The Technoskeptic Magazine

A Reference Why catalogue academic papers dissecting the flaws of Large Language Models (LLMs) aptly captured by the term “AI Slop?” Past this undeniably scintillating intro- it is not going to be a great read, nor is it intended to be. Yet, reference works remain popular for good reason. They will probably become more so, given the relentless “enshitfication” of the internet, a descent turbocharged by “AI-slop” summaries. Now more than ever, we need accessible research sources to debunk bullshit.

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Humans have domesticated organisms from every living kingdom for our purposes. Yeasts are used for fermentation, viruses for gene therapies, bacteria to produce antibiotics, plants and animals for all manner of food and fabric. We have even put human cells to work as bioreactors. But in none of these examples have we sought to exploit the cognitive capabilities of the biological entity until now. Organoid Intelligence (OI) is a flourishing field of investigation.

Today we speak with Dr. Roman Yampolskiy. Dr Yampolskiy is a tenured Professor in the Department of Computer Engineering and Computer Science at the Speed School of Engineering at the University of Louisville, where he is the founder and current director of the Cyber Security Lab. Dr. Yampolski is an expert in AI safety and the author of many books including, “AI: Unexplainable, Unpredictable, Uncontrollable.” We cover a lot of ground.

(EDITORS’ NOTE: A couple of months ago we introduced you to standup comedian Nathan Macintosh, whose hilarious and perfectly named “Down with Tech” warmed our technoskeptical hearts. If you haven’t seen it, what are you waiting for?

(Editor’s Note: The Technoskeptic has no paid relationship with Cloudflare. We don’t pay for their services, and they don’t pay us-or give us free commercial services-for any endorsements. We simply appreciate their “free for ordinary consumer” tools.) It is a new fact of life that large AI companies have bots constantly scraping the internet for training data to feed into the maws of their AI models.

As we covered in "Is AI an Opportunity for Writers?" the threat to social stability from AI-generated propaganda/deepfakes is huge. A group of thoughtful critics recently started a deepfakes petition to be sent to lawmakers. It seeks requirements for AI companies to build-in protections against deepfakes. This is not about restricting free speech-deepfakes are NON-CONSENSUAL videos/audio. Deepfakes can easily be used for fraud and intellectual property theft.

By Rebel Wisdom - Sex and Evolutionary Psychology, Geoffrey Miller CC BY 3.0 This is the second part of our two-part discussion with evolutionary psychologist Professor Geoffrey Miller. If you missed it, here is the first part. Geoffrey Miller: The knock-on effects of non-just mass unemployment, but mass loss of self-esteem, mass loss of meaning, mass loss of sexual and social attraction in relationships, it would be the most socially disruptive thing that maybe the world has faced, ever.

This is why The Technoskeptic Magazine exists. Our magazine’s founder, Mo Lotman, wrote several years ago (full text on our “About” page), “At The Technoskeptic, we don’t hate technology. If that were true, we’d be walking to your house barefoot to deliver this magazine as an epic poem. But we approach it with caution. We may not individually agree on which technologies are and aren’t worthwhile.

By Rebel Wisdom - Sex and Evolutionary Psychology, Geoffrey Miller & Diana Fleischman, CC BY 3.0 (Editor’s note: this interview was originally intended for release as a podcast, but due to audio quality issues, a full transcription will first be released as a two-part lightly edited discussion.) The Technoskeptic was fortunate to get to speak with Geoffrey Miller, a professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.