The Artificial Intelligence (AI) Thread

[China]

In DC, a new wave of AI lobbyists gains the upper hand

 

In a shift for Washington tech lobbying, companies and investors from across the industry have been pouring tens of millions of dollars into an all-hands effort to block strict safety rules on advanced artificial intelligence and get lawmakers to worry about China instead — and so far, they seem to be winning over once-skeptical members of Congress.

 

The success of the pro-tech, anti-China AI push, fueled by several new arrivals on the lobbying scene, marks a change from months in which the AI debate was dominated by well-funded philanthropies warning about the long-term dangers of the technology.

 

The new influence web is pushing the argument that AI is less an existential danger than a crucial business opportunity, and arguing that strict safety rules would hand America’s AI edge to China. It has already caused key lawmakers to back off some of their more worried rhetoric about the technology.

 

“What we don’t want to have happen is have [advanced AI] development occur outside of the United States,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), one of four lawmakers in Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s AI working group, told POLITICO. “So we’re not going to try to restrict development here.”

 

The effort, a loosely coordinated campaign led by tech giants IBM and Meta, includes wealthy new players in the AI lobbying space such as top chipmaker Nvidia, as well as smaller AI startups, the influential venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and libertarian billionaire Charles Koch.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Spaceman Spiff]

This is pretty wild, I stumbled across character.ai

 

You can talk to different characters, some real from history, some fictional.  And for some of them, it'll actually read their answers in their voice. 

 

I'm chatting with a John Lennon bot, I asked him what he'd say to Mark David Chapman right now:

 

Quote

Mark, I forgive you. I wish I could've talked to you before it ever even happened. But in this situation that's impossible. And it probably wouldn't have made any difference. To me, the important thing to come out of this is not that we should forget that Mark murdered me but that we should say, how can we prevent it from ever happening again? In that sense, I hope that some good has come out of it.

 

AND IT READ IT IN HIS ****ING VOICE.  It wasn't perfect, you could tell it was a little synthesized but if you weren't paying too close attention you'd have thought he'd actually said it.  And it read it with tone, inflection, pauses, everything.

 

 

[Fergasun]

I use ai voices for a podcast I do (I promise I will share it after 10 episodes).  

 

Yeah, the voices are good.  But they so lack emotion. I use an open source voice cloning program. I figure as long as I don't name names of who I have cloned, it's legal. And I haven't used inherently obvious people.

 

[Califan007 The Constipated]

 

Grace Swift lol...(I was bored)

 

 

 

Edited May 20 by Califan007 The Constipated

[John Diesel]

Mentioning these commenting here

I think they should consider this blog- Python for ai and machine learning 😅 

Edited May 21 by John Diesel

[Cooked Crack]

 

[Cooked Crack]

 

[China]

Reddit’s 'Squat Plug' Joke Is Now Google AI’s Fitness Advice

 

Google thinks people use butt plugs at the gym, because its AI was trained on Reddit ****posts.
 

 

When you become part of a community (or at least lurk in it long enough), you begin to learn that community’s inside jokes. Unless you are an AI, that is, because large language models are not programmed with a sense of humor. Google’s AI overview, trained as it is on Reddit user-generated content, has begun telling people to use sex toys to lift more in the gym. 

 

(The AI overview, which you may have noticed at the top of your search results lately, is a word salad drawn from the top results for your query. Sometimes it summarizes those results. Sometimes it gets them completely wrong. The AI overview used to be an opt-in feature, but it’s now available by default. You can turn it off (after searching) by clicking on the Web filter, or by adding udm=14 to the end of the URL.)

 

I search a lot of fitness-related topics, and I’ve noticed that the AI overview doesn’t always understand things correctly. It thinks a small wooden block under your heels is a replacement for a squat rack. But nothing compares to the laugh I had when I realized Google has fully bought into Reddit’s “squat plug” lore. Yes, it’s telling unsuspecting users—who are likely searching because they’re checking whether this is a joke—that people commonly prepare for a heavy squat by inserting a butt plug into their rectum.

 

Click on the link for the full story

[PokerPacker]

Google also thinks you should use Elmer's glue to keep your cheese on your pizza.

 

Edited May 24 by PokerPacker

[Renegade7]

OpenAI finds Russian and Chinese groups used its tech for propaganda campaigns

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/05/30/openai-disinfo-influence-operations-china-russia/

 

 

No fn way! Who could've possibly seen this coming??? 😒

[Skins24]

Russia and China? Normal

 

How about India, all the reports I've seen show it's getting pretty bad -

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-68918330

Quote

AI and deepfakes blur reality in India elections

15 May 2024

By Meryl Sebastian,BBC News, Kochi

 

In November last year, Muralikrishnan Chinnadurai was watching a livestream of a Tamil-language event in the UK when he noticed something odd.

 

A woman introduced as Duwaraka, daughter of Velupillai Prabhakaran, the Tamil Tiger militant chief, was giving a speech.

The problem was that Duwaraka had died more than a decade earlier, in an airstrike in 2009 during the closing days of the Sri Lankan civil war. The then-23-year-old's body was never found.

And now, here she was - seemingly a middle-aged woman - exhorting Tamilians across the world to take forward the political struggle for their freedom.

Mr Chinnadurai, a fact-checker in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, watched the video closely, noticed glitches in the video and soon pinned it down to being a figure generated by artificial intelligence (AI).

 

The potential problems were immediately clear to Mr Chinnadurai: "This is an emotive issue in the state [Tamil Nadu] and with elections around the corner, the misinformation could quickly spread."

As India goes to the polls, it is impossible to avoid the wealth of AI-generated content being created - from campaign videos, to personalised audio messages in a range of Indian languages, and even automated calls made to voters in a candidate's voice.

Content creators like Shahid Sheikh have even had fun using AI tools to show Indian politicians in avatars we haven't seen them in before: wearing athleisure, playing music and dancing.

But as the tools get more sophisticated, experts worry about its implications when it comes to making fake news appear real.

"Rumours have always been a part of electioneering. [But] in the age of social media, it can spread like wildfire," says SY Qureshi, the country's former chief election commissioner.

 

"It can actually set the country on fire."

...more...

 

[Renegade7]

*sigh, agreed @Skins24

 

I remember once a time people calling India the largest democracy and potential new Switzerland.

 

Time to get real with what we dealing with and what they are now (and frankly what they are becoming).

[Califan007 The Constipated]

On 5/21/2024 at 8:08 AM, Cooked Crack said:

 

 

 

I had to correct a dude on reddit who ridiculed people on a post about...something...dealing with a pic someone had on facebook of a child without clothes (no info given other than that, so no idea if it was an infant on a rug thing or whatever). Anyway, guy ridiculed posters and said the offending pic--whatever it actually was--wouldn't be illegal CP because the only way that would be illegal is "if you send it to someone. If you don't sent it to someone, it's not illegal."

 

😐

 

I think we can probably tell what he does in his spare time lol...