Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this…)

  • swlabr@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    5 hours ago

    Utterly rancid linkedin post:

    text inside image:

    Why can planes “fly” but AI cannot “think”?

    An airplane does not flap its wings. And an autopilot is not the same as a pilot. Still, everybody is ok with saying that a plane “flies” and an autopilot “pilots” a plane.

    This is the difference between the same system and a system that performs the same function.

    When it comes to flight, we focus on function, not mechanism. A plane achieves the same outcome as birds (staying airborne) through entirely different means, yet we comfortably use the word “fly” for both.

    With Generative AI, something strange happens. We insist that only biological brains can “think” or “understand” language. In contrast to planes, we focus on the system, not the function. When AI strings together words (which it does, among other things), we try to create new terms to avoid admitting similarity of function.

    When we use a verb to describe an AI function that resembles human cognition, we are immediately accused of “anthropomorphizing.” In some way, popular opinion dictates that no system other than the human brain can think.

    I wonder: why?