Unlike Jefferson, I don’t believe there were any contemporaneous accounts of it, and there’s never been any DNA evidence to confirm it. I mean Jackson was undoubtedly an asshole and believed in the institution of slavery (and I believe treated enslaved people inhumanely), but as far as I understood it, not for this in particular.

I believe you’re thinking Jefferson though Jackson did own enslaved people

This is straight out of Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash. Sigh.

My ideal trifecta - fresh tomatoes, green olives, pepperoni

It’s lead-up-to-the-next-Great-Depression … as a service.

Something like this? https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2022/10/31/former-head-of-tesla-ai-explains-why-theyve-removed-sensors-others-differ/

Ahh, yes - the studio that own Star Trek has turned against diversity, equity, and inclusivity. I foresee no repercussions from that at all. /s

I actually had that thought as well, and while they certainly might, I think they’re aiming more for the people who add “reddit” to a Google search when looking for answers.

Every time I see a story like this, I’m always pretty sure it’s an AI that was trained on Reddit content.

Read what I wrote slowly again. I said Pew was the gold standard, said how many they polled in a recent survey as an example, and highlighted that they posted their data and methodology. I never said there was a minimum.

CNBC doesn’t provide any of their data, has no published methodology - this might as well be results from an online survey like Fox News does all the time.

Did you even watch the video? Do you not see the difference between what Pew does with a 1,000 people and what fucking CNBC does?

Pew Research is pretty much a gold standard. In a recent survey on Ukraine they polled almost 10,000 https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/11/25/wide-partisan-divisions-remain-in-americans-views-of-the-war-in-ukraine/

Also they post their dataset and methodology. Any poll/survey that doesn’t do that is reasonably suspect.

I probably didn’t explain well enough. Consuming media (books, TV, film, online content, and video games) is predominantly a passive experience. Obviously video games less so, but all in all, they only “adapt” within the guardrails of gameplay. These AI chatbots however are different in their very formlessness - they’re only programmed to maintain engagement and rely on the LLM training to maintain an illusion of “realness”. And because they were trained on all sorts of human interactions, they’re very good at that.

Humans are unique in how we continually anthropomorphize tons of not only inert, lifeless things (think of someone alternating between swearing at and pleading to a car that won’t start) but abstract ideals (even scientists often speak of evolution “choosing” specific traits). Given all of that, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be worried about a teen with a still developing prefrontal cortex and who is in the midst of working on understanding social dynamics and peer relationships to embue an AI chatbot with far more “humanity” than is warranted. Humans seem to have an anthropomorphic bias in how we relate to the world - we are the primary yardstick we use to measure and relate everything around us, and things like AI chatbots exploit that to maximum effect. Hell, the whole reason the site mentioned in the article exists is that this approach is extraordinarily effective.

So while I understand that on a cursory look, someone objecting to it comes across as a sad example of yet another moral panic, I truly believe this is different. For one, we’ve never had access to such a lively psychological mirror before and it’s untested waters; and two, this isn’t some objection on some imagined slight against a “moral authority” but based in the scientific understanding of specifically teen brains and their demonstrated fragility in certain areas while still under development.

I understand what you mean about the comparison between AI chatbots and video games (or whatever the moral panic du jour is), but I think they’re very much not the same. To a young teen, no matter how “immersive” the game is, it’s still just a game. They may rage against other players, they may become obsessed with playing, but as I said they’re still going to see it as a game.

An AI chatbot who is a troubled teen’s “best friend” is different and no matter how many warnings are slapped on the interface, it’s going to feel much more “real” to that kid than any game. They’re going to unload every ounce of angst into that thing, and by defaulting to “keep them engaged”, that chatbot is either going to ignore stuff it shouldn’t or encourage them in ways that it shouldn’t. It’s obvious there’s no real guardrails in this instance, as if he was talking about being suicidal, some red flags should’ve popped up.

Yes the parents shouldn’t have allowed him such unfettered access, yes they shouldn’t have had a loaded gun that he had access to, but a simple “This is all for funsies” warning on the interface isn’t enough to stop this from happening again. Some really troubled adults are using these things as defacto therapists and that’s bad too. But I’d be happier if lawmakers were much more worried about kids having access to this stuff than accessing “adult sites”.

Really appreciate their coverage of pretty much everything - lots of detail, no fluff, and no over the top headlines.

And yep, fuck insurance. Helped make the entire point of US healthcare providing profit for big corps and not actually patient wellness.

It’s middle men all the way down…

Had the same thought :)

No idea on the song, may have better luck identifying the singer, and working backwards from there? Maybe something by Fine Young Cannibals? Certainly the most notable falsetto that comes to mind for that era for me.

That’s certainly where the term originated, but usage has expanded. I’m actually fine with it, as the original idea was about the pattern recognition we use when looking at faces, and I think there’s similar mechanisms for matching other “known” patterns we see. Probably with some sliding scale of emotional response on how well known the pattern is.

Just imagine what happens when he loses to the chatbot