Musk leans into the bro in tech bro.

Gonna keep posting (almost) every article I read on NCII and generative AI.

This line (from a study quoted in the article) stood out:

The open-source nature of TTI technologies, proclaimed as a democratizing force in generative AI, has also enabled the propagation of models that perpetuate hypersexualized imagery and nonconsensual deepfakes.

Open sourcing generative AI solves some problems but creates others.

On, look, it’s two of my least favorite things about generative AI (NCII and raking in money without concern for ethics) IN THE SAME STORY.

A relatively short comic with good art and a compelling story. In some ways, I would have liked a written memoir more, but this was a good read.

Good read and worth bookmarking for later.

Love—don’t love—how all the constitutional and democratic dangers of our time are so closely married to low-grade scammishness.

Surely this is a reasonable price to pay for the Nazi-praising Grok to “discover new physics” within the next year, as Elon promised last night.

This kind of thing is why I hate “the genie is out of the bottle” arguments. I can’t help but hear them as “yes, people are going to create more CSAM, but all we can do is instead teach people to use these tools more responsibly.”

There’s a genre of news story that I actively avoid following the discourse on but end up reading about once Mike Masnick writes on it, and then I get angry with everyone else. This fits nicely in that genre.

Karen Hao’s Empire of AI really emphasized for me how much stock is being put in AGI—especially as a motivator for AI companies. I am fine wirh concepts being hard to define, but I do think things get tricky when you can’t articulate how you’ll know when you’ve met the goal that serves as your raison d’être.

Disgusting and deliberate.

I hate this timeline.

Heartbreaking read. This line in particular was like a punch in the gut:

I have lost a third of my body weight after nearly 21 months of war in Gaza.

Voici des rappels importants.

We donate to this food bank, so I take their concerns particularly seriously:

“Our volume today is double what it was 12 years ago. Today, some of the early estimates that we’ve seen would suggest that we have to double our volume again in three years. That’s how daunting the task could be,” Halligan said.

Just over a week ago, I preached for the Beyond the Walls online ministry up in Toronto. I wanted to post the text of my sermon (I’ll also link to the video recording just before that text begins). I was excited about this particular topic, since it fit nicely with some thinking I’ve been doing in recent years, includingwhile reading Cédric Lagandré’s book Dieu n’existe pas encore and writing up some subsequent thoughts. I imagine I’ll continue to think on these kinds of themes, but I was pleased with how much the burning bush story—and Jesus’s riffing off of it in the Gospel of John—contributed to my thinking at this particular time.

Shame on me for not realizing just how badly this would affect my home state. Shame on all the Kentucky reps in Congress who voted for it anyway.

This book isn’t the best of the anarchist fiction I’ve read—it feels a bit stilted or maybe even too didactic at points—but it grew on me, and I enjoyed the story a lot. (It’s also not the worst anarchist fiction I’ve read—looking at you, V for Vendetta). Cory Doctorow mentioned Killjoy’s most recent book on his blog, so I’m giving some of her older stuff a try, and so far, I think it’s pretty good.

I can’t find the right words for how this story makes me feel.

C’est bien inquiétant, cette idée de social scoring. Jacques Ellul trouverait beaucoup à critiquer. Et ce n’est pas le seul—j’ai beaucoup aimé ce resumé des critiques d’Adam Knight, à l’Université de Leyden:

En réduisant les personnes à des profils algorithmiques, cela menacerait la vie privée, l’égalité et les procédures régulières. Ce n’est pas juste la surveillance qui est à craindre, mais également une “discrimination automatisée”, estime le chercheur.

This problem makes me so angry, and while I appreciate this article’s exploration of different policy solutions, they also feel overwhelming to me because so many of them come with problems of their own.

J’avoue que je fais partie du problème, vu que j’ai souvent loué des Airbnb, y compris lors de mon dernier déplacement en Europe.

Pourtant, vu les bêtises qui se déroulent actuellement aux É.-U., il m’est arrivé récemment de regarder les loyers à Genève, et j’ai pu voir combien la pénurie des logements pose un problème pour les locataires. Je dois revoir ma relation avec les Airbnb…

This is a good book, with a powerful thesis and a great epilogue that ties things together. It isn’t perfect, but I think most of my quibbles are related to the subject matter and the genre. It’s hard to write a book about a contemporary subject of such importance, and I think it’s tricky to write a book that combines history with more of a critical take on the AI ecosystem.

Well dammit.

Maybe I’m dumb—or not reading closely enough—but I just cannot follow the twists and turns of this series. I love the back of the envelope idea of Indigenous time travelers trying to set things right, but I am very confused by the execution.