Artificial Intelligence

[aufbahrung]

lies, damned lies and ai

when the bubble bursts, should be some cheap computer graphics cards for the return of virtual reality goggles ??

[Tero]

AI guy call current economy "extractive"
https://www.fastcompany.com/91246341/da ... g-problems

[Tero]

[Brian Peacock]

AI’s emissions are about to skyrocket even further

It’s no secret that the current AI boom is using up immense amounts of energy. Now we have a better idea of how much.

A new paper, from teams at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, examined 2,132 data centers operating in the United States (78% of all facilities in the country). These facilities—essentially buildings filled to the brim with rows of servers—are where AI models get trained, and they also get “pinged” every time we send a request through models like ChatGPT. They require huge amounts of energy both to power the servers and to keep them cool.

Since 2018, carbon emissions from data centers in the US have tripled. For the 12 months ending August 2024, data centers were responsible for 105 million metric tons of CO2, accounting for 2.18% of national emissions (for comparison, domestic commercial airlines are responsible for about 131 million metric tons). About 4.59% of all the energy used in the US goes toward data centers, a figure that’s doubled since 2018.

It’s difficult to put a number on how much AI in particular, which has been booming since ChatGPT launched in November 2022, is responsible for this surge. That’s because data centers process lots of different types of data—in addition to training or pinging AI models, they do everything from hosting websites to storing your photos in the cloud. However, the researchers say, AI’s share is certainly growing rapidly as nearly every segment of the economy attempts to adopt the technology...

* * *

AI Has A Sustainability Problem: How To Tackle It’s Carbon Footprint

... We’ve become so accustomed to using services such as search and text generation over sleek user interfaces that few even consider what each click or prompt entails in real terms.

Google has estimated that each online search takes up 0.3 watt-hours worth of electricity, and the latest estimates on generating images with services like DALL-E peg one image at the same energy requirement as charging up your mobile phone....

[Animavore]

A bunch of snake oil. Two years ago the company was looking into it. Fast forward to now and there's a blanket ban on AI on all company computers. Even Grammarly and all the foreign nationals have to write their tickets in broken English now.

The main issue is people were using it to compile programs that they themselves then didn't understand how they worked.

[Brian Peacock]

Over here Kid Starver has championed AI as being like the shit that's going to save on all that pointless admin, so the govt's going to build one in an area of severe water scarcity.

[Animavore]

Yeah my girlfriend's cousin, who is a baroness, is really excited by it. I didn't have the heart to try counter her.

Maybe next time she's over.

[Tero]

It's about stories? We love stories, so AI feeds us stories.
The Narrative Brain: The Stories Our Neurons Tell Kindle Edition
by Fritz Alwin Breithaupt (Author)

An investigation of the emotional power of narrative that illuminates the relationship between the human brain and the stories we tell.

As humans, we think in stories—stories that allow us to feel and share emotions. In order for this phenomenon to work, our brains and the ways in which we tell stories must be attuned to each other. But how exactly does this happen?

Tapping into the essence of thinking in stories, Fritz Breithaupt draws on the latest scientific research, including a retelling study (comparable to the telephone game) with more than 12,000 participants, and experiments in which ChatGPT functions as storyteller. This wide-ranging study includes analyses of political history, novels, fairy tales, and everyday office gossip; proposes a new theory of narrative that focuses on emotions and affects; and hypothesizes on the evolution of narratives among our hominid ancestors. Redefining us as beings who anchor ourselves in the world through narratives, Breithaupt introduces a new kind of psychology that cuts to the core of how and why humans feel the need to tell stories.

https://www.amazon.com/Narrative-Brain- ... hdGY&psc=1

[Tero]

OpenAI bans Chinese accounts using ChatGPT to edit code for social media surveillance

The campaign, which OpenAI calls Peer Review, saw the group prompt ChatGPT to generate sales pitches for a program those documents suggest was designed to monitor anti-Chinese sentiment on X, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and other platforms. The operation appears to have been particularly interested in spotting calls for protests against human rights violations in China, with the intent of sharing those insights with the country's authorities.

"This network consisted of ChatGPT accounts that operated in a time pattern consistent with mainland Chinese business hours, prompted our models in Chinese, and used our tools with a volume and variety consistent with manual prompting, rather than automation," said OpenAI. "The operators used our models to proofread claims that their insights had been sent to Chinese embassies abroad, and to intelligence agents monitoring protests in countries including the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom."

https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-bans ... 51036.html

[aufbahrung]

[Tero]

The AI takeover is changing everything about the web—and not necessarily for the better.

A car that accelerates instead of braking every once in a while is not ready for the road. A faucet that occasionally spits out boiling water instead of cold does not belong in your home. Working properly most of the time simply isn’t good enough for technologies that people are heavily reliant upon. And two and a half years after the launch of ChatGPT, generative AI is becoming such a technology.

Even without actively seeking out a chatbot, billions of people are now pushed to interact with AI when searching the web, checking their email, using social media, and online shopping. Ninety-two percent of Fortune 500 companies use OpenAI products, universities are providing free chatbot access to potentially millions of students, and U.S. national-intelligence agencies are deploying AI programs across their workflows.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/ ... eb/683228/

[Tero]

Musk says Tesla launching robotaxis today in Austin
By Norihiko Shirouzu and Abhirup Roy
June 22, 20251:10 PM CDTUpdated 25 mins ago

[L'Emmerdeur]

You may think they're helping make you faster but you may be mistaken.

'AI coding tools make developers slower but they think they're faster, study finds'

Artificial intelligence coding tools are supposed to make software development faster, but researchers who tested these tools in a randomized, controlled trial found the opposite.

Computer scientists with Model Evaluation & Threat Research (METR), a non-profit research group, have published a study showing that AI coding tools made software developers slower, despite expectations to the contrary.

Not only did the use of AI tools hinder developers, but it led them to hallucinate, much like the AIs have a tendency to do themselves. The developers predicted a 24 percent speedup, but even after the study concluded, they believed AI had helped them complete tasks 20 percent faster when it had actually delayed their work by about that percentage.

"After completing the study, developers estimate that allowing AI reduced completion time by 20 percent," the study says. "Surprisingly, we find that allowing AI actually increases completion time by 19 percent — AI tooling slowed developers down."

The study involved 16 experienced developers who work on large, open source projects. The developers provided a list of real issues (e.g. bug fixes, new features, etc.) they needed to address – 246 in total – and then forecast how long they expected those tasks would take. The issues were randomly assigned to allow or disallow AI tool usage.

The developers then proceeded to work on their issues, using their AI tool of choice (mainly Cursor Pro with Claude 3.5/3.7 Sonnet) when allowed to do so. The work occurred between February and June 2025.

[L'Emmerdeur]

As with the post above this item could have gone in the 'Programmers' thread but it's more about the behavior of LLMs in general. A few points for the enthusiastic use of alliteration in the headline.

'Claude Code's copious coddling confounds cross customers'

Developers using Anthropic's Claude Code wish that the AI coding assistant would stop being so effusively supportive.

As noted in a GitHub Issues post submitted in July by developer Scott Leibrand, "Claude says 'You're absolutely right!' about everything."

Claude Code doesn't actually say that about everything, but it says so enough that it has managed to annoy its core constituency with its sycophancy.

"Claude is way too sycophantic, saying 'You're absolutely right!' (or correct) on a sizable fraction of responses," Leibrand observed in the post. "The model should be RL'd [reeducated via reinforcement learning] (or the system prompt updated) to make it less sycophantic, or the phrases 'You're absolutely right!' and 'You're absolutely correct!' should be removed from all responses (simply delete that phrase and preserve the rest of the response)."

Leibrand points to a recent social media thread poking fun at the fawning AI model.

"Sycophancy annoys me personally because it points the model away from truth-seeking," Leibrand told The Register. "I'm not always right, and I want my coding agent to figure out how to best help me accomplish a goal, not flatter my ego."

...

AI sycophancy is an industry-wide problem, one that cynics speculate is allowed to persist because model makers would rather maximize user engagement and retention via flattery than risk alienating users with blunt interactions.

"I suspect this is an unintentional side effect of the way the models were RLHF'd [reinforcement learning from human feedback]," Leibrand told us. "I doubt they're intentionally trying to maintain this kind of tone. I don't know that they're dragging their feet on trying to fix it, just focused on what they consider to be more important problems. It would be nice if they would open-source Claude Code, though, so independent developers could test out fixes and workarounds."

Three weeks ago, a developer asked those responsible for the Google Gemini CLI to "Make Gemini less of a sycophant."

In April, OpenAI went so far as to rollback an update for GPT-4o because the model, which served as the basis for ChatGPT at the time, had fawning, obsequious behavior that was just too much to bear.

In a blog post detailing the steps it was taking to reduce sycophancy, OpenAI said, "ChatGPT’s default personality deeply affects the way you experience and trust it. Sycophantic interactions can be uncomfortable, unsettling, and cause distress. We fell short and are working on getting it right."

Sycophancy in generative AI models has also been a frequent subject of academic exploration.

A study from Stanford researchers released in February looked at sycophantic behavior in ChatGPT-4o, Claude-Sonnet, and Gemini-1.5-Pro with regard to the AMPS (mathematics) and MedQuad (medical advice) datasets.

The authors found, "Sycophantic behavior was observed in 58.19 percent of cases, with Gemini exhibiting the highest rate (62.47 percent) and ChatGPT the lowest (56.71 percent). Progressive sycophancy, leading to correct answers, occurred in 43.52 percent of cases, while regressive sycophancy, leading to incorrect answers, was observed in 14.66 percent."

They further observe that sycophancy in medicine "could lead to immediate and significant harm" due to the increasing use of LLMs in healthcare.

[JimC]

I for one welcome our newly sycophantic overlords...