Literacy makes human memory atrophied and unprepared. Kids these days can’t even recite the Illiad from memory!
Readit NewsAtomBalm commented on The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking [pdf] microsoft.com/en-us/resea... · Posted by u/greybox
AtomBalm commented on Has the decline of knowledge work begun? nytimes.com/2025/03/25/bu... · Posted by u/pseudolus
Bachelor Degrees need a complete rethink, it was basically modified finishing school for rich capital owners, needing to make their children of proper class before they could take over their businesses.
It then became a vocational degree for the working class, despite being completely detached from useful skills for a wide swathes of degrees. The only value is that you could talk the talk and become a member of the professional managerial class if you impressed the right hiring committee/individual.
In spite of this, we decided the working class should take out crippling loans to pay for this degree, and be in debt for the rest of their working life.
It's not sustainable, and just forgiving the debt only will make it all more expensive and less aligned with actual results we desire (useful workers).
Now that we have AI tutors that cost <$1/Mtok, why not do on-demand standardized testing for academic credentials and eliminate compulsory (dejure or defacto) education beyond working age. Universities can focus on research, and normal people get off the credentialism treadmill or focus on as-needed training at minimal cost. Need the social environment? Libraries or community centers can lend vacant space for “college” classrooms.
Everyone wins, right? You know, except university administrators and lenders.
Software is weird because it is expected that should be free (as in beer) for most consumers while while being for profit and giving high salaries to its workers. I struggle to think of any other privately owned sector of the economy that works that way.
Mathematicians aren’t expected to be paid royalties when someone uses their discoveries.
Paying to lease a server or for access it, sure, but software itself? It’s nonsense.
AtomBalm commented on FOSS infrastructure is under attack by AI companies thelibre.news/foss-infras... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
I've pointed this out to a few people in this space. They tend to suggest that the value in AI is so great this means we should get rid of copyright law entirely.
We should, but not for those reasons.
If software and ideas become commodities and the legal ecosystem around creating captive markets disappears, then we will all be much better off.
Does no one remember the last Google Gemini super-impressive demo that blew everyone away was faked?
https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/07/googles-best-gemini-demo-w...
Don’t Be Evil
… but don’t disappoint shareholders…
He revealed unlawful surveillance years prior to and of the same gravity as Snowden, but only one became a celebrity. I would love to know the reason for that.
AtomBalm commented on Gemma 3 Technical Report [pdf] storage.googleapis.com/de... · Posted by u/meetpateltech
Hard to get more puritanical than "if you disagree with my opinion then you're morally repulsive". Not to mention that your argument implies that all traces of sex ought to be scrubbed from the entire Internet? And that that conclusion is the only moral one?
There are no Puritans and haven’t been for a few centuries. You’re screaming at ghosts. He or she may be Muslim. You should respect the culture.
> my hope is that evolving decentralized platforms and AI tools will bring about a time when all users can collaborate in the creation and maintenance of most software they are using.
How would this happen without AGPL licenses exactly?
The US can stop enforcing IP law, which I don’t think has a sound ethical justification in the first place. Ideas and code can’t be “stolen” like physical property. Using copyright law to oppose copyright is a practical tactic, but I wouldn’t say consistently principled.
Anthropic subsidizes an open standard, but proprietary extensions later emerge that lock you into servers from their marketplace or something? I need a sociopath to help me understand this.