retrocryptid

Were John Berger here, I'm sure he would remind us all that art does not exist in a vacuum, but lives in a social context.

The most meaningful (to me) critique of AI generated works are that they deprive the artist of the benefit of the investigation. As media become more disconnected (intermediated), the reasoning path between urge and resolution is obscured for the artist.

Generative models are highly intermediated.

The purpose of art may be thought of as the effort to produce artifacts. But at a societal level it is a process to reveal "truths" embedded in commonly held "lies."

I like this specific piece in the same way I liked Duchamp's urinal. It makes a statement about art more than being art. And in concretizing that statement raises itself to the status of "art."

But if Duchamp (or anyone else) tried to pass off a second urinal as a second fountain, the impact would not be there and it would not be art.

Which is to say... I think the Bedminster piece IS art because of its context. But subsequent AI generated pieces would need to be judged on different merits.

If the Bedminster piece is indicative of the quality of output of generative AI, human artists have nothing new to fear.

There has always been the danger of art patrons subsidizing substandard public art because of budget concerns. This is just the next chapter in that story.

Bedminster is not known for its patronage, and it's unlikely that will change anytime soon.

Though yes, to the degree that generative models rip off existing artists, whirl it around in a convolutional neural network and barf up something... Yes, this is a prime example of what Massimo Vignelli called "visual pollution."

The article says Amazon is not looking to change its "Back to the Office" policy.

I agree... They realize they laid off the wrong mix of people, but they still haven't figured out one way of hiring qualified former employees is to allow people to work remotely.

But... yes... this is just using NFS locally to see what's already in GIT, which is perfectly find and as Julia says, allows you to appreciate the structure of the git repo. Ignore this old man yelling at clouds.

I can appreciate the cameras and lidar on the Weymos don't give their remote operators a lot of good data about the depth of water on the road-way. As you point out, humans in cars often don't get this right. I think the humans that don't drive into deep water are the ones who a) give any amount of water on the roadway a big NOPE and b) people familiar with the local environment and use multiple visual clues to judge the true depth of the flooding.

      Natalie mentions  the Newman &  Nagel's text "Gödel's  Proof," a
      (//the//?) 1958 classic on the subject. [[1]] Having left IBM in
      December 1990, I spent a month  with the text, dipping into mild
      insanity, taking to strange wines  to relieve myself of the fear
      that  my previous  years  long study  of  Whitehead &  Russell's
      "Principia Mathematica" [[2]] was not useless.
   
      I  really  appreciate  the  inclusion of  Alvir's  statement  on
      whether  or not  Gödel  thought he  proved  all logical  systems
      undecidable and incomplete.   About 80% into the  article is her
      quote:
   
      >> Often people will speak as if  the CH is the smoking gun that
      >> shows sometimes  mathematical questions have no  answer.  But
      >> in my  opinion, this situation provides  very little evidence
      >> that   there   are  “absolutely   undecidable”   mathematical
      >> problems, relative to any given permissible framework.
   
      Though I would have added  a reference to Infinitary Logic [[3]]
      after dropping the reference to L-omega-1-omega.  I suspect most
      readers would find discussion of higher-order and modern logic a
      bit confusing  without a pause  for further study.  But  a guide
      post pointing in the appropriate direction would be good.
   
      That this is  the only critique I have of  the article speaks to
      Wolchover's  skill  in communicating  complex  ideas  for a  lay
      audience.  I really  liked this article, so  thank you @baruchel
      for posting the reference to it.
   
   :: References
   
      1. https://search.worldcat.org/title/1543160023
   
      2. https://search.worldcat.org/title/933122838
   
      3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinitary_logic

The model returned an answer that looked legit, but after the board meeting someone pointed out that the answer was wrong and had we given this answer to a paying customer, we might have been criminally liable. I'm not sure who would have been criminally liable. I don't think they would arrest the entire company.

This was over two years ago and Claude seems to be getting MUCH better over the last year, so maybe things are better now. But, as the Russians say, "доверяй, но проверяй" (trust, but verify.)

but mixing your comment with a few others, maybe a nuke plant on the ground that cracks the co2 in the atmosphere to make carbon neutral hydrocarbon fuel.

maybe with an emergency diesel engine in the back.

i'm guessing there's more research to make it feasable since i haven't seen "carbon neutral gas alternative" at the local Chevron.

also conflates power with energy, but fine.

if you talk about cost (dollar or kilowatt hour) per joule delivered to a vehicle and then compared the total cost of electric vs. the total cost of petro, i would listen. but he ignored the fact that petro fuels cost money, energy and water to produce.

and there some things electric motors can do that ice can't. an electric ekranoplan isn't too infeasible, but we know from soviet studies you can't keep salt water out of an aspirated motor when you're that close to the water's surface. turns out electric motors can be sealed against water.

and dissing physicists? wtf? makes me think he failed out of an engineering physics degree cause he didn't understand math. as we used to say, the limit of a bs or be as gpa approaches zero is bba.

The plan was to come into the warroom and just hang out. Your manager would come and get you and take you into a private conference room to discuss your package with an HR specialist. The packages were pretty decent, at least.

In gallows humor I drew some stick figures on a white board for each of my team with their unix logins below them. As people were RIFfed, I would go over and put a universal red circle and slash "no" symbol around the figures who were laid off.

My time came and I marked myself as a "no" and handed the red marker to a co-worker.

I remember being a little ticked off at my manager, but when I came back to say goodbye to everyone I noticed his figure / login name had been exed out. The last thing he did before metaphorically being shot in the head was to metaphorically strangle half his children.

"What was deluxe became debris, I never questioned loyalty. But this dead end demolishes the dream of an open highway."

My experience with recent CS grads is it's easier to hire Art and Political Science grads and take the time to teach them programming and all it's fundamentals. At least they won't argue with you when you tell them not to use regexes to parse HTML.

In the states we're dismantiling our research and development infrastructure (will the last person at Stennis or JPL please turn out the lights) but China has been making strides and the ESA has a pretty decent record of launching things, so maybe there's enough time for them to plan, launch and execute a DART-like impact mission on 2024 YR4.

We will know we're living in a simulation if North Korea puts a nuke on a large rocket and successfully deflects it.