TechTakes

Habsburgs are good, actually: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41497419

Taylor Swift is on the side of humans* in the battle against the AIs (instagram).

Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.

I'm sure everyone remembers what this is referring to, y'know with the rest of the US election being so low-key and boring, but just in case here's an article with screenshots (Guardian).

Anyway I'm not here to talk politics. SwiftOnSecurity (spoiler: probably not actually Taylor Swift) thinks Taylor Swift will be a "cultural linchpin" against deepfakes.

As I've said before, Taylor Swift may be the cultural lynchpin for addressing abusive AI imitation and I think this was her personal opening salvo. Taylor Swift was previously driven to political advocacy partly by right-wing memes of her aping Hilter on genetic purity. I think she takes INCREDIBLE personal exception to herself being used as a puppet and this directly aligns with it. Directly addressed to political leaders.

Indeed that Donald Trump post isn't the first time she's been targeted. There was Deepfake Swift Porn in January that prompted Microsoft to add more safeguards**. A scam involving fake Le Creuset cookware (nytimes), and on a lighter note: fake Taylor Swift teaching Math on TikTok (Petapixel, whatever the heck a petapixel is).

The January incident prompted some legislatures to introduce the No AI Fraud Act, though looking at it it looks like it hasn't made it far through congress.

* Maybe not on the side of humans against climate change. With the private jet and all. God the US needs trains then at least all the celebrities could ride in luxurious rail cars like the olden days.

** Not sure about Microsoft but these safeguards aren't effective in general, I found a subreddit of people sharing AI image generator prompt tips to get around filters and it was pretty disturbing. But that's another story.

other-other-other-other scott tweeted again. apologies, it's slightly US-pol

it's a doozy:

spoiler of the image too, just in case

as a reminder, this is the same guy that's so keen on thinking the llm can hypnotize him into orgasm

Saw this gem of a plaintive plea from a promptfan:

can’t you just train a LLM to only output “sorry, I can’t answer your question”?

The New Yorker gamely tries to find some merit, any at all in the writings of Dimes Square darling Honor Levy. For example:

In the story “Little Lock,” which portrays the emotional toll of having to always make these calculations, the narrator introduces herself as a “brat” and confesses that she can’t resist spilling her secrets, which she defines as “my most shameful thoughts,” and also as “sacred and special.”

I'm really scraping the bottom of the barrel for extremely online ways to express the dull thud of banality here. "So profound, very wow"? "You mean it's all shit? —Always has been."

She mixes provocation with needy propitiation

Right-click thesaurus to the rescue!

But the narrator’s shameful thoughts, which are supposed to set her apart, feel painfully ordinary. The story, like many of Levy’s stories, is too hermetically sealed in its own self-absorption to understand when it is expressing a universal experience. Elsewhere, the book’s solipsism renders it unintelligible, overly delighted by the music of its own style—the drama of its own specialness—and unable to provide needed context.

So, it's bad. Are you incapable of admitting when something is just bad?

Basilisks commuting

https://xcancel.com/equine__dentist/status/1832568341740851266

saw this ridiculous shit on the side of a jag on the highway a little bit ago

best guess is rental-contract jag by a hustler, but the half-hearted AI non-mention is why I thought to post it here. we're rapidly evolving in the grift cycle!