[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 37 points 2 weeks ago

Musk says: “At times, I think Grok-3 is kind of scary smart.” Grok is just remixing its training data — but a stochastic parrot is still more reality-based than Elon Musk. [Bloomberg, archive]

If someone roasted me such such surgical precision like that, I'd delete my entire Internet presence out of shame. God damn.

[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 43 points 3 weeks ago

Baldur Bjarnason's given his thoughts on Bluesky:

My current theory is that the main difference between open source and closed source when it comes to the adoption of “AI” tools is that open source projects generally have to ship working code, whereas closed source only needs to ship code that runs.

I’ve heard so many examples of closed source projects that get shipped but don’t actually work for the business. And too many examples of broken closed source projects that are replacing legacy code that was both working just fine and genuinely secure. Pure novelty-seeking

21

Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this..)

35

A nice and solid mockery of just how badly e/accs derailed their own plans by getting Trump elected. I'll let the subtitle(?) speak for itself:

Effective accelerationists didn’t just accidentally shoot themselves in the foot. They methodically blew off each of their toes with a .50 caliber sniper rifle.

24

Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this. Also, happy April Fool's in advance.)

[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 34 points 2 months ago

I've already heard of this - mainly thanks to the nuclear backlash it (and basically anything related to AI) is getting. Pulling out a particular highlight, here's Ashley Lynch tearing the whole thing a new one:

Stuff like this is perfect because it shows how utterly devoid of creativity genAI evangelists are. Great, you recreated a photo that already exists in a drawing style that only has currency because of who you're stealing it from giving the world something with absolutely no value or meaning. I can't tell you how excited I am that we're literally burning the Earth up for this garbage.

Every genAI techbro needs to be sent to the Hague to stand trial for crimes against humanity with how they've traded our future for this absolute bullshit. Straight up capital punishment for every one of these fucking losers responsible for cursing us with this garbage. I have zero chill on this issue anymore. They represent the end of humanity.

13
26

Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

16

A solid piece on AI and ethics (and the general lack of them), featuring a nice sideswipe at our very good friends.

19

Fun fact: somebody managed to pull off deferred rendering on the Nintendo 64. And its let them show off impressively high-res textures at pretty solid framerates.

20

Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

14

XCancel: https://xcancel.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1900247885142434220

Context: https://xcancel.com/sama/status/1899535387435086115

If I had a nickel for every "metafictional" "short" "story" a promptbro shat into existence on Twitter, I'd have two nickels. That's not much, but its two nickels too fucking many.

8

It's been a good minute since I took a shot at predicting how the AI bubble (and its burst) is gonna play out. This is less a dedicated post and more a compilation of the bajillion thoughts I've had about this.

  1. Throwing the Humanities a Bone

Right off the bat, I suspect the arts/humanities will gain a degree of begrudging respect at the direct expense of tech's public image taking a nosedive. My primary reason for this is due to the slop-nami and its wide-spread impact on the Internet at large.

On one end, you have an utter tidal wave of AI-generated slop flooding basically every corner of daily life, giving us a nonstop torrent of misinformation (political or otherwise) and inhumanly shit "artwork" which clogs the Internet with garbage and drowns out human voices wherever it can, acting as an omnipresent annoyance at best and a direct threat to people's livelihoods at worst.

On the other end, you have the AI bros responsible for/complicit in this slop-nami, who uncritically praise whatever garbage gen-AI creates, relentlessly hype up its "creative" qualities and relentlessly doomsay about the incoming Artificial General Intelligence that will wipe out humanity/solve all of humanity's problems/God-Knows-Fucking-What.

Combined, these two aspects of the bubble paint a picture of tech as an utterly insipid and artless field, full of soulless dilletantes who are incapable of making or understanding art at best and actively hostile to it at worst.

If that new image of tech takes root in the public consciousness, its gonna make the arts/humanities look a fair bit better by comparison. Sure, the fields are still gonna have to deal with the stigma of being a "useless degree" but its better than your degree being taken as an indictment of you as a person.

Confidence: Low. This is pure gut instinct (and probably hope) talking from watching the slop-nami first-hand - whilst it could force people to appreciate the arts a bit more, nothing's stopping the slop-nami from devaluing the arts even fucking more.

  1. Smells Like Fash Spirit

On another front entirely, I expect this bubble will leave the tech industry with a reputation as a Nazi bar - a reputation that will linger even after Trump and his cronies are thrown out of office.

Silicon Valley's sucking up to Trump and DOGE's AI-Powered^tm^ annihilation of the state is doing wonders on this particular front, but fascists' fascination with slop and TESCREAL being fash to its core are likely helping build this image as well.

Referencing an earlier comment of mine, AI as a concept will likely get hit with the stench of fash as well - considering the TESCREAL movement partially powering this bubble is fascist as hell, that seems likely.

Confidence: High. Unlike Prediction 1, I've got some solid evidence to suggest tech's picking up a reputation for fascism. Mainly Silicon Valley's jackbooted goose-stepping to Trump's tune.

20

Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

26
[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 59 points 4 months ago

To reference a previous sidenote, DeepSeek gives corps and randos a means to shove an LLM into their shit for dirt-cheap, so I expect they're gonna blow up in popularity.

[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 33 points 5 months ago

But Apple Intelligence has its good points. “I find the best thing about Apple intelligence is that since I haven’t enabled it, my phone optimized for onboard AI has incredible battery life,” responded another Bluesky user. [Bluesky]

Y'know, if Apple had simply removed the AI altogether and went with that as a marketing point, people would probably buy more iPhones.

At the bare minimum, AI wouldn't be actively driving people away from buying them.

[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 29 points 8 months ago

If this gets CUDA open-sourced, I will be one very happy man.

[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 36 points 9 months ago

On the one hand, Google's still the dominant search engine, having used every dirty trick in the book to reach that position and maintain it. If you aren't on Google, you arguably might as well not exist.

On the other hand, Google's already under heavy scrutiny since being officially declared an illegal monopoly, and the public is pissed with how Google's declined in search quality - and deliberately so.

Part of me says we're about to see some truly wild shit go down.

[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 29 points 10 months ago

AI companies work around this by paying human classifiers in poor but English-speaking countries to generate new data. Since the classifiers are poor but not stupid, they augment their low piecework income by using other AIs to do the training for them. See, AIs can save workers labor after all.

On the one hand, you'd think the AI companies would check to make sure they aren't using AI themselves and damaging their models.

On the other hand, AI companies are being run by some of the laziest and stupidest people alive, and are probably just rubber-stamping everything no matter how blatantly garbage the results are.

[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 31 points 10 months ago

The good news is I barely use Protonmail (or email at all, for that matter).

The bad news is I have a fucking Proton account. Fuck.

[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 33 points 11 months ago

Do you really think "cult" is a useful category/descriptor here?

My view: things identified as "cults" have a bunch of good traits. EA should, where possible, adopt the good traits and reject the bad ones, and ignore whether they're associated with the label "cult" or not.

Yes, this is real

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BlueMonday1984

joined 1 year ago