Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, September 19, 2024
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62 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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RIP Ozark. Just not right that I’m the first one in.
Informal poll here: is there anyone here who would be more or less likely to buy a phone, computer or tablet if it trumpeted having significant AI ability.
And, if the answer is yes, what would you expect that ability to bring to the table?
Long piece by Thomas Zimmer, who is always insightful.
A few excerpts:
“ThomasZimmer”
snip …
snip …
snip …
Donald Trump is not an outlier, this is what the GOP is now. It will not change post-Trump.
I needed to buy a new phone over the summer, it was touted as being AI ready; with the first upgrade delivering those features. I promptly turned them off.
The only AI features that I’ve used are a couple of photo editing tweaks, mostly the ability to remove unwanted objects from a picture. It should be noted that that feature has been around for nearly 10 years, but the added AI abilities have simply improved the effectiveness.
@MarkedMan: Won’t help your data any, but I only consider price and basic utility when purchasing technology. So no, I would be unlikely to purchase a phone, etc, because of AI capabilities. It would be too expensive.
I DID happen to purchase a new phone when I switched carriers because I no longer could bundle the phone with my Wi-Fi account.* I chose the phone for price and screen size and bought another Motorola. And would be willing to go back to dumb phone tomorrow if my carrier stocked them (and they were less than a smart phone costs).
*And because the agent at the Comcast/Xfinity store assured me that he had unlocked my phone when I returned their wifi equipment but failed to do so. It was at the time of my 3rd call that day to Xfinity from the T-Mobile store that I decided to cut my losses, get off “on hold,” and replace a functional, adequate phone for the equivalent model in the current line (“e” model to “g”).
@charontwo:
The right wingers in government know it. The rubes in the hustings who vote for this shit DGAF. They just want the Murka “they grew up in” back.
@MarkedMan:
No. A lot of what’s touted as AI, especially generative AI, doesn’t even happen on the device, but rather in large server farms on the web/cloud/whatever. Some Windows PCs now are sold as Copilot+ PCs, because they have an extra processor called a neural processing unit (NPU) to handle part of the AI load locally. I’ve no idea how much difference this makes.
AI isn’t a fad and it won’t go away. It’s a development on automation. But there is much about it that is new, especially at the consumer level. The hardware manufacturers and software developers are still figuring out what to do with it. As @Sleeping Dog notes, a lot is about image processing. I’ve no real use for that. If you do, it may be worth it.
Right now, AI integration in devices and software feels like a gimmick, or like selling the sizzle in Ferengi fashion.
It would be good to integrate AI so that it could, for instance, change settings on the device or software, rather than look up on the web or in help files to instruct you how to change them. Also to control apps.
The last thing to note is that at first any AI integration, useful or not, will come at a premium. Later on it will be a standard feature. Remember when color monitors for PCs were expensive? Not to mention laptops with a color screen? I don’t think you can find a monochrome monitor these days, if any are still made. So I’d wait a coupe of years.
BTW, today is Earthquake Drill Day in Mexico City and the metro area (and maybe in other places). As I’m on vacation, it will be the first time I’m not at work when it happens. At home, it makes no sense to try to get out of the building. assuming even 90 seconds warning before a quake hits, I wouldn’t make it out of the garage. So, best to stay put and away from potentially falling objects.
No word on whether we’ll also have a real quake after the drill 😉
@charontwo:
No comment, just thought this was worth emphasizing.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
I know. I miss his daily openers too. And him.
House Republicans reject their own funding bill with a shutdown around the corner (NBC):
So much winning.
@MarkedMan:
Tell me what it does, not what it’s labeled.
I was a very early adopter of cell phones because I could immediately see their purpose. I’ve owned an, iPhone from Day One because again, the point of it was obvious. So far what I’ve seen of AI in practice is a Google AI that summarizes the first search result, and burns a lot of energy doing it. Then we have the creepy pictures and the incoherent text. And AI tools are destroying YouTube for me.
So, until a case is made for AI, why would I pay for it?
Morning, all. A couple of freebies for the palate.
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/09/scientific-american-harris-endorsement-science-covid/679931/?gift=uSl1q9M95MAeGuZMpRtvf7btZUh0uhY3yUDOgqCWTk0&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/09/trump-vance-x-campaign-losing/679924/?gift=uSl1q9M95MAeGuZMpRtvf1lnIhszj-RUiJCel00rSW0&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
Enjoy.
@Kathy:
In a very real sense, “AI” has been around for decades. “Machine Learning”, “Neural Nets”, etc have existed since the 80’s, and have been used in products since the 90’s and become common in the 2000’s. For example, in the early days of search engines, results were based on human coded algorithms. (Does the page contain the word searched? How often?) But even ten years ago the algorithms that generate your results were iteratively developed through machine learning. This is now true of many many interactions we have with our devices. For instance, when I send a message on my phone, the suggested recipients change depending on what I was doing before I sent the message, the time of day and my location. When I search for an app on my phone from a Home Depot, it pulls up that app as the first suggestion, but would not if I was at home. But no person programmed those algorithms, the phone generated them itself, and continues to modify them over time.
So while I think “Look! We have AI!” is a fad, the technology behind it is nearly old enough to have kids in college, and so can’t be considered a fad in any way.
@Michael Reynolds: “And AI tools are destroying YouTube for me.”
My youTube use is pretty basic, so I don’t know if I’ve come across this yet. What is AI doing to the site?
@DK:
Related, El Felon is amply demonstrating his incapacity and unwillingness to learn. He keeps insisting on a government shutdown unless there’s also a voter suppression bill grafted on the budget. Any normal person would have learned shutting down the government will hurt you at the polls, right after losing the House in 2018 after the prolonged shutdown.
@Michael Reynolds:
I definitely fall into the same category. The reason I asked is that it’s been reported that Apple’s new phone is underperforming expectations and analysts are saying it’s because Apple had bet on “AI” as the thing that would trigger a super-cycle for upgrades. It wouldn’t work for me, but I was wondering if I was an outlier.
@Michael Reynolds:
I can tell you that when I google something about a subject I know well, that AI summary is often wrong or misleading in important ways (but it sounds so authoritative!)
@Kathy: Stand in a doorway or sit/kneel under a table* if you are in a room. At least that’s what I recall from the earthquake drills in middle school the year after the earthquake.
*It has to be a sturdy table. Seeking refuge under a folding card table with a pressboard top might not work. 🙁
@wr:
I’ve seen a few videos on Youtube warning about AI generated videos on Youtube, which are more clickbait than real content and often get things wrong (in science videos).
@MarkedMan:
I’ve seen two reviews of the latest iphones, not yet in depth, and both mention the big AI features will come with a software update in, I think, a few months.
@DeD: I question whether people who vote for Trump would even know what Scientific American is. It’s been a long time since school libraries had periodical sections in them. And then there’s the additional question of whether Trump voters even used libraries while in school.
@charontwo: Deport! Deport Melania! Deport Musk! Deport Cruz!
@Kathy: that was how I realized that I had been completely Japanized—I got to the point where earthquakes didn’t wake me up unless it was a big one.
@MarkedMan: I’d buy a sailboat before I’d buy an iPhone.
Even bigger conspicuous consumption value and more fun.
@Slugger:
Too white to count as migrants.
@wr:
AI ‘voice’ is narrating lots of videos. Saying things like, ‘Thigh-land.” You know, the Southeast Asian country where thigh food comes from. Or “King Louis X-I-V.” And scraper sites are proliferating so rapidly it gets hard to find anything original. Then there’s the AI generated thumbnail art of soulless ‘women’ with enormous breasts to draw clicks to everything including 10 worst cities, brought to you by dead-eyed titty girl.
I’m DNRing anything the algorithm suggests* if I don’t see an actual human, or hear an actual human voice.
*The algorithm’s a whole ‘nother problem. Never, ever right. Just never.
DJT stock is currently at a new low of $15. Down just a wee bit from its high of $66. It has had peaks and valleys over the last 6 months, but it’s been on a remarkably straight-line descent since just days before Biden abdicated – no rallies, no peaks, a straight line heading toward junk.
@Kathy: I suppose it is possible that when those features are available, sales will pick up. I’m going to buy one myself in a month or so, but that’s because my current model is 5 years old and I want more memory and a better camera.
One thing that might be pulling down upgrades is how long batteries last in newer phones. Even my five year old one has much better longevity that previous models. For the first time I haven’t had to put a new battery in and it still pretty much lasts the day, although I do charge it for a bit on the drive home.
@Michael Reynolds: I read that if it goes below $12 he can’t sell tomorrow, when the blackout period is over. It will be interesting to see what happens today. If the market believes he’s going to sell, the price will dive below that, because once he starts selling the price is going to go off a cliff.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: I use my iPhone for so many things. The iPhone keeps apps in a kind of suspended mode when you are done with them, so that they start up faster when you come back to them. You can deliberately take them completely out of memory though and I did that 3-4 weeks ago. Just now when I cycled through the apps I had opened since then there were 44. On my iPad I bet it’s well over 50.
Talking to my friends who have boats, it seems it’s better to have a friend who has a boat than to have a boat…
@Kathy: I took an upper-level geology course in college, and one of the things that really sticks in my memory was the surprising number of people killed by debris falling on them as they ran outside of buildings during earthquakes. Many of them would have been far safer remaining indoors and getting under heavy furniture. It was apparently worse for those in areas with a lot of brick buildings (unreinforced masonry).
@MarkedMan:
It’s an increasingly short cliff.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I thought the doorway advice had been debunked.
A table would protect you from falling plaster, masonry, etc. This is current advice.
@DeD:
That’s either extreme chutzpah, or incredible stupidity. Or both.
How does anyone support this moron?
ETA: the only thing that worries me about that article is Frum’s tendency to be absolutely wrong on his calls.
@Jen:
I think Trump’s fans conveniently ignore his multitudinous contradictions.
@MarkedMan:
If El Felon sells soon, it will be to donors who have already agreed to pay a much higher price, or to swap for shares in other companies.
They won’t be investing their money, at least not in that stock.
I think his plan is to win or steal the election, or stage a coup. Then the price will go through the roof, or he’ll get Congress to bail him out for a ridiculous sum. Small, vanity social media apps are too big to fail.
@Jen:
The advice to evacuate is so one won’t be trapped in a collapsed building. But this only works if you have an alert system that gives you some warning. We do have that, but it has limitations.
The AI I want is the AI that will park your car for you, and come to pick you up on the curb outside of the restaurant.
This is AI that is made to help me. As opposed to the AI that is made to fool me, or reduce costs for some corporate behemoth.
Now the search results AI is meant to help me, it’s true. It just doesn’t do it all that well.
I find it’s not the accuracy of it so much. It’s accuracy is about the same as the other hits on my search Which is OK, but not great. It’s just that putting into a voice that answers my question tends not to add much value, as far as I’m concerned. Shearing the information away from the context (the web page) it is taken from loses information. It’s not a plus.
We were watching a German tv show that was dubbed in English. For some odd reason the closed captioning was on , too, and we could not get it off the screen.
It was really distracting because the dubbed dialogue and the captions were reading from two different scripts. Seemed like it anyway. We got so into just noticing the differences that we totally lost interest in the show.
I do remember there was a French character in the show and his name was never spelled the same way twice. Apparently, a vowel cluster threw the ai for a loop. After a few iterations, it’s like it stopped even trying to get the name right. I laughed out loud.
@Jay L Gischer:
This! Ten years ago I was sure this was going to be how autonomous driving would develop, with the first applications being in well defined areas, probably with beacons and other external technology. But that damn Musk convinced everyone that cars wouldn’t need those helpers and it was a waste of time and money, so development stalled. But now it seems to be back on track again, with things like vehicle to vehicle communication (“Hey! Cars behind me! I just came around this blind corner and had to brake hard!) and other forms of external assists for self driving cars.
I would definitely pay extra for a feature that let me pull up to an overhead canopy at the entrance to a movie theater, where we would exit the car and it would go off and park itself. Especially when it was pouring rain!
@Michael Reynolds: Interesting. I suppose I would have noticed this if I ever watched anything besides the Screen Rant Pitch Meetings and old episodes of Kitchen Nightmares…
Thanks.
@MarkedMan: He has said recently that he is not going to sell. If he then does go ahead and sell, isn’t he liable for charges of fraud and stock manipulation?
@MarkedMan:
If we had perfectly networked AVs – and no non-AVs – we would no longer need stop lights or stop signs. Or pretty much any signage.
@wr:
I’m curious whether Ryan George’s (Pitch Meeting) phrases are making it into common use in Hollywood. Are people saying, “Super easy, barely an inconvenience?” Or, “I’m gonna need you to get aaaaall the way off my back?” Or my very favorite, “So the movie can happen?”
ETA: For those who don’t know WTF we’re talking about: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pitch+meeting
@MarkedMan:
Truth truthily truthed, but eventually your friend will get fatigued of taking you out on his boat. The only real way of having the benefits of having a boat is to have your own. (Or realizing that you don’t really benefit from having one all that much.)
ETA: And you could have written the first chunk of your response in Mandarin Chinese and I would have understood your point just as well, but I just don’t have much need for a phone that does more than phone stuff.)
@Kathy:
Shows how long it’s been since I updated my earthquake safety IQ.
ETA: And if debunked is true, I’ll be in trouble if “the BIG one” comes. Don’t have a table–or anyplace to put one.
@MarkedMan: I know that my daughter, who is currently in college, uses AI after she writes a paper to review it. It corrects any grammatical errors she might have missed, and lets her know if she forgot to cite a quotation. This last one is probably its biggest advantage. It can compare your writing with any published work to see if there’s a match and if you appropriately cited it.
@Jen: A Trump pledge on Truth Social isn’t worth the paper it’s not printed on. How many terabytes of data space have died senseless deaths wasted on Trumpy ravings?
@Monala: You mean nobody’s gonna ask me to edit and proofread their doctoral dissertation or MAT reflection essay for their national credential anymore because I’m a comp teacher? DARN IT!
@Michael Reynolds: In theory something like this simulation would be possible. But I’m afraid old codgers like us could never get comfortable with it.
@DeD:
@Jen:
Why is he campaigning in Long Island? NY isn’t a swing state.
@MarkedMan:
That’s the dream. Unfortunately, so far, this is the reality. (I suspect you know where that link goes.)
I use The Wirecutter’s reviews extensively and find them reliable, but this comment startled me:
There is a misconception lurking in there that I’ve heard over and over. The truth is that the FDA doesn’t test the safety or efficacy of anything, and never has. What they do is review the testing (and many other things) submitted to them by manufacturers before clearing a product for market. In fact, it’s a good sign that a product is bogus or that its marketing is just BS if they ever mention “FDA approval”. They don’t approve devices and never have, as that would shift at least some responsibility to them. The FDA clears devices for market based on evidence provided by the manufacturers, full stop.
@Sleeping Dog: It’s bizarre. My guess is that he thinks it is some kind of mind game thing (“why is he in New York? Maybe he has a shot there that we don’t see?” etc.), or he wanted to do something in NY that he didn’t want to personally pay for the transportation (this way he can charge the campaign).
@Jen:
I hadn’t thought of that, but it certainly seems right. It’s expensive to fly that plane and he has always funded it with his marks money.
If I were interested in ever running for office, I would simply not refer to myself as a Black Nazi (or any other type of Nazi) on a porn site where I also expressed interests that would offend my likely voters.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/19/mark-robinson-north-carolina
@MarkedMan: Less likely by far.
I would expect it to bring to the table the ability for the device builder to more efficiently spy on everything I do. So that the builder can then sell that information to anyone and everyone including law enforcement.
@MarkedMan: Exactly. What have now that people call AI is at best a VI (virtual intelligence). An algorithm that self modifies based upon external pressures (carrot/stick/whatever). There’s nothing actually inherently intelligent about it.
@Jen: Long Island is pretty swingy but red, so a normal presidential campaign might do a stop there if it were near a fundraiser, to help boost down ballot candidates.
Whether this is a normal campaign, in this respect, is unknown.
@MarkedMan:
The LLM and generative image stuff is very new. There was nothing even semi-practical like it a few years ago, and even in the past few months there have been significant improvements. (Now hands generally have somewhere between 4-6 fingers!)
A lot of the other things grouped under AI have been around for ages — the data extraction and organizing stuff, where it is looking for correlations in large data sets. The machine learning techniques, which are precursors to generative.
I kind of hate all of it. Dead soulless images, weird voices, and encoding conventional wisdom and biased datasets. Some of the hallucinations are pretty awesome though.
The saving grace is that the newer usages are so energy intensive that they won’t be cost effective unless we have another big jump in the tech, so hopefully the AI people spend themselves into poverty.
@Jen: @MarkedMan:
This seems to me right. Maybe he wants to drop in on Melania in Trump Tower.
@Jen: I expect he’s fundraising. Just in a kind of strange backhanded fashion, but fundraising. I mean, his rallies are thought of as “fun”, right? Maybe he thinks it’s a sweetener.
I completely missed the drill. I may post details alter or tomorrow.
No real quakes yet.