Week round-up: June 22
Here's some stuff I saw this week!
The Subway Is Not Scary - Hamilton Nolan
Fear of the subway is a mark of low moral character.
God, do I agree with this. I agree with this for other cities you'd be shocked about, too. I think being scared of the LA Metro!! is a mark of low moral character. I love my friends but I hate it when they freak out about me riding the bus or taking the train. Fundamentally, you are safer when you are around other people. If you disagree with this - if you want to debate me about which people you'll be safe around in an environment as levelling and crowded and full of regular people as a subway system in a big US city - then yes, you have low moral character.
christine - Jenn Frank
A wonderful reflection on a wonderful roommate. Made me think about how the kindness of other people can remind us of our own capacity for kindness and fellowship.
AI web scrapers: a data point - Andrew Plotkin
Some reflections on how AI web scrapers are just ignoring robot.txt files and fucking with websites regardless. "Webmaster writes about AI scrapers causing problems" is an entire genre of blog post at this point, but this one is worth reading, particularly if you're a games narrative person who values the history of interactive fiction games or the IF Archive in particular.
OpenAI featured chatbot is pushing extreme surgeries to “subhuman” men - Molly White
OpenAI was hosting a version of its chatbot which generates abusive, demeaning, bigoted advice for sad incels on demand. Since this article was published, the particular chatbot it covers has been taken down. Still worth a read, though.
It's worth reminding yourself, and the people in your life, that one of the most obvious uses of this technology is to generate text that is so vile and loathsome that most people refuse to generate that text themselves. LLMs have the ability to output endless quantities of text supporting the fringiest and most harmful beliefs imaginable - potentially mainstreaming them in the process.