Society is galloping toward destruction in so many ways that it’s difficult to keep track. I think this is objectively true. And yet, I understand that exaggerated perceptions of collective doom are common among people who are growing older and reckoning with their own mortality.
An individual death isn’t the end of the world, but for that individual, it is, at least as far as we can know. So it’s understandable if folks falsely conflate their own decline with civilization’s death throes. But what if they’re right? I mean, at some point, old farts who are sure the world is going to hell in a handbasket will age into that tendency when the world really is going to hell in a handbasket.
Anyhoo, cloud-shouting and and lawn vacation demands aside, here’s an alarming report from 404 that suggests things might really be about to get a whole lot worse for humanity, which will have AI crammed down its throat whether it wants it or not (sunk costs, you know):
Microsoft Study Finds AI Makes Human Cognition “Atrophied and Unprepared”
A new paper from researchers at Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University finds that as humans increasingly rely on generative AI in their work, they use less critical thinking, which can “result in the deterioration of cognitive faculties that ought to be preserved.”
“[A] key irony of automation is that by mechanising routine tasks and leaving exception-handling to the human user, you deprive the user of the routine opportunities to practice their judgement and strengthen their cognitive musculature, leaving them atrophied and unprepared when the exceptions do arise,” the researchers wrote.
In short, AI will make us dumber.
Maybe in that way, it will finish the work the internet started when connectivity and access to the whole of human knowledge turned us into the proverbial infinite number of typing monkeys randomly tapping on keys. Only instead of producing the complete works of Shakespeare, we monkeys somehow ended up creating a world with Donald Fucking Trump as ceremonial president of a nuclear-armed kleptocracy managed by frog-faced billionaires who monetize our eyeballs via digital rage bait.
Friends, I do not have any answers. But while watching my country sleepwalk towards fascism over the past decade or so, I’ve often been reminded of the insomnia plague described by novelist Gabriel García Márquez in “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” When the insomnia plague takes hold in the fictional village of Macondo, the isolated inhabitants enjoy it initially — sleep is such a waste of time!
But they start slowly losing their minds due to lack of sleep, forgetting the names and functions of everyday things like clocks, chairs and tables, dining utensils, cows, etc. So they frantically affix labels to objects, including animals: “This is the cow. She must be milked every morning so that she will produce milk, and the milk must be boiled in order to be mixed with coffee to make coffee and milk.”
In the novel, the villagers are saved from the logical progression of the disease (what is milk? what is coffee?) by the return of the nomadic wise man Melquiades. He brings a cure that allows the villagers to sleep and then wake up with their minds intact. In this way, residents of Macondo rejoin history instead of devolving into wordless, solitary idiocy.
I don’t think Melquiades is coming to save us. I think I need a nap.
Open thread.
War for Ukraine Day 1,082: More Drone Swarms Over Northern Ukraine
Shalimar
That’s scary. The majority of Americans don’t use any critical thinking already.
Rose Judson
“Ceremonial president of a nuclear-armed kleptocracy managed by frog-faced billionaires who monetize our eyeballs via digital rage bait” is some fine, if depressing, writing.
I compare the reaction of our media and political establishment to the current situation with South Korean national assembly members climbing fences and shoving soldiers and I despair.
A friend in PA asked me yesterday if the press over here is mocking the US. Nope. Whistling past the graveyard for the most part, just like the US press and the financial markets.
Baud
I’ll worry when AI can write as good as BC.
David_C
It’s like being on an island of sanity, but having to lay low for professional reasons. We are about to tank our entire biomedical research infrastructure. Areas where scientists and clinicians live will be hit the soonest, but the long-term consequences will be even worse.
The UK did the same thing under Thatcher and the US benefitted from the brain drain. And to think I’ve spent 45 years doing this stuff.
Yeah – doing the insomnia experiment on my own.
ETA: I’m grateful for the perspectives of Betty, Anne, and Rose over the last couple days.
VFX Lurker
Ditto.
David_C
I use AI in personal and work settings, but mostly for proofreading or summaries. For me, it’s a matter of saving time or getting details from scientific papers that are over my head (I don’t want to learn quantum mechanics again). I’m too old and have too much experience to have a computer come back with ideas that I know are not feasible or legal.
I had a nice session with ChatGPT analyzing some related genealogical details and having it come up with a decent set of possibilities. Yes, I did fall for the praise and positive feedback (“Good find! That’s really helpful!”).
Rose Judson
@David_C:
I’m sorry you’re on the sharp end of this.
It remains to be seen whether the UK will mobilize itself to take advantage of this situation. Scientists and commentators have been yelling for Starmer to say something since the federal freeze was announced. I hope he does, too, but I’m also cognizant that, you know, it has only been three weeks.
Plus, UK-based higher ed, where a lot of research is based, is in pretty dire straits financially following Brexit and almost a generation of Tory austerity. Russell Group universities may have enough resources to make room for scholars from the US, but there aren’t that many of them.
Baud
@David_C:
Excellent comment! Keep up the good work.
Chetan Murthy
I remember long ago reading a Vanity Fair (?) article by William Langewiesche (this one, I think: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/10/air-france-flight-447-crash?srsltid=AfmBOorUqyV7JXW5xFosfn0oeImjjbzo-6md4M67NM-2XRxfV-ibZmFn ) where he made a similar point. He argued that the research shows that when pilots use autopilot for the routine, mundane tasks, they lose the “muscle memory” (loosely speaking) that allows them to function properly in an emergency. And that that produces more air crashes.
In addition to what BC points out about mental fitness, the relevance to driving cars should be obvious.
Baud
Somewhat related. Since I’ve spent much of my life typing, I now find it harder to actually write down my thoughts by hand.
hells littlest angel
So the intelligence is artificial, but the stupidity is all too real.
David_C
@Baud: Thanks. It’s not been an easy 3+ months.
And I have to add David’s excellent post on indirect rates. I live this stuff every day and get tons of training in federal acquisitions and appropriations law. The people coming in with sledgehammers have no clue and it takes time to put these behind-the-scenes efforts into perspective.
David_C
@hells littlest angel: My granddaughter, frustrated that her classmates have trouble understanding an 8th grade curriculum: “Why do we worry about artificial intelligence? We should be worried about natural dumbness.”
Baud
@David_C:
Oooh. Nominated.
Baud
Via Reddit, apparently it’s universal.
ewrunning
Trump hath murdered sleep.
narya
@Baud: I still take better notes by hand. I kept a paper calendar and notes when I still worked full time (and now, too), and I found it organized my thoughts better.
eclare
@narya:
I also take better notes by hand. But I have noticed that although I can read my mix of print and cursive, I can’t read anyone else’s.
MagdaInBlack
@Chetan Murthy: Mmhm…weighing in from the collision repair industry: my boss and I feel all the bells and whistle driver assistance safety features on vehicles made today do not make us safer, they make the driver feel as tho they don’t have to pay attention to traffic around them. They loose reaction time. And don’t get me started on the distraction of the touch screen.
(please don’t @ me, i know not ALL drivers/cars =-)
Suzanne
@David_C:
Your granddaughter brings the heat. Wonderful. She’s bang-on.
I will note that this is, paradoxically, the right time to bring back educational focus on the humanities. AI spits out slop content, but it doesn’t make ideas. The fields of philosophy, visual art, literature, and many others have a great deal of relevance right now.
One of the saddest things, for me, about the 21st century is how the U.S. has basically given up a lot of its cultural dominance in the arts, design, architecture, etc. It requires a significant amount of risk-taking, education, public investment, big dreams, etc.
Suzanne
@MagdaInBlack:
I hate this so damn much. I rented a car a couple of weeks ago, and they gave me a small Volvo SUV (model name: some mix of letters and numbers). Trying to get my phone synced, to control the volume, even to change the temperature was really frustrating. I had to pull over into a parking lot.
Industrial designers could tell you all about the joyful, satisfying tactile sensation of really nice knobs and buttons.
prostratedragon
Santo & Johnny
Baud
@Suzanne:
BJ After Dark is either really early or really late.
Suzanne
@Baud: “Uhhhhhh…. dial me in…..”
catclub
@MagdaInBlack: The search term is ‘homeostasis of risk’
The safest driver is one driving a car with a large spike in the steering wheel pointed at their chest.
MagdaInBlack
@Suzanne: I’m told the touch screen controls are less expensive for automakers than the individual knob controls. Guess we ain’t goin’ back.
Betty Cracker
I’m the furthest thing possible from an AI expert, but I have had professional dealings with enthusiastic hype men. I came away with the impression that when applied responsibly to do specific tasks, it can be incredibly useful. But when “responsibly” conflicts with “shareholder value,” the latter wins every time.
The same is true of tech like social media, and it’s largely the same rent-seeking ghouls leading the AI charge, so I don’t have high hopes.
@Suzanne: Regarding ubiquitous AI slop, which we’ll be drowning in soon enough, I read something on Bsky the other day that struck a chord. Paraphrasing: I don’t need AI to create art — I need it to do the goddamn dishes so I can create art.
Baud
@Suzanne:
A natural consequence for a country moving away from liberalism, as we have been for over four decades.
MagdaInBlack
@catclub: HA! =-)
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
That’s actually how rich people view servants.
catclub
@catclub: Aviation safety under Trump has been catastrophically bad. They keep reporting individual events but it is starting to look like a pattern.
Suzanne
@MagdaInBlack: Oh yes, screens are much cheaper to manufacture.
There’s also a cultural preference right now to smoothness and lack of ornamentation. It shows up in every design discipline. Very much the look of our time. I’m bored of it.
Suzanne
@Baud:
Agreed. I think it’s also a function of an aging society. The avant-garde is almost always young people. But, on average, our country has never been this old, and our priorities reflect that. Stability over dynamism.
Raoul Paste
Good content this morning. And ditto on the appreciation for Betty, Anne,and Rose.
eclare
@Suzanne:
Don’t get me started on every bit of a home interior being some shade of greige.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Doesn’t seem as if our society values stability.
NotMax
“Givers of pain and delight.”
– Star Trek
.
Suzanne
@eclare: I am not an interior designer, but I am probably more sick of greige than anyone here. I am, if it’s possible, even more sick of the whitey-white-and-light-wood interior. It works in the Apple Store and is shit pretty much everywhere else.
Residential design, architecture and interior design, is all about nostalgia. Most people would never want to live in a contemporary-looking building. They like the looks — but not the functions — of historical styles. Which is how you end up with “McMansion in Texas suburbs with Greco-Roman columns” and “Ye Olde Early American TV stand”.
MagdaInBlack
@Suzanne: Please let me know when you start to see the pendulum of design swing back the other way, because I’m bored with it too.
Does this include the need to paint everything shades of gray? I’m really bored with that.
eta: nm, last question answered.
Elizabelle
Really good post, Betty C. And you all have had some really good comments, about mortality and design and the misuse of AI.
And three cheers for Betty, Anne,and Rose. Tip of the coffee cup to you, once I get up and make some.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Exactly — the future we were promised in ‘The Jetsons!” But instead of robot servants, we’re getting robot masters deployed by oligarchs to extract yet more cash from our wallets.
Suzanne
@Baud: I think we value stability a lot. Stability or increase of home prices for existing homeowners, maintenance of the built environment as it is, fear of “cultural replacement” and anti-immigration attitudes. MAGA is nothing if not a plea for a perverted form of stability. Of course, stability is a critically important thing — nobody should interpret this as me saying that it is not. But I do think we’ve surrendered some degree of dynamism and creativity as a society.
Suzanne
@MagdaInBlack: So I have taken a career path in architecture that gets me out of aesthetic discussions, and I couldn’t be happier about it. I work on advising “what to build and how it should work and how to build it” and leave the “what it should look like” decisions to others.
I might shove chopsticks in my ears if I have to sit through another meeting about colors or massing.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Then they should turn on Trump at some point. He does not offer stability.
Baud
Via reddit, apparently the ABA took a stand.
Suzanne
@Baud: Trump offers the most important form of stability to his freaks. He promises a return to white patriarchy and keeping Social Security and Medicare and not having to press one for English and not seeing weird trans people outside!
Baud
@Suzanne:
He offers it. He doesn’t bring it. So we’ll see if people who aren’t already us turn on him.
ETA: If I were a tech person, I’d hack every automated phone system and program 1 for Esperanto.
Leto
I’m thinking back to this past summer’s Olympics where they were pushing for viewers to write letters to the athletes via AI. “Let Ai do the writing for you…” I know at my university here, every professor warns against using AI. But they also know it’s a losing battle as 1) AI becomes more advanced and the detectors can’t detect it and 2) more and more of the business sector embraces it, thereby making it’s adoption essentially mandatory. Ofc one of the easiest ways of detecting that students have used AI is 1) the papers are about 80-90% the exact same language and 2) AI doesn’t generate a works cited page.
Just a long way of saying, I agree with what you wrote. Not sure what we can do about it other than turn of our respective AI on our devices. Apples latest update pushes another few gigs worth of AI bullshit onto your device, and automatically turns it on. Finished updating and immediately turned it off. If I could delete it I would.
Baud
I’m just sad I won’t live long enough to enjoy holodecks.
Leto
@Baud: Those have enough fuckups with the safety feature that you’re basically already there with current AI.
Princess
That Nancy Mace rape story is wild. She seems to have gone round the bend. Did she spend too much time listening to the Pelicot trial coverage or is there some truth in it? Sometimes I think that people who come out with extravagant bizarre and recent stories of abuse are in fact dealing with some genuine event in their past they cannot face. Anyway, she’s doomed to disappointment if she thinks her party is game to punish white men who commit assault.
J.
A good friend of my daughter’s studies AI at Yale and has a very good substack about it called The Ethical Reckoner, which I highly recommend.
While I have used Grammarly to help spot errors in my work, I refuse to let AI tools do the thinking or writing for me. It feels like cheating. And I definitely feel that the internet/social media has made us lazier and dumber.
Betsy
“instead of producing the complete works of Shakespeare, we monkeys somehow ended up creating a world with Donald Fucking Trump as ceremonial president of a nuclear-armed kleptocracy managed by frog-faced billionaires who monetize our eyeballs via digital rage bait”
obviously, this needs to be a rotating tag. On heavy rotation.
Spanky
In case it hasn’t already been mentioned, Google Maps has obediently labeled the Gulf of America.
I’ll bet Trump thinks it’s the Golf of America.
J.
@Baud: Though how do you know for sure that Betty isn’t an AI chatbot or been taken over by one?
Baud
@J.:
We can spot our own.
MagdaInBlack
@Suzanne: Sounds like you have chosen the right path =-)
TBone
B.C. this is some of your best work. I managed to not get the usual Seasonal Affective Disorder insomnia this winter through extra light! However, the plague of insomnia has visited this household nevertheless – late night and very early morning kitty care has disrupted every routine in my usually run-like-clockwork household and thrown us off kilter by force of necessity.
But it is worth every sleepless moment. Noah Three Miracles is almost all the way back to his normal, dog-like, affectionate self!
Seeing the look on hubby’s face last after mid night, when Noah climbed up the Lazy Boy chair next to his bed for an hourslong snuggle was PRICELESS. Noah is finally gaining weight and I can’t help bragging about it!
Mortality was in our faces every day since the beginning of December (Josey Wales went first). Hubby has serious heart & vascular health issues. But we are able to laugh in the face of death and cherish EVERY WAKING MOMENT.
Currants
@Baud: YES!! BC I LOVE YOUR WRITING!
different-church-lady
They had to do a study to figure that out?
TBone
@different-church-lady: giggling with aplomb!
MomSense
@Chetan Murthy:
Well now my mom’s refusal to let us use calculators when they were provided at my elementary school seems wise with the benefit of hindsight.
At the time I felt really left out of all the hell and boobies fun.
TBone
Celebrating life no matter what mood music.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tTOcUXDt4z0
different-church-lady
@MagdaInBlack: They’re selling objects that cost 40,000 dollars but they can’t be arsed to put a knob on the radio?
different-church-lady
Right now Douglas Adams is wherever he is, screaming, “I TRIED TO TELL YOU!!!”
TBone
@prostratedragon: LOVE
TBone
@MomSense: hahahaha! And “E G G S”
Elizabelle
AI is yet another way to avoid paying humans for their work.
A value central to tech oligarchs, most oligarchs, and certainly the oligarch-fellating Republican party.
What is happening now is why we have the humanities and liberal arts. To make sense of what out of control engineering and financialization has wrought. And how we might extricate ourselves to the extent possible.
No doubt critical thinking endangers those mentioned in paragraph two.
Liminal Owl
@Baud: And seconded. Though I’d probably change the last word to “stupidity.”
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Maybe the purpose of AI is to find the question whose answer is 42.
MomSense
@MagdaInBlack:
My Instagram feed is full of old houses with beautiful colors and designers who say things like open concept, gray, sterile white kitchens, etc are O U T for 2025. It is this way because Instagram knows I like these accounts and keeps giving them to me.
I painted my living room a deep blue/green shade that makes the woodwork sing. I went light with the upholstery and the room is really sunny so it works and doesn’t feel like a cave.
TBone
@Suzanne: a favorite meme:
Picture:
Face of a machine that looks almost like an old school stereo with equalizer. The male side has one dial knob. It is labeled with a curved arrow for which way to turn it.
The female side has every dial, button, and knob imaginable in a very complicated setup. Some are lighted in different colors. No instructional labeling.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
You want the Universe to vanish and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable?
Rumor has it that’s how we got where we are in the first place.
frosty
@Suzanne: When I bought my Mazda 3 a few (!) years back I got a used 2014. it was the last one with knobs for the sound system, heat, and A/C. The newer ones went to screens.
TBone
@lowtechcyclist: classic!
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
I’m willing to take my chances at this point.
Liminal Owl
Thank you, Betty, for an excellent post.
And a Substack I’ve just discovered, which may be of general interest: The Nerd Reich
HinTN
@eclare: We repainted the interior seven or so years ago and Mrs H, in consultation with the painter, chose shades of gray. She asserted, and it is true, that they would bounce the light. The rooms change throughout the day with the exterior light. If course it doesn’t hurt that every room has windows 90 degrees from each other.
Elizabelle
@Liminal Owl: You jackals come up with the best links and sites. Check out most of them. Thank you.
Liminal Owl
@TBone: Fantastic news! I am so happy for you and Noah!
lowtechcyclist
@frosty:
My 2016 Honda Civic has no screen, just knobs. And no lane assist or any of that other safety crap, thank goodness. My wife’s CR-V has all of that. It beeps at her when she’s pulling into a parking space, because other cars are really close. DUH.
TBone
Yesterday, I attempted to reschedule dental checkup & cleaning due to “family emergency and resultant sleep deprivation.” I was told the hygienist is booked out until June so I said, “Well then. I’ll be there at my noon appointment tomorrow.” Then I received a text reminding me that I could reschedule and to please confirm the appointment I’d confirmed last week via text AND email and via phone call yesterday.
Went down for catnap on the couch but phone rings.
“Can we offer you an early morning appointment tomorrow? Someone cancelled.”
OH HELL NO.
Liminal Owl
@MomSense: Have you ever read the classic Asimov story “The Fun They Had”? I think your teacher might have.
different-church-lady
@MomSense: “ShELL OIL”
Baud
God I wish I could do this.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
I actually like the safety alerts on my car. It does a good job alerting to things when I’m backing out of a space. Sometimes it goes off when it shouldn’t but not so much that it’s annoying.
TBone
@Liminal Owl: we have paradise in our grasp 💙
Matt McIrvin
@different-church-lady: Adams clearly had a real love-hate relationship with new technology: he thought it could be destructive but he was also fascinated by it and was an early adopter of word processing and personal computers. There’s that famous quote from him about how people mostly react to new technologies based on how old they were when they appeared:
Which is neither a message of alarm nor of reassurance.
Automation is always a double-edged sword. Is it giving people more freedom or less? Actually solving a problem or creating the illusion of problems for it to solve, so somebody can make a buck? Suppose it replaces human effort–is it producing better results or just cheaper, and, as Chetan observed, is it eroding skills that you’ll need in a pinch? (I think that with airplane autopilots you can make the case from aviation crash statistics that, properly applied, they actually are better at what they do than a human–but pilots hand-fly takeoffs and landings whenever they can for very good reasons.) Is it doing something nobody really wanted to do, or just something nobody wanted to pay for?
Machine-learning tech has actually been put to good use; but so far I’m not so convinced of the net value of LLMs for most of the things people are trying to use them for, just because the output they produce is not very good, aesthetically or factually. But I’m an old dog by now, way past thirty-five.
TBone
@Baud: I got a calligraphy set with special pens as a child for Christmas. I got sort of good at it. Skill atrophied from lack of use since.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
TBone
@rikyrah: good morning!
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I’ve heard block chain is useful, even though it’s most popular use, crypto, is not.
AI reminds me of that.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Elizabelle
I would love to have the little alert lights on the side mirrors. There is a blind spot on my SUV, and frequently when I look back, I get glare and can’t see well anyway. Makes merging lanes a bit too exciting.
That feature would make me feel much safer.
WRT the constant beeping: would bet a lot of people disable that feature, if they are able to do so. Or ignore it, to their eventual peril.
MomSense
@Liminal Owl:
It had been many years since I read it so thanks for the link.
It was my mom who wouldn’t allow calculators because she thought it would make me lazy and I wouldn’t learn how to use my brain for math tasks. That was always her thing if we did something wrong “use your brain”.
There go two miscreants
I find the fake praise extremely irritating and, well, fake!
Baud
@Elizabelle:
Yes, the side mirror lights are nice.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I haven’t actually heard of a good use of blockchain, honestly. It seems to be a solution in search of a problem. Today’s AI tech actually can do some useful things–but I think to get value out of it you have to understand a bit of how it works and its limitations (it’s “fancy autocorrect”–all it can do is detect patterns and replicate them, and what distinguishes it from previous efforts is just that through sheer brute force it’s getting higher-level patterns). There’s so much cargo-cultish application of it as an oracle, which just seems like a human cognitive malfunction to me.
I remind myself that LLMs basically came out of work in language translation–it’s what you get when you take a modern machine translator, take away the constraint of matching the patterns of a source text in another language and let it run wild. (Stanislaw Lem predicted this. It’s all in Lem, all in Lem, what do they teach them in those schools?) People sometimes complain about machine translation producing crap results but I think it’s mostly been a beneficial technology. We generally understand its limitations and where it is and is not useful.
NotMax
@frosty
On some current models, physical controls are making a small comeback.
Soprano2
@MagdaInBlack: I agree, I find I have to remind myself to look behind my car and not just rely on the backup camera. I think those backup cameras are great, and I’m sure they’ve prevented deaths, but they also make you lazy. The camera doesn’t detect everything, especially if it’s right by your vehicle but off to the side.
Kosh III
For real panic I have regularly checked this site for about 20 years. I used to post an article from it once or twice a month on FB but it did no good. I had hoped we’d be dead and gone before everything went wrong but alas Skynet or worse is coming.
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/
Elizabelle
This post reminds me I would like to volunteer to read with early readers at a nearby elementary school. Fight back by trying to instill a love of reading and literacy. So many of those little kids do not have parents who read to them, and they are starved for the attention. (Found this out when my workplace was organizing volunteering many years back.)
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I thought I read that blockchain could be used to make some tyoes of nformation transfers more efficient. But maybe that never panned out.
Elizabelle
@Kosh III: Good morning, sunshine.
TBone
@Soprano2: hubby almost crushed me to death in a store parking lot backing out of the space because I am so short and he was using the screen where I only momentarily appeared just as he was craning his neck around to look – a split second of my entire life flashing before my eyes and thinking “Isn’t THIS ironic?” I let him have it, the what for! because I was so shocked I couldn’t do anything but yell to be sure I was still alive.
Kay
5 trillion in tax cuts for billionaires and 2 trillion in cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security leaves a 3 trillion dollar hole – so they’re going to make up a number to make it even out.
We go further and further from reality.
lowtechcyclist
@Elizabelle:
The Earth says hello.
Kay
Also- this is exactly the “tax cuts pay for themselves” argument and it has never once worked, and it won’t work this time. But let’s pretend it’s new! Because it’s all fantasy anyway!
NotMax
@Soprano2
In the nearly three years have owned the current vehicle have looked at the backup display on the screen precisely zero times.
Kay
Did media really overdub applause over boos for Trump at the Superbowl or is that a rumor?
I just want to know if we’re full North Korea yet.
TBone
@NotMax: GOOD EYE
TBone
@Kay: overdubbed – there was an audible “not happy” sound from the crowd just before the announcers drowned it out.
Matt McIrvin
@MomSense: Affordable pocket calculators were first appearing when I started learning arithmetic. My attitude was that I didn’t really need to use my brain for arithmetic skills, and I still kind of think that (and I’m still bad at arithmetic). It’s the least interesting part of mathematics. I hated math class until algebra, which was where it started getting interesting.
Of course, computer algebra systems then started appearing. And I actually resisted using them until graduate school when I realized I wasn’t going to get my thesis work done without using them. I was, by normal human standards, pretty good at algebra but not, it turns out, at manipulating page-long equations without making a minus sign error somewhere. (My officemate was–he had a real talent for that, also for making the worst puns imaginable. But he was off in a long statistical tail.)
The thing about these systems is, they’re actually good at producing correct results. Modern “AI” sometimes feels like the world’s most computationally expensive way to get the wrong answer. If you use it in situations where the output absolutely has to be right, without some additional check, there’s a problem.
Leto
@NotMax: I have physical controls, as well as a touch screen and voice control, in my 2023 Accord. Contrast that with the new Jeep Wagoneer e-vehicle that’s coming out… just glass everywhere. Personally, I wouldn’t mind it as I don’t have an aversion to touch screens, but I guess some here would.
Kay
Mayor Adams continues his four year long crime spree today, but immunized against any and all charges He should rob a bank. Why not? The NYTimes would cover it as bold, manly personal revenue generation.
Kay
@TBone:
Wow. I read that German and French tv kept the boos. We’re going to have to call people in other countries to find out what’s going on here.
Elizabelle
@NotMax: I keep my screen display dark — do not want the distraction — but do appreciate the backup camera, as an aid to looking first.
The new vehicles with the backup trajectory indicated — very, very nice. Had been wondering why most of my neighbors’ skills backing into a parking space were so far superior to my own!
Last: I think we olds got better defensive driving training than is out there today.
Agree with Magda at comment 19. Too much: let the car do it. I watch drivers fly by, and wonder if they ever envision that they could get into a high speed crash.
TBone
@Kay: good plan! That’s crucial.
Oh and an obligatory FUCK FOX SNEWS.
ETA Last night I was watching BBC for a few and at an arena somewhere in the UK or Australia the announcers gave a shout out to Rupert fucking Murcock. He was looking frail.
BLECH
(I decided to enhance that typo instead of correct it.)
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: “Instead of Reagan’s old flim-flam, they’re arguing that” [description of Reagan’s old flim-flam]
Leto
@Kay: I don’t know if “media” did some type of Fox/NK overdubbing, but here’s a fans recording. Sound icon bottom right of gif. Also did everyone hear about Man Baby Kid Rock storming off the stage because people weren’t clapping for him? Just the most fragile snowflakes.
artem1s
not having art or music or literature or foreign languages in our classrooms has already made us dumber. they all train the mind to understand and work with abstract concepts. working with our hands; kinetic learning is also crucial to understanding how things work. We’ve been dumbing down the population for half a dozen decades at least. AI is just the latest iteration of making people not able to distinguish reason from magical thinking.
Starfish (she/her)
@David_C: AI infrastructure uses a lot of water and power so sometimes some of us wonder if we are contributing to climate change by being polite to the machine.
Kay
Democratic governors think DC Democrats aren’t being aggressive enough re: Trump.
I think there’s valid points on both sides of this divide, but I don’t think we can dismiss governors as malcontents or Leftists or whatever. There’s a genuine disagreement in the Party on how to respond to Trump.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Wow. Let’s all keep an ear/eye out for that.
Problem being: a lot of morons will just believe what they see the first time, or question any correction as the actual manipulated image/sound.
Brave New World.
eclare
@Elizabelle:
My blind spot alert lights on my side mirrors are very useful.
TBone
@Matt McIrvin: ourobouros
Kay
I love how AI proponents call it “hallucinations” when their product doesn’t work. I hope like hell everyone else doesn’t adopt this bullshit excuse for failures.
raven
Snow In San Anselmo
The pancake house is always crowded
Open 24 hours of every day
And if you suffer from insomnia
You can speed your time away
Trivia Man
This is what science fiction has tried to warn us about for about 90 years. What if… then examine a world that arises under those speculative circumstances.
I recall one that described humanity after they forgot what math was. Someone, somehow, discovers how to add and subtract, multiply and divide by hand. Everyone is astonished at his interest. But why? The computer just gives us the answer! We dont need to know how it gets it.
FDRLincoln
I’m glad I’m old. I’m glad my older son (age 27) distrusts over-reliance on tech and only reads paper books. We raised him well.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Thank you for the WSJ links. Easy to avoid the paywall with archive.is
And: they are competing with the FTF Vichy Times, I see. Headline is:
Ah yes. Dems in a helpless pile before the uberhuman man of action. Carry on.
TBone
@Leto: oh thank you I love that very much. Philly represent!
Professor Bigfoot
@Chetan Murthy: Any skill won can also be lost.
I have proven this to myself with shooting– I went back to the range for the first time in over a year and while I COULD hit the side of a barn…
Starfish (she/her)
@Chetan Murthy: I just finished reading a book about AI by Joy Buolamwini. The link is to an art exhibit called “AI: Ain’t I a Woman?” And the AIs think that a lot of black women are men. One of the questions she was asking in her book was “Can these AI systems detect brown people (or is that self-driving car going to run over you?)” With Elon Musk in power, I am deeply concerned about this problem. The book is called Unmasking AI. It is about a flawed face detection system that could not detect Joy’s face.
Bupalos
@Betty Cracker: In broad strokes I think we’re living through a world-historical phenomenon comparable to the Industrial Revolution. We have a hard time appreciating or understanding the power and destabilization of this kind of transformation, reaching all the way from war and national government down to every body and mind. There’s good, bad, and strange, but nothing fails to radically transform. Full fathoms five stuff.
I recently went through a series on pre-industrial Welsh farm life. It focused on all the repetitive tasks and skills that went into endless days of labor for practically everyone, with disease and starvation always hovering. Though it didn’t show on the screen for obvious reasons, I thought about how much time was spent in silence and darkness, in communion with fear and solitary imagination. Just utterly different life leading to utterly different humans. In many ways we’re certainly atrophied from them physically and mentally. The challenge of plenty, paradox of choice, the reality that the things we do not appreciate functionally disappear.
And in many ways they are beings from a drab nightmare.
Elizabelle
@eclare: I want!
Next vehicle, for sure.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Mr DAW got a Prius hybrid last year for various reasons including the safety features. But there are no knobs or button on the screen. I have no intention of ever driving it.
sentient ai from the future
@There go two miscreants: you’re clearly not the target audience then
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Hope springs eternal at the WSJ “this time, trickle down will work!”
It didn’t work the last time they did massive tax cuts for billionaires, which was 6 years ago. Why would it work now? Because they added “dehumanizing trans people” and “not hiring women and Black people” ?
That must be the secret math sauce. Shitting on people will turn a -3 into a zero.
Elizabelle
@Bupalos:
That’s a really good comment. Agree.
But I think we, at least, do recognize — with alarm — a lot of the destabilization others want to blithely ignore.
We be digital era Luddites.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
We are in disarray though. There’s a genuine split on how to move forward and it doesn’t break along ideological lines. Moderates in the Party are angry at Jasmine Crockett for focusing on social issues. State level Democrats think DC Democrats are timid and rudderless. These things are real and pretending they’re not doesn’t make them go away.
It’s healthy too. We’re losing. We have to look at why.
cmorenc
@David_C:
Was watching an episode of the excellent science YouTube Channel Versatasium about exciting recent advances in the ability to correctly model complex protein structures that has an extremely broad, diverse range of potential applications – an example of very constructive application of the intersection of AI and biomedical research. I was simultaneously thrilled and nauseously repelled by what Trump and his minions are mindlessly, ignorantly, recklessly destroying. You’d think the techbro geniuses behind Trump (especially Thiel) would recognize what an enormous catastrophe it is to lump biomedical research and science in with destroying the various purported arms of the liberal welfare state, and try to stage an intervention.
You’d think Musk himself should recognize the distinction, but nooo – Musk is too high on his uber-Fascist power trip right now, and suffers from a severe case of “smartest man in the world” syndrome, where folks think they are so smart and know so much that they cannot recognize their own limits and ignorance, nor respect others to help fill those gaps. Even if Musk suddenly had an epiphany about the wanton destruction of valuable science and research, it’s questionable that he could influence Trump, who’s also an impenetrably convinced know-it-all, high on the biggest power trip of all.
Leto
@Professor Bigfoot: shooting is a skill that you have to practice constantly. When I was assigned to some special forces units, I went from the annual shooting schedule that the Air Force dictates to monthly. That was for basic muscle memory, along with moving into small unit tactics with coordinated movements. It’s why I laugh when people talk about trusting cops to use their weapons because their range time is… not that much. It’s a perishable skill.
Bupalos
@Kay: He’ll be out of office within the year and state charges will be forthcoming.
Trivia Man
@Chetan Murthy: The movie Wall-E explores this. Everyone rides in power chairs and the ship serves all their needs. They are all fat and barely mobile so if they need to walk – they can’t.
I make it a point to take stairs whenever i can. Elevator is faster (maybe! Even at my age i can vest an elevator to the third floor sometimes) but i want to keep my body busy as long as i can. Going up i usually walk if it is 1-3 flights. Maybe more if i gave time and it is a nice stairwell. Down i try for anything below about 6. My personal record was about 65 down in a chicago hotel several times. I planned to try up at least once but it was too confusing and i didn’t want to get lost.
Use it or lose it!
Baud
@Bupalos:
Agree.
Kay
@Bupalos:
Yeah, right.
Forthcoming. You let me know.
NotMax
@Leto
Sometimes I listen to music stored on a USB when driving. Unless the vehicle (’22 model year) is completely stopped, the touchscreen doesn’t permit browsing through the list of music. But the right hand knob beneath it (the one historically for switching through radio stations) does allow for scrolling up and down the various titles while moving. Discovered this totally by accident – it is mentioned nowhere in the vehicle’s manual.
The left hand knob beneath the touchscreen still turns audio on/off and controls volume. Heating/cooling and fan speed controls are also knobs.
The transmission (PRNDL) control is also a knob, sitting flat on the center console between the seats. That took some getting used to.
raven
@Leto : You mean what learned 50 years ago isn’t. enough?
Kay
@Elizabelle:
It’s fine to think it just needs tweaks or the problem is turnout or one or another group of disloyal voters – but that’s only one side of the argument and it is a real argument. It isn’t an ideological divide either- plenty of moderates are in the “we need fundamental changes” camp.
NotMax
@Kay
Remember the Paul Ryan budget with the magic asterisk?
Kay
@NotMax:
They’re better at politics than we are though. My whole adult life they have never balanced a budget yet they’re the budget hawks and we’re the spendthrifts.
Bupalos
@TBone: This happened at the Super Bowl as well. The camera found him and announcer thanked him or said something like “he’s the reason we’re here.”
Leto
@NotMax: my car has both Google Play and Apple Play. It’s how I can access both music and gps. I don’t know what the touch screen allows while driving because I don’t mess with it. Controls on the steering wheel, combined with voice control, means I never touch the screen. “Hey Siri, play X”; otherwise I just ask Avalune to put something together and off we go. Majority of the time I’m listening to the radio. I usually spend about 20 mins in the car, 2-3 times per week, so it’s not like I’m really jonesing for something.
Leto
@raven: I mean, you never forget how to ride a bike so…
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Agree there are valid points made by both camps. I follow an activist on bsky who was complaining about E Warren getting a photo-op at the CFPB. Well duh — drawing cameras is important, and it’s something senators in the minority can do.
But the knee-jerk rush to blame progressives and/or left activists for everything is counterproductive too. Someone on bsky called it the Schrödinger’s progressives paradox — simultaneously too small/fringe to be worthy of inclusion in party policy discussions and yet large enough to tank every Democrat who loses an election.
Matt McIrvin
@cmorenc: I think they know what they’re doing–they’ve gotten what they need out of basic research, and now they can destroy the system to keep any competition from arising. It’s the principle of pulling the ladder up behind you.
After them, the deluge.
Another Scott
@Chetan Murthy:
Muscle Memory is a really, really important thing. It’s one of the hallmarks of experience and expertise. It’s how machinists and assembly line workers and plumbers and surgeons can do their jobs without breaking and destroying stuff and killing people.
Fake expertise of LLMs and Generative AI is fake*. It doesn’t help actual human people become experts, it doesn’t wire their brains to think better and more deeply, it doesn’t develop muscle memory. It’s a crutch.
It’s a fancy, modern way of cribbing off your classmate. It’s an automated customer service line that runs distraction to keep you from talking to a human while draining your bank account and refusing to honor your warranty.
Plus, it’s burning up the planet.
:-/
Grr…
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
==
* – There’s a place for carefully constructed and carefully trained expert systems that flag anomalies on X-rays and the like. As an adjunct for real expert humans.
Dorothy A. Winsor
From David Ho, climate scientist at the University of Hawaii
raven
@Leto: I haven’t fired a weapon in 10 years and it was 20 years before that. I was surprised at my accuracy but I do know that you are correct.
MagdaInBlack
@MomSense: Thank god for the change. I’m sure your living room looks wonderful!
Matt McIrvin
(But… there’s also been a strain for decades in engineering and software culture of insisting that science has become corrupted by left-wing politics, and engineering no longer needs it at all and can go on its own. It’s associated with a lot of outright crankery: young-Earth creationism and/or “intelligent design”, climate denialism, neo-Velikovskianism, perpetual motion machines and similar devices, relativity denialism etc. And more recently alt-medicine.)
Another Scott
@Baud: I think we should start a pool on what month 47 will be impeached again by the House. It has to be coming, as improbable as it seems at the moment. (Assuming he lives that long, of course.)
I’ll take February 2027.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
It would be fine if it were true but it’s not. There are as many moderates who are unhappy with Democrats as there are progressives who are unhappy with Democrats. It just isn’t a real thing to say moderates are loyal and progressives are disloyal. It’s a category error.
Another Scott
@Baud:
Why am I suddenly hearing this song?? (2:46)
Best wishes,
Scott.
Starfish (she/her)
@Bupalos: I have yet to see evidence that the actual technology lives up to the hype.
George
It is sad that even some commenters on a top 10,000 blog like this chirp up in support of AI. I suppose that even heroin has its beneficial uses in small doses, eh? But there’s always a catch. AI puts its hooks into a person and soon enough s/he is rummaging through a dumpster, looking for a half-eaten meal, or standing on street corners begging quarters for an angry fix.
AI is bad. It will destroy creativity and independent thought, as others have noted, replacing them with pure subservience. Short-term benefits will be swallowed by long-term costs.
We (or at least most sane people) are all Melquiades now.
Starfish (she/her)
@Kay: There is a lot of “I want to stick my head in an ostrich hole and believe that Democrats should never be criticized” that goes on here. I am tired of it. It feels like the way Republicans label all Democrats as commies.
Kay
I went on a little trip with my daughter and flying back last night (Miami to Detroit) sat in front of very loud Trumpers whose normal speaking voice is apparently just below shouting. So the man starts playing his laptop – no earphones- and it’s dumbass saying he’s going to mandate plastic straws because it’s essential we destroy the oceans. They were super excited about piling up more single use plastics.
The flight attendant didn’t tell them to listen silently, even though they always tell assholes to do that. I think we’re all exhausted and afraid of setting them off. It’s easier to just let them dominate every space.
Danes have a cultural norm where you have to be quiet on public transportation. It’s a good norm.
Leto
@raven: after my accident, I can’t do half of the standard positions that would be required for basic weapons proficiency. I think about that quite a bit whenever the thought arises on, “Should we maybe get a weapon?” It’s a fleeting thought, but reality hits super fast. And it’s not a, “oh, with age yada yada yada,” no it’s a “I cannot physically get into those basic positions.” My body was reshaped and here’s the new reality. Guess I just need to figure out how to get a ma deuce, or other crew serve weapon.
Kay
@Starfish (she/her):
All I’m saying is if Democratic governors met with Schumer, and they did, then it’s real and we shouldn’t just dismiss it as disloyalty or media bias. The challenge for us- all of us – in this era where everyone is lying (including dubbing out boos for Dear Leader) is to cling to what’s real. The divide is real.
Starfish (she/her)
@Betty Cracker: Oh, I really like that.
It really explains how the Muslims in Dearborn, MI are being treated well. They weren’t worth the time for Harris to visit, but they are big enough to blame for why Democrats lost.
raven
@Leto: I know what you mean, my ancient ass could get in the prone position but I might not ever be able to get back up!
Kay
My husband said when I was giving him live text updates on the loudmouth Trumpers “what adult uses straws anyway? These people all drink from straws?”
lol
He used to like…people :)
Leto
@raven: that’s one I still have to practice. Per the actuarial tables, I still have about 40 years left. Ugh.
TBone
@Bupalos: I bet that is exactly what I saw on BBC and got confused because sleep deprived!
Kay
@George:
I’m with you. I hate it. My nurse practitioner told me health care people Google all the time for reminders and the AI stuff is wrong half the time. They used to get images and text from medical textbooks with a specific prompt. Now they get a slush of error ridden AI. Great! Just super.
Kristine
@Suzanne:
One of the reasons I’ll be hanging on to my 2002 Forester for as long as I can. I hate those touchscreens.
Bupalos
@Starfish (she/her): when I say we’re living through a revolution, I mean computer/it , a now 50 year old phenomenon maturing into it’s latter stages where it’s social effects drop like bombs. Or drone swarms. More every day. As we begin to forget that what we are doing right now- this digital form of socializing and discussion which replaced others- has already changed us. How we communicate. How we think. How we think of others and about life.
For better and worse.
MomSense
@MagdaInBlack:
Except for the ceiling. Back in my youth I tackled some crazy plastering projects between hand hewn beams on the ceilings in my old farmhouse but 30 years later my neck is not up to that task. When the builder rips out the kitchen he will also put Sheetrock over the old, crumbling ceiling. Then I’ll paint it
TerryC
In 1979 the University of Michigan ROTC opened its fall Turkey Shoot – for the first and last time – to teams from across campus, not just ROTC.
I put together a law school team that demolished everyone else for first place.
We were all veterans.
Starfish (she/her)
@Bupalos: Please do not explain to me a technology that I have worked with as if I know nothing about it.
Bupalos
@Starfish (she/her): I think this is a pretty good example of what I’m talking about. Like when in history did total strangers just meet everyday in a curated public square and just start talking past one another while getting vaguely aggrieved? It’s a brave new world.
Starfish (she/her)
@Bupalos: Did we approach this conversation with a curiosity of what the other person might know before attempting to explain stuff?
tobie
@Kay: I’m not sure split or division in the party is the right phrase. I’m more inclined to say we don’t have a concerted strategy. Dems don’t have a leader to rally the base so various talented people (like Crockett) are focusing on particular issues and strategies. I don’t know who can fill this void. I don’t want a Führer and I don’t think that works in a party composed of ideologically diverse constituencies but some common principles and common actions are needed in the face of a monolithic Republican party.
Chris Johnson
@Kay: Note that the NYT’s job IS ALSO to insist that society has collapsed and America is doomed and doubtless will immediately have a civil war, because the NYT is working for the people who are trying to make that directly happen.
That’s not the same as the NYT working for Trump or trying to make him look like the greatest thing. That was their job while he was still not elected. Now that they gave him power their job is to establish as conclusively as possible that he’s broken America forever (possibly while still supporting him?)
It doesn’t have to make sense when they are simply an enemy with that as their job to do. I have already seen stuff attributed to the NYT that is laying the grounds for insisting that everything is ruined now.
The ruining is the point, and they can be lying about this too. Mind that you don’t let the NYT be the authority on doomering. They may be executing a pivot to doom, on purpose, to help that doom occur (or at least claim it’s worked).
PJ
@Kay:
Since the pandemic, many more people listen to music or play games or watch videos on the subway using the phone or tablet speaker instead of headphones or earbuds. The smokers are just as bad. Too many people just don’t give a shit about their fellow humans. Being anti-social is a point of pride for them.
PJ
@Bupalos:
There is no “better.”
Chris Johnson
@Kristine: My 2014 Impreza is the literal last wave of old school. No touchscreen, primitive radio/CD/USB, no sensor array, it doesn’t even have cruise control.
Maybe one day it’ll be worth a bunch because it’s so relentlessly old school :)
Quinerly
@narya: @eclare:
I organize my thoughts better when writing/taking notes by hand. Have to have a paper calendar to map out my days/plans. I’m a pretty good typist on a full keyboard going back to taking an actual typing class in Jr HS around 1976. I suck at dealing with tiny keyboards and my thoughts get tangled up using one finger. Wonder if this is an age thing? Possibly the era some of us came thru?
And, I’m very old school. At the height of my practice and when I was the most productive was back in the “dictaphone” days with at least full time secretary and at least one paralegal transcribing. My brain has always been geared more towards spoken vs written. Worked better for all those years of being in court more than being behind a desk.
Chris
@Suzanne:
A ton of the appeal of conservatism is taking the basic fact that we do, in fact, need some kind of stability, and then completely misinterpreting what that stability is and where it comes from.
People need some stability in their economic circumstances; if they’re going to build a life, they to be assured of a reasonably predictable source of income, a reasonably stable cost of living, and, when the unexpected disrupts one or both of these things, some kind of societal intervention that’s going to cushion the blow and help them cope with it. They also need some assurance that there are people in their lives who are always going to be there to help them get through life’s ups and downs. In other words, they need material stability and they need emotional stability.
Too many people, especially once you get to politics, can’t tell the difference between stability and conformity. They assume stability means things like “when I was a kid, men married women and women married men.” “When I was a kid, there were two genders, and you couldn’t swap them either.” “When I was a kid, people wore suits everywhere in public and everybody went to church on Sundays.” “When I was a kid, I didn’t have to press one for English!” This, at least among the dumber and least malignant of people who are drawn to conservatives, is the appeal. They sense on some level that they need stability, but they think what that means is that the world should always be like (they think) it was when they were children and everything was taken care of, and if only they vote for the people who will wave the most superficial trappings of their childhood in front of them and promise to bring them back, everything will be okay again.
And of course it turns into a vicious cycle, because this means they vote for conservative politicians, and conservatives are capitalists, with all the disruption and instability that implies. And so the harder they vote for the people who promise to stabilize the world and make everything make sense again, the harder their personal lives and stability end up disrupted. But of course they’re not very deep thinkers, so most of them come away thinking that the reason this happened is that the people who promised to bring back their childhood were liberal squishes who didn’t care about bringing their childhood back enough, and so we need to vote for people who are even more determined to bring back their childhood.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
raven
@TerryC: Awesome, remember Mike Landry?
Bill Arnold
@Matt McIrvin:
Decades ago I knew a woman (friend of parents) who wrote romance novels with a word processor, but covered up the screen when she was writing.
That sort of compromise is rooted in self-awareness.
WTFGhost
Newt Gingrich started the “sleepwalk into fascism” in 1992; others would put the date much earlier, but, as of 1994, no Republican would speak ill of a fellow Republican, nor speak well of a “Democrat” politician, because *this* level of hatred fucks with your grammar.
(No, not *has sex* with your Grammar, once Grampar is dead, and she’s been teaching the children how to slide down bannisters a *bit* too enthusiastically… fucks with your *grammar*, your ability to speaks that good english shit your English and Reading teachers wanted you to learn. Totally different concept, because fucking with grammar rarely results in Grammar squealing in delight.)
Kayla Rudbek
@eclare: same here!
Kayla Rudbek
@Leto: how do you go about turning off the AI in iOS?
H-Bob
@WTFGhost: Ronald Reagan (before he became President) said that the Eleventh Commandment was “Thou shalt not speak ill of any Republican”!