“As long as these tech companies have piss poor privacy and security policies—specifically privacy policies—around user data, ad tracking and collection, behavioral tracking of users’ data, they are already mechanized for some really dystopic consequences—Project 2025 or not.”
Here's what tech giants can do ahead of a potential Trump return—and a new wave of extreme anti-abortion proposals.
I do not have the bandwidth to blog a full rejoinder to Zeynep's latest NYT piece. So I'm gonna write it as a quick thread instead. Her thesis is that the effectiveness of mass protest (particularly campus protest) has waned, and social media is the main culprit. www.nytimes.com/2024/09/21/o...
It’s time for organizers to invent a new model.
“Meanwhile, city leaders continue to promise more cameras in response to crime upticks or large-scale public events, without offering evidence that more surveillance will bring more safety.”
While installing thousands of police cameras has undoubtedly helped catch criminals and solve cases, Chicago’s ever-growing surveillance system has yet to become the crime-fighting panacea predicte…
AI tutors are imaginary tech built on pseudo-psychological simplifications of debunked psychological statistical effects, glossed with entrepreneurial confidence and masses of investor speculation 4/
There's a big problem with Altman's working out here. The statistical effect for 1:1 tutoring is 30+ years old, only applied to two contexts with small samples, referred to *human tutoring* not AI tutors, and - the kicker - *has never been replicated* 3/ www.educationnext.org/two-sigma-tu...
An experimental intervention in the 1980s raised certain test scores by two standard deviations. It wasn’t just tutoring, and it’s never been replicated, but it continues to inspire.
Altman has said similar "visionary" things about AI tutors before, claiming that the "difference between classroom education and one-on-one tutoring is like two standard deviations – unbelievable difference" as the evidentiary basis for AI being better than actual teachers 2/ mbs.edu/news/Why-Ope...
Of all the ways artificial intelligence can transform a vast range of sectors, the entrepreneur behind ChatGPT is most excited about its potential to change education.
When Sam Altman expresses views about the future of education and the role of AI in it - as he did this week in his very silly "Age of Intelligence" post - I think it's important to realize he is absolutely full of shit 1/
“Harari is Silicon Valley’s ideal of what a chatbot should be. He raids libraries, detects the patterns, and boils all of history down to bullet points… He mines other writers for material… Harari doesn’t acknowledge any intellectual influences beyond his business relationships.”
His warning of AI’s dangers is alarming, but does it help us avoid them?
It's funny how Facebook doesn't have any ideas that aren't "soon everybody will buy expensive new hardware in order to put us in charge of every aspect of their lives".
