Cullen Thomas

36 Followers
149 Following
535 Posts

Nonbinary Iowan, journalist, teacher, writer, tech nerd. I like privacy, cows, and ttrpgs.

🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🏳️‍🌈



My security newsletter and live content are published by iPhone Life but all my posts and boosts here are my own and don't represent my employer.

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~giving small numbers of desperate scammers access to large numbers of people was a bad idea.
~giving small numbers of desperate scammers translation tools and international reach was a bad idea.
~giving small numbers of desperate scammers access to a common unregulated currency was a bad idea.
~flooding the public square with stochastically generated "information" that nobody can trust was a bad idea.
~driving all the small presses out of business so the only news is published by megacorps and influencers was a bad idea.

This was supposed to be an information super highway. Now it's a bullshit river.

When you have laws with which it is impossible to comply, you end up with selective enforcement that only punishes the opponents of people in power. Just sayin'.

https://www.kuer.org/politics-government/2026-05-07/utahs-online-porn-age-verification-law-now-includes-vpns-critics-say-it-wont-work

Utah’s online porn age verification law now includes VPNs. Critics say it won’t work

The new law, which took effect May 6, says adult content websites must verify the age of any users physically located in Utah, regardless of whether they’re using a VPN that says they’re in another state.

KUER

So, something that's been bugging the shit out of me?

These fucking assholes who let LLMs run rampant and delete prod?

They query the LLM for "why" it did that.

This is delusional behavior.

LLMs do not have a concept of 'why': they assemble a response based on a statistical sampling of likely continuations of the original prompt in their database.

LLMs do not have the ability to have motivation. It is a machine.

LLMs, further, function by instantiating a new runtime -for each query- that reads the prompt and any cache, if they exist, from prior sessions:

which means, fundamentally, "asking" the LLM to explain "why" "it" did a thing is thrice-divorced from reality:

It cannot have a why;
It cannot have a self to have motivations;
And the LLM you ask is not the one that did it, but is a new instance reading from its predecessors notes.

Treating it as tho it is an entity with continuity of existence is fucking delusional and I am fucking sick of pandering to this horseshit.

Touch some grass and get a fucking therapist.

This brings me to Apple Intelligence. In it's current implementation #Apple designed writing tools to work by selecting your text, then activating the AI, which _replaces your text_ with whatever the AI has generated.

This fundamentally assumes that the AI will be writing on your behalf, replacing your language with its own language. It positions the AI not as a helper, making suggestions, but as a ghostwriter supplanting your voice. That cannot be ethical. Whatever else happens with energy costs, sources of training material, etc, that specific workflow will never be ethical. #AI

Whatever else you think #AI is good for, the words it generates must not pass from its app window into the window where you're composing language you intend to represent as your own without quotes and attribution. Ever.
Plagiarism is bad. Not as an abstract ethical thing, but because it is caustic to the base fabric of trust that society needs to function. It's just as caustic in your emails to your mother as it is in the academic or scientific world, it's just that those worlds need more trust in order to function. Your mom is still going to be bummed if you plagiarize your letters to her. #AI
I'm just saying that as a baseline, even the most optimistic #AI policy must still stipulate that you can't have AI write on your behalf and claim that you wrote it. You didn't. That's plagiarism.

SCOTUS: *strikes down ban on conversion therapy on Trans Day of Visibility*

Me: Whatever, fuck you, too.

I have not heard activists use the term “ethnic clensing” to describe the Trump regime’s mass detention and deportation agenda. I’m curious if there is a logic behind avoiding that term?

#nokings #iceOut