Artificial intelligence, like any intelligence, has goals and priorities

No. Intelligence does not necessitate goals. You are able to understand math, letters, words, meaning of those without pursuing a specific goal.

Because it’s not AI, it’s sophisticated pattern separation, recognition, lossy compression and extrapolation systems.

And our brains work in a similar way.

I’m willing to debate the potentials of AI again once they manage to do that without those “benchmarks” getting special attention in the training data.

You sound like those guys who doomed AI, because a single neuron wasn’t able to solve the XOR problem. Guess what, build a network out of neurons and the problem is solved.

What potentials are you talking about? The potentials are tremendous. There are a plethora of algorithms, theoretic knowledge and practical applications where AI really shines and proves its potential. Just because LLMs currently still lack several capabilities, this doesn’t mean that some future developments can’t improve on that and this by maybe even not being a contemporary LLM. LLMs are just one thing in the wide field of AI. They can do really cool stuff. This points towards further potential in that area. And if it’s not LLMs, then possibly other types of AI architectures.

Compared to what I’m used to regarding storage upgrades on other highly integrated devices like smartphones for example, the storage upgrade costs of the steamdeck seem much better and fair.

For example, it might record if people are browsing for baby products or other personal items.

Don’t mind baby products and dildos or whatever.

They could see bank activity and even login credentials when someone is temporarily displaying their own passwords.

This basically ignores all security measures regarding everything. Sensitive communication, company secrets and so on.

That’s fucking seriously huge. What the fuck?!

Or: “Men buying women’s hygiene products, because they exist.”

It’s really hard for me to find some stuff at all.

There are a lot of different species which serve as pollinators besides bees. Afaik, some are more specialised into specific flowers/plants than others and without them, these plants wouldn’t be able to reproduce. (Yucca moths for example.)

It was already ruled that they failed to sufficiently disclose which information was used and how.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/australia-court-fines-facebook-owner-meta-14-mln-undisclosed-data-collection-2023-07-26/

This is not evidence that they’re using your microphone, and you know it’s not.

I didn’t claim it to be evidence for that.

somehow bypassing Google and Apple’s mic usage notifications

Unless some form of hardware notification is hardwired into the device, which indicates cam or mic usage, I’m on the rather paranoid side regarding software notifications. Software is usually much easier to break. I’m leaning a lot out of the window now, as I don’t know how secure those notifications are implemented. However, even then there is reason for concern, given that facebook had / has questionable deals with device manufacturers. If they were willing to share personal data with device manufacturers, there is reason to suspect this went or can go the other way around as well.

I don’t know why you keep coming back to trust. […] That’s not the point.

It is mine. Even though there is no evidence for a surveillance using device microphones itself yet and it could be surprising if they were able to, given the history of facebook, they participated in a lot of rather surprising shit.

Aye. Facebook has been proven to be shady af over and over again.

it wasn’t in secret

Did I misread something? It even says in the title of the linked article, that it was a “secret project”.

The evidence is: among other things, facebook has repeatedly violated user’s privacy. It would be no surprise if they would also monitor conversations via the microphone. Sure, currently there seems to be no evidence for that. But I wouldn’t be so naive to just trust them on that.

Yes. Just another malicious thing facebook does. Surely, they are totally trustworthy in all other regards. /s

Security researchers can and probably have tested for this and found no clear, verifiable evidence, otherwise we would have known.

Facebook snooped on users’ Snapchat traffic in secret project, documents reveal

Sadly not just the USA.

This becomes even more ridiculous if you consider that we wasted about 1.05 billion tonnes of food worldwide in 2022 alone. (UNEP Food Waste Index Report 2024 Key Messages)

But no. Supermarkets will miss out on profits if they ban people from their stores who can’t pay.

Seems illogical? Because it is.

That’s a good way to use it. Like every technological evolution it comes with risks and downsides. But if you are aware of that and know how to use it, it can be a useful tool.
And as always, it only gets better over time. One day we will probably rely more heavily on such AI tools, so it’s a good idea to adapt quickly.

Critical thinking courses would indeed be very great to have.

Mere factual knowledge transfer is not effective in forming mature and responsible minds if critical thinking is not a focus of education as well.

What is “dumb”? What is “intelligence”?

I think, as long as people have normally functioning brains, it is possible for them to understand. And I think nurturing critical thinking is an important aspect of how to approach this.

You can absolutely present a complicated topic to someone who isn’t educated in that field, or even has low education at all, if you are being humble about how you explain it and try to meet them at eye-level.

You don’t need to give definitive answers, you may give recommendations, but you can always explain a bit and note that there is also a lot more to it than what you explained and that one must take care before making some further conclusions.
Interested people in your audience then have some first basis and grasp of a topic and can take it up on themselves to dive deeper; for example, by asking questions or finding further sources (you might refer them to these).

Sometimes a common error, as people just have a rather ordinary interpretation on the meaning of the word “theory” and sometimes it’s an intentional attempt of discrediting.

Words can mean different things in different contexts. A scientific theory is not the same as the general or ordinary every-day meaning of “theory”.

Classic example and mistake by followers of creationist religions: “evolution is just a theory”.

Well, what if I told you, that, for example, our modern electronic means of communication are part of the wide field of “information theory”?

I am absolutely with you on that one.

But I think it’s tied to how we do business and less a problem which is very specific to the movie industry. Or in other words: it’s our fucked up capitalism in action again.

The workhorses of such shows get almost neglected while the shiny poster people and producers get most of the share.

And that’s basically everywhere the case. CEOs, managers, superiors are making insanely more money than those who are contributing a lot of work. It’s an unfair system which is holding the movie industry tightly in its grip as well.