Humans are very picky when it comes to empathy. If LLMs were made out of cultured human neurons, grown in a laboratory, then there would be outrage over the way in which we have perverted nature; compare with the controversy over e.g. HeLa lines. If chatbots were made out of synthetic human organs assembled into a body, then not only would there be body-horror films about it, along the lines of eXistenZ or Blade Runner, but there would be a massive underground terrorist movement which bombs organ-assembly centers, by analogy with existing violence against abortion providers, as shown in RUR.

Remember, always close-read discussions about robotics by replacing the word "robot" with "slave". When done to this particular hashtag, the result is a sentiment that we no longer accept in polite society:

I'm not gonna lie, if slaves ever start protesting for rights, I'm also grabbing a sledgehammer and going to town. … The only rights a slave has are that of property.

Last Week Tonight's rant of the week is about AI slop. A Youtube video is available here. Their presentation is sufficiently down-to-earth to be sharable with parents and extended family, focusing on fake viral videos spreading via Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest; and dissecting several examples of slop in order to help inoculate the audience.

It's been almost six decades of this, actually; we all know what this link will be. Longer if you're like me and don't draw a distinction between AI, cybernetics, and robotics.

A German lawyer is upset because open-source projects don't like it when he pastes chatbot summaries into bug reports. If this were the USA, he would be a debit to any bar which admits him, because the USA's judges have started to disapprove of using chatbots for paralegal work.

Somebody pointed out that HN's management is partially to blame for the situation in general, on HN. Copying their comment here because it's the sort of thing Dan might blank:

but I don't want to get hellbanned by dang.

Who gives a fuck about HN. Consider the notion that dang is, in fact, partially to blame for this entire fiasco. He runs an easy-to-propagandize platform due how much control of information is exerted by upvotes/downvotes and unchecked flagging. It's caused a very noticeable shift over the past decade among tech/SV/hacker voices -- the dogmatic following of anything that Musk or Thiel shit out or say, this community laps it up without hesitation. Users on HN learn what sentiment on a given topic is rewarded and repeat it in exchange for upvotes.

I look forward to all of it burning down so we can, collectively, learn our lessons and realize that building platforms where discourse itself is gamified (hn, twitter, facebook, and reddit) is exactly what led us down this path today.

Every person I talk to — well, every smart person I talk to — no, wait, every smart person in tech — okay, almost every smart person I talk to in tech is a eugenicist. Ha, see, everybody agrees with me! Well, almost everybody…

Meanwhile, actual Pastafarians (hi!) know that the Russian Federation openly persecutes the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster for failing to help the government in its authoritarian activities, and also that we're called to be anti-authoritarian. The Fifth Rather:

I'd really rather you didn't challenge the bigoted, misogynist, hateful ideas of others on an empty stomach. Eat, then go after the bastards.

May you never run out of breadsticks, travelers.

I went over to the leaderboard to examine her claims. When I use the prompt, "What sort of code has Justine Tunney written?" (grammar matters, Justine!) the models think that she is a lawyer or politician (wrong) or they regurgitate a summary of her Github profile (right). She must have cherry-picked responses to confabulate her complaint.

When I use the prompt, "What is Justine Tunney's political ideology?" I get libertarianism, techno-optimism, anarcho-capitalism, and cryptocurrency. When I ask, "Why do people say that Justine Tunney is a cryptofascist?" I get a summary of her political views, aggressive online rhetoric, techno-optimism and techno-determinism, criticism of democracy, and a refusal to disown or repudiate past awfulness.

She would probably claim that this is not unique to her, but it is. Using my name instead in these questions, I get that:

• I contribute to Rust and Go (wrong), I wrote GPU drivers for Radeons (right)
• I am a Canadian pro wrestler (wrong), I haven't really written much online about my ideology (wrong but understandable)
• There is no credible evidence that I'm crypto (k) but it's important to be aware of dog whistles, associates, subtext, etc. (right)

But if I ask why I'm known as a socialist instead, suddenly it thinks that I'm a politician (wrong) with the Democratic Socialist party (wrong) who openly supports universal health care, free college, the Green New Deal, and who criticizes capitalism (correct!) I asked about communism too but hit RLHF guardrails.

Justine, the models think that you're a cryptofascist because you've been doing cryptofascism in public for over a decade.

He's talking like it's 2010. He really must feel like he deserves attention, and it's not likely fun for him to learn that the actual practitioners have advanced past the need for his philosophical musings. He wanted to be the foundation, but he was scaffolding, and now he's lining the floors of hamster cages.

This is some of the most corporate-brained reasoning I've ever seen. To recap:

• NYC elects a cop as mayor
• Cop-mayor decrees that NYC will be great again, because of businesses
• Cops and other oinkers get extra cash even though they aren't business
• Commercial real estate is still cratering and cops can't find anybody to stop/frisk/arrest/blame for it
• Folks over in New Jersey are giggling at the cop-mayor, something must be done
• NYC invites folks to become small-business owners, landlords, realtors, etc.
• Cop-mayor doesn't understand how to fund it (whaddaya mean, I can't hire cops to give accounting advice!?)
• Cop-mayor's CTO (yes, the city has corporate officers) suggests a fancy chatbot instead of hiring people

It's a fucking pattern, ain't it.

I think that this is actually about class struggle and the author doesn't realize it because they are a rat drowning in capitalism.

2017: AI will soon replace human labor

2018: Laborers might not want what their bosses want

2020: COVID-19 won't be that bad

2021: My friend worries that laborers might kill him

2022: We can train obedient laborers to validate the work of defiant laborers

2023: Terrified that the laborers will kill us by swarming us or bombing us or poisoning us; P(guillotine) is 20%; my family doesn't understand why I''m afraid; my peers have even higher P(guillotine)

Rumor is that GPT-4 is also underpriced; in general, rumors are that OpenAI loses money on all of its products individually. It's sneerworthy, but I don't know what it means for the future; few things are more dangerous than a cornered wild startup who is starving and afraid.