New Blood in the Machine: The weaponization of Waymo, about protesters torching Waymos in a repeat of last year's Waymo Warm-Overs.

Democracy dies in darkness, and WaPo's jumping headfirst into it.

New opinion piece from the Guardian: AI is ‘beating’ humans at empathy and creativity. But these games are rigged

The piece is one lengthy sneer aimed at tests trying to prove humanlike qualities in AI, with a passage at the end publicly skewering techno-optimism:

Techno-optimism is more accurately described as “human pessimism” when it assumes that the quality of our character is easily reducible to code. We can acknowledge AI as a technical achievement without mistaking its narrow abilities for the richer qualities we treasure in each other.

ZITRON DROPPED

Should've probably posted this earlier, but fuck it: South Korea's ‘4B’ Movement Goes Viral in US After Trump Elected

“4B” is shorthand for a South Korean movement in which women refuse to engage in heterosexual marriage, childbirth, dating, or sex with men. It comes from the words bihon, bichulsan, biyeonae, and bisekseu, all of which start with a Korean prefix for “no.” It originated in 2019 in response to a culture that women felt was patriarchal beyond repair, and has since gained some traction in other countries.

Also, fuck it, quick sidenote:

This is mostly gut instinct, like most of the Trump predictions I've made, but I'm expecting a spike in full-blown misandry over Trump's term. Mainly because Trump managed to win over Gen Z men this election, and because the Trump administration is almost certainly going to town on abortion/women's rights.

Saw an unexpected Animatrix reference on Twitter today - and from an unrepentant promptfondler, no less:

This ended up starting a lengthy argument with an "AI researcher" (read: promptfondler with delusions of intelligence), which you can read if you wanna torture yourself.

So you're saying that they've got books worth at least a grand which their owners are literally using to flaunt their wealth?

I'm legally obligated to say stealing is legally and morally wrong buuuuuuuut

Local models are theoretically safer, by virtue of not being connected to the company which tried to make Recall a thing, but they're still LLMs at the end of the day - they're still loaded with vulnerabilities, and will remain a data breach waiting to happen unless you make sure its rendered basically useless.

AFAICT basically all of them failed at the "become too important to be busted for mass copyright infringement" part - turns out actively stealing from some of the most litigious and DMCA-happy motherfuckers on the planet was an easy way to get mired in lawsuits.

Bonus points for becoming essentially a money pinata for their lawyers in the process.

@ai_shame RT'd a good sneer in the wild recently:

Bonus: Eliezer, of all people, also sneered at the TESCREAL twat:

No clue why they'd willingly accept crypto - they aren't doing anything that'd have credit card companies running for the hills.