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  • Cauthon
    Member
    • Jan 2022
    • 1636

    #76
    Call me at midnight, to arrange a job interview? Fine, I completely understand that not everyone looks closely at resumes. Especially when you're just scheduling the interviews for other people. No harm no foul.

    Not giving at least a perfunctory apology once you find out that I was sleeping? Kinda rude, but again, fine.

    Scheduling the interview at 1am my time, with the email reading "as we discussed" as if thats what we agreed to? Despite me saying several times that I was free any day but needed it to be slightly later in the day than when you called me, and you acknowledging that request? Fuck you, lady.


    Monkish Asexual.

    My homebrew hub

    Mostly checked out, there's an uncomfortable amount of condescension in the old guard.

    Comment

    • Iguazu
      Member
      • Mar 2014
      • 351

      #77
      Originally posted by Cauthon View Post
      Call me at midnight, to arrange a job interview? . . ..
      So, did you apply for a bar-tending job? If it's a 9 to 5 job, I wouldn't want to get promoted to manager because they'll expect you to work until midnight too!!!

      Comment

      • Cauthon
        Member
        • Jan 2022
        • 1636

        #78
        Originally posted by Iguazu View Post

        So, did you apply for a bar-tending job? If it's a 9 to 5 job, I wouldn't want to get promoted to manager because they'll expect you to work until midnight too!!!
        I'm in Japan, but applying for jobs in the US, since my contract here is up in August. Reasonable, middle-of-the-day times for them are the middle of the night for me.


        Monkish Asexual.

        My homebrew hub

        Mostly checked out, there's an uncomfortable amount of condescension in the old guard.

        Comment

        • Iguazu
          Member
          • Mar 2014
          • 351

          #79
          Originally posted by Cauthon View Post

          I'm in Japan, but applying for jobs in the US, since my contract here is up in August. Reasonable, middle-of-the-day times for them are the middle of the night for me.
          That makes sense; I did, once, interview for teaching in Japan. I didn't really know or like a lot about Japan, but I did want to live somewhere else for a bit; for some reason, the interview really stressed me out; I think I was depressed at that time. But a few years later, I did move to South America, sans job teaching English, with money in my pocket after working and saving, so yeah.

          Comment

          • Darksol-aeternium
            Member
            • Nov 2013
            • 358

            #80
            I keep hearing about AIs created to be creative (i.e. be artists and musicians), and it makes me sick.
            The heedless spread of technology into every aspect of our existence and the obsessive compulsion to develop AIs that can do all the jobs normally requiring a human consciousness will not end well. If these supposed tech "geniuses" manage to replace every living person with some kind of contrived AI or machine, then do they not realize there is no more reason for human beings to exist? Do they assume that the world will magically become someplace where people live in leisure for free? Do they not understand that’s not how economics works? Not once have these morons ever considered that they rapidly remove much of the population from the workforce, by eliminating the need for such a thing. Not once have they ever considered the repercussions of stripping mankind of any reason to even act. They’re too wrapped up in the hubris of doing something just because they can, and they won’t realize they’ve screwed up until everyone is cast into poverty and we all lynch them for ruining our lives. By that time anything like a society will have collapsed into a new dark age of savagery and ignorance, all for the sake of a few tech-nerds who had no common sense.
            ​

            Comment

            • TempleBuilder
              Member
              • Mar 2021
              • 1219

              #81
              Originally posted by Darksol-aeternium View Post
              I keep hearing about AIs created to be creative (i.e. be artists and musicians), and it makes me sick.
              The heedless spread of technology into every aspect of our existence and the obsessive compulsion to develop AIs that can do all the jobs normally requiring a human consciousness will not end well. If these supposed tech "geniuses" manage to replace every living person with some kind of contrived AI or machine, then do they not realize there is no more reason for human beings to exist? Do they assume that the world will magically become someplace where people live in leisure for free? Do they not understand that’s not how economics works? Not once have these morons ever considered that they rapidly remove much of the population from the workforce, by eliminating the need for such a thing. Not once have they ever considered the repercussions of stripping mankind of any reason to even act. They’re too wrapped up in the hubris of doing something just because they can, and they won’t realize they’ve screwed up until everyone is cast into poverty and we all lynch them for ruining our lives. By that time anything like a society will have collapsed into a new dark age of savagery and ignorance, all for the sake of a few tech-nerds who had no common sense.
              ​
              Uh, what? What’s wrong with artificial intelligence? I live under several rocks, did something happen?

              …also I’m pretty sure humanity not having a reason to act would change literally nothing, plenty of people think that’s already the case. And they still get up and do stuff, and have the same capacity to be nice and stuff. Nihilism gets a bad reputation, but it’s kinda like Satanism, just another way of seeing the world.


              To whomever reads this, I hope you have a good day/night. May you be Happy.

              So, I made some Mage Legacies here, with some help. They vary in quality, but I hope you take a look at them. Every one contains pieces of me, for better or worse.

              Comment

              • Cauthon
                Member
                • Jan 2022
                • 1636

                #82
                On the topic of lynching people over technology, I'd like to recommend "A Canticle for Leibowitz". That shot never ends well for anyone.


                Monkish Asexual.

                My homebrew hub

                Mostly checked out, there's an uncomfortable amount of condescension in the old guard.

                Comment

                • TempleBuilder
                  Member
                  • Mar 2021
                  • 1219

                  #83
                  Originally posted by Cauthon View Post
                  On the topic of lynching people over technology, I'd like to recommend "A Canticle for Leibowitz". That shot never ends well for anyone.
                  Oh, cool. I’ll check it out.


                  To whomever reads this, I hope you have a good day/night. May you be Happy.

                  So, I made some Mage Legacies here, with some help. They vary in quality, but I hope you take a look at them. Every one contains pieces of me, for better or worse.

                  Comment

                  • Lysander
                    Member
                    • Mar 2022
                    • 1607

                    #84
                    I knew when I was given medication for my gum graft I knew there would side effects. But I wasn't expecting feelings of anxiety to crop up instead of drowsiness or headaches as the common side effect. Good thing I'm off the medication now and I'm starting to feel way better and talk about getting the bad luck of the draw there.


                    What in the name of Set and Malkav is going on.

                    Comment

                    • Heavy Arms
                      Member
                      • Nov 2013
                      • 11511

                      #85
                      Originally posted by Darksol-aeternium View Post
                      If these supposed tech "geniuses" manage to replace every living person with some kind of contrived AI or machine, then do they not realize there is no more reason for human beings to exist? Do they assume that the world will magically become someplace where people live in leisure for free? Do they not understand that’s not how economics works? Not once have these morons ever considered that they rapidly remove much of the population from the workforce, by eliminating the need for such a thing. Not once have they ever considered the repercussions of stripping mankind of any reason to even act.
                      ​
                      A slight counterpoint, but one that leads to a bleaker future than some sort of AI rebellion that wipes humanity out:

                      Humans are self-motivating. It's built into us on a fundamental level as biological organisms. Nobody has any idea how to get AIs to the point of having instinctual drives. AI is, most likely never going to be able to replace the biological imperative. We don't need jobs to want to do things. Every study on both UBI and the ultra rich point the same thing: once you take money off the table as something to worry about to survive, people spend more time doing stuff, not less. The whole problem with the people working on AIs like you're talking about is that having so much money that money is not longer a motivating factor in their decision making means they keep doing shit on a whim because humans don't stop doing stuff when they're left to their own devices.

                      As an aside to that, automation and AI doesn't actually lead to less jobs. It leads to less entry level and low-academic-education jobs. There's been huge advances in cow-milking automation, which has lead to a small decrease in farmhand jobs, but a larger increase in jobs needed to keep those machines running.

                      What, at least to me, if far scarier than humans extincting ourselves via our own creations? Humans enslaving ourselves via our own creations. WALL-E is both more likely and more horrific to me than The Terminator: humans kept a live by machines because AIs need us for our instinctive motivations to give them inputs to act on, with the trappings of luxury and post-scarcity society lulling us into not caring that we exist solely because digital computations can never be as irrational as biological neural systems; effectively making us no more than dice in a RPG. Shiny baubles to keep everything from stagnating into pointless repetition, and our own agency ceded to enhance the existence of others.

                      Originally posted by TempleBuilder View Post
                      Uh, what? What’s wrong with artificial intelligence? I live under several rocks, did something happen?
                      The Internet and datamining have allowed for AI training on massive datasets, and this has lead to huge advances in the ability for AIs to simulate human creativity. They're not actually creative, and the "garbage in, garbage out" mantra is still in full force, but the simulation is getting good enough to that passing for mediocre human creative output.

                      As most current economies vastly undervalue creatives in a given area (the people that write, draw, etc. see a tiny fraction of the profits CEOs and shareholders do), creatives are increasingly worried about two things:

                      First is that their work is being used without their permission, further devaluing their efforts. Why higher an artist to do an illustration when scraper bots have already sampling hundreds of pieces by that artist and can simulate an illustration in that artist's style a few hundred times ans you can just pick one that's close enough? The artist never got paid for their work to be in that dataset though, but they don't have to be paid for a image an AI created "in their style" either.

                      Second, that because their efforts are undervalued, profit driven motivations are going to push towards increased use of AI even if the results are inferior because the process will be cheaper. They know that corporations both want artistic/creative products,but also do not consider all the time, energy, and effort to become good at a creative endeavor to be something worth fair compensation. Most freelance creatives live in a world where there's a dangerous race to the bottom as someone is always willing to charge a bit less to get a job for various reasons. Once AI creative-simulations enter the picture, you have the cheapest possible source of creative output. We've already seen the first instances of the idea of writers becoming script doctors to AI generated content rather than AIs operating as tools for writers to help them like spellcheckers and grammar checkers already do now.

                      Comment

                      • Cauthon
                        Member
                        • Jan 2022
                        • 1636

                        #86
                        I, for one, welcome our Rogue Servitor overlords.


                        Monkish Asexual.

                        My homebrew hub

                        Mostly checked out, there's an uncomfortable amount of condescension in the old guard.

                        Comment

                        • TempleBuilder
                          Member
                          • Mar 2021
                          • 1219

                          #87
                          Originally posted by Heavy Arms View Post
                          What, at least to me, if far scarier than humans extincting ourselves via our own creations? Humans enslaving ourselves via our own creations. WALL-E is both more likely and more horrific to me than The Terminator: humans kept a live by machines because AIs need us for our instinctive motivations to give them inputs to act on, with the trappings of luxury and post-scarcity society lulling us into not caring that we exist solely because digital computations can never be as irrational as biological neural systems; effectively making us no more than dice in a RPG. Shiny baubles to keep everything from stagnating into pointless repetition, and our own agency ceded to enhance the existence of others.
                          I don't know if I find that particularly scary. I just see that as humanity's retirement home. Or perhaps we could try to embrace Transhumanism and become indistinguishable from our creations. That would be neat.


                          Originally posted by Heavy Arms View Post
                          The Internet and datamining have allowed for AI training on massive datasets, and this has lead to huge advances in the ability for AIs to simulate human creativity. They're not actually creative, and the "garbage in, garbage out" mantra is still in full force, but the simulation is getting good enough to that passing for mediocre human creative output.
                          To clarify, is that a philosophical issue on what makes a process creative? Seems like an area where different people have different ideas on what makes an idea creative. Do you think there could ever be a future where AI actually do create stuff like humans?

                          Originally posted by Heavy Arms View Post
                          First is that their work is being used without their permission, further devaluing their efforts. Why higher an artist to do an illustration when scraper bots have already sampling hundreds of pieces by that artist and can simulate an illustration in that artist's style a few hundred times ans you can just pick one that's close enough? The artist never got paid for their work to be in that dataset though, but they don't have to be paid for a image an AI created "in their style" either.
                          Ah, now that's a very clear problem. Sounds like we need new laws then to prevent that sort of thing. And let me guess, the collective political power of the pool of people concerned by this doesn't match the power of those seeking to profit from it.

                          Originally posted by Heavy Arms View Post
                          Second, that because their efforts are undervalued, profit driven motivations are going to push towards increased use of AI even if the results are inferior because the process will be cheaper. They know that corporations both want artistic/creative products,but also do not consider all the time, energy, and effort to become good at a creative endeavor to be something worth fair compensation. Most freelance creatives live in a world where there's a dangerous race to the bottom as someone is always willing to charge a bit less to get a job for various reasons. Once AI creative-simulations enter the picture, you have the cheapest possible source of creative output. We've already seen the first instances of the idea of writers becoming script doctors to AI generated content rather than AIs operating as tools for writers to help them like spellcheckers and grammar checkers already do now.
                          Yeah, I can see that. That's quite sad. Do you think it's possible people will start marketing stuff as human-made for an increased price?


                          To whomever reads this, I hope you have a good day/night. May you be Happy.

                          So, I made some Mage Legacies here, with some help. They vary in quality, but I hope you take a look at them. Every one contains pieces of me, for better or worse.

                          Comment

                          • Heavy Arms
                            Member
                            • Nov 2013
                            • 11511

                            #88
                            Originally posted by TempleBuilder View Post
                            To clarify, is that a philosophical issue on what makes a process creative?
                            There is certainly that discussion to have, but it's not yet a reality. Even the current AI proponents acknowledge that what AI can do isn't computational creativity. The "garbage in, garbage out" issue is one of the big reasons why we know AI processes are still a simulation of creativity instead of getting to the point where we need to debate if what they do is creative. There isn't the self-awareness of context to modify outputs on their own. The reason why various AI programs will, say, refuse to write a students paper for them if asked to is only because they've been programmed to refuse those requests (and can be easily fooled with rephrasing the requests in fashions humans wouldn't fall for). These programs have a huge problem regarding using offensive materials because the Internet is the Internet, and without a programmer going in and saying, "don't do this even though millions of data points say it's something done in this set of criteria."

                            We can tell them to not use certain words, but they aren't sophisticated enough to learn not to use those words contextually on their own.

                            Do you think there could ever be a future where AI actually do create stuff like humans?
                            While this might feel like hairsplitting: no, but only because eventually AI will be creative in a different way than humans. If anything that will be the proof of digital creativity: when computations can be creative in a fashion that isn't based on simulating humans. Digital processing doesn't work like our brains, true creativity is invariably going to embrace that instead of simulating humans more and more effectively.

                            Ah, now that's a very clear problem. Sounds like we need new laws then to prevent that sort of thing. And let me guess, the collective political power of the pool of people concerned by this doesn't match the power of those seeking to profit from it.
                            The law is so far beyond the speed of technological advancement it doesn't really to an extent. We let the law be in the hands of people that don't understand what they're making laws about, and refuse to listen to people that do in a meaningful fashion. Even if the less politically powerful group convinced legislators to do the right thing, by the time they did it, it would be outdated.

                            We are seeing some good signs from other avenues of regulation. The largest US based writers guild has already put out policies they plan to push via their collective bargaining power such as not allowing their members to be forced to use AI program outputs, and AI is ineligible for credit or consideration for compensation. Like I compared things to a spellchecking program earlier, they want these things treated as tools for humans to use or not use as they like. Writers don't have to share credit with whoever programmed their autocorrect, or share their pay with those programs (besides possibly paying for them in the first place).

                            Do you think it's possible people will start marketing stuff as human-made for an increased price?
                            I mean, we already do in physical crafts. We already see plenty of things like "hand-made" "artisanal" and so on to market a product as more human-hands-on in food and crafts that also denotes a higher price point (whether it's true or not).

                            Ultimately though, our controls on such things are too limited to matter. They become buzzwords that corporations can figure out how to use without facing serious risk of backlash as they slap luxury prices on something that's 99..9% the same as their "normal" products.

                            Comment

                            • Lysander
                              Member
                              • Mar 2022
                              • 1607

                              #89
                              It's going to interesting to see how soon we will see a true A.I. of some sort in our life times. Twenty plus years ago it seemed so remote but with all the tech advances we have seen in recent years it certainly amazing how close it can become a reality and I need to watch Wall-E when I have the chance in regards that you find it more scary then the Terminator.. On a differnt note what did you think of Elysium with Matt Damon and Jodi Foster? I saw the ending as bad news with the possibilty of a technological dark age happening with everyone being made citizens of the space station.


                              What in the name of Set and Malkav is going on.

                              Comment

                              • Cauthon
                                Member
                                • Jan 2022
                                • 1636

                                #90
                                It was a very depressing movie, certainly. In the vein of "there was never wny chance of a happy ending".


                                Monkish Asexual.

                                My homebrew hub

                                Mostly checked out, there's an uncomfortable amount of condescension in the old guard.

                                Comment

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