https://twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1779753281960722706
Critiquing an AI startup?
distasteful, almost unethical
Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.
For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community
https://twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1779753281960722706
Critiquing an AI startup?
distasteful, almost unethical
it's deep downthread on that one hellthread but I want to put it here: a short semi-NSFW reflection on the state of the internet
tired: learning from others through the wealth of experiences and resources that are widely available
wired: taking a "first principles" approach to endangering and traumatising your own child
I was at the apartment pool chatting with a friend who is a very advanced swimmer - the type that swims laps seemingly endlessly - and she asked “have you ever seen what would happen if [your two year-old son] fell in the pool?”. I said no, and then she suggested I try it so that I would at least know. So I picked him up and with no warning tossed him in. He immediately froze under water, arms and legs outstretched in literally stunned silence. I counted to 5 and pulled him out and he was trembling with fear.
At that point I realized that the time it takes for a kid to drown is one breath. That may be 3 seconds, may be 10 seconds.
what the fuck
one of my few childhood memories is some dipshit fuckwad at a family-friends event who, upon learning that I hadn't ever gone/tried swimming, decided all upon their lonesome to throw me into the pool
unfortunately I only recall the general event, and not who it was.
no lies detected
Oh man, I’ve always wondered how the hiring process could become more impersonal and demeaning, now I know!
About a year ago I ran across something (a ZA startup, by the looks of it) that essentially pitched casting reels as an interview screener, and one of the highlights of the pitch was “they just send in a video clip introducing themselves, and you can tell whether they’re a cultural fit”.
No need for all that messy scheduling! No misunderstandings[0]! Totally fair[1]! Totally not abusable[2]!
Noped out of that so hard, on account of all the obvious reasons, but also because it immediately felt like it had ulterior motives/uses, such as dataset for ML training.
Imagine we’ll see some more of that.
[0] - that you get to do anything about [1] - y’know, if you ignore the complete power imbalance and complete susceptibility to allowing hidden profiling [2] - except for all the extremely obvious ways
That strikes me as probably illegal, at least in the US (although I can't find a better source, if someone can find where the EEOC says that it'd be appreciated.)
Oof.
That being said, that’s not unheard of. I remember back when I was looking at scholarships and such that some places wanted video submissions, and I have friends in other industries that had to do the same. That in no way diminishes the shittiness of it all.
The ML angle seems novel though. Ostensibly you’d have a resume/cover letter that is effectively a set of tags for the video component, which I guess you could do sentiment analysis over? I guess the end game is to build a robot that can tell if you are a team player or not, and if you’d lie about it out of necessity for a job vs. eagerly for kool aid.
Why would I want my interview experience to be "more gamified"?
So you can quick load your save state from the beginning of the interview and have another go at defeating the boss now you know their movement pattern?
you know I normally hate those job-simulator games but this just made me think there's potentially a great indie game to be made in Interview Simulator
puritan firefly will protect people from the horrifying impropriety of a gentle fuckyo, ah wait….listens to earpiece…. I’m being informed that it may not, in fact, protect you from being told to get fucked
The day I get to stop hearing phrases rooted in or centered on “brand concern” will be a very good day indeed
Hey Clippy, write my paper for me.
Source (the paragraph right before the conclusion).
Previously discussed here
Ah, damn, I even read that post. Must’ve slipped my mind because I just saw this on Reddit.
No worries! :-)
I'm glad there is these private companies ~~leaching on~~ reviewing public research.
There is a sad parallel between the SEO'tification of the internet and the 'publish at all cost' that science become.
A choice selection of musks deposition with TurdRationalist™ ajacent brainrot shibboleths:
Q: (By Mr. Bankston) And this quote says from the Isaacson book, "My tweets are like Niagara Falls sometimes and they come too fast," Musk says. "Just dip a cup in there and try to avoid the random turds." Do you think that's an accurate quotation from you?
A: (By Elon) That is acutally not -- not accurate. [...] The things that I see on twitter, not the [...] posts that I make are like Niagara Falls. [...] my account is the most interacted with in the world I believe. It is physically impossible for, you know, any one person to see all of the interactions that happen. So the only way I can really gauge the interactions is by sampling them essentially.
Q: Got you. So would it be fair to say that Isaacson made a mistake here and what thus really should say is not my tweets are like Niagara Falls, but everyone else's tweets are like Niagara Falls?
A: Not exactly. It means [...] all of what I see when I use the X app, [...] all the posts that I see and all the interactions that happen with those posts, are far to numerous [...] for any human being to consume.
Q: Okay. So when this quote talks about random turds; these are other people's random turds?
A: I mean I suppose I -- I could be guilty of a random turd too, but [...] what I'm really referring to is that the only way for me to actually get an understanding of what is happening on the system is to sample it. Like try to do -- just like in statistics, you don't -- you do -- try to do -- you sample a distribution in order to understand what's going on, but you cannot look at every single data point.
I can only gauge truth from first principled anecdotal sampling of my nazi friends, I can't look at everything alas, I'll leave community notes to deal with pesky liberals
[Which btw in other parts of the deposition he says, for a community note to be surfaced people must vote the same note as being helpful, where they previously disagreed, which doesn't sound at all like it couldn't be gamed, and doesn't at all sound like it would sometimes force "centrism" with nazis]
On a all too sadly self-aware note
Elon: I may of done more to financially impair the company than to help it.
You think?
Is that the same Mark Bankston who represented the Sandy Hook families?
yes, and the best bit is when he unhinges his jaw and swallows Spiro
I believe it is.
Yes it is. I'm just waiting for the Knowledge Fight boys to have a podcast on this deposition.
Musk is weirdly into the Rationalist ideas, but also he doesn't get them. He once explained the 'we live in a simulation' ancestor simulation argument, and made it even dumber. Just mentioning statistics and distribution sampling isn't really it.
Anyway, because he mentioned Niagara Falls: A Dance
Btw, deleted this because the vid needed a content warning, but I was too lazy to edit it in properly.