>Scott Hennessey, the owner of the New South Wales-based Australian Tours and Cruises, which operates Tasmania Tours, told the Australian Broadcasting Network (ABC) earlier this month that “our AI has messed up completely.”
To me this is the real takeaway for a lot of these uses of AI. You can put in practically zero effort and get a product. Then, when that product flops or even actively screws over your customers, just blame the AI!
No one is admitting it but AI is one of the easiest ways to shift blame. Companies have been doing this ever since they went digital. Ever heard of "a glitch in the system"? Well, now with AI you can have as many of those as you want, STILL never accept responsibility, and if you look to your left and right, everyone is doing it, and no one is paying the price.
This one isn't actually inevitable in the near term. Lethal robots policing the streets isn't something that can just sneak up on us[0] - it's a pretty clear-cut civic issue affecting everyone, so excepting hardcore autocracies with no vertical accountability[1], the public can push such ideas back indefinitely[2].
It's hard to "agency launder" a killer robot when it's physically patrolling a public square.
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[0] - Except maybe through privatization of law enforcement, which could be more gradual - think police outsourcing more work to private security companies, which in turn decide to "pioneer innovative solutions to ensure personal safety" by giving weapons to mall security patrol robots and putting them out on the streets - but it'll still be pretty obvious what's happening.
[1] - Some cursory search suggests this is the correct term for the idea I'm thinking of, which is how much the people in power have to, in practice, take their subjects' reactions into account.
[2] - Well, at least until armed forces of multiple countries start using autonomous robots as ground infantry, and over the years, normalize this idea in the minds of civilians.
> No one is admitting it but AI is one of the easiest ways to shift blame.
Similar to what Facebook, Google, Twitter/X, Tiktok etc have been doing for a long time using the platform-excuse.
"We are just a platform. We are not to blame for all this illegal or repugnant content. We do not have resources to remove it."
That famous Bible verse, "there is nothing new under the sun", comes to mind. Even most of the problems with computers and computer systems - especially distributed ones - and information processing, and all problems at the interface layer between those systems and people, are something we've already been dealing with for hundreds of years. For many of those we even developed effective solutions, that most people don't realize exist.
It takes a little frame shift to see this: one has to realize that bureaucracy is a computing system, built on a runtime made of people instead of silicon, storing data on forms and documents, invoking procedure calls through paper shuffling, executing programs written in legalese, as rules and procedures and laws.
Accountability shifting? "The program won't let me do that" is just a new, more intense flavor of "this is the company/government policy". The underlying goals remain the same - building a reliable system from unreliable parts, a system to realize some goals - while maintaining control of and visibility into it, all without having to personally micromanage every aspect. Introductions of computers into bureaucracy didn't change its fundamental nature; making process more robust and reducing endpoint variation (i.e. individual autonomy of the workers) just makes it scale better.
Hell, even AI - at least at this point[0] - isn't really a new thing either. Once you allow yourself to anthropomorphize LLMs a bit and realize they are effectively "People on a Chip", it becomes clear what their role in a computing system is, and that we already have experience dealing with their flaky, unreliable nature.
And from that perspective, it's clear as day that company blaming AI for a fuckup is just the most recent flavor of shifting blame to a subcontractor.
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[0] - Things will meaningfully change if and when we get to the point of AIs being given moral or legal status as people. Though in all honesty, this wouldn't be a completely new situation either - more like a new take on social and political issues humanity has been dealing with ever since first two ancient tribes found themselves contesting the same piece of land.
It sounds like in this case there was some troll-fueled comeuppance.
> “We’re not a scam,” he continued. “We’re a married couple trying to do the right thing by people … We are legit, we are real people, we employ sales staff.”
> Australian Tours and Cruises told CNN Tuesday that “the online hate and damage to our business reputation has been absolutely soul-destroying.”
This might just be BS, but at face-value, this is a mom and pop shop that screwed up playing the SEO game and are getting raked over the internet coals.
Your broader point about blame-washing stands though.
That's the thing about scammers, they operate in plausibly deniable ways, like covering up malice with incompetence. They make taking things at face value increasingly costly for the aggrieved.
I somewhat disagree, because at the end of the day he still has to take responsibility for the fuckup and that will matter in terms of dollars and reputation. I think this is also why a lot of roles just won't speed up that much, the bottleneck will be verification of outputs because it is still the human's job on the line.
An on the nose example would be, if your CEO asked you for a report, and you delivered fake data, do you think he would be satisfied with the excuse that AI got it wrong? Customers are going to feel the same way, AI or human, you (the company, the employee) messed up.
> if your CEO asked you for a report, and you delivered fake data, do you think he would be satisfied with the excuse that AI got it wrong?
He was likely the one who ordered the use of the AI. He won't fire you for mistakes in using it because it's a step on the path towards obsoleting your position altogether or replacing you with fungible minimum wage labor to babysit the AI. These mistakes are an investment in that process.
He doesn't have to worry about consequences in the short term because all the other companies are making the same mistakes and customers are accepting the slop labor because they have no choice.
I imagine it's already happening, but not at price points most of us would ever afford.
I.e. I'm not really going to pay lots of money to, say, 1) find a doctor that does not use AI as part of their work, and 2) legally/contractually enforce this is the case. However, I can imagine a government agency or a large company contracting out to some think tank or research organization, and paying through the nose to get a legally binding guarantee that no AI will be used as part of that work.
Is this an option that's available all the time? Back when the Nexus 5 was still new, I tried doing exactly this and took one I just bought to my local Verizon outlet to have it activated on their network. The tech there told me that while the phone DID have the hardware needed to be compatible on Verizon's network, he was "not allowed" to activate it for me unless I bought it directly through them. I've since switched to T-Mobile and never looked back.
Verizon around the Nexus 5 still had a lot of CDMA and you needed to have a phone activated.
Now that networks are pretty much LTE and 5G only, if your phone takes a SIM, take the SIM out of the old phone and put it in the new phone. Some carriers still play games with allowlists for VoLTE though.
But you might have better luck (and better pricing) with a MVNO or the prepaid side of your preferred carrier.
Allowlists for VoLTE are a perfectly reasonable (if extremely unfortunate) safety measure.
Because of the special handling that emergency calls must get in cellular networks, many older phones will use circuit-switched fallback (AKA 3g or 2G) for those calls, even if they are otherwise VoLTE capable.
This was pretty much fine back in the day, as 2g and 3g networks were just as (if not more) widespread as VoLTE, but those networks are now being shut down. If you have one of these phones and an LTE-only carrier allows it onto their network, you will be able to make any normal call, but emergency calls will not work.
To add insult to injury, there's no way for the carrier to tell whether any specific phone does emergency calls over VoLTE or not, especially if they don't have a contract with that vendor. Some phones may only do it in certain configurations, E.G. when branded for that specific carrier and configured with their preferred modem settings.
Okay, what I really meant to ask was whether Verizon in particular is still incredibly dishonest about the process of bringing your own device as I had personally experienced. Obviously, the real solution is just to take your business elsewhere.
No, then again I wouldn’t recommend it now since there’s tons of mvno’s to go to that you can order online without dealing with less scrupulous store employees. Best advice I can give if you still want to do verizon/tmo/att direct is AVOID authorized retailers, only use the corporate stores.
I'm also curious what others' takes are too. Lately I have found myself completely unable to remember things without writing them down or completely losing focus on a task and instead going off on "side quests." A close friend familiar with ADHD hinted that I probably have "late developing ADHD" and advised that I get evaluated/diagnosed.
The thought of that kind of scares me---I'm in my late 20s and tend to think I have functioned my whole life without needing any kind of coping strategy or technique to keep myself on top of my work, but now I am facing the possibility that I might just have to start doing things differently, and I'm not sure where to start.
Aside from actually getting diagnosed, are there any strategies I ought to try to help focus on work without getting sidetracked? And ways to help remember things?
> are there any strategies I ought to try to help focus on work without getting sidetracked? And ways to help remember things?
How do you tend to spend your time?
What percentage of your time is spent on activities that benefit from rapid context-switching and short periods of concentration? (Examples might include watching short-form content, browsing/commenting on online forums, most video games, navigating most cities, and working in certain environments).
How much time do you spend on activities that benefit from the opposite? Sustained concentration and attention with minimal interruptions. (Examples might include watching movies, reading novels, some video games, navigating countryside, and working in certain environments).
Our bodies and minds adapt to the demands we place on them. If you're sedentary all day you'll lose muscle mass, cardio endurance, etc.
Late 20s/early 30s is when I started to notice the costs associated with my lifestyle becoming more apparent. The prophylactic effects of youth start to wear off and you realise that you are what you eat, in a multitude of ways.
There are some really good suggestions in this thread: sleep, exercise, medication. Therapy also helps some.
Externalizing my brain helped massively before I was diagnosed. Pages and pages of notes -- both to write an idea down to move away from it and as a way to make sure I do a task. It's way easier for me to accomplish something if I can obsessively plan it out in advance, and it's way easier to stop rolling an idea around in my head if I jot it down (potentially to be never entertained again.)
It's a later step after diagnosis, but my doctor told me I'd be surprised at how effective medication can be. They were 100% right. It's not a cure all and it's not without potential side effects, but it makes me sad that it took me so long to approach my primary doctor about the issues.
But as a side note, the medical info I've read makes a pretty firm statement that there is no late developing ADHD. One if the diagnostic criteria is that the symptoms occurred during childhood. Coping and your environment may affect the disorder's effect on your life, but it's with you for your life. _However_, adult diagnosis is very real. Your environment changes so much as you age, and it may or may not make ADHD worse. I'd talk to your primary doctor with an open mind, both for what may be going on and for how to deal with it.
Carefully consider your environment. I perform best with very little going on around me. In my physical environment and on my PC. Austere. Minimize things that catch your brain and eye. One or two apps at a time, close everything else. Pick your one more important thing every day and work on that. It needs to be a contract. Usually you have one or two important things to be doing and you can ignore everything else without too much consequence.
To remember things you need an ironclad todo system that lets you very quickly capture anything you need to remember. You need to be able to record, triage, filter, prioritize, and execute on anything you need to remember. If any one of those stages is leaky you won't trust it and it won't last. My entire life is structured around managing it. I have to have very strong discipline. House must be spotless. Desk must be spotless. Try to work in the same place at the same time every day. Environmental and contextual stability is huge. Your brain must associate a particular desk, chair, place with doing the most important things. If you allow yourself to goof off or do other things in that place you are losing the fight.
Working out fixes a lot for me too. I workout or my mood and motivation falls apart. Move or die. Again, consistency is key. Everything I do around environment is to reduce the need to use executive function. It is finite and fickle for people with ADHD. The more you have to think and convince yourself to do things the less likely you are to do them. You need consistent cues. "Sit down here, start timer, means work on main thing and nothing else." If you can have discipline at all of these external things, the work can just happen and there is a kind of freedom in that.
Program outlets. Give yourself set, specific time to explore the sidetracking. Don't tell your brain no. Tell it "later". It helps if you know there is time for the extra thoughts. That there is a relief valve.
Also, drugs. I use prescribed stimulants. There are some unpleasant negative things, but I can function with them and life is better with them. But it isn't some magical cure. You still have to be organized and willing to work on your tasks or you will just be really focused on things you don't really need to be doing.
I could write so much more, but that is some top of mind stuff that I think sits at the top of my hierarchy of being productive. Oh and you may need to have some conversations with future you. How is future you, a week, month, year from now going to feel if you burned a lot of time on side quests?
When I first installed Windows 11 about 2 years ago, I had a similar experience. One of the things I noticed quickly was that much of the preinstalled crap that comes with Windows 10 can be easily uninstalled from the Settings menu or Control Panel, no PowerShell tricks required. It felt like Windows 11 was actually less bloated than Windows 10 at the time.
But, going through the same process now I notice a lot more of the cracks. Windows 11 nags a lot more, whether it's about OneDrive or Copilot or whatever new thing Microsoft is trying to push. My same Windows 11 install from 2 years ago kept reinstalling and re-enabling the same crap I originally got rid of, and I feel like it's only getting worse.
In short I think Windows 11 was actually really good when it first launched, minus the UI quirks at the time. But, in classic Microsoft fashion, it was totally ruined and has woefully lost my trust as something I can depend on for even just basic computing.
About one of my favorite racing games of all time: "The game could have been removed for a number of reasons, including the closure of developer Bizarre Creations in early 2011, but the most likely cause was expired licensing of the real-world cars featured in the game."[1]
To me this is one of the most egregious examples of how licensing massively hurts consumers. The game is fully playable offline (and online with a patch) but cannot legally be sold because of an arbitrary restriction limiting the use of likeness of virtual cars in the game.
It becomes a moral imperative to pirate it and continue seeding it for others to also acquire, as a mean to help preserving something you cared about, apparently more than the owners of the IP/rights themselves care.
> It becomes a moral imperative to pirate it and continue seeding it for others to also acquire, as a mean to help preserving something you cared about, apparently more than the owners of the IP/rights themselves care.
Your words brought me right back to my teenage years sitting at the family computer at 12am babysitting a couple of song downloads to burn onto a CD for my friends to listen to on the bus ride.
Kinda random and only tangentially related but the thought brought a smile to my face and I just felt like sharing and saying thanks!
Heh, I too remember the stress and rush of burning car-listening CDs right before long car trips, trying to set the write speed to slower and slower after each failed attempt, and finally succeeding burning it, only to find out that the car didn't actually have any CD reader at all, and could only do cassette. Waiting for DC++, Kazaa or LimeWire to finish a download only to find out that of course, it's some Britney song instead.
Simpler times for sure, unsure if it was actually better or not though, we certainly aren't as young as we used to be :)
Wow this looks pretty rad, I wish I knew about it before! Having real cars in the game really makes it more fun to me. I dunno why, but playing racing games with a bunch of fake cars isn't as exciting (Super Mario Kart being an exception). It's especially fun when you see one of your cars, or a friend's car in the game.
People generally always want the artist to have control.
What people don't want, as in this case, is for a corporation to have control of the artist's work, and exercise that control mercilessly, thus actually reducing the reach and impact of the artist's work.
(Often, unknowingly to the corporation's own detriment. Having your cars appear in a game is literally free marketing, why refuse that?)
Probably copyright needs to be amended to belong to an individual or a team that comprises not more of 5 people. No corpos can hold copyright or if they do, they must upfront declare the individual/team that holds it.
The problem is not a matter of artist control. Rather, it's a problem with how license agreements are handled--license agreements for product-breaking things with timeframes should generally not be permitted. It's a version of planned obsolescence.
The same is currently happening with Forza games (at least Horizon ones, not sure about original Motorsport series). You can only buy the latest game, others have been delisted. You can still get physical copies, but the DLCs have been delisted as well, so you can't get the full version, at least not officially. And more than that, the online servers have been shut down as well.
It baffles me that this is still an issue, publishers are not concerned with implementing some sort of "kill switch" for expired content to keep getting money for the games. GTA also suffered from this.
yeah, that's the whole point, thye still let you install the games you bought because not doing so would open a huge can of worms and re-start the whole "are you really buying games on steam or just renting them?" discussion, which they are very keen on avoiding
For what it's worth, I recently bought a spool of CAT7 cable and a bunch of RJ45 connectors and made my own cables that perform well and reliably. I don't know if this was wise in the end but I was able to get what I needed out of it.
Good point, I chose not to on my main "Owner" profile to be fully Google-free. I have the sandboxed Play Services on a separate profile I hardly ever use for testing purposes.
One explanation that was brought up before about this was licensing. A lot of the source code has been touched by other entities like Digital Extremes who may feel differently about releasing the source. That's even more true for UT2k4 which was worked on by many more companies behind the scenes, some of which are now defunct.
This is being done by OldUnreal with written permission from Epic. They've been doing the same thing for Unreal 1 and Unreal Tournament '99 under NDA and all.
To be fair, I did read that, but didn't state why I was sceptical: I've been playing UT since UT99, it's one of my favourite games. I wasted hours of my life in unreal ed 1. Anyway Epic removed UT from all online stores, I still have access to my gog version but in general as far as I know it's impossible to buy a legit copy these days. They also shut down it's master servers. To be fair I haven't tried playing a few years so maybe that is fixed and maybe they have restored it to gog or the epic store. I don't know I haven't checked.
A random post on Reddit "with epics blessing" looked pretty much throw away to me. But hey, I'm wrong :)
To me this is the real takeaway for a lot of these uses of AI. You can put in practically zero effort and get a product. Then, when that product flops or even actively screws over your customers, just blame the AI!
No one is admitting it but AI is one of the easiest ways to shift blame. Companies have been doing this ever since they went digital. Ever heard of "a glitch in the system"? Well, now with AI you can have as many of those as you want, STILL never accept responsibility, and if you look to your left and right, everyone is doing it, and no one is paying the price.