Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Teresa Heffernan @tjheffernan.bsky.social · 12h

Hinton confuses optimization with evolution; part of the constant abuse of language in this field that began with Turing substituting imitation for thinking.

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.bsky.social · 14h

Back in the day people used to have a slide at the end of their presentations saying "and that's how the brain works" as an inside joke about Hinton since he was known to talk confidently out of his ass.

Now, the Nobel committee brought this upon us like they give the peace prize to genociders.

⚡️🌙 @dystopiabreaker.xyz · 3d

anyway, here is 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics winner Geoffrey Hinton discussing what we know about large AI models on 60 Minutes.

2

Reposted by Teresa Heffernan

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.bsky.social · 14h

Back in the day people used to have a slide at the end of their presentations saying "and that's how the brain works" as an inside joke about Hinton since he was known to talk confidently out of his ass.

Now, the Nobel committee brought this upon us like they give the peace prize to genociders.

⚡️🌙 @dystopiabreaker.xyz · 3d

anyway, here is 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics winner Geoffrey Hinton discussing what we know about large AI models on 60 Minutes.

2 58 200

Teresa Heffernan @tjheffernan.bsky.social · 12h

As a literary scholar, I would say there is a big difference between fiction and science; both have their uses but conflating them is a massive problem.

1

Reposted by Teresa Heffernan

Charlie Angus @charlieangus104.bsky.social · 1d

The MAGA plan to break up our country: secret meetings in Washington, a massive American slush fund and Danielle Smith.
Here is my latest on the MAGA and MAGA MAPLE attack on Canada.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nwi...

THE MAGA SCHEME TO DESTROY CANADA: TRAITORS, FAKE PIPELINE, SLUSH FUND

YouTube video by Charlie Angus

www.youtube.com

19 170 340

Reposted by Teresa Heffernan

Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 16h

just an obscene lie, but because it's "will be" nothing happens. Oracle is posting razor-thin gross profit margins (which do not mean they're actually making a profit, by the way!). Oracle lost $100m in three months on renting out Blackwell GPUs.

www.theinformation.com/articles/int...

In the three months that ended in August, Oracle generated around $900 million from rentals of servers powered by Nvidia chips and recorded a gross profit of $125 million—equal to 14 cents for every $1 of sales, the documents show. That’s lower than the gross margins of many nontech retail businesses.

As sales from the business nearly tripled in the past year, the gross profit margin from those sales ranged between less than 10% and slightly over 20%, averaging around 16%, the documents show.

In some cases, Oracle is losing considerable sums on rentals of small quantities of both newer and older versions of Nvidia’s chips, the data show. A spokesperson for Oracle, which doesn’t publicly disclose the AI cloud server unit’s financials, did not have a comment on those figures.

The 14% gross margin figure appears to take into account the labor, power and other direct costs of running Oracle data centers, including depreciation expenses for some of the equipment. Other unspecified depreciation expenses would eat up another 7 percentage points of margin, the documents show. Equity analysts such as Gil Luria from D.A. Davidson say they tend to account for depreciation of chips and other data center equipment when calculating a cloud provider’s gross margin, as the equipment is a key cost of selling cloud services.

That dynamic seems to contradict Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s recent comment that the release of newer chips essentially wipes out demand for older ones.

Oracle’s margins are also affected by how many of its servers customers are actually using—and paying for. Utilization of Oracle’s GPU cloud servers ranges between 60% and 90%, depending on the type of Nvidia chip that powers them, according to internal documents.

In the three months that ended in August, Oracle lost nearly $100 million from rentals of Nvidia’s Blackwell chips, which arrived this year. That’s partly because there is a period between when Oracle gets its data centers ready for customers and when customers start using and paying for them, the documents show. It’s not clear what causes the gap or how Oracle plans to shorten it.

12 74 400

Teresa Heffernan @tjheffernan.bsky.social · 12h

@mark-carney.bsky.social...can Canada please stop investing in the "AI" scam? OpenAI's Altman: a “prepper”; funded by Peter Thiel and Elon Musk; Stanford dropout; paid 10,000 to have his brain embalmed before (!) he dies; wants to be uploaded to into a computer and live forever. Fiction not science.

FT Edit @ftedit.ft.com · 1d

OpenAI is spending at a scale that even Silicon Valley can't quite believe, buying up 20 nuclear reactors' worth of computing power this year. But there are big questions around whether it can turn that power into profit.

An #FTEdit 🧵on the ChatGPT maker’s $1tn bet on artificial intelligence 👇

1 3

Teresa Heffernan @tjheffernan.bsky.social · 13h

?? I thought we were discussing left/right violence stats? But ok...Trump's approval rates are overall declining...from a fellow white man as you seem not to like women :) ew.com/jimmy-kimmel...

Jimmy Kimmel taunts Donald Trump after beating him in approval poll

Jimmy Kimmel is taunting Donald Trump after beating him in an approval poll: 'I am more popular than the president of the United States.'

ew.com

Reposted by Teresa Heffernan

Kevin 🚀🤠 @astro-cowboy.bsky.social · 18h

A trillion for fancy linear algebra that sucks up energy and rots brains just to get things wrong. Got it.

Techmeme @techmeme.com · 22h

JPMorgan Chase reports that $1.2T of debt is now tied to AI-related companies, making it the largest segment in the investment-grade market (Caleb Mutua/Bloomberg)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

1 4 8

Teresa Heffernan @tjheffernan.bsky.social · 13h

Thanks to Bondi for linking Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn) to Epstein. Big Tech--all super close to funding from Epstein, who was taken with the idea of transhumanism and eugenics and wanted to inseminate women with his sperm and have his brain and penis frozen, hoping he could be brought back to life.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse @whitehouse.senate.gov · 16h

AG Bondi, here’s that correction you requested.

1 3

Teresa Heffernan @tjheffernan.bsky.social · 13h

I asked Hinton years ago "what is your model of intelligence" because if you are going to build it, you must have a model; I suggested various theories. Response: once I get enough of my "neuronets" connected it will "spring into consciousness." Magical thinking indeed.

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.bsky.social · 14h

To a privileged, out of touch, white dude like him, a hypothetical magical fairy tale scenario that both makes him a godmaker and justifies the current harms this endeavor results in, is clearly more important than real world issues the rest of us face.

1 4

Reposted by Teresa Heffernan

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.bsky.social · 14h

They gave the physics prize to the dude who said that ChatGPT is the world's butterfly and GPT3 was a caterpillar.

The dude who told us in 2018 that radiologists should cease to go to school because the profession was gonna be out in 5 years. But 5 years later he just moved on to the next lie.

These Women Tried to Warn Us About AI

Rumman Chowdhury, Timnit Gebru, Safiya Noble, Seeta Peña Gangadharan, and Joy Buolamwini open up about their artificial intelligence fears

www.rollingstone.com

4 85 250

Teresa Heffernan @tjheffernan.bsky.social · 21h

And right (and left) are race blind. Trump won 21% of black votes. '"Black separatism" has been used by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an American civil rights advocacy group, to categorize several groups in the United States promoting antisemitic, anti-LGBTQ and male supremacist views.'

1

Teresa Heffernan @tjheffernan.bsky.social · 21h

Why Trump/Big Tech love AI so much...the dream of all totalitarian powers is to control the narrative. Evidence and history be damned.

David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 1d

On brand

Republicans post fake image of Oregon protest – using photos of South America

A federal judge had blocked Trump’s request to deploy California national guard to Portland

www.theguardian.com

1

Teresa Heffernan @tjheffernan.bsky.social · 21h

from the SPLC (your source): "The number of hate groups in the United States rose for a second year in a row in 2016 as the radical right was energized by the candidacy of Donald Trump"
www.splcenter.org/resources/st...

Hate groups increase for second consecutive year as Trump electrifies radical right

The number of hate groups in the United States rose for a second year in a row in 2016 as the radical right was energized by the candidacy of Donald Trump, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center...

www.splcenter.org

1

Teresa Heffernan @tjheffernan.bsky.social · 22h

Europe's DSA: "Under that law, platforms must submit regular transparency reports, partake in risk audits and act quickly to remove illegal content." Trump/Big Tech companies want to get rid of it so they can filter the world through their extremist algorithms.

Tech Policy Press @techpolicypress.bsky.social · 1d

The Trump administration appears to be engaged in a dramatic project to replace the United States’ traditional European alliances, with tech policy and culture wars over social media a key to the effort, Tech Policy Press contributing editor @dwj88.bsky.social writes.

Trump’s State Department Wants to Use Tech Policy to Remake Europe In Its Image | TechPolicy.Press

Tech policy is a key part of the Trump administration's dramatic project to replace the US's traditional European alliances, Dean Jackson writes.

www.techpolicy.press

2 6

Teresa Heffernan @tjheffernan.bsky.social · 23h

Right/left labels tend to be a bit reductive, but the evidence does not support your claim. One of many studies: "white supremacists have been the most lethal threat of domestic terror."

What We Know About Political Violence in America - FactCheck.org share.google/TT9tEH6bU0Sr...

FactCheck.org

1 1

Reposted by Teresa Heffernan

My IRL friends call me Chris @christyceeck.bsky.social · 2d

You've got to be kidding...

Multiple vehicles assigned to Ontario cabinet ministers have been slapped with over $3,300 in speeding-related fines -- many of them caught on automated speed cameras. Average: 17 km/h over the limit.

This is all @isaaccallan.bsky.social & his FOI skills.

#OnPoli

Vehicles registered to Ford cabinet ministers caught by speed cameras more than 20 times | Globalnews.ca

Documents obtained by Global News reveal that, over three years, vehicles registered to Ford’s cabinet minister received more than $3,300 in fines for speeding.

globalnews.ca

13 66 170

Reposted by Teresa Heffernan

Aaron Binder @aaronbinder.com · 12d

I spent last month analyzing Toronto business costs to figure out what's actually squeezing small businesses.

Turns out commercial rent jumped 142% over 5 years while wages went up 23%. For a typical 3 employee micro-business, rent increases cost $1,540 MORE per year than wage increases.

👇👇👇

Infographic showing 'Retail rent up 142% since 2019' in large yellow and red text. Contains two data visualizations: a year-over-year comparison chart showing decline from $19.54 in Q4/19 to $17.39 in Q1/20, and a commercial retail square footage chart comparing Q3/23 ($28.01) to Q3/24 ($47.21), showing 68.5% increase. Bottom text reads 'For a 1,000 sq. ft. space, that's +$27,670 extra/yr after 5 years.' Data credited to Toronto Regional Real Estate Board. Better Way Alliance branding at bottom.

1 10 19

Teresa Heffernan @tjheffernan.bsky.social · 1d

And needlessly drive up energy costs with AI slop to support the fossil fuel industry.

Teresa Heffernan @tjheffernan.bsky.social · 1d

AI is not the future...it is recycled slop that degrades and exploits humans for profit. It would be nice if our governments stopped pretending otherwise.

Dr Kat Day (she/her) @chronicleflask.katday.com · 1d

Daughter of Robin Williams, Zelda Williams 💔

zeldawilliams
20m
From Create Mode
••
Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad. Stop believing I wanna see it or that I'll understand, I don't and I won't. If you're just trying to troll me, I've seen way worse, i'll restrict and move on. But please, if you've got any decency, just stop doing this to him and to me, to everyone even, full stop. It's dumb, it's a waste of time and energy, and believe me, it's NOT what he'd want.
To watch the legacies of real people be condensed down to 'this vaguely looks and sounds like them so that's enough,
, just so
other people can churn out horrible TikTok slop puppeteering them is maddening. You're not making art, you're making disgusting, over-processed hotdogs out of the lives of human beings, out of the history of art and music, and then shoving them down someone else's throat hoping they'll give you a little thumbs up and like it.
Gross.

And for the love of EVERYTHING, stop calling it 'the future. Al is just badly recycling and regurgitating the past to be reconsumed. You are taking in the Human Centipede of content, and from the very very end of the line, all while the folks at the front laugh and laugh, consume and consume.

5 16

Teresa Heffernan @tjheffernan.bsky.social · 1d

Enron? Tell a story..bury the actual numbers that make no sense.

1

Teresa Heffernan @tjheffernan.bsky.social · 1d

Not Maga? Same outrageous and violent tactics.

Charlie Angus @charlieangus104.bsky.social · 1d

I spoke up about Pierre Poilievre today and got this threat on facebook. Josh Levy tells me to watch my back.
No Josh, I will keep speaking out about building a better Canada regardless of the threats you make to me or my loved ones.

9 16 79

Teresa Heffernan @tjheffernan.bsky.social · 1d

Just what academic research needs...more AI slop to deal with. Honestly!

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 1d

Oh FFS. Because what overburdened peer review systems really need is more noise between the reviewers & ACs. Yeah, that's the ticket.

aaai.org/aaai-launche...

>>

Screenshot of AAAI automated review announcement reading:

1. Supplementary First-Stage Reviews: LLM-generated reviews will be included as one component of the
initial review stage, providing an additional perspective alongside traditional human expert evaluations.
2. Discussion Summary Assistance: LLMs will assist the Senior Program Committee (SPC) members by
summarizing reviewer discussions, helping to highlight key points of consensus and disagreement among
human reviewers.

1 4 19

Teresa Heffernan @tjheffernan.bsky.social · 1d

bsky.app/profile/anab...

Teresa Heffernan @tjheffernan.bsky.social · 1d

And Aida Lovelace would be horrified to see herself coopted by the uncritical AI hype crowd after she clearly warned against overestimating the power of computing machines

Kristen Thomasen @kristenthomasen.bsky.social · 1d

The consultation is structured to a pre-determined outcome: yes, more AI. Very much agree with @anabrandusescu.bsky.social 👇🏻

(I‘m also offended by how much effort so many stakeholders put into trying to make the AIDA process better only to be ignored again. As Ana says, it’s no way to build trust)

Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 5d

I wrote a short essay about refusing to participate in Canada's public consultation on AI.

1 3