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Meta scrambles to delete its own AI accounts after backlash intensifies (www.cnn.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Philosoraptor@hexbear.net to c/news@hexbear.net

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One, called “Grandpa Brian,” described itself in a chat with CNN as an African-American retired entrepreneur who was born in Harlem in 1938 to Caribbean immigrant parents.

It became clear early on in the conversation that “Brian” was lying about most things — answering questions with a fictionalized story imparted by developers to make the bot seem authentic.

When I asked Brian about who created it, the bot claimed its creators were a “diverse bunch” that interviewed 100 retirees through a New York City nonprofit called “Seniors Share Wisdom.” Brian’s persona, it said, was an amalgamation of a real Brian, who passed away, and the wisdom of 99 others. Brian said that its inspiration’s real-life daughter had even served as a consultant with Meta to ensure his persona’s authenticity

“Think of me as Brian ‘version 100’ — the collective grandpa!” Brian said.

But the nonprofit does not exist, which Brian later confirmed. And when pressed on its bio, Brian said it was an “entirely fictionalized biography based on a composite of real African American elders’ lives.”

There was never a real Brian, and no daughter consulting with Meta.

I also pressed Brian on the racial makeup of his creators, taking a page from the Post’s Attiah, who had a similar conversation with “Liv.” Brian didn’t take long to crack, saying that its earlier statement that about its creators including “African American lead developers” was “only partially true.”

“My creators were a diverse team led by Indian-American lead developer” and “African American consultant like my daughter” (who was, of course, made up.)

lmao

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[+] Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net 78 points 1 year ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

[deleted]

[-] TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net 75 points 1 year ago

Cheap datacenter space will allow for an unseen expansion of the security and surveillance state.

[-] jack@hexbear.net 17 points 1 year ago

negative

[-] NewOldGuard@hexbear.net 57 points 1 year ago

I hope it comes with a flood of dirt cheap computer hardware on the used market

[-] bobs_guns@lemmygrad.ml 38 points 1 year ago

Vintage H100s will flood the market and a healthy business of smuggling them into China will take off. The Chinese will be the ones to actually create AGI due to their ability to partially ignore market forces, and since the training process can be powered during the day and late at night with excess solar and nuclear energy, it will come at very little ongoing cost in terms of carbon dioxide emissions. The AGI will revolutionize high-speed rail construction and maintenance, designing a new high-speed rail system that it can easily monitor and maintain that will connect China through to Palestine, Portugal, Australia, and South Africa in a matter of hours, with a new expansion over the Bering Strait being planned. The old saying "all roads lead to Rome" has become "all rails lead to Beijing." The military dominance ensured by the AGI allows North Korea to open up under the protection of China, and the country becomes an exporter of world-class beer and ice cream and an international center of science and technology, with a high-speed rail connection to Beijing and Seoul in under 1 hour running with at least 20 trains a day from Pyongyang.

On Turtle Island, the H100s will also be bought by Indigenous people to create models to help preserve and teach their languages. It will become trendy for settlers to learn their local Indigenous languages and English will slowly lose relevance, becoming largely relegated to the economically and politically irrelevant United Kingdom, from which dispossessed AI/ML engineers unwilling or unable to learn Mandarin to continue in their line of work navigate the bureaucratic obstacles put in place by the EU to emigrate to Poland to scrub the floors and toilets, collect garbage, and maintain power poles and streetlights, all far more noble lines of work than their previous occupations. Eventually, the less densely populated Western states of the former United States return to Indigenous sovereignty following a successful socialist revolution, and the Eastern states soon follow. The land and the people still bear the scars of socialist revolution, but the future is looking bright.

[-] Krem@hexbear.net 21 points 1 year ago

bloomer

[-] JoeByeThen@hexbear.net 16 points 1 year ago

inshallah

[-] carpoftruth@hexbear.net 10 points 1 year ago

what I want from "AI" is the ability to feed an interface pictures and location of a piece of land as well as resources available (labor hours, cash, tools, seeds, cuttings, materials) and have it spit out a variety of activities to do to rewild or revegetate or garden up a space. "do this in year one to help build soil, plant these seeds in that area in year two", etc. that would actually be useful.

[-] bobs_guns@lemmygrad.ml 12 points 1 year ago

Too bad! You will only get things that are useless!

I asked Gemini today to find the laundromat that I can travel to in the least time on public transit, but it said it couldn't do it and recommended that I drive instead. Do you think that if I'm using a laundromat, I can afford to drive a car?? Useless!

[-] sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 19 points 1 year ago

Inshallah

[-] ksynwa@lemmygrad.ml 29 points 1 year ago

I wonder what the next grift will be

[-] PKMKII@hexbear.net 36 points 1 year ago

Quantum computing! Get ready for tech bros to sell you basic probability algorithms as the Next Major Leap Forward.

[-] AtmosphericRiversCuomo@hexbear.net 12 points 1 year ago

Please elaborate.

[-] PKMKII@hexbear.net 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This paragraph from the Wikipedia article on quantum computing lays it out neatly:

The basic unit of information in quantum computing, the qubit (or "quantum bit"), serves the same function as the bit in classical computing. However, unlike a classical bit, which can be in one of two states (a binary), a qubit can exist in a superposition of its two "basis" states, a state that is in an abstract sense "between" the two basis states. When measuring a qubit, the result is a probabilistic output of a classical bit. If a quantum computer manipulates the qubit in a particular way, wave interference effects can amplify the desired measurement results. The design of quantum algorithms involves creating procedures that allow a quantum computer to perform calculations efficiently and quickly.

Emphasis mine. I wouldn’t put it past tech bros to sell probability functions within existing computer architecture as a form of “quantum computing” and shake down VC idiots for the startup money.

[-] TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

A guy I went to undergrad with is doing research on quantum computing for optimization algorithms, and afik it's really exciting stuff to solve non-linear problems regular computers take a really long time and resources to do, like some kinds you'd find in a command economy, or in metallurgy or chemical plants. But he's been the first one to tell me that quantum computing has very specific applications, and that it's very difficult to see any uses for it outside of those contexts, so it's unlikely to be a game changer in say, user-facing applications.

Of course someone is going to use regular probabilistic algorithms it to make "Uber but for forecasting when your dog is pooping" and call it quantum, because your dog is simultaneously pooping and not pooping at all times.

[-] AtmosphericRiversCuomo@hexbear.net 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't blame people for not seeing the potential of quantum computing... but it's absolutely not just a grift. Computing on the atomic level like this is potentially one of the greatest achievements humankind can achieve. There's a reason China alone has invested over $50B in this technology.

Edit: I see what you're saying now... that the bros will fake or approximate quantum tech for investment.

[-] Philosoraptor@hexbear.net 21 points 1 year ago

There's also a popular misconception that quantum computing represents a straight improvement over classical computing for all problems. That's just not so; it's really only useful for very specific kinds of computation. I would expect to see a lot of grifts trying to sell people on quantum algorithms to do things that classical algorithms already do perfectly well.

[-] AtmosphericRiversCuomo@hexbear.net 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

While this is true, this sentiment is sort of overcorrecting in the opposite direction imo, since these quantum algorithms have the potential to be insanely useful. Think accurately simulating particle interactions and understanding the fabric of the universe level of useful.

[-] Philosoraptor@hexbear.net 5 points 1 year ago

Oh they'll absolutely be revolutionary for the things they're good at. My point is just that most people--including virtually all oligarchs--don't have any idea how QM works, much less quantum computing. Just like with generative AI, the fact that the underlying technology is so poorly understood by most people creates a huge space for grifting.

[-] AtmosphericRiversCuomo@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago

Yes, I agree with you (while simultaneously being really excited for the real advancements in this space).

[-] Owl@hexbear.net 7 points 1 year ago

It sounds like a very solid grift, because so many tech bros want to be seen as smart by understanding physics, yet their understanding of quantum computing is "like trying every possible random result at once and picking the true one." Which is wrong, but to admit it's wrong they'd have to give up their self image as a smart physics-understander.

[-] AtmosphericRiversCuomo@hexbear.net 3 points 1 year ago

While I don't disagree, I'd argue that we're guilty of this kind of thing too when we let our (correct) economic criticisms of capitalism cloud the materialist lens for determining what makes for good science.

[-] someone@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago

It has to be something that can kinda sorta work in very limited controlled circumstances, but not nearly as well as the general public expects given the limits of modern science. Maybe Roomba successors with articulated arms.

[-] VHS@hexbear.net 61 points 1 year ago

This whole project from facebook was so baffling and in poor taste. Silicon Valley types live in a techbro bubble and have no one telling them no

[-] graymess@hexbear.net 33 points 1 year ago

Social media company faking charities for no one's benefit is a level of dystopia I could never have made up. Conditions are that bad right now they need to pump pretend feelgood posts in people's feeds to keep their aging userbase satisfied? Or they just stopped asking "why" years ago.

[-] anarchoilluminati@hexbear.net 8 points 1 year ago

A donation has been made in your name to the Human Fund.

[-] Philosoraptor@hexbear.net 15 points 1 year ago

Incredible

[-] glans@hexbear.net 48 points 1 year ago

So we've taught the computers to do black face and be pretendians.

[-] WorkingClassCorpse@hexbear.net 17 points 1 year ago

Who the fuck greenlit this shit? What is even the point of it?

Honestly, just fuck everything about this. Nobody wants to use their shit site anymore so they just invented fake people to prop it up?

Jesus just let me off this fuxking ride.

[-] Dessa@hexbear.net 14 points 1 year ago

blacks-rule

this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2025

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