Aardbolbewoner

Getting a grip on sustainability, recycling, our use of human and natural resources.

[youtube-privacy-union]

Roku launches TV channel that shows “AI slop” 24 hours a day

Roku launches TV channel that shows “AI slop” 24 hours a day - Dexerto

Streaming platform Roku has launched a new 24-hour TV channel that shows nothing but AI movies and shows all day, every day.

“Streaming platform Roku has launched a new 24-hour TV channel that shows nothing but AI movies and shows all day, every day.”

“Roku recently introduced four brand-new channels that are available for free to all its users.

One of these, found at number 300 of The Roku Channel, is “Fairground AI,” which broadcasts nothing but AI-generated content.”

“Anyone who tunes in will see a constant stream of movies and TV shows that don’t star any real actors, broken up by ads that are also made with AI.”

made by who

“the content is made by AI creators that Colin Petrie-Norris, the founder and CEO of AI studio Fairground Entertainment, found on social media.

The aim is to create “gorgeous things” of a higher quality than the kinds of AI-generated videos usually found online”

people hate it

People have been roasting the clips of this channel that have surfaced online

“One of the videos that went viral is a medieval drama, which was mocked for its clunky dialogue and jarring cuts between scenes.”

[vorbisx]

Replacing physical buttons and controls with touchscreens also means removing accessibility features. Physical buttons can be textured or have Braille and can be located by touch and don't need to be pressed with a bare finger. Touchscreens usually require precise taps and hand-eye coordination for the same task.

Many point-of-sale machines now are essentially just a smartphone with a card reader attached and the interface. The control layout can change at a moment's notice and there are no physical boundaries between buttons. With a keypad-style machine, the buttons are always in the same place and can be located by touch, especially since the middle button has a raised ridge on it.

Buttons can also be located by touch without activating them, which enables a "locate then press" style of interaction which is not possible on touchscreens, where even light touches will register as presses and the buttons must be located visually rather than by touch.

When elevator or door controls are replaced by touch screens, will existing accessibility features be preserved, or will some people no longer be able to use those controls?

Who is allowed to control the physical world, and who is making that decision?

[garaks-padded-cell]

Self portrait of my current situation at my local cafe

[enba-and-luka]

Kill all yanks

[muttsandmustelidae]

“hey this dog looks to be struggling to perform very basic functions and that is very worrying” “well ACTUALLY if you STUDIED THE BREED STANDARD you’d see that this dog is actually the IDEAL ______” YEAH. THIS TOO IS THE PROBLEM. WHAT ARE YOU NOT GETTING.

[muttsandmustelidae]

“you can’t blame breeders for breeding to standard :/“ i actually find it very easy to blame them. they are the ones creating the dogs on purpose, you see

[teethwreath]

[sequentialprophet]

There aren't words for how insidiously disgusting and blatant this is. (Link)

[sissa-arrows]

In France if you suffer from hair loss as a teenage girl and cannot afford a real hair wig the school will try and force you to go to class bald. The school will make you buy a chemotherapy turban, you will buy two different so that the school can choose which one they prefer and you will prove that they are chemotherapy turban and not hijab but once you wear it they will change their mind and say it looks too much like a hijab and insist on you going bald or buying a real hair wig that you cannot afford.

If your doctor makes multiple documents confirming that you suffer from alopecia because of stress and the medicine you have to take for your epilepsy and that wearing a bonnet or something is recommended for your mental health as you’re not ready to go out bald in high school as a teenage girl, instead of admitting they are wrong the school will accuse the doctor of lying and report him to the Ordre des Médecins (equivalent of the General Medical council). Your doctor will find himself asking you for a document stating that you are not Muslim in order to defend himself and prove that no he wasn’t colluding with you so you could wear a substitute for hijab.

Source

───────

In France if you are a North African nurse at a public hospital and wear a fabric surgical cap they will try to make you remove it because apparently it’s a hidden hijab. They will accuse you of going against secularism and when you’ll argue that they are discriminating you by assuming you’re Muslim for a surgical cap on your head they will change their angle and claim that you should wear nothing on your hair because you wear the same surgical cap in multiple bedroom which is unhygienic apparently (which is a bullshit argument cause you wear the same scrub/uniform in different bedrooms as well). They will go as far as claiming that disposable scrub caps (you know the thin papery ones?) are not okay to wear in a hospital even if you change it regularly. And then they will fire you for a lack of hygiene because you wear a surgical cap.

Source

───────

All of that will be done in the name of secularism and women’s right despite having nothing do with either quite the opposite.

The teenage girl’s story is also not just about racism and Islamophobia it’s also about ableism as the girl is convinced that the real reason the school is trying to push her out is because she had an epilepsy crisis in class and nobody knew what to do and the school nurse was absent. It could have ended badly had her best friend not known what to do to help. Apparently it was bad enough to cancel class for the rest of the day and the teacher was shocked to the point of ending on sick leave.

[marzipanandminutiae]

oh and don't forget that many parts of France mandate by law how much skin women must show in swimsuits, which they claim is about not getting street dirt in public pools but which is disproportionately enforced on Muslim or even just Middle Eastern/North African women

(and of course is also some forced nudity misogynistic bullshit in general, to boot)

[prettyinpinkcatgamer]

I didn't really care too much about the french government previously, but now I want every one of that scum dead almost as much as the american government.

[sissa-arrows]

What if I tell you that the guy people (internationally) were fawning about because he was the youngest and first openly gay prime minister we had in France is remembered for one thing that he is still very proud of. He passed a law making “abaya” illegal at school. Except there is literally zero way to distinguish a “abaya” from a summer dress or any long dress. So what happened is that Arab and Black girls ended up being profiled at school and school staff ended up deciding that if a Arab or Black girl says that this is not a “abaya” one way to know for sure was to ask them what they were wearing underneath…

So we have grown adults asking underage girls what they are wearing under their dress and if they wear shorts and not just underwear they have to remove the dress and stay in short or they get send back home… grown ass ADULTS checking what UNDERAGE Black and Arab girls wear under their dresses and making them undress or lose access to education. That’s where we’re at in France…

(And you can’t wear a headband either if you’re Black or Arab but that’s an other subject.)

P.S: For the white French people who will be disingenuous and claim that these laws don’t target Arab and Black girls they actually do because it’s only illegal to wear these stuff if you’re Muslim and because Islam is a racialized religion in the West, France assume that all Black and Arab folks in France are Muslim so white girls are not affected by these laws.

[the-prairies-calling-out]

"Why do you buy books when the library is right there?"

Because publishing houses will not continue printing paper books if libraries are their only customers.

Also, I like being able to read at my leisure and generally have books at hand.

[its-the-blob]

#public libraries are good because they let people access books they might never otherwise read#private book ownership is good because it's Yours#physical books are good because they last a long time and again it's Yours#ebooks are good because you can fit a whole library into the physical space of a single book and they're cheaper to produce#audiobooks are good because they're accessible to people with eyesight or visual reading issues and leave your hands free#in conclusion: all books are good and people should enjoy them however and whenever they can#(lest it be misunderstood I agree with you completely OP I just also really like books in general and it got away from me)

YES. all books. every kind

[shdwycupcake]

@official-library-posts

[official-library-posts]

official library post

[awfulpunk]

this is insanely racist and I haven't even seen much about this online yet

[checkyourasianbias]

after Bad Bunny won they added a Latin song category and after Rosé got three nominations the grammys added a k-pop/c-pop/j-pop category they have always been afraid of well-performing artists of color challenging white artists in mainstream categories

[eraserheadadult]

the situation with harry potter is kind of unprecedented in some ways imo because it is maybe the largest media franchise in history to be created & owned by a single person who still has direct creative control over it. who is also a billionaire with significant cultural/political influence. like the usual "no ethical consumption under capitalism" type excuses shatter on impact when the bigoted author in question is logging onto twitter every day saying explicitly that when you buy the tim hortons ravenclaw donut she is using your donut money to fund the genocide of trans people. like with big franchises usually there's at least a little more diffusion of responsibility than this

[bunjywunjy]

why is lake superior so dangerous? i cant find anything online that will give my access (not american!)

it's the largest freshwater lake on the planet by surface area, you could lose a couple of smaller countries in there and not even notice. (vs Europe)

on top of that, it's a Northern lake, so the water never really gets warmer than 50 F (10 C) even in the heat of summer, and it's famous for sudden violent storms that destroy ships and buildings alike. this thing has a MASSIVE body count because it's also a major shipping thoroughfare.

tldr it wants to eat you so so bad

[kedreeva]

She is also over 1,300ft/400m deep at her deepest. Once she has eaten you, she will not give you back. Lake Superior doesn't give up her dead.

And when Bunjy says "the largest by surface are" what that means is: Lake Superior is a whopping 31,700 square miles (82,103 square km) of water. The only reason she is not an inland sea is because she is freshwater.

She has tides. She has rip currents, like an ocean does. You don't even have to go out on a boat to get got by her, all you have to do is step into her icy waters in the wrong spot. She has ice formations that aren't "icebergs" on the technicality that they didn't calve from glaciers, even though they look and act the same.

(photo by Paul Berger)

She LOOKS like an ocean when you are at her shores. This is from a location on the Minnesota side shore.

(photo by George Ilstrup)

She is huge, icy, and hungry. This makes her very dangerous. Not to be fucked around with, because you WILL find out.

[hadespuppy]

Superior doesn't want to kill you in the way that K2 wants to kill you. She doesn't give much thought to you at all, unless you draw her attention. Then, well, might as well start ringing the bell at Mariner's Church yourself, because she is inevitable.

[zmediaoutlet]

[honeyedheartss]

one of my favorite bodies of water

[mornington-the-crescent]

[kikokuso]

I have a new favourite batshit rail idea

Please build it for the funny please please please

[vacuously-true]

You're right. I SHOULD be able to take the train from Minneapolis to Berlin.

[aardbolbewoner]

world peace so we can have world train tourism

[sailermoon]

this is how new yorkers @ mamdani

[sailermoon]

[excitedrainbow]

IT’S LITERALLY HAPPENING LMAOOOOO

[dyingroses]

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

“A kiss may be grand, but it won’t pay the rental, on your humble flat, or help you at the automat.”

Like literally the most famous song about how much girls love jewellry is just explaining the importance of getting jewellry for when your partner leaves you penniless and alone.

[ohheyheyitsjj]

The founder of Girl Scouting in the US, Juliette Gordon Low, funded her first troop by selling her pearl necklace, which was her only belonging after her husband died and left everything to his mistress.

She founded Girl Scouts to teach girls self-sufficiency so they wouldn’t have to go through what she went through when her husband died and she didn’t know how to take care of herself.

[penrosesun]

While we’re on the subject, let’s please also remember that historically disenfranchised communities who had to worry about frequently being run out of town often bought expensive jewelry with their limited funds not because they were greedy or tacky or classless, but rather because you can’t sew a real estate investment into the lining of your coat, and the powers that be can’t freeze a diamond necklace the way that they can freeze a bank account.

[tpwrtrmnky]

Tbh I think the "but data centers are important infrastructure, not just AI" talking point misses that like

Ok so roads are important infrastructure. A lot of stuff that's important happens on roads. Now, let's imagine that quadrillionaire Matt Stench has decided that the next big tech innovation is the Wide Car. It's a car that takes up six lanes despite seating only one passenger.

The Wide Car is supposed to be the future, and everyone's going to be driving Wide Cars, even though nobody who makes Wide Cars is turning a profit. Employers are offering Wide Cars as an employee benefit, and getting "nah." Some employers are going as far as demanding their employees drive Wide Cars, and the result is that people take time out of their workdays to get in the mandatory gas usage for their Wide Car before driving home in a regular car.

In spite of the fact that the Wide Car is clearly set to fail, there's an enormous push to expand to twelve-lane roads to accommodate a bunch of Wide Cars that simply will not materialize. This is not an organic response to demand, but a speculative investment that amplifies the existing issues with road development for no good reason.

That is the problem.

[liberalsarecool]

Getting #BlackRock to change/exit the real estate market in NYC is a massive win for New Yorkers and #ZohranMamdani.

[goodluckdetective]

So Hank Green got caught using AI and it’s a whole huge blow up, and I really don’t have much interest in adding to the pile on.

However, I do think this case is great example of what happens when smart people decide they can use these systems “responsibly.”

Let’s put aside the plagiarism and the energy use for a second (not that these don’t matter, but they’re not relevant to my point at the moment) and pretend these systems were made with entirely properly obtained info and ran on only solar, but otherwise were entirely the same. If you’re a person, you might think “okay, I’m going to only use this to come up with ideas for my next paper: I’m going to do all the research myself and the writing, I’m just gonna brainstorm topics.”

The thing is, even if you’re trying to limit use to just “brainstorming” the chatbot isn’t going to limit itself to just brainstorming. You might ask it “what should I write about involving Greek history” and it may suggest “the plague of Athens” but it’s also going to suggest some “basic info” on the plague of Athens that you might end up picking up and deciding your topic is. It’s going to provide you with “research.” And even if you decide to check that research yourself, that’s still setting you down a specific path you might not have picked organically.

And speaking of double checking its “research”, fact checking is a time heavy process. Not only now do you have to read the original text the bot provided, but you also have to compare it line by line with the summary the bot provided. That’s more time than it would have taken to just read the article by itself. And with any time heavy task, people are going to get lazy. And in original research being lazy might mean skimming a paper or an abstract, chatbots allow you to be lazy without looking at the article at all.

And soon enough, despite telling yourself you were only going to use it for brainstorming, you have offloaded topic generation, research and eventually even drafting because that’s what these bots are intended to do. They are not meant to serve as research tools or help brainstorm or serve as a bouncing off board: they are built to encourage maximum engagement. And that means if you go at them with the best of ethical intentions, they are built to tempt you to use them as much as possible, regardless of whatever line you drew in the sand for yourself.

Anyway, my main thought here is you are not smart enough to outwit the dopamine machine. It wants your attention and nothing more. Do not assume you can resist just because you know what’s under the hood.

[goodluckdetective]

Whenever you decide to use a tool, you should consider “what is this tool designed to do” and for LLM’s that answer is “maximize user engagement.” Anything else is in service to that goal.

[goodluckdetective]

My read of this came from Hank’s own response to the situation which you can find here. I’ve screenshotted the part in particular that drew my attention and spawned this post below:

Obvs, Hank’s situation is not the same as the scenario I laid out but I think the snippet above gets back to my main point which is these tools are built to encourage interaction and that’s a hard thing to avoid, regardless of intentions.

Some other notes:

1. As stated, I don’t bring this up to add to a pile on, just to use this as an example of something I’ve seen happen with folks trying to engage in this tech with an ethical framework. This is because-

2. Frankly, I think shame is a shit motivator. I bring all this up to try to draw attention to something I find under discussed which is what these LLMS are meant to do, and what they are advertised for which are often very separate lists. (I didn’t even get into how they’re meant to train off user data but that’s another can of worms). If you want to discourage AI use, it’s a far better strategy to listen to why the person is engaging with AI and then address that reason.

3. I don’t want to come off as someone trying to scare folks that they’ll get addicted just by touching the stuff: my point is merely that is it critical to know what something is made for before engaging with it. This actually goes for a lot of tech besides AI like Google or social media (which are also designed to 1. Capture your attention and 2. Show you advertisements). AI isn’t a special kind of evil in this way, merely a continuation of a tech trend where a product is sold to a consumer with the goal of the time of the consumer becoming the source of revenue.

4. I have book recs on this topic. As you can guess, this is an academic interest of mine. But that’s another post if folks are interested.