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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 6th, 2023

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  • I sympathize with the cynicism in your last paragraph, but I push a little optimism back on a couple points. 1: our capability for speech may be limited by the corporations who have grabbed control over our media platforms, but insofar as freedom of speech refers to our ability to speak freely without retaliation from the government, we do still have real free speech. It’s a juvenile point, but given events in the last few years it’s not a right I take for granted as I did previously. That being said, I did just watch a video of FBI agents interrogating a woman in front of her house for posting non-violent content on Facebook relating to Gaza that you can add to a pile of evidence that the government is frequently toeing the line on free speech, so… that’s not good.

    2: Regulatory authority has become almost laughably meek, granted, but you’re commenting on a video of one of the most aggressive regulators to hold the position in as long as I’m aware. This is a powerful sign that regulatory capture is not inevitable if we care enough to vote for candidates who will appoint strong regulators – even if it hurts our pride to do so (<<conscientious vote objectors).



  • I…don’t think that’s what the referenced paper was saying. First of all, Toner didn’t co-author the paper from her position as an OpenAI board member, but as a CSET director. Secondly, the paper didn’t intend to prescribe behaviors to private sector tech companies, but rather investigate “[how policymakers can] credibly reveal and assess intentions in the field of artificial intelligence” by exploring “costly signals…as a policy lever.”

    The full quote:

    By delaying the release of Claude until another company put out a similarly capable product, Anthropic was showing its willingness to avoid
    exactly the kind of frantic corner-cutting that the release of ChatGPT appeared to spur. Anthropic achieved this goal by leveraging installment costs, or fixed costs that cannot be offset over time. In the framework of this study, Anthropic enhanced the credibility of its commitments to AI safety by holding its model back from early release and absorbing potential future revenue losses. The motivation in this case was not to recoup those losses by gaining a wider market share, but rather to promote industry norms and contribute to shared expectations around responsible AI development and deployment.

    Anthropic is being used here as an example of “private sector signaling,” which could theoretically manifest in countless ways. Nothing in the text seems to indicate that OpenAI should have behaved exactly this same way, but the example is held as a successful contrast to OpenAI’s allegedly failed use of the GPT-4 system card as a signal of OpenAI’s commitment to safety.

    To more fully understand how private sector actors can send costly signals, it is worth considering two examples of leading AI companies going beyond public statements to signal their commitment to develop AI responsibly: OpenAI’s publication of a “system card” alongside the launch of its GPT-4 model, and Anthropic’s decision to delay the release of its chatbot, Claude.

    Honestly, the paper seems really interesting to an AI layman like me and a critically important subject to explore: empowering policymakers to make informed determinations about regulating a technology that almost everyone except the subject-matter experts themselves will *not fully understand.


  • We replaced our HP OfficeJet with a Brother this year. I don’t even know what we were thinking getting the HP 5 years ago or so, it was gross overkill for us. But of all the things it could do, it was most consistent with printing like shit and jamming paper. Part of the problem was that we just print too infrequently, but having to replace overpriced cartridges from HP didn’t help. You also have to install apps for wireless printing (or if there’s a workaround we didn’t bother with it).

    The Brother is a color laser printer and it’s perfect for us. No apps needed, super quiet and hassle-free (there have been no paper jams or transmission errors), and the print quality is crisp as hell.





  • I am almost never bothered by minor niggles and do my best not to blow things out of proportion, but I don’t care how good this game is, I will play it with deep resentment if Insomniac doesn’t patch in Peterface 1.0. To me, that face was somehow the perfect expression of benign charm, compassion, and hidden pain. It impeccably complemented what I think is one of the greatest adaptations of the character, including some/many eras of the mainline Amazing/Superior comic books.

    Peterface 2.0 is…blank somehow. Even though it’s supposed to be more expressive, its features just don’t seem to match the emotion that’s being animated, at least certainly not to the same degree as 1.0. And it just doesn’t look like the Peter that I grew so instantly attached to the first 3-4 times I played this game in the original release version.



  • The Spider-Man video’s theme was so uninteresting to me. It’s been five years since the first game, whose open world was already derivative of tired tropes (towers, collectibles, repeat activities, etc.), and the video was advertising how they’ve just…combined their existing ideas to slightly refine the original formula.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to play the hell out of the game. I loved the first game enough that they could have changed nothing to the core gameplay and just made a new story and I’d play it through 4-5 times again like the original. But the activities within the open world was one of its weakest components, and it doesn’t sound like they’ve done anything interesting with it.



  • I thought I was finally getting worn out on RGG games after playing Yakuza 0-7 and Judgment, but damn if this didn’t pique my interest.

    In this fight, we got to test out some of the new fighting skills you’ll be able to utilize in his Agent fighting style. You’ve got plenty of face-crushing fist strikes, of course, but now Kiryu also has a whole slew of unique, outlandish gadgetry to enhance his already elite combat prowess. Ever wanted to turn on some rocket-powered shoes and glide around as a human battering ram? How about turning enemies to toast with one of those exploding cigarettes you’d see in old-school spy thrillers?

    I do love Kiryu as a character and this just feels like the right thing to put him through.