I'm not sure you understand what "average" means.

lol you just reinvented https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule … but even nastier!

> I'd argue not - whether it's an image of a damaged bridge, a phone call from a concerned person about an obstruction on the line, or just heavy rains or an earthquake .. the line should be inspected.

Ideally? Sure.

But when someone can generate plausible disaster photos of every inch of every line of a country's rail network in mere minutes? And as soon as your inspection finishes, they do it again?

Yeah; it’s completely a matter of frequencies and probabilities. Also, technology keeps improving.

If I were working for the train line, and bridges kept “blowing up” like this, I’d probably install a bunch of cameras and try to arrange the shots to be aesthetically pleasing, then open the network to the public.

The runbook would involve checking continuity sensors in the rail, and issuing random pan/tilt commands to the camera.

plausibly correlated with what?

This correlated with an earthquake - this is the event that should have triggered an inspection regardless.

> But when someone can generate plausible disaster photos of every inch of every line of a country's rail network in mere minutes?

In the UK (and elsewhere) a large percentage of track is covered by cameras - inspection of over the top claims can be rapidly dismissed.

> And as soon as your inspection finishes, they do it again?

Sounds like a case for cyber crimes and public nuisance.

It's also no different to endless prank calls via phone, not a new thing.

> It's also no different to endless prank calls via phone, not a new thing.

Of course it's different. If I do 5 prank calls, that takes, say, 15 minutes.

In 15 minutes how many hoaxes can I generate with AI? Hundreds, maybe thousands?

This is like saying nukes are basically swords because they both kill people. We've always been able to kill people, who cares about nuclear weapons?

> This correlated with an earthquake…

Plenty of disasters don't. "No earthquake, no incident" obviously can't be the logic tree.

> In the UK (and elsewhere) a large percentage of track is covered by cameras - inspection of over the top claims can be rapidly dismissed.

"Yes. That doesn't do much to detect a stone from a parapet rolling onto the line though. Hence the need for inspection."

Sounds like you now agree it's less a need?

> Sounds like a case for cyber crimes and public nuisance.

"Sorry, not much we can do." As is the case when elderly folks get their accounts drained over the phone today.

> Sounds like AI was utterly useless to everyone involved.

Not the hoaxer!

Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall;_or,_Dodge_in_Hell with the Moab plot point.

I really liked the first half to 3/4ths of the that book. The last part was less interesting to me but the Moab plot line and all the parts around anonymity/online presence I enjoyed.

“It brings up some interesting points for this article...”

Why are you acting like a LLM that had its own earlier statements run off the end of the context window and can’t remember you yourself said them?

Sounds a lot like the old guarantee paid SSL certificate providers used to offer; pretty words, but meaningless in practice. (IIRC, no one ever got a payout from any of them.)

"We assume scraping and parsing liabilities for both domestic and foreign companies unless your usage is otherwise illegal" seems like a big loophole in it.

This also means you may have to pay for it out of pocket, rather than having it covered by insurance.

> The chatbots swayed opinions by citing facts and evidence, but they were not always accurate—in fact, the researchers found, the most persuasive models said the most untrue things.

Yikes.