quietthrow

It’s an incredible time we live in. We can ask any question we want the previously we may have been embarrassed to ask and get an answer and learn and improve ourselves daily. Just one thing I can’t wrap my mind around is privacy. We all seem to be asking sometimes stupid and some times incredibly personal questions to these llms. Questions that we may not even speak out loud from embarrassment or shame or other such emotions to even our closest people. How are these companies using our data ? More importantly what are you all doing to protect yourself from misuse of your information? Or is it if you want to use it you have to give up such privacy and uncomfortableness ? What are some solutions available today that people are using there are somewhat privacy, preserving or fully privacy preserving?

A dear friend confided recently that they are being forced out of a team. The options given were change teams or go on PIP. The reasons cited were hand wavy. They went through a manager change recently and prior manager gave positive feedback (solid performance and happy with current state) and suddenly next quarter with new manager feedback was performance is suboptimal however no specific causes given (its all hand wavy and subjective which means it’s open to interpretation and it’s the managers interpretation against the subordinates)

This person is junior and I can see it’s taking a toll on them psychologically. I have never been a manager so I don’t know the dynamics of a large organization (fang) but am curious how many of you have experienced something similar or were forced to performance manage a employee when they really didn’t have bad performance but you had to do it anyways due to organizational pressures/circumstances?

I am an IC in tech given the current climate want to protect myself from something like this happening. What’s the best way to do so?

I am trying to understand how strong or restrictive are the OS’s with regards to what the apps can do.

The question stems from the fact how important the phones are wrt to personal data. If there are two apps App 1 and App 2. What all can app1 access from app2 on Android vs iOS? What data can all apps access?

At its core I am trying to understand by installing different apps on my phone what all am I really saying yes to sharing with that app. Is it limited to common things like contacts and generic files folder or is it also that plus the data stored in other apps (say journal apps, text notes etc)

If there are articles / short books that explain this please let me know of it.

Genuine question. I understand there may a small marginal cost to host a ebook site for downloads, but other than that what are the drivers that disincentivize this practice?

Genuinely curious and please point me to resources if this documented somewhere.

I come from a “everything on a computer is a file” perspective and am curious what a model persisted on disk looks like? Is it essentially a long list of key value pairs where the key is the node “ID” and value is its “current”weight (may be from its last training?)

Is there more to it?

Reuters broke that the precursor to all the recent drama at open AI started with researchers at open AI writing to the board about a recent breakthrough they made and the threat it poses humanity. (It could be possible that Sam was aware of this and didn’t care but that’s a tangent)

Given where AI stands today what kind of breakthroughs are possible. What are the big gaps to AGI that exist today?

would be great to know of the gaps to follow progress and closeness to achieving AGI

Recently heard that Meta and Microsoft are both disbanding their teams which focus on AI safety.

Can’t help but connect dots of recent events at open AI where the board fired Altman for what seems like lack of alignment between profit motives and non profit (safety first) goals. It appears there is a tension between folks who want to progress AI fast (for profit by capturing more market share) vs folks who want to slow down the rate of progress for safety reasons (let the world be ready regulation and ethicswise for something so powerful )

Ironically seems like the real threat at this time to humans is not AI but Humans’ Greed and or Power.

The core of the question is there such a thing as progress that is too fast for one’s own good? Are there examples in history where this (fast progress) has back fired? Would like to see some comparisons from folks we versed in history

I have often wondered this but don’t have a logical answer that satisfies so asking here to get the hive minds perspective:

Why are salaries /compensation something that is not openly talked about in a capitalistic society like USA especially when people know thst having this information open is beneficial to the them (employees) (which make up the vast majority of people in the society)

Is salary secrecy only a white collar thing or pervasive everywhere.

why would the masses do something that they know is not good for them? Curious about the psychology at play here.

Would love to understand what’s going on and how might one change the minds of masses for the better.

The Israel - Gaza conflict coverage in New York Times and other such caliber journalism sources is heartbreaking beyond imagination.

I can’t help but notice the coverage articles does not allow comments. I am curious from a journalist’s perspective how such decisions are made? On the receiving end feels that they disable this because the news outlet may be afraid to unearth 1) how people really feel about this and/or 2) something that is not in alignment with their point of view or agenda.

How do news outlets make such calls. What are the factors considered. Who is responsible for making such calls.

It would be great if people can shed light on the why behind the actions.