Intentionality is the key difference. You can eventually tell a Chinese room’s nature by giving it new variables that it hasn’t encountered before. New problems lead to algorithmic breakdown.

That said, there’s deeper conversations you can have about what consciousness truly is, of course. My personal view is that it requires a level of complexity that we are still very far away from architecturally, and a level of scalability that we may not even be able to support ecologically. This thought experiment is mainly to show you what the inner workings of a computerized process can look like, and works to provide a demystified perspective.

A concept that I think is really helpful for interpreting what an LLM does is the concept of a “Chinese room”. The idea is someone slips a piece of paper containing a message in Chinese under the door and inside that room is someone that doesn’t know Chinese following a set of rules for converting characters and numerals into a response based off their syntax. Afterwards the person in the room creates a response and slips it back out under the door. At no point does the person in the room understand the Chinese in the input or in the output, but the person standing outside of the room might believe there is a Chinese speaker inside of the room. This is the same idea with computerized outputs like LLMs. They only provide the illusion of intentionality and don’t actually have an understanding of inputs or their outputs.

Stupid is as stupid does.

Romania and other places in European have unlimited data for under $10/month. Meanwhile here in Canada an unlimited plan is over $100/month. God forbid you have a non-unlimited plan (which is still more expensive than an unlimited plan in EU btw) and you have a cap on your data, because with the way the internet is these days the amount of bloatware on every website will kill your data allocation in a week, and then you’re left with overage charges that double your monthly fees. You either get screwed now or get screwed later. Those are your choices when it comes to telecom companies in Canada.

Seems to me the Township admin should be going after the private owner of the billboard sign that’s currently leasing the digital display to Morgan. Weird how this private entity has been kept anonymous in the reporting.

~$200K annual salary btw

NDP’s Wab Kinew as PM would be an amazing thing for the country. He seems like exactly what we’d need after Carney.

Your lack of arguments is louder than your sarcasm.

It’s a bridge owned by Canada that undercuts a US billionaire owned bridge. It’s a win in my book. And you know what’s worse for the environment? Continuing to feed a warmongering economy down south.

Corporate laws feel like such a joke when they can just open subsidiaries in other countries and bypass the laws their parent companies are beholden to. Canada needs to clamp down on this and show they’re better than their US counterparts, otherwise they’ll lose their soft power advantage on the international stage.

I just realized if Alberta separates Poilievre loses his seat in parliament again lol. It almost sounds worth it…but nah, there’s plenty of other ways Pierre can be humiliated.

Of course they threw a complaint about regulations in there. Overcoming short term pains by demolishing our long term barriers is not helpful, especially when it comes to the ecosystem.

Yup. I get that he’s also walking a tightrope with Alberta’s separatism right now, but even with that matter resolved I don’t think he would truly stand up for the environment and worker’s rights. I’d be happy to be proven wrong, though.

Carney saved us from the immediate dangers of capitulating to the US like the conservatives were ready to do, but he won’t save us from the multinational danger of corporate parasitism. That requires a fundamental reassessment of the key economic concepts behind growth and GDP. Much like decoupling from the US requires a regrettably intolerant attitude (“tolerance of intolerance…” and all that), decoupling from corporate oligarchy requires a determined adherence to supporting the lower and middle class above the upper class. This will no doubt strike a chord with people who have become ingrained to the capitalistic belief system, but it must be done before it’s too late. I personally hope the NDP can rise at the federal level with such a message in order to push back on this form of tyranny.

I’d focus on education and the arts rather than tools of death. Just look at how well it’s serving the US. Meanwhile places like Nepal are able to depose their government without widespread guns. Hearts and minds>toys and slogans.

Dunno how it is everywhere else but in Toronto the FIFA preparations have also fenced off certain public parks around the stadium which were heavily used for through-traffic, forcing pedestrians and cyclists to have to take massive detours around them. It’s particularly annoying because they’ve just been fenced off for weeks now with barely anyone inside except for some half asleep volunteer guards on their phones. How this is legal, I don’t know, but I’m assuming it came with the bribes. Just stinks of classism and corruption and it makes me like this World Cup even less (among all the other reasons).

No need to interrupt your enemy while they make mistakes. Just let the US continue to make fools of itself while the government and populace divests further.

Ok, give me an example from the report.

Nothing in the article states what type of influence is being pushed. All I saw was warnings about China, but I am already pretty prepared for fact all nations are trying to influence each other. The real question I care about is “what type of influence”? If the message is to promote better conditions for public health, infrastructure, and education then I’m all for it. If it’s about ceding public rights in favor of corporate entities and the wealthy then I’m against it. Which countries are pushing the latter message? Is it China? Doesn’t seem like it to me.

Should’ve been happening since the 70s when we already knew about all the risks and issues. Boggles the mind how easily fooled humans are by corporate lobbying. I really hope we get past this planning stage eventually.