#stoptheaicorruption — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #stoptheaicorruption, aggregated by home.social.
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So joyful, isn't it, if a block to creativity crumbles. Glad for you that you could re-open your blog. I read the current post and found it refreshing.
I like your "I don’t tell you an LLM-like resume at the beginning, because I never know what I will write after my first sentences." That is a fine anti-LLM tenet. In the era of LLM bulletlistification, we human writers must fight back by making the exploration itself the actual subject of the text.
As to writer's block: good for you that yours had a specific cause and that you could find the fighting energy to overcome it. I myself need no external reason to be blocked! :-) Still, we keep writing, one sentence at a time, one deadline at a time. A luta continua.
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AI valuations have finally exited the Earth's orbit. Anthropic backers support their target IPO valuation by assuming that Anthropic's revenue will grow _tenfold_ within the next four months.
Don't worry, the cheque is in the post, Sir!
"Investors expect the Claude maker’s annualised revenue to be between $100bn and $120bn by the end of 2026, up by more than 10 times over the course of the year."
Report by George Hammond in today's FT. (Sorry, my links aren't working.)
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As they watched the moment of the Great Endarkening, Queen Sybilla remained completely silient and still. Then she spoke these words to the assembled ambassadors:
When sun and moon align in this way, the Evil Techlord shivers. The stars are on our side, my noble friends. Bubbles burst when the sky darkens. We need not wait much longer. Short Nvidia stock now.
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The bubble does what every bubble wants to do: it breaches all limits of sanity. The laws of phyiscs and the laws of logic all are being suspended. Or so it seems, until the inevitable return to reality. In the meantime, valuable resources worth trillions of dollars are being misdirected. What a collosal waste.
Tulips at least did not material harm. Come back, Tulip Mania.
#noAI #noLLM #StopTheAICorruption #bubbles #nvidia #TulipMania
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A heartfelt "no to genAI" from a teaching and education perspective. By Katherine Rundell. l 100% agree.
《 genAI risks becoming an iron curtain that comes down between a young person and their potential for thinking, for experiment and conquering frustration, for stamina and for invention – and thereby, between the young people and their freedom. It risks halting learning before it can take flight. 》
《 It was always very possible to write an essay about Paradise Lost without having read Paradise Lost. This is the first time it is possible to create an essay about Paradise Lost without having read the essay you just “wrote”. This is the first time in history that sentences do not need to have humans behind them. 》
《 The young mind is a spectacular thing. To waste its beauty and strength would be a dereliction of the trust the young are asked to put in the old. 》
#education #learning #noAI #noLLM #KatherineRundell #StopTheAICorruption
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Fascinating article by Anne Lawrence-Mathers on the _Ars Notoria_. Thank you for the Lichtenbergian assignment!
As you say, the visual element in the Ars Notoria book is interesting. The whole presentation feels very current.
As does the desire by its medieval users to bypass actual learning through the use of arcane methods unrelated to the subject matter. The association with current LLM practices is striking, and rather amusing.
And, just like today's genAI users need to develop ever more sophistiated layers of prompt-management skills, so the medieval Ars Notoria users struggled to meet the extensive technical demands of invoking the substitute methods. Then as now, one wants to ask these users: why not do the real thing?
Thought-provoking stuff!
#ArsNotoria #AnneLawrenceMathers #noAI #noLLM #noShortcuts #StopTheAICorruption
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Regex tools are the genAI antidote.
They do right what genAI does wrong.
#regex #RegularExpressions #noLLM #StopTheAICorruption #zuzai
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And here is Mr Hepworth. He will be your AI replacement over the coming weeks. Mr Hepworth will accept any prompts that you put to him, and he will respond to them in his own way. You will find the change hard at first, but you will get through this.
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Thank you so much for this super insighful essay! Frightening in many ways, but it also gives me hope, since it at least lets me understand how it happens that madness gets a grip on an organisation.
Very wise words at the end about how to survive in an institution caught by the mania.
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<< What started as a few people [...] being caught up in hype has now resulted in an environment where leaders cannot speak honestly about their beliefs on how best to guide organisations, for fear of being removed [...]. This means that the least sensible recommendations are going totally unchallenged, resulting in employees being evaluated on totally gameable metrics such as “money spent on AI”, and those employees must play along to avoid being terminated. >>
Thank you for the link! An exceptiomally insightful, if frightening, report by @ludicity on the mechanisms through which AI mania spreads.
In my own work in a university context, I see glimpses of the same mechanisms, thankfully a little less extreme. We haven't reached the token-count yet, nor the firing-the-sceptic stage, but no doubt those will come to us too. We certainly have otherwise sensible colleagues ruthlessly pushing "AI innovations" because it buys them promotion.
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《 Fable in particular is known to have baffling gibberish intermediate messages, and in general if any of the intermediate "thinking" text was visible it would make it abundantly clear that the only reason these things appear to work is by sheer brute force, just keep generating text until something seems plausible. 》
Oh, lovely. This example shows us in archetypical form the original sin of genAI, doesn't it. Brute force being used to hide the absence of substantive alignment. Highly instructive (and entertaining), as is your entire thread.
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You can see the empty eyes, Lestrade. The self-satisfied smile. This man is no murderer, Inspector. He is an AI victim.
Holmes's voice revealed something akin to pity for the man in custody.
It is plain that our man here has lost all capacity to plan anything as complex as an actual murder of a physical human being. Notice his hand, still grasping the ergonomic mouse even though you have taken away his laptop. Too much ego boosting from the Affirmation Machine has closed him in on himself. If you check his laptop, you will find an open Claude session, not a floor plan of the victim's apartment.
Your murderer is still out and about, Lestrade. What the man before us needs is rest and an Affirmation detox.
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Quite incredible.
OUP World Classics brings out a new translation of Proust's La Prisonnière, and it turns out that the translator (Andrew Rothwell) assembled his copy from fragments provided to him by a genAI tool. And he couldn'd even be bothered to tell the editor about it! The Way We Live Now.
Painfully strong Invasion of the Body Snatchers vibes. Who hasn't been turned around yet?
(Thank you for the link to the LitHub essay. An excellent piece of writing and nuanced reflection by Bryan Charles.)
#Proust #BryanCharles #AndrewRothwell #translation #noLLM #StopTheAICorruption
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A fine essay. Speaking as a university teacher, and as a writer in a research and teaching context: I experience the same pain when people don't see the uniqueness of the human source of true writing and true teaching. And like you I believe that true creative human work (in writing, in teaching) will survive. If need be in new formats and new channels.
Martin Buber studied the true dialogue that happens between my "I" and your "Thou", and he contrasted it with the unlistening talking that happend when both sides treat the other as an "It". Today's genAI proponents are glad to abolish both I and Thou: a vision of a society where the "It" of one person's genAI talks to the "It" of another person's genAI.
#StopTheAICorruption #IAndThou #writing #teaching #creativity
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100%, and beautifully written. Precise and poetic, the underlying anger transformed into a positive vision that emphasises creative human agency. Thank you for writing this, and for sharing.
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Brilliant. Recognising the inherent difficulties in actual programming, and offering a bridge that utilises the natural-language capabilities of the user for transparent conversion. Enabling conversion that gives agency to the user, vs disabling transfer of agency to the LLM.
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Love your article. In the precise dynamics, there may be slight differences between US and UK institutions. In my UK university, the pressure to go all AI comes from senior management, but also from academic colleagues, and this collusion has been something of a shock to me.
I completely agree with your point on marking:
'Bad writing gets bad grades no matter who or what wrote it. It seems ridiculous to waste time using unreliable AI detection software when I can justifiably grade what’s in front of me with the same result."
And, underlying this:
"[genAI] can’t carry an argument from the beginning of an essay to the end, because it can’t think." Indeed!
I've been around for long enough to have lived through most of the previous hypes you mention, and your historical perspective has given me a bit of moral encouragement to keep up the resistance.
@harmonygritz @kate @cogdog @Downes @bryanalexandee -
BREAKING: Scientists at Angelus Silesius University have discovered that under certain conditions, humans are capable of writing and thinking unaided, without the help of standard prompt-driven AI software bots.
"It sounds counterintuitive, but it almost looks as if our subjects wanted to do these things on their own", texts Professor Melanchton, the project lead. "We don't fully understand the mechanisms yet, but our study suggests that humans may have some sort of in-built agentic capabilities."
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"Intentional or not, AI is seemingly great at amplifying the Dunning-Kruger-Effect in people, making everything they attempt with it seem smarter and justified to them, ..."
"It's sad, because it feels like a completely out-of-control delusion; you see smart and capable people with lots of responsibility at work suddenly turn into a shill for these AI companies without any rhyme or reason. A highly qualified person, suddenly reduced to the same presence as a door-to-door salesman lying about how well the cleaning product really works, making up use cases that are neither useful nor working right."
It's not quite as extreme in my workplace, but the atmosphere is the same, and like the author (Ava, https://blog.avas.space/), I feel an immense disillusionment about senior people who should know better but who are betraying our trust.
Sensible people turn into untrusted aliens. The invasion of the bodysnatchers.
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Breakfast time, my friends, our Lady Joan Mastodon said to her knights as they gathered in the Great Hall. Enjoy the fish soup, I made it from last night's leftovers. We shall slay the scrapers, so make sure you are well nourished. Coffee is on the table over there.
#GoodMorningFedi #JoanMastodon #FishSoup #SlayTheScrapers #StopTheAICorruption
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Indeed, a warm & intelligent #noAI message by a teacher to their students. The act of writing such a message in itself sends an important message to the students. Bravo. I shall write a similar message, in the context of my own teaching, and I will make time to discuss it in class.
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A senior academic writes an opinion piece, advising students not to cut corners. It turns out she didn't actually write it. LLMs wrote the piece for her.
I treasure the fact that at the present moment, we can still see the absurdity in this story.
We can still find this story funny. We can still laugh at this pompous cheat, Professor #CathEllis, a Pro Vice-Chancellor at #WesternSydneyUniversity. In a year's time, Professor Ellis's lazy inauthenticity will be standard. Very likely I will have to meet HR to explain why I don't do the same.
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"Your principles matter." Erin Maus is right.
She's a model to us all. I am quietly preparing my own case. Not needed yet, but the day will come where I will be required to use genAI tools in my teaching, will have to allow students to use them in my classroom, will be required to teach them how to do use those tools.
Thus far my principled refusal has been accepted by the institution, and I have even managed to embed some refusal rights in some of our policies. But these are temporary reprieves, not lasting solutions. The genAI tide right now goes one way only, and it takes everything with it. The day will come when I will have to stand up and refuse an explicit order. I do not believe in God, but I do believe that when that day comes my guardian angels will be on my side. ,(Perhaps Pope Leo will help too.)
#noLLM #HigherEducation #teaching #TheTideWillTurn #StopTheAICorruption #PopeLeo
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Why not to use genAI.
A gripping tale, told in a court judgement, by a judge with a very fine dry sense of humour.
" [...] a junior associate had used AI to research the point and the AI invented the quotation. The junior associate [LA] did not check it and neither did the solicitors supervising them. LA seems to have almost exclusively relied upon AI to provide the answers and did not check its references, even when told to do so by the AI itself. [...] (section 71)
Every sentence in this tale is worth reading. I love how the judge keeps referring with mock sympathy to the AI tool, which in his account does its best to warn its clueless human user that it really knows nothing and that there are facts that await to be checked by its human user.
Highly entertaining, and frightening too. Frightenig primarily because the junior associate clearly has lost every notion of writing without an AI tool.
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CW: Pope Leo's Magnifica Humanitas: genAI and education [1/2]
Pope Leo's encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, released today. Focus on genAI.
Reading it as a university teacher and a non-Catholic and an atheist, I find deep truths in this document.
This pope understands the pedagogical challenges posed by the genAI maelstrom; he understands them better than most of my academic colleagues.
Quote from Section 140:
"Education is a long journey requiring patience, and therefore needs time for development and for engagement with reality beyond appearances."
"Educating people about the use of AI, then, involves teaching them to decide when and for what purpose it ought not to be used. The speed and ease with which answers or summaries can be obtained risk extinguishing the desire to ask questions, which is a process that bears fruit only over time."
#PopeLeo #MagnificaHumanitas #HigherEducation #pedagogy #noLLM #AcademicChatter #StopTheAICorruption
[1/2] \cont'd
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CW: Strange alliances: I read a Jesuit's reflection on teaching
"To teach a person to live by thinking and to think by living."
Father Antonio Spadaro SJ offers a thoughtful reflection on the role of the university and the nature of learning.
I am a university teacher in a technical subject. I am not a Christian, not a Catholic. I am an atheist who admires the rebellious stance of the Reformation. But as a teacher, I find substance in Spadaro's text.
Learning and teaching are part of a process where the student encounters their subject, encounters others, encounters themselves. The university is a place that creates such encounters. That is a programme Martin Buber would be happy to share. It is also a programme that is threatened by the maelstrom of genAI corruption.
I am willing to treat Pope Leo as an ally in today's battle in defense of meaningful education.
#HigherEducation #pedagogy #PopeLeo #noAI #StopTheAICorruption #MartinBuber
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I use em dashes freely and joyfully --- AI or not!
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Ah, Lestrade. Watson tells me that your new AI toy Claudi has solved the case of the missing Ethernet cable. Oh, indeed? The Duke of Timberland?
So sorry, Lestrade, but Claudi is wrong. Timberland couldn't have done it, as is obvious to anyone who looks at the actual case with open eyes. Afraid I can't explain further at this moment, terribly busy. But why don't you pay a visit to the Duke's daughter. Ask her about her NeXTcube. Yes, Lestrade, her NeXTcube. Find someone who can explain it to you.
And get rid of Claudi. You don't really need any additional source of blunder and incompetence at the Yard, do you Lestrade?
#SherlockHolmes #HolmesAndWatson #InspectorLestrade #NextCube #noLLM #StopTheAICorruption