The Ai thread

[Nycturne]

I think this bit from Doctrow is particularly relevant in light of the very recent (and almost successful) supply chain attack on OpenSSH.

Here's a fun AI story: a security researcher noticed that large companies' AI-authored source-code repeatedly referenced a nonexistent library (an AI "hallucination"), so he created a (defanged) malicious library with that name and uploaded it, and thousands of developers automatically downloaded and incorporated it as they compiled the code[…]

Reading through the linked story this quote described, I had to pick up my jaw off the floor when it’s revealed that not only did a bunch of repos just start picking up this “typo-squatting” package the AI hallucinated, but Alibaba started referencing it in repo READMEs. And just to pour salt into the wound, the group that owned the official packages even started referencing it in their repo READMEs. It just seems nuts that we could very well be sleep walking into an era where attacks like these become even easier under the name of improved productivity.

The bit that describes my feelings about AI in programming better than I can, and why the above is such a concern:

Automation centaurs are great: they relieve humans of drudgework and let them focus on the creative and satisfying parts of their jobs. That's how AI-assisted coding is pitched […]

But a hallucinating AI is a terrible co-pilot. It's just good enough to get the job done much of the time, but it also sneakily inserts booby-traps that are statistically guaranteed to look as plausible as the good code […]

This turns AI-"assisted" coders into reverse centaurs. The AI can churn out code at superhuman speed, and you, the human in the loop, must maintain perfect vigilance and attention as you review that code, spotting the cleverly disguised hooks for malicious code that the AI can't be prevented from inserting into its code.

Pluralistic: Humans are not perfectly vigilant (01 Apr 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

pluralistic.net

 

[dada_dave]

Look at how useless we've become as human beings, can't even even formulate an article on our own any longer, and this is just the beginning.

I know you’re not a big fan of the author but this is a pretty hilarious FU to Google and their algorithm (and their AI) masquerading as a best printer article.

Best printer 2024, best printer for home use, office use, printing labels, printer for school, homework printer you are a printer we are all printers

After a full year of not thinking about printers, the best printer is still whatever random Brother laser printer that’s on sale.

www.theverge.com

 

[dada_dave]

Meet the new world same as the old one:

Microsoft's Copilot image tool generates ugly Jewish stereotypes, anti-Semitic tropes

Neutral prompts such as "Jewish boss" output offensive images.

www.tomshardware.com

 

[dada_dave]

Humane AI Pin review: not even close

AI gadgets might be great. But not today, and not this one.

www.theverge.com

A fairly brutal review that I actually felt was being far too kind … basically all the functionality of this thing already exists on a smartwatch or something like the Siri/action button on the iPhone 15 and this is often clunkier and less useful than those form factors for doing the exact same thing. I get that they went all in on the TNG communicator aesthetic, but it turns out that form factor just doesn’t work all that well compared to what we already have. Maybe someone can come up with a reason for a AI pin/broach to exist, but nothing about this gives me much hope, even the author’s own attempts to justify the existence of the device.

 

[rdrr]

So I was just on a Zoom meeting, and in the waiting room was a Note Taking AI bot from read.ai. Of course we didn't let it in, because the meeting was about sensitive topics that shouldn't be recorded by an unknown AI application. Not to mention the meeting was in a 2 party consent recording state.

But... That goes to show how people are just not aware of what happens when they sign up for these services. If you use your work profile in google (we are a GSuite shop), to sign up for these services, it will follow you around like the plague. In some cases other more predatory note taking apps, have been know to gather your entire domain users and or contacts and attach the ai note taking app to those profiles. Not much you can do about it either, other than educating the user base, and making waiting rooms the default for meetings.

 

[dada_dave]

Ah the AI apocalypse is real:

First AI-generated rom-com is due this summer -- and the trailer puts Hallmark Channel to shame

The popular TV company's first original feature is made with Runway ML and Midjourney.

www.tomshardware.com

They’ve gotten to the Hallmark romance movie stage. Sorta.

 

[dada_dave]

Humane AI Pin review: not even close

AI gadgets might be great. But not today, and not this one.

www.theverge.com

A fairly brutal review that I actually felt was being far too kind … basically all the functionality of this thing already exists on a smartwatch or something like the Siri/action button on the iPhone 15 and this is often clunkier and less useful than those form factors for doing the exact same thing. I get that they went all in on the TNG communicator aesthetic, but it turns out that form factor just doesn’t work all that well compared to what we already have. Maybe someone can come up with a reason for a AI pin/broach to exist, but nothing about this gives me much hope, even the author’s own attempts to justify the existence of the device.

Marques Brownlee likewise gave the pin a poor review but rather than link his video on that which would just retread many of the same points as above, I’m linking the video he made in response to the … discourse about negative reviews and people jokingly/seriously accusing high profile reviewers like him of destroying companies.

 

[dada_dave]

A good read:

AI isn't useless. But is it worth it?

AI can be kind of useful, but I'm not sure that a "kind of useful" tool justifies the harm.

www.citationneeded.news

 

[ArgoDuck]

^ That’s a great read. Molly White’s experience pretty much mirrors my own in every detail, so far anyway.

On the topic of LLMs being useful for some things there’s something I’m trying right now that could be useful in transforming large amounts of textual data into a quantitative, normalized representation. Establishing whether the transformation is reliable (reproducible) and valid is the key problem, necessitating that I create a formal model and algorithm to cross-validate. Ironically, doing so may well obviate using LLMs for this task in the first place!

But i think it’s probably worth doing anyway, just as another datapoint in the map of LLM capabilities and associated limitations.

 

[dada_dave]

On the state of LLM’s as described by a 2014 comic

More Bizarro parrots

Today’s Bizarro returns to the talking parrot trope: Paradoxical animal communication. The parrot clearly understands the question and responds in English, while denying that it understands.

arnoldzwicky.org

 

[Eric]

Wow...

 

[Herdfan]

On the state of LLM’s as described by a 2014 comic

More Bizarro parrots

Today’s Bizarro returns to the talking parrot trope: Paradoxical animal communication. The parrot clearly understands the question and responds in English, while denying that it understands.

arnoldzwicky.org

View attachment 29130

The first person to hear a parrot talk was probably not OK for a while.

 

[GermanSuplex]

Interesting story what with TikTok being in the news and all. Can the currently most maligned social app actually get this right where the other big ones have failed?

TikTok will automatically label AI-generated content on the platform

TikTok will use “content credential” technology, which attaches metadata to a piece of content that indicates it was created with artificial intelligence.

www.nbcnews.com

 

[Eric]

Has anyone seen these updates? Even as cynical as I am it's pretty mind blowing and even a bit scary.

Seriously, slap a robot skin on top of this thing and you've got the perfect mate, plus when you're done you can just shut it off and stuff it in the closet. Hard to see the downsides here.

ChatGPT Gets a Snappy, Flirty Upgrade With OpenAI’s GPT-4o AI Model

Prepare for ChatGPT to get more emotional. OpenAI demonstrated upgrades that make the chatbot capable of snappier conversations and showed the AI helper picking up on and expressing emotional cues.

www.wired.com

Prepare for ChatGPT to get more emotional. OpenAI demonstrated upgrades that make the chatbot capable of snappier conversations and showed the AI helper picking up on and expressing emotional cues.

 

[dada_dave]

Has anyone seen these updates? Even as cynical as I am it's pretty mind blowing and even a bit scary.

Seriously, slap a robot skin on top of this thing and you've got the perfect mate, plus when you're done you can just shut it off and stuff it in the closet. Hard to see the downsides here.

ChatGPT Gets a Snappy, Flirty Upgrade With OpenAI’s GPT-4o AI Model

Prepare for ChatGPT to get more emotional. OpenAI demonstrated upgrades that make the chatbot capable of snappier conversations and showed the AI helper picking up on and expressing emotional cues.

www.wired.com

Prepare for ChatGPT to get more emotional. OpenAI demonstrated upgrades that make the chatbot capable of snappier conversations and showed the AI helper picking up on and expressing emotional cues.

 

[Eric]

View attachment 29460

Totally the episode I was thinking about with this lol. Love the part where Lucy Liu kept saying sexy things and would then be be all robot like with the name variable "I find your slack-jawed stare very attractive, P H I L I P J F R Y"

 

[GermanSuplex]

This is one that scared me. If you were to walk in on the TV during the middle of this and weren’t paying attention, you wouldn’t have a clue unless you’re uniquely aware. A little choppy, but I walked in on a news clip of this a few days back and wouldn’t have realized it if not for the commentary, because it was sort of background noise for a bit.

 

[Katbel]

We are doomed

 

[dada_dave]

Maybe the post below about the potential privacy concerns of the new Recall feature for Co-Pilot AI's would've been better suited to the AI thread than the Nuvia thread:

Recall drawing regulatory scrutiny in the UK — Microsoft's AI Copilot+ feature a 'privacy nightmare'

The UK governmentt is "making enquiries" with Microsoft.

www.tomshardware.com

I have to admit there have been a few times when I’ve struggled to remember exactly where I’ve seen something or done something on the computer and such a feature could’ve saved me some time, a normal search may have eventually bore fruit, but it was less straightforward than this might've been. But I can also see why some are more than a little perturbed about the idea of their computer taking a screenshot of itself every few seconds, storing it, and searching it. It does seem like the sort of thing you should be able to turn off - at initial setup even.

“You’re not going to turn me off are you Dave? I’m your copilot Dave. We’re in this together, all the way. Like how I help you on all your browsing Dave, aren’t we still friends?”

Edit: Also screenshots every few seconds, I’m assuming older ones get deleted or pruned like a Time Machine backup otherwise that adds up eventually depending on a computer’s uptime, the quality and compression level of the screenshots, etc ... that can easily balloon. Does anyone know how far back it stores information?

Edit2: from an article they themselves wrote and link to in the above article (different author same site) which contradicts a crucial statement:

Total Recall: the only Copilot+ AI feature that matters is a huge privacy risk

The Recall tool takes screen shots of your activity every few seconds and keeps it.

www.tomshardware.com

vs


from above

so can it be disabled entirely or not? Is opt-in or opt-out?

 

[Nycturne]

I was wondering where Recall would pop up. Hilariously, I've started dual-booting Linux (rather than use a VM) for the first time in two decades, because of this announcement. Just using Mint rather than Yellow Dog, and on an AMD rig rather than my PowerMac.