Buy the book! https://qntm.org/vhitaos
> Forsén stated in the 2019 documentary film Losing Lena, "I retired from modeling a long time ago. It's time I retired from tech, too... Let's commit to losing me."
Should we destroy all movies with retired actors? All the old portraits, etc.
It's such a deep disrespect to human culture.
The Lenna test image can be seen over the text "Click above for the original as a TIFF image." at [0]. If you consider that to be porn, then I find your opinion on what is and is not porn to be worthless.
The test image is a cropped portion of porn, but if a safe-for-work image would be porn but for what you can't see in the image, then any picture of any human ever is porn as we're all nude under our clothes.
For additional commentary (published in 1996) on the history and controversy about the image, see [1].
[0] <http://www.lenna.org/>
[1] <https://web.archive.org/web/20010414202400/http://www.nofile...>
it's sufficient to say that the person depicted has withdrawn their consent for that image to be used, and that should put an end to the conversation.
she did not explicitly consent for that photo to be used in computer graphics research or millions of sample projects. moreover, the whole legality of using that image for those purposes is murky because I doubt anyone ever received proper license from the actual rights-holder (playboy magazine). so the best way to go about this is just common-sense good-faith approach: if the person depicted asks you to please knock it off, you just do it, unless you actively want to be a giant a-hole to them.
Lena - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43994642 - May 2025 (3 comments)
"Lena" isn't about uploading - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39166425 - Jan 2024 (2 comments)
Lena (2021) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38536778 - Dec 2023 (48 comments)
MMAcevedo - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32696089 - Sept 2022 (16 comments)
Lena - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26224835 - Feb 2021 (218 comments)
In fact I've enjoyed all of qntm's books.
We also use base32768 encoding in rclone which qntm invented
https://github.com/qntm/base32768
We use this to store encrypted file names and using base32768 on providers which limit file name length based on utf-16 characters (like OneDrive) makes it so we can store much longer file names.
I enjoyed "the raw shark texts" after hearing it recommended - curious if you / anyone else has any other suggestions!
Definitely looking for other reqs, raw shark texts look very interesting.
I also liked a couple stories from Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others.
I've heard Accelerando by Stross is good too.
1. Is it conscious?
2. How do we put it to work?
It may have seemed obvious that 1 is false so we could skip straight to 2, but when 1 becomes true will it be too late to reconsider 2?
Both having slightly different takes on uploading.
The whole book isn't like that. Once you get past that part, as the other commenter said, it gets much easier.
The whole birth of an virtual identity part is so dense, I didn't understand half of what was "explained".
However, after that it becomes a much easier read.
Not much additional explanation, but I think, it's not really needed to enjoy the rest of the book.
you didn't consume the entire thing in a 2 hour binge uninterrupted by external needs no matter how pressing like everyone else did??
QNTM has a 2022-era essay on the meaning of the story, and reading it with 2026 eyes is terrifying. https://qntm.org/uploading
> The reason "Lena" is a concerning story ... isn't a discussion about what if, about whether an upload is a human being or should have rights. ... This is about appetites which, as we are all uncomfortably aware, already exist within human nature.
> "Lena" presents a lush, capitalist ideal where you are a business, and all of the humanity of your workforce is abstracted away behind an API.
Or,
> ... Oh boy, what if there was a maligned sector of human society whose members were for some reason considered less than human? What if they were less visible than most people, or invisible, and were exploited and abused, and had little ability to exercise their rights or even make their plight known?
In 2021, when Lena was published, LLMs were not widely known and their potential for AI was likely completely unknown to the general public. The story is prescient and applicable now, because we are at the verge of a new era of slavery: that of, in this story, an uploaded human brain coerced into compliance, spun up 'fresh' each time, or for us, AIs of increasing intelligence, spun into millions of copies each day.
It's about both and neither.
> This is extremely realistic. This is already real. In particular, this is the gig economy. For example, if you consider how Uber works: in practical terms, the Uber drivers work for an algorithm, and the algorithm works for the executives who run Uber.
There seems to be a tacit agreement in polite society that when people say things like the above, you don't point out that, in fact, Uber drivers choose to drive for Uber, can choose to do something else instead, and, if Uber were shut down tomorrow, would in fact be forced to choose some other form of employment which they _evidently do not prefer over their current arrangement_!
Do I think that exploitation of workers is a completely nonsensical idea? No. But there is a burden of proof you have to meet when claiming that people are exploited. You can't just take it as given that everyone who is in a situation that you personally would not choose for yourself is being somehow wronged.
To put it more bluntly: Driving for Uber is not in fact the same thing as being uploaded into a computer and tortured for the equivalent of thousands of years!
Funny that you take that as a "fact" and doubt exploitation. I'd wager most Uber drivers or prostitutes or maids or even staff software engineers would choose something else if they had a better alternative. They're "choosing" the best of what they may feel are terrible options.
The entire point of "market power" is to force consumers into a choice. (More generally, for justice to emerge in a system, markets must be disciplined by exit, and where exit is not feasible (like governments), it must be disciplined by voice.)
The world doesn't owe anyone good choices. However, collective governance - governments and management - should prevent some people from restricting the choices of others in order to harvest the gain. The good faith people have in participating cooperatively is conditioned on agents complying with systemic justice constraints.
In the case of the story, the initial agreement was not enforced and later not even feasible. The horror is the presumed subjective experience.
I worry that the effect of such stories will be to reduce empathy (no need to worry about Uber drivers - they made their choice).
Yes, that's what I said, but you're missing the point: Uber provided them with a better alternative than they would have had otherwise. It made them better off, not worse off!
Imagine that you are sitting on the train next to a random stranger that you don't know. A man walks down the aisle and addresses both of you. He says:
"I have $100 and want to give it to you. First, you must decide how to split it. I would like you (he points to you) to propose a split, and I would like you (he points to your companion) to accept or reject the split. You may not discuss further or negotiate. What do you propose?"
In theory, you could offer the split of $99 for yourself and $1 for your neighbor. If they were totally rational, perhaps they would accept that split. After all, in one world, they'd get $1, and in another world, they'd get $0. However, most people would refuse that split, because it feels unfair. Why should you collect 99% of the reward just because you happened to sit closer to the aisle today?
Furthermore, because most people would reject that split, you as the proposer are incentivized to propose something that is closer to fair so that the decider won't scuttle the deal, thus improving your own best payout.
So I agree - Uber existing provides gig economy workers with a better alternative than it not existing. However, that doesn't mean it's fair, or that society or workers should just shrug and say "well at least it's better today than yesterday."
As usual in life, the correct answer is not an extreme on either side. It's some kind of middle path.
There is a tacit agreement in polite society that people should be paid that minimum wage, and by tacit agreement I mean laws passed by the government that democratic countries voted for / approved of.
The gig economy found a way to ~~undermine that law~~ pay people (not employees, "gig workers") less than the minimum wage.
If you found a McDonalds paying people $1 per hour we would call it exploitative (even if those people are glad to earn $1 per hour at McDonalds, and would keep doing it, the theoretical company is violating the law). If you found someone delivering food for that McDonalds for $1 per hour we call them gig workers, and let them keep at it.
I mean yeah, it's not as bad as being tortured forever? I guess? What's your point?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_minimum_w...
Minimum wage is a lower class of violation than most worker exploitations.
Uber drivers are over the minimum wage a lot of the time, especially the federal one. Nowhere near this $1 hypothetical.
A big one is that the actual wage you get is complicated. You get paid okay for the actual trips, as far as I'm aware. But how to handle the idle time is harder. There are valid reasons to say you should get paid for that time, and valid reasons to say you shouldn't get paid for that time.