Mar 15, 2023

What About Artificial Stupidity?

Biden approves a massive oil drilling project. The A got a bit more I. Google is doing the thing they do best. You're gonna see a bunch of outrage about nothing. Meta would prefer to just not have employees, and we say goodbye to some good games.

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Biden says we should drill for oil instead of listen to the local natives

While claiming to give the remotest shit about the environment, Biden (the president, who is 80) approved a massive oil drilling project in Alaska. Notably, natives and environmental protection groups were pushing hard for this project to not move forward, but when has the opinion of minorities ever really mattered to Biden?

AI just got a lot more headlines

GPT-4, the next iteration of the AI model that powers things like ChatGPT and Microsoft's new Bing AI, has dropped.

Among other general improvements, GPT-4 is able to deal in more than just text, opening up the door to a whole new suite of capabilities with images-as-context and whatnot. It does give a bit more hope towards helpful applications, such as the possibility of better assistive tools for those who need help with sight. But it falls quite short from the wild rumors that this next iteration of AI would be earth-shattering. And to be clear, that is a good thing.

Google is doing that thing again

Speaking of AI, Google is cramming AI into every surface they can find. Docs, email and beyond. Not unlike their wildly successful approach to integrating Google Plus into everything. Look forward to a massive suite of AI features being haphazardly tacked on to every service of theirs, only to be removed in, say, 7 months. 8 if it goes well!

Speaking of which, if you haven't had the pleasure of browsing the Google Graveyard, give that a glance!

You're gonna see a lot of outrage and headlines about reparations, probably

A proposal was made in SF by an appointed committee who was tasked with understanding what it would look like to address reparations in the city and beyond. The committee's proposals are just that: proposals. Nothing is happening here, but its just the right thing to cause a bunch of outrage.

Specifically the headlining proposal: Give $5,000,000 to each eligible Black adult. The proposal essentially is to answer the question: "what economic changes could be made to make things right?" And when you consider the horrors of slavery and the suppression of Black folks in America throughout the centuries, $5,000,000 per person does not seem like a lot. But again, its a thought experiment and not actual policy being put into place. So when you inevitably see sensationalized stuff about this, just smirk in your immaculate big-brained knowledge of this situation.

Meta laying off another 10,000 employees

It's honestly getting old y'all, figure out a new routine cuz laying off 10,000 employees is starting to get a bit repetitive.

After a 13% staff reduction just a few months back, Meta has announced that they will be laying off 10,000 more employees, furthering what Z U C C continues to call "The Year of Efficiency". No seriously, this time the title of their layoff blog post was "Update on Meta's Year of Efficiency".

I bet those 10,000 human beings will totally understand that the flippant rejection of their worth is simply in the name of being more efficient, despite their sudden lack of healthcare coverage.

Closing time. One last call for video games…

Let us all gather and say a few words, as the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U e-shops will be closing on March 27th. If you have one of those consoles, you can still log on and download some stuff, but you'll be losing access shortly.

RIP to a real one y'all. The Wii U was a great console that just never got a foothold. I loved mine. It was transitional, sure, but damn did it have some good games. And it could natively run as a Wii! What a time to have been alive.