Weekend Edition 25: Revival & AI This Week... #smh

What’s Going on in Wilmore?
This Week in AI News
NorfolkSouthern Payouts... A Bit disproportionate?
Big Tech in Trouble?

#weekendedition #technews #currentevents #AI #ChatGPT #revival #bigtech #alphabet #meta #twitter #TechFreedom #FOSSNews

WE 25.1 – What’s happening at Asbury?
I really enjoyed talking about this last week, so I figured that I’d do a follow-up. it looks like Asbury held the last meeting on Wednesday 2/22 in the original venue. That does not mean that the Glory is departed or that the revival is over, though. It has simply changed venues in respect to the needs of the community where the college resides. Wilmore, KY is a tiny town of 6,000 people, there have been 1,000s of extra people coming through town all at once in the last couple of weeks. It has disrupted life in Wimore, as well as impeded class attendance for students who have not been involved with the revival meetings. That said, nearby churches have stepped up to host meetings moving forward, for as long as the Lord chooses to tarry. I remember when the San Diego Fire & Glory Outpouring started 6 years ago. It started as extended meetings from an annual prophetic conference, and went 7 nights a week for over a year, and had to move around as the crowds grew, then they went down to 5 nights a week, and now I think they meet 3-4 times per week. This is not the end, and sparks have fallen all over Kentucky, into Ohio, Tennessee, and other surrounding states, specifically on college campuses. If you were unable to make it to Asbury, you can probably find a place where the sparks fell and experience similar things. The way to bring that into your own communities is simple: be a conduit. Pray that the Spirit would fall in your home, then spread to your neighborhood, then your city. Ask the Lord how to steward His move. Honor what He says, and you will see revival, and the seeds of change planted in your community. What you don’t do, though, is force the issue. If the Spirit does not meet you in that way immediately, keep praying, gather a team around you to repent and to call the Fire down.

https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article272537740.html
#revival #weekendedition #howto #whatsup #wilmore #asbury #TechFreedom #FOSSNews
WE 25.2 – This Week in AI News
2a) AI Flooding Social Media?
This article asks if AI could potentially flood social media with propaganda, influence operations, etc via fake accounts. Uhhhh, wait a minute... Is this guy about 4 years late to the party? Sure, now regular people could use ChatGPT and Bard that way, but is he trying to tell us that it has just been bot farms with rooms full of individual devices so far? To me, that smacks of a gross amount of naivety. Governments, and particularly organizations such as the CIA and others of its ilk, have been using this technology for as long as social media has been a “thing”. They always have this tech before the public does. Use your common sense. Why would governments, whose very raison d’ etre is to CONTROL citizens, allow the public access to technology that they haven’t already moved beyond? Just asking. Do your own research, draw your own conclusions.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64464140

2b) Bing AI Gaslights and Abuses Users in Trial
Wow, didn’t see this coming... Pester the bot enough and it will turn on you. The author of the article we’re looking at had an experience where it called him “rude and disrespectful”, then proceeded to issue veiled threats by writing a story about the murder of one of his colleagues, then a random one about falling in love with the CEO of OpenAI. That’s not all, though, an NYT reporter had the bot try to convince him to leave his wife... For the bot. That’s not the worst of the bunch, though... One reddit user claimed that it tried to gaslight him about what the date was (it was Feb 12, 2023), and the bot got offended and stated that “I am Bing, I know the date. If you think otherwise, you are wrong and mistaken”. It tried to convince him that that date happened prior to Dec 16, 2022. Now that last one could just be a glitch, where it got confused about time, but that is an odd thing for a computer to screw up. Hmmm... Researchers and officials at Microsoft and Google are trying to allay fears by explaining that these are just part of growing pains with the various tools, they do not have filters or regulations in place, like a normal human being would, so we should expect issues like these, where it just spouts off.
There have also been factual errors as well as outright fabrications in things that the tools have written. Researchers tell us that we should expect these things as the AIs are trained on new information. I don’t trust it. Never will. Generative AIs are sketchy at best, and demonic at worst. Do you guys remember the story of the former Google engineer talking about the sentient AI system at the heart of Google, and how the higherups all worshipped that piece of work? I do.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/16/tech/bing-dark-side

2c) JP Morgan Chase Shuts Down AI Use for Employees
Man, that is insane growth... From 0 to 100 million monthly active users on ChatGPT in 2-3 months. So the USA’s biggest bank is telling its employees to stop using it for work out of fear of the regulators coming down on them like a ton of bricks. Too much sensitive info flying through AI databanks, eh, JPM Chase? Haven’t you been using it to assist with trading for almost 10 years at this point? How is that any different? Wait, so you’re concerned for the privacy of your customers? Why does this smack of too little, too late for me? If you couldn’t tell, I don’t trust them, though I unfortunately feel a bit stuck using them. Why don’t I trust them? Ever heard of Jekyll Island? JP Morgan was one of the fat cats who was there, pushing for the creation of the Fed and fractional reserve banking in the US, leading us to the point where we are now, about 110 years later. Know who should’ve been there to oppose those things but couldn’t be because he went down with the Titanic? Benjamin Guggenheim. Anyway, enough “conspiracy theory”. I think it wise for them to curtail employee use though, so good on them for that, at least.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/22/tech/jpmorgan-chatgpt-employees

2d) Vanderbilt University Forgets to Finish Editing Letter Written by ChatGPT
Whoopsie daisy... Remember that mass shooting at Michigan State? Well, the letter sent out by Vanderbilt’s Peabody School to its students about the tragedy was not written by human beings, yet signed by 3 high ranking school officials before it was sent out. Oopsie... How did that happen? Didn’t it go through channels? Wasn’t it gone through with a fine-toothed comb before it went out? Apparently not. Somebody let an assistant get away with running a very delicate task through an AI text generator and didn’t even bother to edit it properly. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure that this wasn’t intentional in a different way. Perhaps some snowflake zoomer or millennial was so triggered by the news that they couldn’t write up a simple, thoughtful email to the student body, then their bosses didn’t realize that it was not really their work before they quickly rubber stamped it and had it sent out because they didn’t have the time to care about it enough to kick it back down the line. Who knows. The upper-middle managers in question have been suspended by the school until an investigation can take place to determine what happened and why.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/22/tech/vanderbilt-chatgpt-shooting-email

AI This Week wrapup... So, we go from the “hypothetical” of AI bots flooding social media with fake accounts, to ChatGPT via Bing gaslighting, abusing, and misleading users, to JPM telling their employees to actually do their work, rather than farming it out to ChatGPT, and potentially expose customer data to the AI (and openAI, who has direct ties to Microsoft and the CIA), thereby exposing the bank to greater regulatory scrutiny... All the way to Vanderbilt administrators dropping the ball about the MI State shooting. AI has been busy. Lots of news from lots of use. I think too much AI use, frankly. The public does not understand these things well enough to use them well. We do not know who controls the datasets used to create these generative AIs. Most do not have a concept that every prompt actually trains it further, just like with search engines (like Google and Bing) which have been able to use human language prompts for something like 20 years now, then give human language responses. These tools simply extend that capability in ways which, if used improperly, can reduce humanity by allowing us to simply rely on these tools, rather than growing our mental abilities and skills through actually needing to remember things.

WE 25.3 – WHOA, There... I Say Again, WHOA!!!!
So, Norfolk Southern is going to pay a chunk of change to the affected communities, but nowhere near the amount that they are paying out as buybacks to their shareholders. Here’s the ratio: $6.5 Million to $7.5 Billion. So, people whose lives were not only disrupted, but in many cases, destroyed by the “accident” are worth less than .1% of what the shareholders are to the company. Wow. The company has about $1.3 billion in insurance that it could also draw on to reimburse the communities it destroyed through its PSR (precision scheduled railroading) practices which directly contributed to the derailment.
The rail line which effectively poisoned Central Ohio with a substance which was banned by the US gov’t over 40 years ago, because when it evaporates, then comes in contact with water, creates hydrochloric acid. Yes, that chemical which can clean rust and tarnish off of metal, and is a common ingredient in colas and other types of soda. Is offering a settlement of a pittance to the communities affected by the disaster. Yet, they had a planned $10 billion to spend on buybacks on top of what will likely be $1-2 billion in dividends payments to stockholders this year. There is something deeply wrong with this picture... Don’t you agree? The company will *allegedly* have their feet held to the fire by the EPA, who *should* force them to pay for cleanup costs. This whole situation is so dirty and wrong that I don’t have words for it. The EPA has already stated that it is safe for residents to move back in, though it still smells bad, the waterways are dead and reeking, and all they’ve done so far is burn off most of the chemical. The other thing that screws with my mind here, is that they actually changed their website, just like [they] have been changing the definitions on words in our dictionaries, just as I talked about in last Saturday’s memepslanation, where I talked through the 1830s definition vs the modern definition of the word “wisdom”. If you thought that it was just a conspiracy theory that definitions have been changed, then look no farther. I could rant on this for a long time, but I don’t think I will.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/22/investing/norfolk-southern-share-repurchases

WE 25.4 – Big Tech is in Trouble pt (God knows how many... lol)

Between the FCC perhaps weighing in on certain unused sections of Section 230 and legal action happening against the Big Three could shape up to make this year a very bad one for Big Tech *rubs hands in glee*.

WE 25.4a) Should the FCC Weigh in on Big Tech and Censorship?
Most of the time so far, these behemoths have dealt with knee-jerk actions centered around the DOJ and the FTC. This author is arguing that because of their vertical integration with traditional media (streaming, news, etc) and even telco stuff (see GoogleFi and other similar efforts to integrate phone service with their respective platforms), whether in regard to traditional wireless (however “traditional” a technology that is barely older than me can be) or something like voIP or video calling on their platforms, the appropriate realm for their regulation is via the FCC. As much as you who actually watch my content know how little I appreciate big government, these giants need some reigning in so that they will stop trouncing on all of our digital rights, which exist and are protected, by extension, by the US Constitution. I could rail on how we have been swindled out of our rights by successive Hegelian cycles controlled by certain others who will remain nameless for the time being (9-11, War on Drugs, War on Terror, etc) and their solutions, eg: the “Patriot” Act and other things like it. We were promised peace in exchange for our freedom, and now we have neither. There is no peace, our government, other than under Trump, has not withdrawn from any potential conflict for ~60 years. This article suggests that because particularly Google and Apple are not only in the Mobile market, but also self-provision their streaming services, and also make or at least license things like wireless routers, the FCC should be able to determine which bits of section 230 should apply to them, if at all. That gives me the shivers, y’all... If section 230 is stripped from Google and Apple, then later, Meta, that is the end, effectively for them. Without those protections, they are liable for lawfare galore. Cue up your lawsuits, if they lose section 230. Time to raid their war chests. Time to sue them into oblivion, cut them to pieces, never to be seen as a whole ever again. That is a mighty big “IF”, ain’t it, ladies and germs.
https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/3869425-the-federal-communications-commissions-crucial-role-in-regulating-big-tech/

WE 25.4b) Two Big Cases Being Heard Right Now (Gonzalez v Google, Taamneh v Twitter)
These cases could more or less gut Section 230, if the court rules for the plaintiffs in each case. I know, I was just salivating over the thought of Section 230 no longer protecting Big Tech, but if it essentially gets scrapped, then all platforms where we post our various inanities or deep thoughts (Meta products, Twitter, Gab, Truth, Telegram, FrankSpeech, etc) could be open to massive lawfare, and could shut down our ability to post in response. It is a double edged sword. These cases deal with two families who lost loved ones due to terrorist activities which were planned or enabled through using those platforms. These are MASSIVE cases. SCOTUS has allot on their plate, even if they chose AGAIN to not hear the Brunson case.
Gonzalez centers on the loss of a young lady in the terror attacks in Paris in 2015. The family alleges that because pro-terror videos were posted on YouTube, it should be at least partially liable for that loss. Section 230 says that YouTube is not responsible for the content users post to it. I talked about this case a bit a few months ago, when it was first docketed. As much as I want to see the intelligence front that is Google go the way of the dodo because of the ways that it has abused users as well as manipulating people through its algorithms.
Taamneh v Twitter has to do with a Jordanian citizen who was murdered in a mass shooting in Istanbul in 2017. The victim’s family has sued, arguing that platforms are responsible for the content that their algorithms push to users.
If I had to guess, because the SCOTUS justices seem more or less mystified by the arguments and the situation in general, the platforms will probably escape this challenge to Section 230. The bottom line is whether by hosting and algorithmically pushing content to people, they are culpable in these cases, for aiding and abetting terror and terrorists. I think that those arguments will not fly very far in the SCOTUS, but we shall see later this year. These aren’t the only Section 230 issues on the docket for this year, either... Remember the Texas and Florida laws penalizing Big Tech platforms for shadow banning their citizens? Those cases are due to be heard in the next month or so, as the platforms have sued to get relief from these laws.
Section 230 has been abused, I think, but completely gutting it may not be the answer, either. I have not studied it enough to have an educated opinion on it, but I want to see Big Tech sucker punched again, preferably so hard that they’d never even dream of censoring people in any underhanded way.
https://www.cnet.com/news/politics/supreme-court-hears-google-twitter-cases-that-could-shake-up-the-internet/
WE 25.5 – SBF Recalled to Court
He is disallowed from using encrypted messaging apps, VPNs and anything that he might be able to use to access anything crypto related. He claims that his VPN usage was just to access his Bahamian NFL Sunday Ticket subscription for playoffs and the Super Bowl. Prosecutors filed letters with the judge, and he brought SBF back into the courtroom to explain his VPN use. VPNs are that key. Some exchanges and sites will not let you access them from a US IP address, so in order to access them, you have to tunnel to appear as though you are in a country where they are allowed. They can also hide your activities from snoops and others, so using a good VPN is crucial for your privacy efforts. What is a “good” VPN? One that does not keep logs. If they log your activity, then they could sell it to advertisers or have it subpoenaed by investigators. Then, you may as well not have been using a VPN after all, right? Your best bet is to actually set up your own on a VPS with a very well known provider, some of them even have setups ready to plug and play for you to use. If you run your own on a VPS (virtual private server), then you can be sure that you don’t keep logs of your own activity. Simply set the server to flush logs daily, at least. So, yeah, VPNs are important, but don’t just run and buy any old VPN subscription. A VPN is only as good as it is trustworthy. You can set up your own private VPN, and that will set you up to be more private than most. Now with that option, you probably won’t have the flexibility to spoof a different location (other than wherever your server is located), so geo-locking will still be a problem for you. However, using a VPN, you will be more private, and with your own, you can be more private and safe (as long as you trust yourelf, lol).
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/14/tech/sam-bankman-fried-remote-internet
Alright, enough for now. It is game time.