Executives working on AI at Microsoft and OpenAI admitted what its critics have been saying all along: Large language models are predatory pieces of technology that have been built on what a Microsoft executive called “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions,” and the “largest theft of labor in human history.” An internal Microsoft document said generative AI products have created a “doom loop” that is killing “the entire web.”

Those statements and a series of other mask-off moments feature heavily in an unredacted court filing that was unsealed Thursday in the behemoth New York Times vs OpenAI copyright lawsuit that has been winding its way through the court system for years. In a filing asking for summary judgment (basically, a filing with the court asking it to rule), lawyers for the New York Times laid out a series of admissions made by Microsoft and OpenAI executives in documents and depositions that until now had remained either sealed or redacted at the request of Microsoft and OpenAI.

It’s easy to see why the AI companies wanted to hide this from the public. The statements, taken together, are some of the most damning indictments of the ways LLMs were trained, how they worked, and the immediate threat they pose to human labor. It is a reminder that even as AI becomes more powerful and companies try to shift the narrative to the supposed existential risk of “superintelligent” AI, the tools they have already built were created by stealing from human creativity and labor and are by definition existential threats to the human labor market.

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Donald Trump has once again stepped up his threats to entirely wipe out Iran, but it somehow isn’t forcing Iran to make the deal he wants. The emptiness of the threats is embarrassing enough. But now, CBS News has published a series of extraordinary photographs of American bases and equipment abroad badly damaged by Iranian attacks. These pictures were leaked by anonymous U.S. service-members who did this because the truth about Trump’s war is being suppressed. As one put it: “This is major damage to our ba...

War damage to data centers exceeded what AWS services are designed to withstand.

Half a year after Iranian drone strikes knocked out multiple Amazon data centers, the US tech company has acknowledged the permanent loss of some customer data that was hosted in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

Amazon Web Services was “unable to restore access to the resources and data” hosted in some of the war-damaged data centers, according to an AWS dashboard update posted on September 15. The development was first reported by Reuters and suggests that the Iranian strikes inflicted catastrophic damage on the data centers.

Customer data was irretrievably lost in one of three AWS availability zones in the United Arab Emirates region, specifically the mec1-az2 availability zone. Each availability zone is serviced by one or more Amazon data centers.

At a small restaurant in Tennessee, USA.

I don't like that they asked an LLM to graphic design the entire menu, but why in the name of robot jesus did they look at the result and say "great. Love it. Print 100 copies."

The food pictures made me physically ill. They're really upsetting! I told the Waitress, who agreed that the pics were awful, and the manager/owner(?) who didn't seem to care.

There are LLM inconsistencies all over, too, like icons changing from page to page.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/71064612

Pressure builds in Spain to deny US extradition request for leftwing donor

Others said the campaign had a darker side and stirred up fear of newcomers. Some backers of the Piddington referendum compared their fight against the asylum accommodation to the 1940 Battle of Britain against Nazi Germany.

Villager Herbert Owen, 76, said after voting on Tuesday that the independence referendum "isn't just about Piddington," adding: "It means everything our grandparents, our parents fought for. Today is the Battle of Britain."

Comparing unauthorized immigration to an invasion has become increasingly common among politicians including Nigel Farage of Reform UK, and far-right groups that have been active in organizing and attending anti-immigrant protests.

What a bunch of assholes. From earlier in the article:

Residents of Piddington, which has a population of about 350…

That makes sense. Small town people need to have no say over issues pertaining to classes of people who are "different" from themselves. They're too insulated and lack exposure to those who aren't like them to properly recognize that they're human beings in all the ways that they'd recognize if they knew someone from said class.

Brief story: decades ago, while I was on excellent drugs at a rave, my homophobia (thanks, Mom!) instantly disappeared when I realized the hilarious gay guy, in a group of us smoking cigarettes, was no different from me. "He just wants to take his drugs and have a good time on Saturday night," I realized. He was no different from me!

Small town people need drugs and a good time with people unlike themselves.

source

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/52022727

Actually made me giggle

Not it.

it's been some time since the last purplepost, so here we are again. this one *might be the most intense one to date.

alt image (catbox, high quality)

you might notice that Whites arm clips into the sofa. i really really tried not to let that happen, but the other option would have been to either change the hands color or to have it be even harder to tell what pose White is taking exactly. sooo i think this is a fair tradeoff.

some day i really might wanna transition to a style where each arm gets a slightly different shade so one can tell them apart, even when they are right in front of one another.

i hope you enjoy this one.

i wish you a wonderful day where someone compliments your work.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/52056086

Oh yeah? Well I got a 4 dimensions waifu! (Don't get her mad or she'll flip you... And the world will be mirrored)

https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/149784246

• https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(26)01110-3
• https://www.newscientist.com/article/2589847-beautiful-new-cat-species-is-first-to-be-named-in-a-century/