Tessera
Folgen

Alasdair Stewart

@abestew.bsky.social

Sociologist | Socialist | Neurodivergent | Linux & FLOSS advocate | he/they

401 Posts348 Follower446 Folgt
Alasdair Stewart@abestew.bsky.social · 2d ago

Since the council never returned our food waste bins post-pandemic, I decided to start a "mulch pile" of tea leafs & coffee grinds. Only been a month so unsure yet what benefit it'll have for the garden, but it's done wonders at exposing my caffeine problem to the neighbours.

Alasdair Stewart@abestew.bsky.social · 3d ago

Anyone able to recommend decent quality rechargeable batteries? All the ones I've bought in recent years seem to be close to useless after 12-18 months, where I don't recall rechargeable batteries being so disposable a decade ago.

Jo Michell@jomichell.bsky.social · 6d ago

I realise the details are unlikely to be forthcoming, but I'd like to to know more about why OpenAI and Anthropic are unable to set up secure test environments without internet connectivity. It doesn't appear a particularly difficult task.

Alasdair Stewart@abestew.bsky.social · last wk.

Anthropic: Industrial-scale scraping of the internet and digitisation (and destruction!) of physical books to create training data for our AI models is perfectly fine. Also Anthropic: Industrial-scale distillation of outputs from our AI models to train competing AI models should be illegal.

Ross Greer (he/him)@ross-greer.bsky.social · 2w ago

For the second time in as many months Nazis have rioted in Glasgow. They targeted anyone who isn't white, as well as those daring to stand up to them. Reform's Thomas Kerr claims 'Scotland is lawless'. So will he condemn the Reform councillor who spoke at this 'rally' with violent Nazis?

Scottish Greens@scottishgreens.org · 2w ago

Failed politicians shouldn't become unelected, unaccountable law makers for the rest of their lives. This is a fundamental principle of democracy. The House of Lords is a relic long past its sell by date.

Abolish the Lords. The words are over an image of Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar.
Xanthe van Otterburn 🦦️🍇️@satyrs.eu · 2w ago

Mac users be like “Spaceship, the app that lets you use your keyboard’s space bar to type spaces instead of holding down Esc and Backspace like you have to by default, is one of the most joyous and ecstatic apps I’ve ever had the pleasure of using. The annual license is well worth the $599.”

Alasdair Stewart@abestew.bsky.social · 2w ago

Having ruined the internet by flooding it with slop, AI companies are now destroying physical books to create slop-free training data for their slop machines.

404 Media@404media.co · 2w ago

A book seller told 404 Media that, normally, on a good week, he’d sell about 20 books. Since April, he has regularly sold hundreds of books a week. While the seller didn’t have clear evidence that the purchases were being made by AI companies, the purchases made him suspect that they were.

Alasdair Stewart@abestew.bsky.social · 2w ago

Using genAI to organise desktop files is good example of how most genAI use-cases are incredibly inefficient compared to existing alternatives. You can find a plethora of existing Python packages and scripts online to help organise files - all of which use an infinitesmal amount of energy to run.

Alasdair Stewart@abestew.bsky.social · 2w ago

This is so common now I cannot fathom how either developers are unaware or are not treating it as a priority to fix. I turned off a share suggestion feature on Android as without fail it would pop in to displace what I am about to select the exact millisecond before I manage to select it.

czech hunter biden@conkrete.bsky.social · 2w ago

I think if I was a ui/ux designer my big priority would be to make sure the ui does NOT shift unexpectedly just before a user interacts with it

Alasdair Stewart@abestew.bsky.social · 3w ago

It is bizarre how many people - especially as go higher up in an organisation - who simultaneously (1) view genAI as both inevitable and totally revolutionary **and** (2) either only use genAI for the most banal shit imaginable or don't use it at all - without (2) ever making them question (1).

Screen-shot of text from article linked in original post: There have been several occasions where I have seen someone, apropos of nothing, blurt out almost word-for-word “AI is changing everything”, only to concede moments later that their organisation does not currently use LLMs for anything, and indeed, that they cannot name a single thing that has changed other than they get some use out of ChatGPT (frequently the free-tier). In one extreme case, I have seen an executive confess that they had never even used ChatGPT or any AI tool in their life, immediately after producing a technical strategy for an organisation with $2B+ in revenue which was entirely centered around AI.
Alasdair Stewart@abestew.bsky.social · 3w ago

"All of the AI projects we have observed as a team are failing. Every single one – we have seen 0% success in a year and a half, not only amongst projects we have been asked to participate in, but even within projects that we have observed in passing". ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/ai-mani...

Alasdair Stewart@abestew.bsky.social · 3w ago

This is good explanation on why Anthropic's J-Space paper is load of nonsense. Anthropic took something undoubtedly interesting, but not overly surprising given how LLMs work, and through overstretched misleading analogies spun it into low-quality scifi fanfic. www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6uc...

Anthropic’s New “Research” Report is Dumb.

YouTube video by Cal Newport

youtube.com

Alasdair Stewart@abestew.bsky.social · 3w ago

Anthropic's j-space paper was one of the most ridiculous things yet. It takes something interesting, but not overly surprising, and reports it using a bunch of misleading language that makes it sound as much as possible that LLMs work similar to an organic brain.

Alasdair Stewart@abestew.bsky.social · 3w ago

Amazing how little money there is to be made from AI compared to what you'd expect from the hype. Only around 3-5% of individual users pay for AI subscriptions, businesses are reducing usage now they are paying the actual price for tokens, and there isn't an ad market that'd sustain current costs.

Ed Zitron@edzitron.com · 3w ago

"Emarketer’s data finds that standalone chatbots like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot app, Google AI Mode, and Amazon Alexa for Shopping (formerly Rufus) in U.S, will generate less than $1 billion in ad revenue this year, and just $5.41 billion by 2030" Lol www.adweek.com/media/openai...

OpenAI’s ad business is on pace to fall short of the company’s own five-year revenue forecast by 90%, according to Emarketer. The AI lab has projected $2.5 billion in ad revenue this year and $100 billion by 2030. Emarketer’s data finds that standalone chatbots like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot app, Google AI Mode, and Amazon Alexa for Shopping (formerly Rufus) in U.S, will generate less than $1 billion in ad revenue this year, and just $5.41 billion by 2030.