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@krnlg @solitha You seem to have forgotten that actual mature engineering disciplines have codes of conduct, oversight bodies, and ethics exams. A lot of what passes for engineering in silicon valley, though, ignores all that. Software engineering in particular simply isn't a serious discipline yet.
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@cstross To get to applied engineering, though, one has to do the study that shows how to apply it. In this case, cockroach anatomy and function.
@krnlg When I talk about ethical guidelines, it's not about the application so much. It's more about how we treat the creatures we study. Just in my lifetime we've improved ethics in that area immensely.
I disagree that kindness alone would be as good for suffering as medicine, but that is a matter of differing opinions.
@solitha
We have the wrong balance, is all I'm saying. Not that science is wrong, far from it. Not that we should sit in caves loving each other while we die young either! 🙂We're an immature civilisation flailing around with power we don't know how to handle. Our philosophy is way behind our science, and we're ruled by bad people who take our science and use it to ruin everything.
Feels like we're already living in sci-fi but I guess that's the power and purpose of fiction!
@cstross -
@krnlg @solitha You seem to have forgotten that actual mature engineering disciplines have codes of conduct, oversight bodies, and ethics exams. A lot of what passes for engineering in silicon valley, though, ignores all that. Software engineering in particular simply isn't a serious discipline yet.
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@krnlg @solitha Therac-25[1] predated most of the problems: the problem is that Therac-25 isn't universally taught in CS classes!
[1] the accidents happened from 1985, but the Therac-25 dates to 1975 and the software was written by one dude using PDP-11 assembler who may well not have understood race conditions.
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Sigh.
So it turns out we've mapped the neural connectome of Drosophila *and simulated it in silico*.
Pop-sci explainer here:
Key quote: "The step from a complete connectome to a working computational brain model is not trivial." And there's an even more important finding in this screenshot (alt text via OCR):
"The wiring is the computation".
/1
@cstross
Huh. Pity they don't talk about the compute required. -
@krnlg I would reply that the only way we *can* mature as a civilization, and figure out how to handle this power ethically, is through practice and self-reflection.
And that maturing is helped immensely by those like you with a strong sense of the inherent worth of all life. It drives us to honor the sacrifices we make, and to seek advances that no longer require such sacrifice.
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@rachel @cstross @mwl @pwassonchat I actually wouldn't think that phrase especially odd (Uk boomer)
@annehargreaves @rachel @cstross @mwl I'm French and to me it sounds like someone tried to translate "[veuillez] faire le nécessaire" too literally/word to word. Maybe that's where the old English got it from ?
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Sigh.
So it turns out we've mapped the neural connectome of Drosophila *and simulated it in silico*.
Pop-sci explainer here:
Key quote: "The step from a complete connectome to a working computational brain model is not trivial." And there's an even more important finding in this screenshot (alt text via OCR):
"The wiring is the computation".
/1
@cstross @stevegis_ssg
You knew this instinctively.
It was hardwired into your brain. -
But I'm REALLY HAPPY right now because this kinda-sorta validates the key premise of the SF novel I just handed in last month (which involves serial reincarnation via destructive brain-slicing-and-imaging then imprinting onto an immature cortex, and then explores its disastrous societal failure modes).
... And it also hints that artificial consciousness might, eventually, be possible, if only via the hard path of doing it the same way we do it, only in simulation in silico.
/6 (ends)
kinda-sorta validates the key premise of the SF novel I just handed in last month
That must feel good. I'm reminded of a forward to one of Zelazny's collections about The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth where he commented on the sudden realization he had to get the thing published because he was spinning a tale of hunting alien whales on the vast oceans of Venus and the Soviets were about to launch a probe that was going to confirm or deny that there were oceans at all.
I'm not a writer, but it seems to me the nice thing about past-fantasy is that you can decide to finish a story about dragons and castles at more-or-less any time and it won't be invalidated or rendered too fantastical for the reader to accept. Science fiction doesn't always have that luxury since the future keeps rushing at us.
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@cstross
I expect TESCREAL types to dismiss the ethical concerns. If we can improve the lives of trillions of hypothetical future humans, it would justify murdering and dissecting millions of actual contemporary humans.Please don't forget the LGBT in LGBTESCREAL
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@cstross
I expect TESCREAL types to dismiss the ethical concerns. If we can improve the lives of trillions of hypothetical future humans, it would justify murdering and dissecting millions of actual contemporary humans.@VATVSLPR @cstross Thouh for the genral good, shouldn’t we start by dissecting the most brilliant brains available now? No need to dissect the unwashed masses, but to make lives better for the hypothetical trillions, dissect all the billoinaire brains!
Sarcasm, obviously. I’m not advocating dissecting anyone. It’s just that for some reason TESCREAL types propose things which get them, and just them, money and power right now.
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@pwassonchat@eldritch.cafe @cstross@wandering.shop @mwl@io.mwl.io
I'm not surprised by this at all
after getting asked to "please do the needful" by some indian clients at an old job on a bunch of emails I had to figure the origin of the phrase
Turns out it is a remament of old UK English that fell out of use elsewhere but still survives in Indian-English, as opposed to any sort of English as a second language grammatical "error", there were a bunch of other examples as well@rachel @cstross @mwl @pwassonchat "prepone" as an opposite of "postpone" is one of my favourite quirks of Indian English
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Sigh.
So it turns out we've mapped the neural connectome of Drosophila *and simulated it in silico*.
Pop-sci explainer here:
Key quote: "The step from a complete connectome to a working computational brain model is not trivial." And there's an even more important finding in this screenshot (alt text via OCR):
"The wiring is the computation".
/1
@cstross
This is a major milestone in understanding the operation; I am seriously impressed.But doesn’t some small part of your rmind, thinking back to the cockrroches they turned into robots go:
NEXT UP: Zombie Drosophila controlled by LLMs!!!
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@annehargreaves @rachel @cstross @mwl I'm French and to me it sounds like someone tried to translate "[veuillez] faire le nécessaire" too literally/word to word. Maybe that's where the old English got it from ?
@pwassonchat @rachel @cstross @mwl Could be!
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@cstross
Huh. Pity they don't talk about the compute required.@dymaxion Indeed. But I suspect as an academic project with no immediate avenues for commercial exploitation they probably didn't build any new data centres for it.
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@cstross
This is a major milestone in understanding the operation; I am seriously impressed.But doesn’t some small part of your rmind, thinking back to the cockrroches they turned into robots go:
NEXT UP: Zombie Drosophila controlled by LLMs!!!
@SpeakerToManagers No, it goes to DARPA, at Pete Hegseth's instruction, funding research into LLM-controlled murder hornets loaded with tetrodotoxin in their stingers and aimed at targets identified as being insufficiently Christian Nationalist.
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@pwassonchat@eldritch.cafe @cstross@wandering.shop @mwl@io.mwl.io
I'm not surprised by this at all
after getting asked to "please do the needful" by some indian clients at an old job on a bunch of emails I had to figure the origin of the phrase
Turns out it is a remament of old UK English that fell out of use elsewhere but still survives in Indian-English, as opposed to any sort of English as a second language grammatical "error", there were a bunch of other examples as well@rachel @cstross @mwl @pwassonchat It's fun how lots of phrases in other English speaking places, and that we Brits sneer at as being "not proper English", turn out to be older than what we now use in the UK. Fall is older than Autumn, that kind of thing.
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@dymaxion Indeed. But I suspect as an academic project with no immediate avenues for commercial exploitation they probably didn't build any new data centres for it.
@cstross
Of course. But "we did this on a laptop" and "we did this on a 64-card H200 cluster" imply very different things about the work. -
@cstross
Of course. But "we did this on a laptop" and "we did this on a 64-card H200 cluster" imply very different things about the work.
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@cazmockett ah! I was wondering what it was. Perfect indeed 🙌
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@stefano_zan si eh😉
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Il terzo gode | Stop #USA alle sanzioni, Putin ringrazia. Ma è l’#Iran che decide | il manifesto https://ilmanifesto.it/stop-usa-alle-sanzioni-putin-ringrazia-ma-e-liran-che-decide
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@Reverse-Engineering
This reminds me of #ZakMcKracken … 😅😅😅
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@phoronix
Those are not good news. 😱🤬😭
Yet there is hope as #Lenovo has upstreamed #firmware for one of its #thinkpad.
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@stefano published on my birthday 🙂
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