylvester, Marvin the Martian .etc were staples anywhere in culture. However, it felt like some pendulum swung another direction because there's solemn mention of Looney Tunes in the past 10 years.

And I'm trying to not say that Looney Tunes has faded away, it still has made shows as recent as 2020 that lasted until 2024 and a movie that was this year. But I'm saying that it's cultural relevance has taken a backseat and it doesn't help that its parent company, WB, has been treated as nothing more than just an asset to be acquired while those who acquired it, aren't doing a lot with the name to bring it back to its former level.

It's kinda like how Tom and Jerry were huge (still are to an extent) but its cultural significance as of late, has largely taken the same backseat where you don't hear as much from them as you used to.

Just discovered a much easier way to grind my coffee in the morning and felt dumb because it was so obvious, figure there's some good stories out there about this type of thing out there

Inspired by a comment where one said he wouldn't even visit the US and he already lived there, i got curious about whether people dream of living in any other specific country.

What would be your reasons to live in this other country?

I live in Denmark and I am quite satisfied with my life here. I've been to many European countries, some Asian countries and Australia.

The only other country I would consider moving to was Australia. I absolutely loved the nature, I liked that it seemed like you could pretty much mind your own business, if you lived in the rural parts, while still not being too far away from "civilization".

I've only been in Australia as a tourist, so it is of course limited how much of the daily life of an Aussie i was exposed to, but those locals I talked to seemed happy, despite hating on the politicians (but that is a global issue, for every country, I guess.), and then there was of course quite a lot of racism, but again, you see that in many countries.

Australia also seem to be spared from a lot of the global political issues we currently see, but I am not sure that is correct.

Every day I get at least 5, and I just hit the button to block them and report as spam. I don’t want to reply to the messages since that will probably only make it worse. Is there somewhere I can register the number that’ll spam them back or something?

Edit: legal suggestions only, please

Unmatched someone: I was talking about how the movie Avatar is a blatant allegory for native/indigenous populations and the person got offended that I would "put real life events into a movie about blue people"

Been unmatched: the person had a series of 4 almost identical selfies but each one had different anime boys edited in as if they were hanging out (amazing bit. Perfect joke) and my opening line was "i hate when people have only group photos. It makes it so difficult to tell when one I matched with". I was called an idiot and unmatched within 5 minutes.

Never seen anybody using emoji in any community. I did use once or twice, but the way its absent over here, I'm starting to think its part of some implicit rules lemmy has

I replied to someone saying that the USSR defeated the Nazis saying that it was a group effort. Got into an argument and called a Nazi repeatedly because "I was mad that the USSR defeated the Nazis and hated them for it" which is ridiculous. This isn't the first time that's happened on Lemmy. What's up with that?

Time.

For me it's time. Some people out there, seem to think we're all running on unlimited time and that we're all immortal. It's not the case, but it's awfully apparent just how little we care about the concept of time. We only make it matter when it comes to things we want to buy, fretting about bills .etc

But anything else, we chuck it over our shoulder and pretend it doesn't exist.

Bonus points for also including favourite and/or most interesting.

I think it might be, there's no way Anakin would be able to buy proprietary hardware or software. So either he stole it, which his mother probably would not have allowed. Or he was able to scrap all the parts together because there is a template for humanoid protocol droids that we have also seen round Star Wars. And then the software itself either Anakin programed entirely himself, (which I know he's very smart, but even that seems a stretch) or he forked it. So it would make more sense that there was an open source catalog of protocol droid software. It also would make more sense due to the fact that a lot of people have droids, but they are not all created equal. I would think many of the droids on Coruscant were proprietary, while many of the droids in the outer rim are open source.

Currently playing a video game and a NPC called me this. It’s a pre-boomer term as I’ve always known. So, I thought it’d be fun to see who gets close to the definition.

Based entirely on trust-

Without googling it, wtf is a rap scallion?

EDIT: For clarification, I know it means onery and rambunctious youth, but what is it derived from. Like the origin of the term.

In the country I live the alt-right has a very strong hold over one of the biggest online communities of the country. The thing is that this forum is a business that lives out of advertisement, so I think there is a weakness there if they were to lose advertisement money.

Do you know or have any successful stories about collective action being done to take the platform down or enforce heavy moderation changes so the alt-right gets deplatformed there?

I usually don't even understand the lingo they use. "Open-weighted" is the most recent one, then it usually goes down to specific "models" that everybody is supposed to know about.

These are my thoughts (I will stick to the vague "it" for now, but of course therein lies another question: "and how does all this apply to various specialised AIs"):

• Is it really feasible to run it 100% locally? I know there's plenty of people with very powerful rigs indeed, but still. Or are 99% of these people really saying "it would, in theory, be possible to run that locally, therefore your concerns are invalid"?
• If yes to the previous: the software doesn't come from nowhere and ultimately still relies on gas-turbine-powered datacenters and stolen IP and stolen personal data, no?

If what I wrote above is true, what exactly are people arguing when they say it's still possible to use LLMs ethically or true to FOSS philosophy, because ... ???

edit

Thanks to all who answered.

I guess it's my fault for asking several questions in one, but this thread has attracted exactly the type of people I'm writing about; several even used the term "open-weighted models" without explaining it.

Asking to get arguments explained, I got more arguments instead.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting we do what I’m about to propose, I just think it’s an interesting ethical/moral thought experiment.

If we could find a lot of people who want to unalive themselves, and say to them: there’s been a disaster and there are a lot of people who are stuck (e.g. a mine collapse, or 9/11 or something like that) and it’s a dangerous situation for rescue workers to go into, since you don’t care if you die we’re gonna send you in… would it be an ethical or moral thing to do? To ask or make people who don’t care if they live or not, to go into a situation that there’s a known high risk that they won’t survive?

(Also, I not asking wether it is a good idea to send such people in or wether it would be effective — I’m only interested in the ethics/morality of such an idea)

Big inspiration for the question is the assertion I've seen on Lemmy a few times that this user base is as bad/misogynistic/hateful. But also just curious.

A while backed I figured that if I like eating from clean dishes my pets would too. So I got some cheap enamel metal bowls and use clean ones for my dog and cat.

Anybody else do this?

ETA: I’m not weird and I’m happy all your pets get clean dishes. It was weird for me growing up.

This past week, someone thought I was still in high school (sometimes known as secondary school), but I'm actually at least ten years older.

I don't care what they think since they are still in high school themselves, but I'm sure other people have thought I was that young (but didn't say it out loud).

Other than growing a beard, what else can I (and other men) do to make ourselves (at least facially) look older?