Paraphrasing, but: “testing can only show presence of bugs, not their absence”

It’s kind of indirectly related, but adding a query parameter udm=14 to the url of your Google searches removes the AI summary at the top, and there are plugins for Firefox that do this for you. My hopes for this WM project are that similar plugins will be possible for Wikipedia.

The annoying thing about these summaries is that even for someone who cares about the truth, and gathering actual information, rather than the fancy autocomplete word salad that LLMs generate, it is easy to “fall for it” and end up reading the LLM summary. Usually I catch myself, but I often end up wasting some time reading the summary. Recently the non-information was so egregiously wrong (it called a certain city in Israel non-apartheid), that I ended up installing the udm 14 plugin.

In general, I think the only use cases for fancy autocomplete are where you have a way to verify the answer. For example, if you need to write an email and can’t quite find the words, if an LLM generates something, you will be able to tell whether it conveys what you’re trying to say by reading it. Or in case of writing code, if you’ve written a bunch of tests beforehand expressing what the code needs to do, you can run those on the code the LLM generates and see if it works (if there’s a Dijkstra quote that comes to your mind reading this: high five, I’m thinking the same thing).

I think it can be argued that Wikipedia articles satisfy this criterion. All you need to do to verify the summary is read the article. Will people do this? I can only speak for myself, and I know that, despite my best intentions, sometimes I won’t. If that’s anything to go by, I think these summaries will make the world a worse place.

The best boys

I love how, for everyone, media literacy seemingly goes straight out the window the moment North Korea is mentioned. I remember a few years back every mainstream media outlet reporting that sarcasm was banned in NK, and that everyone had to get the same haircut as Kim Jong Un. Journalism at its finest.

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Of course I haven’t, that’s what I’m referring to when I say further crackdowns. But cracking down is not a binary, and I think the cracking down worsening on account of these murders is a legitimate worry to have.

I’m very conflicted on this. On the one hand, it is a good thing when genocide collaborators die, that’s two less to worry about, but on the other, this could serve as a catalyst for further Zionist crackdowns on free speech.

The definition of genocide according to the UN genocide convention consists of two parts. The first part is action which is subdivided into five subcategories:

• Killing members of the group;
• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
• Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
• Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
• Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Ticking one of these boxes is enough to qualify for the action part. Certainly, Israel ticks the first box, probably the second, and if Yoav Gallant’s words are anything to go by, also the third:

“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed, we are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly"

This quote is actually a nice segue into the second part of the definition of genocide, which is intent. Performing the actions outlined above only counts as genocide if it is done with the intention of destroying (in whole or in part) an ethnic, a religious, or national group. This is usually a bit harder to show. Not in this case though!

"“It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware not involved. It’s absolutely not true. … and we will fight until we break their backbone.”

““there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza”

“The people should be told that they have two choices; to stay and to starve, or to leave”

These are all quotes from high placed Israeli officials (one of them is even president), all said in the context of justifying and directing the current attacks on Gaza. There’s many, many more, each more overt and disgusting than the last, outlined in South Africa’s 80 page document accusing Israel of genocide.

Back in december 2023 it was already indisputable that Israel is committing genocide. Even more so now. One more for good measure:

“Erase the memory of them. Erase them, their families, mothers and children.”