well that’s sort of the point of this comic because the one thing you’d really want it to be good enough to do and would love to be able to trust something to do for you is the tax and all the other tasks in the comics are things you were pretty well able to do yourself before, probably wanted to do before, and if not exactly wanted, at least didn’t want something else to displace you in by taking over doing that task from now onwards especially if it was your actual job before. If displacing human workers for those tasks was the only problem, it’d be a sad but familiar story of progress but the fact that AI, at least for now is incapable of doing the part we’d all really love to have done for us is just the diarrhea icing on the dog turd cake.

I’m going to put this in an update as well but, the insurer said it was fine, the only effect they could foresee it having was if they could somehow trace back something I claim for to events happening in the first country visited, for example, if you have a medical problem in the 1st country, obviously they won’t cover it, but if you have to pay for follow up medical services in country 2 for the same problem that started in country 1, they also won’t cover that either. Otherwise though, not a problem where you departed from as long as you bought the insurance before leaving your home country.

The thing is now, manipulative tactics are used to persuade people to choose one option over another either for representatives, or in some cases like Brexit, directly for specific policies. In that scenario one might argue that those that successfully made the case for one side of the referendum did so by knowingly presenting the outcome of choosing one policy differently from what they knew to be the reality hence “manipulating” people.

However, with this proposed idea of being able to delegate your vote to other people or organisations, I’m concerned people will be manipulated into giving up their ability to vote on something one way or the other they don’t even need to be convinced of the merits of something, just convinced to give it up. Seems like a small difference but I can imagine people being unknowingly disenfranchised thinking they’re giving up something else, or possibly having to give up their vote even though they do want to use it because if they’re offered some tangible immediate benefit in exchange, they might not be in a position to decline such an offer.

In these cases the distortion of the democratic ideal is worse than in the Brexit scenario for example, because at least in that situation one could say (however disingenuously) that that vote more or less reflected how convincing the case was for the leave campaign and argue that anyone saying that leave voters were manipulated is just being patronizing to such voters by denying their agency in the decision. Of course that’s a simplistic way to portray it, but there’s an element of truth there. At the very least that referendum does tell you what most people decided to vote for even if the details of how the cases were presented might be dishonest. Delegated votes would more accurately be described as a reflection of who successfully obtained votes through whatever means, not who prosecuted a case the most convincingly.

I’ve heard of that idea but frankly I’d be frightened by how many people would be parted from their votes by manipulative tactics or people finding ways to buy such votes (even if explicitly disallowed, they’d find an indirect way). That second point in particular would be a big concern because the people who have little else to sell but their own vote would be the ones most likely to sell it and organizations buying such votes would likely be those with a vested interest in keeping the poor, poor which would now be even easier.

Thank you. I guess such a chat would be in order. That’s a shame. So far the full contract is only taking pains to point out that the insurance has to be purchased before we leave our home country but I’m definitely concerned that there is also a hidden requirement to begin the journey by departing the home country.

You don’t seem to understand, I’m not logged in here with you, you’re logged in here with me!

I actually rather liked it.

Reminds me of the PS2 with it’s blue triangular stand.

What do they say again about little hands?

I was really expecting that to say removed instead of “retard”. I find it hard to get behind that censorship even if well intentioned. It’s extremely annoying especially when you can’t guess what was removed and it renders a sentence incomprehensible.

I “visit” it frequently in so far as I’ve allowed myself to click on reddit posts that I’ve found organically while googling something. Much as I don’t want to contribute to it anymore, they do have something valuable in the vast discourse on their servers and I know the chances of something useful and relevant being amongst that discourse is very high compared to other web results and I’m not going to just ignore that while I’m lookin for answers or information. At the very least I do not post or comment there anymore and do not visit for the sake of a visit as I used to. Hopefully Lemmy will grow enough to be as useful and to actually show up in web searches. I would ask for.information or answers here to help with that effort but there’s rarely an appropriate place to do that in the lemmy portion of the fediverse as yet.

OOTL

This can NOT happen, the risk is too big and people could get hurt. Your Mom has allowed this to escalate too far, too fast and can’t see the danger she is inviting.

Your Mom isn’t ‘mad’ but she is definitely being reckless and while trying to help someone else that she thinks needs her, she is forgetting about her family that need her. She doesn’t know everything she needs to know to be sure this is a safe idea and she doesn’t have the resources or ability to find out. Just getting to know someone over the internet is NOT enough and it IS possible to be deceived even when you think you know the person well. That’s how online scammers work, they have to be convincing or people would not give them anything.

Even if they are telling the truth, the amount of help they’re going to need and the long term commitment could be a disaster for you all. This person will be completely dependent on your family while in your country and they may have all kinds of complicated needs having come from a difficult home in a very different country, and with potential immigration questions. Offering to help someone with those kinds of needs is not a good thing to do if you are not truly in a position to offer that much help. Already your Mom can’t even offer them a place to stay without making promises on someone else’s behalf (yours), can she really offer what will likely be years and years of emotional, legal and financial support to a stranger without compromising her responsibilities to her family? When you speak to your mother about this, you need to remind her that YOU are her first responsibility and you are the one being put at risk most of all. You mentioned siblings, I’d be worried about them too. Are they minors? This is just such a bad idea.

You should speak to your father and find out if he is really okay with this like your Mom says? It sounds possible that like you, he didn’t think it would do any harm for your mother to comfort this person online and now it’s getting out of control and he doesn’t want to upset her or doesn’t know what she’s promised them. If he really doesn’t have any objections, then maybe there’s other family members you can talk to? Most people outside this situation will think your Mom is making a bad decision and maybe you have an Aunt or Uncle that can talk to her. YOU are her first responsibility, because you are her child and family, this person online is not. It would be nice if it was possible for her to take care of the whole world, but it isn’t, and if she tries to do that she might find herself unable to care for you and your family either because she gets scammed and loses your family’s money, or because the person invited in to your home turns out to be more dangerous than expected or just requires more care than any of you can offer. It’s not that they don’t deserve care or help, it’s that it’s not help your family can reasonably and safely provide.

I hoped I would have good advice on how your mother could still help this person without the risk of being scammed or without going way too far like inviting them to live in your home but unfortunately I don’t know any way that can be done. Though tragic, there is sadly a line where your personal responsibility for others ends. When caring for strangers involves risks to your own children that line has been crossed. Help offered to people in bad home situations, or in dangerous countries or in this case both, is complicated and difficult and full of risks even for professional organisations that try their best to do this, to take on this responsibility personally is very reckless and dangerous for your Mom, for you, for the rest of her family and even for her internet friend. Once he stays with you guys, what then? Can he work in your country? Can he legally immigrate there? What’s his family going to do if they find out about you guys? How long can you support him? If he stays for some time and it doesn’t work for any reason, where could they go? They’d be be alone in a foreign country with no where to stay? This isn’t a real plan, it’s a big, kind, but thoughtless gesture that needs to be reconsidered.

Yeh I think we are owed this story as the price for our debatably useful replies

Very Dragonball Z looking

My cat likes to sit on the desk in the little space between my pen tablet and the brick size external hard drive I use, and nod off to sleep while I work.

Yesterday she did this peacefully for hours until out of nowhere, I assume because of a bad dream maybe, she woke up suddenly by jumping in to the air knocking over the expensive hard drive I was working off of and then also, upon seeming to realize she wasn’t comfortably laying on the desk anymore but instead in the midst of a rapid descent towards it from a height, proceeded to kick every limb in a panic and also me in the process. Good times.

GenZ is sitting quietly reading a printed newspaper and only speaks in a universally recognizable lexicon with no cohort specific affectations?

This along with much else that’s pointed out make the whole devices capturing audio to process keywords for ads all seem unlikely, but, one thing worth pointing out is that people do sell bad products that barely or even just plain old don’t do what they told their customers it would do. Someone could sell a listening to keywords to target ads solution to interested advertisers that just really sucks and is super shit at its job. From the device user’s standpoint it’d be a small comfort to know the device was listening to your conversations but also really sucked at it and often thought you were saying something totally different to what you said but I’d still be greatly dismayed that they were attempting, albeit poorly, to listen to my conversations.

I don’t know why, given recent impressive developments, but I’ve always met thie idea that this is really happening with heavy skepticism and I still do. This is definitely the most concrete thing I’ve ever heard and I definitely don’t doubt companies would do this, I just… I don’t know, it’s hard to believe they really are.

One reason is it just seems like they’d be absolutely overwhelmed by useless data, it’s not like AI is cheap to run, and it’d be so hard to link a conversation that’s captured to a genuine sentiment and then to an ad connecting to that person and then a purchasing decision to that ad. This is scary for sure but it feels like this is more marketing hype to marketeers than a real thing.

Will be watching closely. I feel like this might actually be that bridge too far that the mainstream of society will demand action be taken against if it gets widely adopted and widely known. Even if it technically works and is provably effective to advertisers I think you’d need Google or Amazon to be the ones pulling it off and to have done so silently so we all just kinda assume they’re doing it but don’t know. If a company “starts” offering this service in a way the public can latch on to it would likely cause a massive backlash that would hopefully scupper such plans.

That sounds like it’s probably it. Don’t have that brand here so I’d never have picked that.