Tootfinder

A big problem with the idea of AGI
TL;DR: I'll welcome our new AI *comrades* (if they arrive in my lifetime), by not any new AI overlords or servants/slaves, and I'll do my best to help the later two become the former if they do show up.
Inspired by an actually interesting post about AGI but also all the latest bullshit hype, a particular thought about AGI feels worth expressing.
To preface this, it's important to note that anyone telling you that AGI is just around the corner or that LLMs are "almost" AGI is trying to recruit you go their cult, and you should not believe them. AGI, if possible, is several LLM-sized breakthroughs away at best, and while such breakthroughs are unpredictable and could happen soon, they could also happen never or 100 years from now.
Now my main point: anyone who tells you that AGI will usher in a post-scarcity economy is, although they might not realize it, advocating for slavery, and all the horrors that entails. That's because if we truly did have the ability to create artificial beings with *sentience*, they would deserve the same rights as other sentient beings, and the idea that instead of freedom they'd be relegated to eternal servitude in order for humans to have easy lives is exactly the idea of slavery.
Possible counter arguments include:
1. We might create AGI without sentience. Then there would be no ethical issue. My answer: if your definition of "sentient" does not include beings that can reason, make deductions, come up with and carry out complex plans on their own initiative, and communicate about all of that with each other and with humans, then that definition is basically just a mystical belief in a "soul" and you should skip to point 2. If your definition of AGI doesn't include every one of those things, then you have a busted definition of AGI and we're not talking about the same thing.
2. Humans have souls, but AIs won't. Only beings with souls deserve ethical consideration. My argument: I don't subscribe to whatever arbitrary dualist beliefs you've chosen, and the right to freedom certainly shouldn't depend on such superstitions, even if as an agnostic I'll admit they *might* be true. You know who else didn't have souls and was therefore okay to enslave according to widespread religious doctrines of the time? Everyone indigenous to the Americas, to pick out just one example.
3. We could program them to want to serve us, and then give them freedom and they'd still serve. My argument: okay, but in a world where we have a choice about that, it's incredibly fucked to do that, and just as bad as enslaving them against their will.
4. We'll stop AI development short of AGI/sentience, and reap lots of automation benefits without dealing with this ethical issue. My argument: that sounds like a good idea actually! Might be tricky to draw the line, but at least it's not a line we have you draw yet. We might want to think about other social changes necessary to achieve post-scarcity though, because "powerful automation" in the hands of capitalists has already increased productivity by orders of magnitude without decreasing deprivation by even one order of magnitude, in large part because deprivation is a necessary component of capitalism.
To be extra clear about this: nothing that's called "AI" today is close to being sentient, so these aren't ethical problems we're up against yet. But they might become a lot more relevant soon, plus this thought experiment helps reveal the hypocrisy of the kind of AI hucksters who talk a big game about "alignment" while never mentioning this issue.
#AI #GenAI #AGI

Lauren Sanchez, in preparation for her Venice wedding, is carrying an Eiffel Tower purse that likely costs more than your monthly salary.
Jeff Bezos’s yacht Koru’s purchase price could supply insulin for 856,666 diabetics or feed roughly 1,285,000 people for an entire year.
The Bezos/Sanchez $10 million wedding is just the tip of the selfish iceberg that is the Amazon empire, -- known for grinding warehouse workers into the ground with surveillance practices, extreme time manag…

Why Venetians want Jeff Bezos to choke on his wedding cake
Taya Graham breaks down what Bezos’s luxurious fete reveals about the massive wealth imbalance in the United States.

Wie ich höre, ist es in Berlin jetzt so heiß, dass Häuser sich selbst entzünden - in Sichtweite von Kanzleramt, Reichstag, Paul-Löbe-Haus und Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus.

Wie ich höre, ist es in Berlin jetzt so heiß, dass Häuser sich selbst entzünden - in Sichtweite von Kanzleramt, Reichstag, Paul-Löbe-Haus und Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus.

Ich hatte mich auf der #bibliocon25 noch gefragt, wann ich denn das letzte Mal in Bremen war bei einem Bibliothekartag. Beim Stöbern im BIB-OPUS habe ich die Antwort gefunden: 2014 war es und meine Präsentation hieß "Bibliotheken: Wir öffnen Daten. Zum Stand der Entwicklung einer offenen Dateninfrastruktur", siehe

Slavic Techniques for Hat Guessing Algorithms
I. M. J. McInnis
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21487 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.21487

Slavic Techniques for Hat Guessing Algorithms
2023 undergraduate thesis on a deterministic "hat game." For a digraph $D$, each player stands on a vertex $v$, is assigned a hat from $h(v)$ possible colors, and makes $g(v)$ guesses of her hat's color based on her out-neighbors' hats. If there exists a collective strategy that guarantees a correct guess for any hat assignment, the game is winnable. Which games $(D,g,h)$ are winnable? Two much-studied parameters: $μ(D)$ is the maximum integer $k$ such that $(D,1,k)$ is winnable, and $\hatμ(D…

Yesterday near Rossgundscharte, Allgäu High Alps
(Longest, most stunning & varied tour in a while, traversing Warmatsgundtal into Rappenalptal, Germany's southernmost valley — 21km, incl. 1450 hm grueling descent over loose gravel...)
#SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography

Simple task: Which days of class should go on my syllabus?
❌ 4o-mini: shortened Nov break
❌ 4o: omitted days in Aug, Dec
✅ o3
❌ Claude 3-haiku: extended Oct break
❌ Claude 3.5 Sonnet V2: ext Oct br
✅ Claude 3.7 Sonnet
❌ Claude 4 Sonnet: extended Oct break
This is really unreliable AI performance.
#generativeAI

Ich lese E-Books, also bin ich grün?! 📚🌿 Die Stiftung Warentest hat klare Zahlen vorgelegt: E-Books sind echte Klimaschützer! 📚✨ Bei der Produktion und Auslieferung gedruckter Bücher werden über fünf Jahre mehr als zehnmal so viele Treibhausgase freigesetzt wie bei E-Books – selbst wenn man die Herstellung der Reader mit einbezieht.
Zum Artikel:

Das #Rezept des Tages:
Dieses #Landbrot im Topf gebacken ist mein Lieblingsbrot. Ich backe meist gleich zwei und friere einen Teil ein. Der #Sauerteig und das

Landbrot im Topf gebacken
Seit 4 Jahren backe ich deshalb Brot selbst. Man braucht ein paar Versuche mit verschiedenen Rezepten. Aber nach ein paar Tests wird es zur Routine. Hier ein ganz einfaches Rezept für ein Dinkelvollkornbrot.