Iain Bancarz 🇨🇦
@iainrb
Fights cancer with computers in Toronto, Canada. Fan of SF, cinema and various sports. Sort of an ominous robed figure pointing and saying "BEWARE" in a hoarse voice every time AI is mentioned. 🇨🇦/🇬🇧 citizen. Parent, husband, cat servant. He/him.
A rogue fighter pilot toppling a regime is unusual, but not unheard of. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_R...
Greek schools of philosophy as cartoon characters: - Garfield: Epicurean - Charlie Brown: Stoic - Calvin: Cynic
Had a T-shirt clear out today. Some great memories, but no shirt lasts forever. 🥲
The island of St Pierre is a beautiful, isolated community enjoying a cool maritime climate. It's currently under heavy smoke because of wildfires 2500 miles away in Ontario.
This future sucks. I wanted the one with clean air and amazing new technologies.
In Lord of the Rings, I always liked the vulture statues guarding the gate to the tower of Cirith Ungol. How did they get there? Why are they so powerful? Doesn't matter, it's a fun creepy weird thing.
It reminds me of this meme. Young men benefit greatly from meeting a friendly older guy in the pub who's got his head screwed on straight.
Every city's got an ominous megastructure. Edinburgh is blessed with uniquely beautiful architecture... and Appleton Tower.
The university library in Cambridge, England has a definite vibe of "bow down and tremble, puny mortals." 😀
It reminds me of this exchange from Pulp Fiction. Although Vincent, despite being a criminal lowlife, is less obnoxious than this person. 🙃
ME: I'm going to listen to some cool new music. MY BRAIN: That album was released in 2009. ME: So? MY BRAIN: It's 17 years old now. ME: Shut up, brain.
THEM: He has taken out a contract... ME: Wow, things are getting serious. THEM: ... on an office for 40 members of staff ME: OK, not as much as I thought. observer.co.uk/news/politic...
Good thread. Why the Washington DC reflecting pool turned green, explained with science!
You may think space is big (and it is), but the number of possible forms of communication is stupefyingly bigger. Aliens may exist, somewhere in the universe. But they don't speak English unless they learned it from our TV broadcasts.
Yeah. It's like an alien language which happens to be exactly the same as English. Ludicrous to put it forward with a straight face.
Fascinating piece. These folks are basically doing the Douglas Adams bit about dolphins, but they failed to get the joke. It's a kind of Extra Strong Anthropic Principle, saying the sole purpose of the universe is to evolve nerds who indulge in sci-fi speculation about AI. I'm not impressed. 😒
Oooh, I got a different one. I didn't want to bring Google down before, but this nonsense is making me reconsider. In what universe is this a helpful response to a search input?
Pick a Bond villain from the pictures you already have on your phone. (Seriously, Dinklage would be a great choice to play a Bond villain.)
This is a cat checkpoint: show the most recent cat photo on your phone. "Enough of your pointless human work, what about *my* needs?"
Our society appears to have collectively decided: "Fuck it, being right 52% of the time is good enough." Terrifying in contexts where being wrong has consequences.
That's the whole problem. This technology is not trustworthy and never will be. Hallucinations are inherent to how LLMs work. So *why* exactly is this machine, which produces dangerous misinformation in response to simple queries, "critical" to "prosperity and security"? What is the use case?
I met a 3 month old Bernese Mountain Dog puppy today. I am still getting over the cuteness overload. Already so big! But a soft fluffy puppy! 😍 (Photo is not the pup I met -- but will give you an idea of how cute they are.)