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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • I’m confused exactly what you’re saying here. It does seem from your experiment that if you specifically ask it to, Chat GPT can reproduce selected pieces of copyrighted creative works verbatim, but what’s your point? You posted the screenshots underneath a quote about how AI systems extract patterns from works rather than copying them so I guess you want to show that it can at times in fact just copy things despite this seeming claim to the opposite, but the fact that you prompted the system to do it seems to kind of dilute this point a bit. In any case, it’s not just reproducing the work, it’s producing output that is relevant to your naturally phrased English language output, and selecting which particular passage in a way that is specifically relevant to the way your input was phrased and also adding additional output aside from the quoted passage which is also relevant and unique to the prompt.

    The developers make the analogy of a person being influenced by works in the creation of their own and that that is considered acceptable. If you asked Bob Dylan to cite a passage from a work by Hemingway and he successfully remembered such a passage and in the correct context recited it to you verbatim, followed by an explanation for why it’s a good passage to have selected, you wouldn’t take from that exchange that this was proof that Bob Dylan was not really actually ‘influenced’ by anything but was instead just cobbling together the work of others when he produces his music. If anything, it’d likely be regarded as a mark of how well read Bob Dylan must be that he could remember the passage so accurately and choose a passage that so successfully fits the brief of your request. I don’t typically want to leap to the defence of these AI models that wholesale take in so much creative work and mechanistically re-assemble it without compensation nor input from the artist but I wouldn’t pretend that it’s not an issue with at least a little nuance to it and I can’t see what these screenshots prove.




  • I haven’t been to the states but I can compare Burger King UK to Burger King (Hungry Jacks) Australia and also Hungry Jacks to any other burger place that isn’t Mc Donald’s (because that’s just a tie). BK UK was significantly worse than the Aussie version but I nevertheless indulged quite a few times whilst there, ironically probably even more than here in Australia. Despite managing to be worse, it still occupies that very wide band between just under the threshold of good all the way down to just above actually inedible and usually if going for BK it’s definitely because “it’ll have to do” and it always does.

    Hungry Jacks (BK) compared to an actual good burger joint here in Australia stands no chance but it does fulfill its promise of a consistent standard, even if it’s a low one and that’s a good thing since you can find some awful shit here like a local cafe’s burger or those Vietnamese lunch bars that have to offer a ‘burger’ on their otherwise nice menu. But of course the flipside is you can get good to great burgers easily as well as long as you go somewhere that’s actually a burger place not somewhere that just has a burger option.



  • well that’s sort of the point of this comic because the one thing you’d really want it to be good enough to do and would love to be able to trust something to do for you is the tax and all the other tasks in the comics are things you were pretty well able to do yourself before, probably wanted to do before, and if not exactly wanted, at least didn’t want something else to displace you in by taking over doing that task from now onwards especially if it was your actual job before. If displacing human workers for those tasks was the only problem, it’d be a sad but familiar story of progress but the fact that AI, at least for now is incapable of doing the part we’d all really love to have done for us is just the diarrhea icing on the dog turd cake.







  • This can NOT happen, the risk is too big and people could get hurt. Your Mom has allowed this to escalate too far, too fast and can’t see the danger she is inviting.

    Your Mom isn’t ‘mad’ but she is definitely being reckless and while trying to help someone else that she thinks needs her, she is forgetting about her family that need her. She doesn’t know everything she needs to know to be sure this is a safe idea and she doesn’t have the resources or ability to find out. Just getting to know someone over the internet is NOT enough and it IS possible to be deceived even when you think you know the person well. That’s how online scammers work, they have to be convincing or people would not give them anything.

    Even if they are telling the truth, the amount of help they’re going to need and the long term commitment could be a disaster for you all. This person will be completely dependent on your family while in your country and they may have all kinds of complicated needs having come from a difficult home in a very different country, and with potential immigration questions. Offering to help someone with those kinds of needs is not a good thing to do if you are not truly in a position to offer that much help. Already your Mom can’t even offer them a place to stay without making promises on someone else’s behalf (yours), can she really offer what will likely be years and years of emotional, legal and financial support to a stranger without compromising her responsibilities to her family? When you speak to your mother about this, you need to remind her that YOU are her first responsibility and you are the one being put at risk most of all. You mentioned siblings, I’d be worried about them too. Are they minors? This is just such a bad idea.

    You should speak to your father and find out if he is really okay with this like your Mom says? It sounds possible that like you, he didn’t think it would do any harm for your mother to comfort this person online and now it’s getting out of control and he doesn’t want to upset her or doesn’t know what she’s promised them. If he really doesn’t have any objections, then maybe there’s other family members you can talk to? Most people outside this situation will think your Mom is making a bad decision and maybe you have an Aunt or Uncle that can talk to her. YOU are her first responsibility, because you are her child and family, this person online is not. It would be nice if it was possible for her to take care of the whole world, but it isn’t, and if she tries to do that she might find herself unable to care for you and your family either because she gets scammed and loses your family’s money, or because the person invited in to your home turns out to be more dangerous than expected or just requires more care than any of you can offer. It’s not that they don’t deserve care or help, it’s that it’s not help your family can reasonably and safely provide.

    I hoped I would have good advice on how your mother could still help this person without the risk of being scammed or without going way too far like inviting them to live in your home but unfortunately I don’t know any way that can be done. Though tragic, there is sadly a line where your personal responsibility for others ends. When caring for strangers involves risks to your own children that line has been crossed. Help offered to people in bad home situations, or in dangerous countries or in this case both, is complicated and difficult and full of risks even for professional organisations that try their best to do this, to take on this responsibility personally is very reckless and dangerous for your Mom, for you, for the rest of her family and even for her internet friend. Once he stays with you guys, what then? Can he work in your country? Can he legally immigrate there? What’s his family going to do if they find out about you guys? How long can you support him? If he stays for some time and it doesn’t work for any reason, where could they go? They’d be be alone in a foreign country with no where to stay? This isn’t a real plan, it’s a big, kind, but thoughtless gesture that needs to be reconsidered.


  • My cat likes to sit on the desk in the little space between my pen tablet and the brick size external hard drive I use, and nod off to sleep while I work.

    Yesterday she did this peacefully for hours until out of nowhere, I assume because of a bad dream maybe, she woke up suddenly by jumping in to the air knocking over the expensive hard drive I was working off of and then also, upon seeming to realize she wasn’t comfortably laying on the desk anymore but instead in the midst of a rapid descent towards it from a height, proceeded to kick every limb in a panic and also me in the process. Good times.






  • I think somewhere around the middle of high school the storyline started to really fall apart and now in it I’m at various times a successful and likeable actor/astronaut/musician/academic/author/just a salt of the earth everyday guy that everyone somehow has respect for and comes to for advice/race car driver/activist/underground resistance fighter. And I’m also magnanimous and generous, but somehow also dishing it out to the all the wankers I have to deal with.

    I think after the exhaustion of adulthood and fuckwits and my own mediocrity the quality and vividness of my daydreams has dulled to just a kind of cartoon version of me having a much better time or telling someone who’s done me wrong to fuck themselves.