getoj
Macbeth is Shakespeare’s most popular play, cause it’s got sex and blood and poetry all over, a really tight plot, and it’s not too long. It is pretty well guaranteed to fill a theatre. Also, every actor knows the script so you can find a cast in no time.
So if your current play is not selling a lot of tickets and is about to be cancelled, the theatre is going to put on Macbeth right after you to try to make its money back quickly. That’s why thespians hate to hear the name ‘Macbeth’ — because if there’s talk of that play going about, you could be out of a job next week.
> Can an AI model intend harm?
No. The last time we attributed liability to non-human things was the deodand of the Middle Ages.
> Can a company, or company employee, intend harm by creating an environment that would knowingly encourage (but not force!) an AI model to do harm?
Absolutely. This is why we have the concept of recklessness. If you shoot a gun into a crowd without regard for whether it hits anyone, you’re getting charged with some crime whether it hits someone or not.
There is also a major difference in the common law between criminal liability and tort liability. Criminal liability generally requires a combination of mens rea (intent) and actus reus (actually committing the crime). Liability for a tort, which is where you harm someone in a way that falls short of being a crime, does not require mens rea. The OG tort is negligence, where you harm somebody by forgetting to do, or deciding not to do, something you ought to have done to protect that person from harm.
Even if AI companies somehow escape criminal liability for their cyber-shenanigans, any court in a civilised country would be happy to find them liable in tort for damage to computer systems.
As you can probably tell, I think the common law is already more than equipped to deal with AI technology based on well-established principles.
You’d be surprised. The culture of kidzukai has two core tenets: (1) You must anticipate and cater to the other person’s every need and whim. If you fail you must apologize. (2) You must not allow the other person to do (1) for you instead of you doing it for them. If you fail you must apologize.
This means that every interaction between people who are even slightly close to each other in the social hierarchy is 3D chess which always ends in one or both of you apologizing to the other.
p.s. Gomen kudasai is “please permit me” to enter your house, not really an apology like gomen nasai.
“Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table”
→ Uruguayan singer-songwriter Jorge Drexler, who grew up around some other glaciers
Y cuando el momento llegue, honremos nuestras heridas / Celebremos la belleza que se aleja hacia otras vidas / Y aunque la pena nos hiera, que no nos desampare / Y que encontremos la manera de despedir a los glaciares
(When the moment comes, let us honor our wounds / celebrate the beauty that goes off to other lives / and although the sorrow stings, I hope it will remain / and that we find a way to say goodbye to the glaciers)
The internet is very big on Japonisme (not to say Orientalism) so I feel obligated to present a contrary viewpoint once in a while.
Sorry to nitpick, but not really. If we're being literal it's "honorably rushing about on your horse": chisō describes the work that had do be done to prepare the feast, running here and there to gather the ingredients. The "sama" doesn't mean Mr., it's just another honorific tag like go-/o-.
- St Michael's Church in Bengaluru, India
- Gereja Katolik Santo Mikael in Surabaya, Indonesia
- St Michael's Catholic Church in Kilcoy, Australia
- St Michael's Church in Auckland, New Zealand
Perhaps the real data challenge here is to find the straight line with the most St Michael'ses globally.
As a professional translator, I cherish those readers. They have the good sense to trust me to do the technical part (understanding the original) and only criticize the artistic part (producing a beautiful derivative work).
The worst readers are the ones who have some knowledge of the source language, and rush to nitpick the technical decisions without considering the artistic ones. They are the literary equivalent of those "fans" who will watch a stunning film adaptation and then go home to complain about the colour of Gandalf's shoes or the width of a sand worm's molars. Ultimately, readers of this type are all ego, more concerned about being right than about whether the work is good.
The very best readers, of course, are knowledgeable in both languages and understand that "equivalence" goes far beyond what is written in the dictionary. But as you say, they don't need the translation!
I believe what GP is getting at is that if you didn't have a die, and you truly ignored all your previous attempts to the point of genuinely forgetting that the question had been asked, then your answer would likely be the same every time. Imagine asking a person with severe Alzheimer's to pick a number, then asking again a few minutes later. You'd probably get the same answer.
Despite all that it’s still the best single site for gaming criticism, sadly.
Whether this had any effect in this study, I don’t know, but it certainly seems relevant that the experience of writing by hand in Japanese is utterly different to any alphabetic script.
[1] Don’t take my word for it, here’s an interesting blog post on the topic: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2473
My point is not to say that patients have it easy, but that both parties have their burdens to bear, and it is not necessary for every essay to cover both sides.
Edit: I see you have deleted your comment, which is a shame, I don’t think you should be afraid to express this sentiment.
His widow wanted them forgotten because she wanted to control his image. He is a controversial figure whose ideas changed a lot over the course of his life. After her death, they were collected, presumably with permission from the family.
That they are not in wide circulation now is because they are voluminous and obscure, so there is no market to sell them. I certainly am not interested in reading all of his book reviews and political reporting. But many more people are interested in reading them than have the university connections required to do so.
There is nothing to be lost and everything to be gained by making the complete works available to anyone for free, or even for a normal amount of money. But no publisher is going to because it’s not profitable. That’s fine, they don’t have to, but that fact undermines any argument that a volunteer who does this archival work is somehow acting immorally.
Indeed, the Ryukyuans were divided into a whole kingdom with its own head of state and foreign policy, which didn’t become “part of Japan” until the late 19th century. Hokkaido was “acquired” in the 1860s, along with its indigenous people. The dates and situations closely parallel Hawaii and Alaska. To say that they are Japanese because the Japanese government decided so is to ignore historical facts in favor of ideology.
An example where I’m from is train station escalators. There is an unwritten social rule that you stand on the left, and let anyone who is in a hurry walk down on the right. This benefits the individuals because if you’re in a hurry you can get through faster, and if you’re not you don’t care. But the rail company has constant announcements telling people not to do this, and to stand on both sides of the escalator, because a full escalator clears the platform much faster.
These announcements are largely ignored. No individual cares about clearing the platform, even though it is the best thing for the rail network as a whole (crowded platforms cause delays). I would also argue that the needs of the few people running to get to work are more important than improving network efficiency. But the job of the very intelligent, well informed boffins who make the announcements is to make the trains run on time, so the announcements continue.
In this case too, I think the FAA have a different set of priorities to the passengers, and they really don’t care about your medicine. Probably if there is an emergency they will send an employee back into the plane to grab your bag, as a one-off exception. If they’re too slow and you die, too bad—-should have had extra medicine in your shoe.
Policy is created to achieve institutional goals; individual needs are an afterthought at best.
Kii: Next question, again regarding generative AI. I would like to ask from the two perspectives of copyright protection and educational use. [...] First, can we understand that Japanese law permits the use of works for information analysis, both for non-commercial and commercial purposes, and acts other than copying, and using content that was uploaded illegally?
Nagaoka: Use for non-commercial information analysis is permitted under Article 30-4 of the copyright act, provided that the purpose is not the enjoyment of the ideas and emotions expressed in the copyrighted work.
Kii: Minister, I asked about four aspects of use for information analysis: non-commercial use, commercial use, acts other than copying, and illegally uploaded content. Please address the other three.
Nagaoka: Use for commercial purposes is permitted under Article 30-4 of the copyright act, provided that the purpose is not the enjoyment of the ideas and emotions expressed in the copyrighted work, because that Article does not distinguish between information analysis for commercial or non-commercial purposes.
Regarding copying, Article 30-4 of the Copyright Act does not distinguish based on the method of use, so use by means other than copying is permitted provided that the criteria are met.
[...] Regarding content obtained from piracy sites and the like, [...] illegal uploading itself is infringement of copyright, and is subject to a damage claim, petition for injunction, or criminal punishment. However, it is not practically feasible to identify whether any particular work in a large collection obtained from the internet is copyrighted or not, so making this a criterion for information analysis would make it difficult to use information analysis for Big Data.
In addition, as the use of a work for information analysis is not use for the purpose of enjoyment of the ideas or emotions expressed in the work, and even if [it were used in that manner] it would not overlap with the original market for the use of the work, so it is not considered to harm the interests of the copyright holder that are protected by the Copyright Act.
As such, Article 30-4 of the Copyright Act does not have the legality of the work as a criterion.
Kii: Minister, based on your answer, I think the greatest issue is that there is no protection against use that goes against the intentions of the creator or the copyright holder. I believe that new regulations will be necessary to address this point; will you consider such new regulations?
Nagaoka: Article 30-4 of the Copyright Act provides for use that is not for the purpose of enjoying the ideas or emotions expressed in the work, and applies to acts that are considered not to affect the opportunities to collect revenues from the work, and not to harm the interests of the copyright holder protected by the Copyright Act.
That Article also provides that the use is limited to the extent considered necessary, and it does not apply to cases where the interests of the copyright holder are unduly harmed. [...]
The perfect English abjad would use diacritics to mark vowels and some clever way to identify syllable boundaries (so you can distinguish ideal from idyll). But alas, we’re probably stuck with an alphabetic script forever.
Even among children, where the difference in experience is negligible, some people are able to analyze the input they receive from their eyes or ears in a way that others can’t. My friends who are artists amaze me by reducing a 3D object to a series of deformed polygons, or drawing a perfectly straight line with a pencil, and I amaze them by mimicking accents or memorizing song lyrics on one listen. For both of us, these are things that we’ve always been able to do.
I don’t propose that this barrier is insuperable, but there’s only so many hours in the day. There is also likely to be a hard limit on how good I can get compared to someone with natural ability. Spending 10 years going from 0/10 to 7/10 is a particular kind of commitment to make.
I agree that it’s very strange that professional services fall under 手数料 instead of 報酬, but taxes are weird in every language.
I must have missed the memo on this, but when did “people” become an unacceptable word in corporate communications?
We're talking about memory erasure plus accurate knowledge of the future. The combination is different from memory erasure by itself. Not knowing what parenthood is like, I would choose to become a parent - I know this because that's what actually happened. Accurate knowledge of the future would not change that decision, for the reasons I gave.
>You would tell your past self that you would be less happy, but you would be able to convince him to have a kid regardless as if he could understand your reasoning through you simply communicating vocally to him. My question to you is why didn't you try communicating this knowledge to me?
- I'm not convincing him, I'm merely conveying information. I have nothing to gain or lose, and I already know what he's going to do absent the information.
- He could understand my reasoning because he's me, I know everything about him, and he trusts me implicitly because I have nothing to gain by deceiving him.
- I can't trust you to convey my thinking accurately because you are biased by your own worldview, as am I. He can't trust you either. Therefore any information you give him would be imperfect, tainted by the impossibility of communication between different people. My point is that only that kind of imperfect information might change his behaviour.
>your words would not convince me to have a kid if the result of everything you said meant that I would be significantly unhappier.
Who said anything about convincing you? Past me is already inclined to have a child, whereas you appear to be quite against it. Moreover, it would be very irresponsible of me to convince you to act against your own self-interest. But I will attempt it...
Some axioms:
1. A quiet, uneventful, comfortable life with amiable companionship is the epitome of happiness.
2. Happiness is not the only measure on which the quality of a life can be judged.
3. It is possible for two equally logical processes with different sets of priorities to arrive at contrary conclusions.
Say that tonight, Mephistopheles appears in your room and offers you the chance to travel throughout space and time and learn all the secrets of the universe. Being all-knowing, he also tells you with undeniable authority that saying yes will make you somewhat less happy than saying no. What would you say? I would say yes without question. My curiosity is more important than my happiness.
Say that tonight, Beelzebub appears in your room and offers to take 50 points off your IQ in exchange for serene ignorance of all that goes on around you. You will live out the remainder of your life in physical comfort and absolute, beatific bliss in a centre for the severely disabled. What would you say? I would say no, without question. My ability to perceive the world is more important than my happiness.
I use the metaphors of knowledge and curiosity because I expect they will appeal to your sensibilities. The set of priorities that led me to becoming a parent is unique to me, and I doubt you would find it convincing, so I will not spend time typing it out. But perhaps the metaphor will open your mind to the idea that happy is not always the best thing you can be.