Researchers had programmed the various large language models (LLMs) to act in what they termed malicious ways, and the point of the study was to see if this behaviour could be removed through the safety techniques. The paper, charmingly titled Sleeper Agents: Training Deceptive LLMs that Persist Through Safety Training, suggests “adversarial training can teach models…
When the kids were little, my wife and I managed their media consumption with the help of reviews from sites like Common Sense Media. (Or maybe a competitor. It was a long time ago… I emailed the webmaster to correct a detail they got wrong in a VeggieTales review.) I’m impressed by the level of…
Far from being “stochastic parrots,” the biggest large language models seem to learn enough skills to understand the words they’re processing. […] A trained and tested LLM, when presented with a new text prompt, will generate the most likely next word, append it to the prompt, generate another next word, and continue in this manner,…
I’m sure the good-apple cops will fairly and thoroughly investigate reports about someone stealing newspapers containing a story about alleged rapes at an underage drinking party at the police chief’s house. Nearly all the copies of a small-town Colorado newspaper were stolen from newspaper racks on the same day the Ouray County Plaindealer published a…
This is offensive, deeply troubling, and, sadly, totally predictable. Julian Dibbell documented similar behavior 30 years ago in his article about sexual assault in the text-only virtual world LambaMOO. (Content warning… sexual assault in a multi-user virtual environment.) A woman has revealed she was ‘virtually gang raped’ by four male avatars in Meta‘s Horizon Worlds –…
Rewatching ST:DS9 The Ship On a mineral survey of a planet that just happens to look like Southern California, O’Brien trades playful barbs with crewman Muniz. Unlike most episodes where the leads have all the fun, this mission is fairly crawling with random crew we’ve never seen before. An unidentified ship appears randomly and crashes…
As a grad student in the 1990s, I chose to focus my dissertation on the years 1920-1950, on the theory that works published during that time period would fall out of copyright during the prime of my academic career. I imagined that one of my ongoing scholarly projects would be to publish free, annotated editions…
The AI authors’ writing often sounds like it was written by an alien; one Ortiz article, for instance, warns that volleyball “can be a little tricky to get into, especially without an actual ball to practice with.” According to a second person involved in the creation of the Sports Illustrated content who also asked to be kept anonymous,…
Rewatching ST:DS9 After a comic opening on the station (featuring Quark working an advertising jingle into the cups served up by the food replicators), we join Kira, Dax and a starry-eyed Bashir (“Is it my imagination or are the stars a little brighter in the Gamma Quadrant?”) on a runabout, following a distress beacon to…
I check into Musk’s X every few days, but I no longer *use* it as I once did, as a way of learning from credible experts responding to breaking news, and as a way of connecting with colleagues in my field, mostly just listening quietly while they shared their wisdom with each other. I first…
Rewatching ST:DS9 In the Defiant mess hall, Dax and Bashir give O’Brien friendly advice about parenting, and Dax and O’Brien warn Bashir not to sit in Worf’s favorite seat. A Jem-Haddar sneak attack on DS9 has fragmented a docking pylon, and during the hectic scene that follows, the camera leaves Kira’s in-progress tactical report so…
There’s a history of case law protecting the rights of privately owned publishers and social networks to make their own editorial decisions — including algorithmically sorted content. The U.S. Court of Appeals (11th Circuit) ruling in May 2022, which blocked Florida’s law, stated “while the Constitution protects citizens from governmental efforts to restrict their access to social…
So, the sight of Elon Musk charging towards Wikipedia with his trademark guile and delicacy was so predictable that it was almost relaxing. He saw a collective resource that people prized and he wanted to hurt it. Why does Wales even need any money to run Wikipedia in the first place, he wondered on Sunday. You could…
Rewatching ST:DS9 Sisko and Kassidy playfully tease each other about balancing duty and their relationship. After she leaves, Sisko blissfully smells her pillow. Eddington briefs the staff about protecting a shipment of industrial replicators from the Maquis (former Federation citizens whose colonies were ceded to the Cardassians against their will). Sisko sends Worf to patrol…
As much as I love escapist science fiction, the way to get to the future for real is to avoid killing each other and ourselves in the present. We can’t count on capitalist techbros selling joyrides to billionaire tourists. People tend to liken space exploration to expansion on Earth—pushing the frontier. But on the edge…
I’ve enjoyed human-written A/V Club articles in the past. I see no reason to seek out articles written by bots that copy existing material word-for-word and add no value. The company G/O, mentioned in the clip below, owns the A.V. Club and is behind the shift to bot-authored articles: “A/V Club [sic] licenses content from…
Rewatching ST:DS9 Worf wins a furious sparring match with Dax, but she discombobulates his composure, first by accusing him of trying to flirt with her, and then by actually flirting with him. A drunken Klingon arrives on the station, calling for Worf. It’s his brother Kurn, come to ask for a ritual death due to…
Rewatching ST:DS9 Played for laughs, Kira gets many inoculations as she prepares for a diplomatic mission to a Cardassisan outpost. Her pilot is none other than Dukat, who has been demoted and ostracized after acknowledging his half-Bajoran daughter, Ziyal, who now lives on his clunky freighter. Dukat smugly flirts with Kira at dinner, clearly enjoying…
Rewatching ST:DS9 Odo meticulously arranges his office in preparation for a routine meeting with Kira. For her, it’s an enjoyable part of her workday, but Odo looks like he’s nervously preparing for a date. Quark complains that Odo makes too much noise shape-shifting into various creatures in the quarters above his. First Minister Shakaar arrives…
Rewatching ST:DS9 Continuing from Part 1 (s4e11 “Homefront“), Sisko and Odo puzzle over Starfleet’s reports on the planetwide power outage, noting that the elite cadet group Red Squad was first recalled, then assigned to unspecified field duty. Though the streets are empty except for the security guards, Joseph Sisko opens his restaurant, seeing the guards…