Category: Random

Modern generative AI systems are opaque in a way that fundamentally differs from traditional software.  If an ordinary software program does something—for example, a character in a video game says a line of dialogue, or my food delivery app allows me to tip my driver—it does those things because a human specifically programmed them in.  Generative AI is not like that at all.  When a generative AI system does something, like summarize a financial document, we have no idea, at a specific or precise level, why it makes the choices it does—why it chooses certain words over others, or why it occasionally makes a mistake despite usually being accurate.

— Read on www.darioamodei.com/post/the-urgency-of-interpretability

California’s community colleges are reporting a rise in financial aid fraud. In January, suspected bots represented 1 in 4 college applicants. Schools have given away millions to these scams, and college officials say fraudsters are getting smarter with the help of AI.

— Read on calmatters.org/education/higher-education/2024/04/financial-aid-fraud/

It’s a lot of responsibility, and being a father is one of the two most important jobs in the world; the other, of course, is being a mother, but you’re not cut out for that role. No offense.

— Read on www.ncregister.com/blog/letter-to-a-young-stoic

According to some researchers, puffins cannot fly unless they have a view of the ocean; that’s why the best way to rescue the babies is literally to throw them off the cliffs.

— Read on www.aol.com/people-iceland-collecting-baby-puffins-152349435.html

How to win an argument with a toddler:
You can’t.

That’s because toddlers don’t understand what an argument is and aren’t interesting in having one.

— Read on seths.blog/2025/04/how-to-win-an-argument-with-a-toddler/

More recent content lookup are equally alarming:

• In 2023, 38% of all pages created in the previous decade – gone;
• 1 in 5 links on government pages – broken (of which 86% were internal to the sites);
• 32% of links from news site – dead;
• 11% of reference links on Wikipedia – unreachable (with 53% of pages having at least one broken link);
• On social media, 90% of tweets disappeared within 46 days.

The issue is so widespread that it has a name: Link rot.

— Read on tnlnet.substack.com/p/digital-amnesia

“We optimized everything,” he said. “The forms, the processes, the outcomes. But we never optimized the human experience. Because the system was never really built for us.”

— Read on www.linkedin.com/pulse/we-optimized-everything-ourselves-katalin-b%C3%A1rtfai-walcott-q4w9c/

I’m a full-time believer in writing habits, pedestrian as it all may sound. You may be able to do without them if you have genius but most of us only have talent and this is simply something that has to be assisted all the time by physical and mental habits or it dries up and blows away. I see it happen all the time. Of course you have to make your habits in this conform to what you can do. I write only about two hours every day because that’s all the energy I have, but I don’t let anything interfere with those two hours, at the same time and the same place. This doesn’t mean I produce much out of the two hours. Sometimes I work for months and have to throw everything away, but I don’t think any of that was time wasted. Something goes on that makes it easier when it does come well. And the fact is if you don’t sit there every day, the day it would come well, you won’t be sitting there.

Flannery O’Connor
Letter to Cecil Dawkins
22nd September 1957

— Read on news.lettersofnote.com/p/i-dont-know-so-well-what-i-think

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally.

Flannery O’Connor
Letter to Betty Hester
6th September 1955

— Read on news.lettersofnote.com/p/i-dont-know-so-well-what-i-think