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“Ari” here, welcoming you back to This Week Online.
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AI WEEK
Not Wikipedia: AI Is Tearing Wikipedia Apart
Can they please just chill: Scientists Use GPT AI to Passively Read People’s Thoughts in Breakthrough
What a relief: Scary ‘Emergent’ AI Abilities Are Just a ‘Mirage’ Produced by Researchers, Stanford Study Says
WHAT HAPPENED
28/04 – 04/05
- Youth Allowance punishes people for going to uni
- Australia to “stamp out” vaping
- How special is Special K???
- Guy instrumental in AI development resigns, changes tune, is now afraid
- Sex magic 101
- VICE SIDE HUSTLE: Selling Street Stuff
YOUTH ALLOWANCE PUNISHES PEOPLE FOR GOING TO UNI
Fucked up! Anyone that’s been on youth allowance knows it’s a wicked snare. It’s assumed you’re on mummy and daddy’s money until you’re 22 [contrast this with abusive boomers’ common opinion that once you’re 18 you’re on your own] and even once you have been deemed an independent adult you’re expected to live off $500 a fortnight.
This is for full time study, so if you need to cut back on classes in order to work and make ends meet, you can bet your meagre allowance will be sliced in half. As Aleks Bliszczyk writes, the system is broken, in more ways than one.
“Youth Allowance also assumes positive relationships between parents and children. The recipient must be in constant dialogue with their guardians until they turn 22 to obtain signatures for income statements, which leaves many young people vulnerable to violence.”
Rather than setting our young people up for a positive and meaningful life through study, our system sets people [those without intergenerational wealth to fall back on] up for a life of poverty. Indexed uni debts that grow as our economy worsens, meagre living allowances, housing crises…. There are also restrictions on the amount of money you can earn before your allowance is cut. They want you to earn just enough to keep subsisting through your studies, but in these economic times, it’s barely enough to live.
[ here ]
AUSTRALIA TO ‘STAMP OUT’ VAPING
Health Minister Mark Butler wants vapes to return to their intended purpose: helping smokers quit. They’re giving vapes the plain packaging treatment, and nixing all the fun flavours. This would be good, if it works.
Vapes are easy to get, and even easier to get addicted to. The last time the government tried to ban vaping, all they did was stop the import and sale of reusable, regulated vapes and vape juice from our neighbours in NZ, where vaping is still legal. What this did was evoke an insane “black market” [can we really call it that, when you can simply stroll into any tobacconist or milk bar to cop at any hour?] that has people unable to afford ciggies because of tax hikes paying an easy $20 for a disposable pod that gets them hopelessly addicted and is destined to be disposed of inappropriately, filling up landfill with toxic juice and batteries and wires. Exciting times ahead….
[ here ]
HOW SPECIAL IS SPECIAL K???
What’s the vibe???? What’s the score??? Can ketamine solve our mental health crisis??? What ya reckon?
It’s been touted as a wonder drug in the US. The hype has made it down here. Previously demonised psychedelics and other recreational substances are slowly making up the new vanguard of mental health treatment. But is it all just hype? We spoke to the host of the Science Vs podcast, on the eve of their new ep, How Special is Special K?, to find out.
[ here ]
GUY INSTRUMENTAL IN AI DEVELOPMENT RESIGNS, CHANGES TUNE, IS NOW AFRAID
AI deep learning pioneer Geoffrey Hinton has quit Google at age 75, deciding instead to spread awareness about the imminent dangers presented by the very AI he helped birth.
It feels a little on the nose, a little too familiar… the computer scientist who envisioned a world improved by artificial intelligence, only to realise, all too late, that society wasn’t at all ready to handle what had been set into motion.
Hinton’s fears are related to concerns that the AI is already capable of training models inside of itself to learn new material it hasn’t been programmed to learn. Hinton envisions the ease with which Large Language Models, [LLMs] would be able to teach themselves new information, and communicate it to others instantaneously, and the probable ease they’d find in making copies of themselves. And that’s not even considering the dangers of what might happen when adverse AI gets into the hands of bad actors. Putin, for instance, would probably love an AI army that can train itself for the express purpose of murdering Ukrainians.
Uh oh!
[ here ]
SEX MAGIC 101
Learn how to practise sex magic when you flick your bean, in offering to the gods, so that they give you whatever the fuck you want. It’s fun, promise.
[ here ]
VICE SIDE HUSTLE: SELLING STREET STUFF
Times are tough. But rich people don’t know that. They’re still throwing all kinds of stuff out. Stuff that is perfectly functional, and more than likely worth a fair bit of money.
Their shit is valuable. And they’re just leaving it on the street because they can’t be fucked or don’t need the money from selling it on Facebook Marketplace. But that’s where you come in.
If you can be fucked, and you need that money, you can actually make a nice income supplement off street shit. Here’s how it went.
[ here ]
+ …………..
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW IN AUSTRALIA TODAY
NEWS TIKTOKS FOR BIG BRAINS AND BIGGER AWARENESS OF TODAY’S UTMOST PRESSING ISSUES.
[ here ]
useful info maybe for u or maybe someone u know
[ watch ]
important cultural viewing for all of humanity
[ watch ]
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