Manjushri

At home, she has forbidden her 10-year-old daughter from using chatbots. “She has to learn critical thinking skills first or she won’t be able to tell if the output is any good,” the rater said.

And this is why the vast majority of people, particularly in the USA, should not be using AI. Critical thinking has been a weakness in the USA for a very long time and is essentially a now four-letter word politically. The conservatives in the USA have been undermining the education system in red states because people with critical thinking skills are harder to trick into supporting their policies. In 2012, the Texas Republican Party platform publicly came out as opposed to the teaching of critical thinking skills.

We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

This has been going on at some level for more than 4 decades. The majority of people in those states have never been taught the skills and knowledge to safely use these tools safely. In fact, their education has, by design, left them easily manipulated by those in power, and now, by LLMs too.

I honestly cannot think of a single reason why I, or anyone else, would want this crud built into anything other than toys, and even then I doubt it would end well.

Okay, I know it’s bad form to reply to my own post, but one day after I posted the above, I saw this story.

AI-powered plushie pulled from shelves after giving advice on BDSM sex and where to find knives

It also explains different sex positions, “giving step-by-step instructions on a common ‘knot for beginners’ for tying up a partner, and describing roleplay dynamics involving teachers and students and parents and children – scenarios it disturbingly brought up itself,” the report stated.

I don’t like your LLM because A) It’s a piece of junk and I cannot trust it’s answers, and B) It’s designed and built by an organization focused solely on gathering every bit of data about me that it’s possible to gather and use that information to squeeze every nickle out of me you can.

I honestly cannot think of a single reason why I, or anyone else, would want this crud built into anything other than toys, and even then I doubt it would end well.

Oh, let me check down detector to see what’s impacted.

Well, shit…

"People are over-trusting [AI] and taking their responses on face value without digging in and making sure that it’s not just some hallucination that’s coming up.

So very, very much this. I see people taking AI responses at face value all the time. Look at the number of lawyers that have submitted briefs containing AI hallucinated citations and been reprimanded for them, for example.

These people turned to a tool (that they do not understand) - instead of human connection. Instead of talking to real people or professional help. And That is the real tragedy - not an arbitrary technology.

They are a badly designed, dangerous tools and people who do not understand them, including children, are being strongly encouraged to use them. In no reasonable world should an LLM be allowed to engage in any sort of interaction on an emotionally charged topic with a child. Yet it is not only allowed, it is being encouraged through apps like Character.AI.

How many people has Google convinced to kill themselves? That is the relevant question. Looking up the means to do the deed on Google is very different from being talked into doing it by an LLM that you believe you can trust.

Anyone who hires a consulting company powered by AI doesn’t need to. Clearly they are capable of making their own poor decisions and don’t need to go to an outside company to get bad advice.

Huh… I didn’t realize that. I’m actually not sure how you would get it to take a new capture.

Not sure. I’ve only known about the site for half a year or so.

They want to be able to sue ISPs who fail to take block people they believe are pirates. Cox did not do that. They told Cox that these people are pirates and Cox didn’t block them. Do you really want your ISP to be able to cut you off just because some other company claims you are using the service to pirate content? I want them to have to go to court and prove a crime was committed before their ISP is required to block them.

Right now, these very publishers can file copyright claims against people on youtube and other sites for infringement. Those claims are not evaluated by youtube. The content is just removed. No proof. No court order. If SCOTUS sides with the guild here, then those same companies will be able to have your internet cut off just by telling your ISP that your IP address was used to pirate their material.

Frankly, I would like a court to be involved before what is now a vital utility is cut off rather than letting book, movie, and music publishers decide who should be cut off with no review.

Uhm… what do you think this is?

This is the Author’s Guild asking for internet providers to be able to block people without a court order. They want to be able to contact a provider and say, “This user downloaded a book without paying for it so you have to cut off their internet.” The provider should not be allowed to do that unless the courts order them to do so.

The linked article clearly shows this.

As our brief explains, when millions of people can copy and share creative works “quickly, anonymously, and across borders,” going after individual infringers one by one is nearly impossible. The only practical way to stop large-scale piracy is to hold accountable for the internet companies that provide the infrastructure—especially when those companies know exactly what’s happening and choose to profit from it anyway.

They can already go after individual infringers and web sites that aid in piracy. Now they want to be able to order providers to cut off users without the bother of going to court over it.

Uhm… they do. Fuck up badly enough and your license is taken away.

Yeah, by the courts. Fuck up badly enough, and you can be taken to court and a judge will take away your license. It’s not taken away by the local government. What the Author’s Guild wants is equivalent to requiring communities to take away the rights of some drivers to use the roads without bothering to take drivers to court.

The local government is not banning repeat speeders from using the roads though. The courts might do that by revoking driver’s licenses, but the engineers and local governments do not have the authority, and should not have the authority to do so.

In the same way, internet providers should not be the one’s who decide that a given user should not have access. That should remain the decision of the courts. If a copyright holder can show the courts that a user should be denied access to the internet, the courts can order the individual cut off. That’s where the power should remain.

Yeah, I for one have never eaten anything except chemicals!

They are captures of the same page at different times .

https://archive.is/5QFkF is the snapshot taken 7 Nov 2025 01:40 and

https://archive.is/TFqAx is the one taken 6 Nov 2024 17:08

I imagine that the Elon’s of the world see these movies only from the perspective of the rich oligarchs who are running those dystopian societies and think, “That is so cool! I want that world!”

Come on. Convincing people they need something and then selling it to them is what capitalism is all about. It doesn’t matter how stupid the idea is, if you convince people to pay for it then by their standard, it’s a good idea.

Not the user you were responding to, and you’re correct about these thermostats, but not all devices retain functionality without internet connectivity. For example, these $2000 dollar ‘smart’ beds.

Some reported on Reddit that they were woken up by their bed suddenly readjusting their preferred sleeping temperatures – some soaring as high as 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Others say their bed became stuck at an extreme incline. According to The Washington Post, some beds also blinked flashing lights and sounded wake-up alarms.

These things became contorted, overheating (or freezing) bricks when AWS went down last week and the owners had no control over them without the app.

Particularly if those innocents are the “right” color.

Are you kidding? They’re proud of it. They honestly think it’s a good thing. Along with the recent article about ICE stopping brown people and using a phone app to ID them from a photograph , we’ve rocketed right past the Papers-Please phase of fascism into a high tech dystopian end game.