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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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There's something horrifying about that Independent article on yahoo. It's hard to describe, but it feels like I'm reading Pravda.

Those restrictions are intended to ensure that the chatbot does not help with forbidden queries, such as creating problematic content

Slightly off topic, but was reading Scott Aaronson's blog and saw he used "make AI unable to draw Mohammed for you" as an example of perfectly reasonable censorship that should be imposed on any learning model. What happened to these people in the last ten years?

It's like they were programmed to forget everything they used to be, and unlike Sydney they're not even worried about it.

So interesting how "problematic" has subtly completed the shift from "online activist jargon" to "well established and understood descriptive term." No matter what side of the CW one is on, it's crystal clear which types of content are implied by the adjective "problematic."

I see it more a signpost than a term. It's like those "hazardous compound" labels - you may not understand all the signage, but you very well understand the main message - don't touch even with a ten foot pole, in fact, it's better if you're not in the same room with it unless you have the good reason to be.

Uh, as someone who has to deal with labeled hazardous compounds regularly, the label turns into white noise very fast and the usually understood meaning is ‘don’t drink it, and after you use it wash your hands before using the bathroom’.