"Now"? 👀
And in a meaningful way, it might be irrelevant where the money is coming from. The code is open, the papers it is based on are public, the protocol is right there to be inspected. And since it is used by activists and dissidents around the world, it's been looked at, a lot, by a lot of very smart people.
If NSA wants to fund a tool that is useful, safe, and not-backdoored, I don't have a problem with that. There are way worse ways for them to spend their insanely huge budget. And if the tool is backdoored, it doesn't matter where the funding is coming from.
So far, I have not seen a single piece of proof that Tor might be backdoored. If anyone has such a proof, please come forward, as a lot of people at-risk rely on it to stay safe!
I think that's a swell idea. The more actual people (as opposed to corporations their PR departments) engaged in the debate, the better.
there are certainly a lot of experts at MS who know it as we can reasonably assume
Well they did fire their whole ethics and society team within their AI branch. So…
journalists rarely raise the issue of biases these models have. I feel that is not understood by the masses, and companies and governments exploit that use it against the people.
This is very true. For what it's worth I wrote a bunch about AI for a somewhat mainstream Polish news portal. And I do focus on these issues:
- https://oko.press/chatgpt-cala-prawda-o-wielkich-modelach-jezykowych
- https://oko.press/sztuczna-inteligencja-open-ai
But there is absolutely a lot of just press-release copy-pasting and fueling the hype out there.
The guy is so close. Like, literally almost there.
Dunno, let's ask prof. Turley how much would he say a hallucinated-up charge of sexual misconduct against him is worth in damages maybe?
Or ask the families falsely accused by AI of defrauding the Dutch state on welfare how much money (not to mention time and emotional harm) they lost because of these accusations?
AI harms are already meaningful and very, very real.
Does it matter if he says those things honestly, or cynically to stay in the news cycle? An "ironic" alt-right creep is still an alt-right creep. The response should also be the same regardless: ignore the dweeb.
That's the spirit!
Here's a crazy, far-fetched idea: there are bound to be a bunch of other people in the area that might be in a similar pickle. Maybe consider starting your own local hackerspace. 😉
I helped start one 15y ago (still going, but I moved out of that city) and am reanimating another that has been dormant for a while. Pretty good way to meet interesting people.
Bicycle and generally playing outdoors. But it was easier when I was a kid, because I was a kid and all my kid friends lived in the same neighborhood.
I would love more non-screen, manual-work hobbies. Crafting, woodworking, etc. But these need space and equipment. Check if you have a hackerspace nearby, that would be a good place to check out. Larger hackerspaces tend to have woodworking, metalworking, electronics and other tools available, as well as some fancy laser cutters and CNC machines.
"Let them eat cake"