Wandering Adventure Party

@ShaulaEvans There are some butterflies that give off pheromones that mimic Queen ant larvae and the ants will find them and keep them in their nests…
Some “pantry bugs” (a beetle larvae) can survive on arsenic and eat through lead.
We have a millipede in the northern states (us) that gives off cyanide gas when disturbed… I remember picking one up (with gloves and keeping it away from my face) but even at arms length my eyes were stinging!

@ShaulaEvans it’s not “exactly” a bug… but the wonderful bizarre world of the “sea sheep” is something VERY fascinating! They “repurpose” chloroplasts from their food to make food in their tentacles (and it’s a bizarre system too) they also “self decapitate” their heads from their bodies if they need to preserve themselves from disease etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costasiella_kuroshimae
https://www.livescience.com/decapitated-sea-slugs-regrow-entire-body.html

@mathew @larsmb @jzb
My husband is using notebook llm (yes it’s google uhgggg ) and he “says” that he can set it to “local” and only data he puts into it. I don’t really know how it works because I haven’t used it and I don’t plan to. So I can’t say for certain if this is actually true or not.

@jzb @larsmb
This too! Granted, if you’ve got to the phd level through education before llms you are probably okay with using it to “finish up” but I really worry about younger generations (even myself) when it comes to all of this

@larsmb @jzb this is what I keep stressing to my husband about! Validate the heck out of it if you are.. and then, is it *actually* saving you time in the end?

@larsmb @jzb
I just worry that the younger generation will not understand how & when to use it & when to use their brains 🫩 . In the science realm, Ai can be useful for a lot of data heavy and number crunching stuff, but there must be a limit so that students can understand what & why these things happen. (And regulations so hallucinations are limited)
The humanities are a no-go zone imo, the use of a closed system citation mechanism is probably the only exception for this.

@larsmb @jzb
I think if it’s a “closed system” where you feed it information and tell it to only use the information it has and say when it “comes up empty” it should be okay. And to speed up the process of citations that does seem useful. (He would also double check on the accuracy of it , like say if it says something is on page 34 it should be there otherwise it’s not valid)

@larsmb @jzb
I keep having this conversation with my husband. He is of the opinion that a”useful tool” should be used at its capability, not pushing it too far. For example, he is writing a thesis, he has all the information together and now he wants to use Ai to take his sources and find where in his document he has derived the information from. He likes to use the example of “a personal libraian”

@ridetheory This actually does make sense I will remember this and use this wisdom whenever /where-ever I go work with people!