Hard Pass

cross-posted from: https://feddit.online/c/mildlyinfuriating/p/1784290/interesting

A new data investigation says the paper of record increasingly framed transgender rights as a debate instead of a lived reality.

A new data investigation argues that The New York Times sharply changed the way it covers transgender people beginning in 2022, moving from rights-based framing toward more skeptical, conflict-driven coverage that elevated opponents of transgender rights and gave less prominence to transgender people themselves.

As The Advocate reported in May, an Assigned Media analysis found that the Times produced more transgender-related coverage than any other outlet examined but was the least likely to quote transgender people or trans advocacy organizations in stories primarily focused on transgender issues.

The report reviewed coverage from January 1 to April 25 across 10 major news outlets. Assigned Media found that the Times published 60 news stories centered mainly on transgender issues during that period, but only 12 included quotes from transgender people or representatives of transgender advocacy organizations, a rate of 20 percent.

I’m gonna piss myself. Never thought I’d see the day

disclaimer: This isn't an issue specific to the company involved, more than likely they were fooled into believing AI assisted customer service would work, just like everyone else.

A centaur is the idea of a human directing the AI horse. A reverse centaur is the AI being carried by the human, telling them where to go.

tl;dr It doesn't work and even if it could, everyone is definitely using it wrong. AI has created an even worse bad solution to a difficult problem. LLM's and chatbots are replacing critical thought and empowered employees (if there were any) with Douglas Adam idiots boxes directing people unable to point out the machine isn't right. Yeah.....

I wanted to change my email address with a prepared meal service called CookUnity. Going to settings I didn't find any option to do so.

After emailing support, "To change your email address you need to cancel your account and create a new one."

Replying back "Are you absolutely sure? Also does anyone over there realize how unhinged (this is)?"

AI responds back in the affirmative that I need to cancel my account and create a new one.

One last question "Before I do this, I just want to be sure I won't be punished for doing this."

This time a human proceeded to phone bomb me with repeated call after call until I could answer. Their accent and command of the English language suggested they were some unfortunate soul in a call center somewhere in god knows where. My brief conversation gave me some idea of how the "Customer Experience" is implemented.

Unfortunately it turns out later, with no surprise, I was indeed punished for creating a new account.

To be clear, this is not some Greek tragedy solely inflicted upon me but is definitely happening everywhere with everything and it has been like this for sometime, but now these AI companies have added themselves (and their service fees) to an already broken system.

I speculate the process is like: Alice has a problem, she contacts customer support. An LLM processes her message, generates a response as per the policy (or lack thereof) in the system prompt, and then Maria the reverse-centaur located who knows where on Earth does a quick QA and maybe some minor adjustments. Maria's income is very likely weighted by some inane metric like closed tickets which actually doesn't work for promoting quality and instead just pushes quantity.

The response Alice gets back may or may not be helpful. If the issue was Alice not understanding how to use or not knowing how to achieve something with the service, maybe the LLM was able to rephrase things so it makes sense. Alternatively if the problem is a policy conflict or an edge case problem, the LLM is going to give a beautifully written, magnificently marked up, ultimately useless response. In this case Maria may not be able to escalate the issue because perhaps that is another inane metric? How many tickets did she escalate? This feels a little insidious as this unfortunate reverse centaur can't actually do anything but get in trouble with their metrics or click Approve.

Beyond my lament that AI sucks, it is worth noting that all of these companies are probably infected with these AI services so deeply that when the prices go up, the companies won't be able to escape because it will cost real money now for the possibility of saving money later. That's way too risky!

geteilt von: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/1186630

Comments

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/39421726

The full statement is here

Few qualities carry more weight for Donald Trump than loyalty, and few aides embody it as fully as his executive assistant, Natalie Harp.

A former TV presenter, Harp is a near-constant presence at Trump’s side — encouraging his Oval Office redesigns, typing up his Truth Social tirades and printing out online articles, a role that has earned her the nickname “the human printer.” She also leaves behind admiring notes for him to discover. Her devotion is so pronounced that the 80-year-old Republican once declared: “She’ll never leave me.”

These details about one of the most influential White House aides were revealed by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan in their new book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.

The Senate on Tuesday voted to block U.S. military action in Iran for the first time as the war approaches its fourth month.

The war powers resolution passed by a vote of 50–48. Sen. John Fetterman, again, was the lone Democrat to vote in the negative.

Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Dave McCormick, who was in his home state for a visit by President Trump to a Mack truck plant in the Lehigh Valley, was absent.

Four Republicans — Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana — supported the measure.

California intends to sue the Trump administration over its deal to end an offshore wind project proposed off the state’s central coast.

State officials said they are combating the administration’s attacks on their offshore wind industry by sending a notice of their intention to sue to the Department of the Interior on Tuesday. Tuesday’s action is focused on the administration buying back the lease for Golden State Wind, a floating offshore wind project off California’s central coast.

California has made a major commitment to offshore wind because of its potential to generate vast amounts of clean electricity from strong, consistent winds off its coast. Its strategy calls for the state to develop 25 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2045, enough to power roughly 25 million homes and provide about 13% of the state’s electricity supply.

These energy and climate goals are now in jeopardy, and that’s why California will fight vigorously, said California Energy Commission Chair David Hochschild. He called the administration’s strategy of buying back offshore wind leases “a strategic mistake of colossal proportions” that is especially stunning at a time when fossil fuel prices have been spiking due to the Iran war.

“Countries that thrive around the world are those that lean into innovation, into the energy sources of the future,” he said in an interview on Tuesday. “And so to turn away from this, and turn back the clock, and really engage in what I consider to be a war on innovation, is really ill-considered. And I think it’s a decision that’s not just bad for California, it’s bad for the nation.”

Watch Jacob Rockwell, a man fined for running a red light in Florida while being in Alabama, pop off against the use of the A.I. red light cameras that were used to "identify" him.

This community wouldn't be what it is without you.

Cheers to you Mickey7. Happy hatch day ! 🥂

Larry Sanger, one of Wikipedia’s cofounders, was banned from editing the site indefinitely after other editors determined he was canvassing, or in other words, calling on his followers off platform in order to influence Wikipedia’s content.

Sanger has spent more than a decade criticizing Wikipedia for what he claims is an ideological, left-wing bias on a variety of topics, and on X has framed this recent ban as further proof of everything that’s wrong with Wikipedia. The New York Post took that bait and last night published an article with the headline “Left-leaning Wikipedia blocked founder from editing site—after he campaigned to make it more balanced.”

Wikipedia editors obviously reject that framing and say that Sanger was banned for wielding his followers to sway discussion and decision making on Wikipedia. The discussion that led to the decision to ban Sanger concluded with what an editor called a “clear consensus” to ban Sanger.