Tag: thought

WRITER ALARMED WHEN COMPANY FIRES HIS 60-PERSON TEAM, REPLACES THEM ALL WITH AI

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Impostor Syndrome

The pace at which AI has damaged countless industries is whiplash-inducing. And no one understands this better than a writer who in 2023 was excelling at his copywriting job with a team of writers 60 people strong — and by the next year found himself the last human standing, arm in arm with AI imitators he was expected to drag along and get up to speed.

“They wanted to use AI to cut down on costs,” the writer told the BBC, using the pseudonym Benjamin Miller.

At first, the new workflow was this: his manager would feed a headline into an AI model, and it would generate an outline that the team were expected to work with, with Miller doing the final edits.

But that was just the beginning. Months later, management decided to cut humans out of the loop almost completely. Going forward, the AI model would generate articles in their entirety. Shoddy automation was here, and as a consequence, most of the writers lost their jobs. Miller kept his — though his role was going to be a bit different than before.

Now, he was tasked with polishing up the AI’s lackluster prose, and, to quote the BBC, “make it sound more human.” If only there was a way of doing that with, uh, human writers.

Dehumanizing Drudgery

Soon, Miller was the only human employee left on the team. It was down to him, and him alone, to fix up all the AI-generated articles.

“All of a sudden I was just doing everyone’s job,” Miller told the BBC. “Mostly, it was just about cleaning things up and making the writing sound less awkward, cutting out weirdly formal or over-enthusiastic language.”

“It was more editing than I had to do with human writers, but it was always the exact same kinds of edits,” he added. “The real problem was it was just so repetitive and boring. It started to feel like I was the robot.”

And so Miller found himself in the unenviable position of legitimizing the intrusion of AI into his very own job by making the extremely fallible models appear more capable than they actually are. This hasn’t been a fate exclusive to writers; in the service industry, for example, an army of underpaid, outsourced workers secretly worked behind the scenes to power the “AI” drive-thrus at the fast food chain Checkers.

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I worked as a translator for many years. Gradually, computers took over and I moved on. I found it liberating to be replaced by machines. The other day I posted a song supposedly composed and played by AI. I think the song is pretty good and is a masterpiece of composition, employing almost every major lyrical and musical trope in its genre. It’s humorous, cleverly mocking, has many good lines—I think her name was Hailey. Where’d you run? The song was based on a Tik Tok clip with the pictured women making a reference to a sexual act. She was joking. The video was widely received with good humor. You can find more reactions at the link. As for the musicality of the tune, I play guitar but AI selected riffs ‘twice as better than I will’. Lots of people dump on music, especially country, because it’s just simple patterns. Steve Pinker has said as much. But AI is going to show Pinker that even his exalted thoughts and prose can be imitated. They too are just simple patterns, tropes. AI is revealing the core of Buddhism, itself the root of skepticism and stoicism, by forcing us see and feel the amalgam of experience and memory that is human ‘creativity’, its transience, emptiness and copyableness by a machine. ABN

Neil Oliver: How Banks Took Over Empires, and the Truth About WWII, Brexit, & COVID

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In the first few minutes they both admit they have been late to wake up and also take responsibility for that. I like that, but it also means they’re still babes in the woods if not double-agents seasoning the opposition. Both still have prominent voices and may be sincere but I bet both also have known breaking points, which can and will be manipulated. I have only watched a few minutes and may restate this if I ever finish the whole thing. ABN

UPDATE: At approximately 1:40, Oliver wonders if the people in control of the West have the ‘backbone to do the wet-work’. What he does not appear to realize is there has been an enormous amount of wet-work done clandestinely throughout the West since the end of WW2. It has been that wet-work that culled the Western herd of strong boys and young men and brought us to where we are today. Note that both Oliver and Carlson confess having been true-believers in their governments and institutions until covid made it obvious to them that those entities were not what they had assumed. That’s a start guys, but since anyone can see the enormous violence engaged in openly by the Western cabal, why would you two not see the violence that has happened secretly in your own countries for your entire lives? The answer is both Oliver and Carlson were selected and allowed to become prominent because they had been true-believers. What will happen next with them, I wonder. ABN

Is the Old Monarchy Dying?

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This is very good and well worth watching. In many ways what is described parallels what has been happening in USA with the tearing down of statues and the debasement of all of our institutions, mores, and laws. Conquerors always destroy the major symbols of the conquered and rewrite their histories. Everybody knows that Biden is not in control of USA and everybody also says they have no idea who is in control of USA. If that is not proof positive that we have been conquered, what more proof do you need? ABN

American Pravda: The True Origin of the Jews as Khazars, Israelites, or Canaanites

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Over the last half-dozen years I’ve regularly cited the work of John Beaty, a respected academic who spent his entire teaching career at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

During World War II, Prof. Beaty served in Military Intelligence and his responsibilities included producing the daily intelligence briefing reports distributed to the White House and the rest of our top political and military leadership. That position provided him with a unique perspective on the entire course of the conflict.

After the end of the war, he resumed his academic career and in 1951 he published The Iron Curtain Over America, a book harshly critical of our government policies and the overwhelming Jewish influence that he had believed was responsible. He argued that Jewish domination over the publishing industry and the media had grown so powerful that most ordinary Americans never learned many important facts, with their dangerous ignorance maintained by the “Iron Curtain” of Jewish media control described in his title.

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This article provides an excellent overview of the origins of the Jews and the main theories on that. ABN

Exothermic Core-Mantle Decoupling – Dzhanibekov Oscillation (ECDO) Hypothesis

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Exhibit N – Engineering Analogous to a Sextant – In practice, the foreman would take the shaft ceiling stone upon which the star map was marked, align the bottom center of the stone with the celestial north pole in the sky, and then ensure that the center of the stone matched exactly the azimuth and altitude of the celestial pole itself – in this manner, aligning the next day’s work (as well as the shaft) to true north. The stone had to bisect the north sky horizontally so that the altitude of the celestial north pole could also be shot, along with its azimuth. If the foreman used an 8 inch mirror fit into the shaft itself, this would in essence be analogous to a sextant.

The fact that all four of these shafts initially run at odd angles to the celestial north pole, thereafter reattaining the altitude and azimuth discipline in each case, indicates just how important this alignment was to the function of these shafts. They were not air shafts (despite our employment of that name at times herein). The copper fittings in the sealing stone were not for dropping the stone into place, as every stone in the pyramid had to be dropped into place, yet none of them used such labor intensive through-stone-fittings. Nor are the fittings placed at the right center of gravity to afford such a function. These were copper cables, for which we previously had no theory regarding their purpose—that is until now.

This form of evidence is indeed inductive, nor do I believe that the builders constructed two of the shafts while underwater during the counter-alignment. That issue is tactical, non-critical-path, and is resolvable by a number of plausible means. Dismissing the observation as defacto irrelevant—when in fact, the stone depiction is salient—perpetuates the linear induction or Nelsonian Ignorance Trap approach to science that we criticized at the outset of this article. Science is stuck in that trap regarding the Khafre and Khufu pyramids, in desperate need of disruption and paradigm shift. We are introducing a hypothesis, not another ‘perfect answer’ for a new doctrinal set of beliefs. If a priori perfect answers were the standard, the current consensus would have never survived to be considered in the first place.

The star map exists, the stone exists, the shafts exist, the shafts point at celestial north, Khafre is clearly differentially-damaged by ocean water inundation, the Tura casing stones are completely gone from both Khufu and Khafre except for above the water level, the carbonic-acid-dissolved residue of those stones was found at their bases. An official narrative must definitively explain (not simply inductively dismiss or ignore) these critical path elements, or that Narrative is pseudo theory, no matter how many experts revere it.

However, setting aside the debate over the possible date range for the stone star depiction, one fact remains unmistakably clear:

The shaft that was aligned by means of this celestial north star map
today points toward Giza’s southern sky.

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Above in an excerpt from an essay by The Ethical Skeptic which claims that two of the pyramids in Egypt were constructed ‘around 9200 to 9600 BCE‘ and were intended to be a warning to future generations that the earth’s angle of rotation has changed abruptly in the past and will do so again, leading to massive flooding across the globe. The essay is well-worth reading. ABN

IRELAND: The End of Ireland’s Great Consensus

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Last Monday, May 6th, Irish people gathered in Dublin for a protest against the government’s immigration policy. This was the second Bank Holiday Monday in a row where an event like this happened, but this crowd was the biggest yet, reaching many thousands of people.

There is much that is very impressive about the anti-immigration movement in Ireland. This event was organised with little central leadership and promoted mostly by nationalist social media influencers. The crowd was diverse in age, with plenty of families and older people, a sight not typically seen at anti-immigration protests in Europe.

Another major strength of Ireland’s budding populism is the broad consensus on what Irish nationalism is. Because of Ireland’s unique history, our nationalists aren’t getting bogged down in sentimental attachments to dying empires and their civic conceptions of identity borrowed from imperial administrators. The idea that we would have to win a historical argument to make our case, or should identify with historical nationalist movements in other countries, is obviously ridiculous. Everyone in that crowd knows what an Irish person is, embraces Ireland’s revolutionary nationalist tradition, and is willing to affirm “Ireland belongs to the Irish”.

…It’s becoming a great embarrassment for Ireland’s liberal establishment that a populist movement like this could arise, despite no institutional support, sympathetic media or significant financial support. It’s even more embarrassing for the left, who now cling to increasingly elaborate conspiracy theories about shadowy British forces pulling the strings of the far-right.

The alternative — that the working class is not interested in their message and has built their own “far-right”, because their top concern is replacement immigration — is unthinkable.

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Overwhelming consensus among citizens has been and always will be the only real brake on government excess, government foolishness, government civilizational self-destruction. All of the West should follow Ireland. Do not comply, do not give up, do not allow shitheads in power to ruin our civilization. No one wants to have to do this but we have no choice. It’s do or die. ABN

Woods’ conclusion:

All these factors have helped make Ireland’s anti-immigration movement one of the most effective in Europe, even without elected representatives. And here, there is no phony liberal center-right party to gobble up nationalist votes with diversionary rhetoric focused solely on illegal immigration or other side issues. If the strength of Ireland’s liberal establishment for years was its consensus based politics and lack of a right-populist force, that cohesion has backfired.

Those on the outside have been forced to adapt and build their own force from the ground up. It is a force that can no longer be ignored or handwaved away as the fringes of the “far-right”, and as the government shows no signs of yielding on its accelerationist policies of replacement migration, it is a force destined to emerge as the only remaining challenge to the vision of Official Ireland, which would be the final death of the Irish nation.

I hope migrant workers in Ireland from other parts of Europe, particularly the Baltics and Poland, will learn from this and not allow their own nations to be destroyed by replacement migration. ABN

Changes in Earth’s core and mantle leading to significant shifts in Earth’s climate and rotational dynamics

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@EthicalSkeptic AI Summary:

The article “Exothermic Core-Mantle Decoupling – Dzhanibekov Oscillation Theory” explores a hypothesis that links changes in Earth’s core and mantle to significant shifts in Earth’s climate and rotational dynamics. Here is a simpler breakdown of its main points: 

@EthicalSkeptic 2/5 A process called exothermic core-mantle decoupling is taking place, where the Earth’s core transfers heat to the mantle. This process, previously misinterpreted as solely due to human activities, could be significantly affecting Earth’s climate. 

3/5 Following the heat transfer, a phenomenon similar to the Dzhanibekov effect observed in space physics, where a body flips unexpectedly while rotating. In Earth’s case, this could mean a dramatic shift in the position of the geographic North Pole due to changes in the density and rotation of the mantle. 

4/5 The theory introduces two critical points:

The Indigo Point is the beginning phase of these changes, where actions set in motion are not easily noticed but lead to significant outcomes.

The Tau Point marks a crucial tipping point where these changes become irreversible and clearly observable. 

5/5 A link between the Earth’s core-mantle, large-scale environmental and rotational changes challenges scientific understanding. Catastrophic changes could be underway. New ways to understand geological & environmental data are urgently needed before reaching the critical Tau Point. 

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The longer article from which AI extracted the summary above: Exothermic Core-Mantle Decoupling – Dzhanibekov Oscillation (ECDO) Theory. TES has been a saint during covid and beyond. He is also very interesting on how heat from the earth’s core is affecting earth’s climate by warming our oceans. I am using the AI extract above in the hope that it will prompt more readers to delve into TES’s work on climate change. Most of us know the oceans have suddenly heated up at a (modern) unprecedented rate. Since there is nothing new enough happening in the atmosphere, it seems highly likely that something is happening in the deep ocean. When that much water gets that much hotter fast, obviously the atmosphere will also heat up. ABN

‘How many layers of translation do you need to go down? You’re going to fit the narrative to the cultural capabilities of the observer… which is why the observations change over time’ — Garry Nolan on why aliens show themselves to us as they do

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This works for me and is something I have considered for many years. Many of us see not just one thing or one incident or one profound inkling, but many things, some of them disparate, not the same but also connected, profoundly beautiful, magnificent and sensible, always indicating a much larger reality not pinned to the conditions of ordinary earth life, restricted rationalism. Nolan is pinning this to science, which is fine, but not entirely necessary or even necessarily the truest way to see it. It is a good way to communicate, which is what he is doing. I bet he would agree with what I have said here. ABN

VASA-1: Lifelike Audio-Driven Talking Faces Generated in Real Time

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This video was made from a single AI-generated image and will work with any suitable photograph.

We introduce VASA, a framework for generating lifelike talking faces of virtual characters with appealing visual affective skills (VAS), given a single static image and a speech audio clip. Our premiere model, VASA-1, is capable of not only producing lip movements that are exquisitely synchronized with the audio, but also capturing a large spectrum of facial nuances and natural head motions that contribute to the perception of authenticity and liveliness. The core innovations include a holistic facial dynamics and head movement generation model that works in a face latent space, and the development of such an expressive and disentangled face latent space using videos. Through extensive experiments including evaluation on a set of new metrics, we show that our method significantly outperforms previous methods along various dimensions comprehensively. Our method not only delivers high video quality with realistic facial and head dynamics but also supports the online generation of 512×512 videos at up to 40 FPS with negligible starting latency. It paves the way for real-time engagements with lifelike avatars that emulate human conversational behaviors.

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This technology will work well in psychological games that use the faces of relatives and friends as well as fictional ones. The day will come when AI-generated characters will be able to play simple roles on their own. These roles will become more complex and creative as the tech evolves. Psychological games, especially when the user has a lot of control, will be fun and provide significant insights into how our minds are actually working. Gnarly psychologies, like narcissism or BPD, will benefit greatly from working through a variety of plots and scenarios.

Beyond self-help, the possibilities for deep works of art seem boundless. Whole novels with many variable plot-turns will raise the art of fiction to new levels of immersion and aesthetic reward. Coupled with brain-wave reading technology, AI characters will be capable of reacting to out mental and emotional states in ways no one has ever experienced before. I love where this is going. Of course there will be porn but the deepest transformative fun will be the realm of art and self-knowledge. ABN