[09:14] schestowitz[TR2][09:14] schestowitz[TR2]Doubts emerged late last year after Helen battled with many of the generative platforms to get less racist and gendered cultural assumptions. We even had some ideas for an episode about baked bias, but other podcasters picked up on that and did a fine job of investigating and explicating.
[09:14] schestowitz[TR2]Though, maybe more is still to be said. With time I've noticed the "guardrails" are staring to close in like a pack of dogs. The tools seem ever less willing to output edgy ideas critical of corporate gangsters. That feels like a direct impingement on visual art culture. Much like most of the now enshitified internet there seems to be an built-in aversion to humour, and for that matter to [09:14] schestowitz[TR2] hope, love or faith in the future of humaity. The "five giant websites filled with screenshots of text from the other four" are devoid of anything human.
[09:14] schestowitz[TR2]Like the companies that make them, commercial AI tools seem to have blind-spots around irony, juxtaposition and irreverence. They have no chutzpah. Perhaps we are just bumping into the limits of machine creativity in its current iteration. Or maybe there's a "directing mind", biasing output toward tepid, mediocre "acceptability". That's not us!
[09:14] schestowitz[TR2]
[09:27] schestowitz[TR2][09:27] schestowitz[TR2]A couple of weeks ago, I tested Plasma 6 for the first time. Long story short, the test was somewhat of a dud. While the desktop environment delivered, the underlying test platform, KDE neon, did not. I was not able to install the distro on an AMD-powered laptop, due to errors in the installation wizard itself, and consequently, I had to limit my review to just the impressions from [09:27] schestowitz[TR2] a virtual machine setup. C'est la Tux.
[09:27] schestowitz[TR2]Now, there's a new image of the KDE neon User Edition available, so perhaps I will be so lucky, lucky lucky, or something. All right, time to repeat the test. My IdeaPad 3 machine, AMD processor and integrated graphics. If this turns out fine, in the third review, we shall expand to a system with an Intel processor and a discrete Nvidia card. So hybrid graphics, Nvidia vs. Wayland [09:27] schestowitz[TR2] , ought to be interesting. Let's start, then.
[09:27] schestowitz[TR2]
[12:39] schestowitz[TR2][12:39] schestowitz[TR2]What is missing in Schneier and Sanders' account is the word abuse. Just as drugs can be abused despite offering great potential benefits, so can technology. Each of the social problems described in his list is really a simple abuse. Perhaps Tristan Harris is the among the few able to so boldly call out what is inhumane.
[12:39] schestowitz[TR2]Abuse occurs within power relationships. It need not be criminal, technically. Indeed most of what Schneier and Sanders describe is accepted, legitimised or at least normalised. That does not make it any less abusive.
[12:39] schestowitz[TR2]
Mr Thomas,
Sorry for this tardy response to your comment.
The principle of the primacy of claims in claim interpretation may be a red line for BOAs as you suggest. But this principle does not in any way negate the crucial and obvious role of the description and of the drawings, if any, to gain understanding of and convey meaning to the terms o [22:47] schestowitz[TR2] f the claims. Concretely, this is illustrated when there are drawings by the requirement to include in the claims reference numbers used in the drawings and the description.
There is a red line anyway, it is the well established principle that the interpretation of a claim for the assessment of patentability cannot read into the claim unclaimed features disclosed in the description. An argument based on an unclaimed feat [22:47] schestowitz[TR2] ure to distinguish over the prior art, if acknowledged as convincing by the deciding body, must also be considered ineffective unless the applicant or patent monopoly owner amends the claim to enter this feature.
As to the case of a claimed feature presented as optional in the description, I am not surprised by your position. But I do not see this inconsistency as an issue of serious concern. When a feature is ent [22:47] schestowitz[TR2] ered into a claim, it implies that it is made objectively essential and considered as such by the applicant or patent monopoly owner. This makes obsolete the presentation of the feature in the description as optional . And in my opinion, such a presentation casts no doubt either as to clarity (the meaning is not affected by the term optional in the description) or support (the feature is disclosed in the description whet [22:47] schestowitz[TR2] her presented as optional or not).
The term optional or equivalent terms are objectionable when they are included in a claim e.g. if the feature is preceded by such as preferably or for example .
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