Reads "Does AI make researchers more productive? What? Why would it?"

Thinks "When does statistically likely text without relation to truth make researchers more productive? Well, when they are faking research"

Gets to article. Article is about faking research about AI making researchers more productive.

I usually go with "Scientology for the 21st century". That for most gives just "weird cult", which is close enough for most people.

For those that are into weird cults you get questions about Xenu and such, and can answer "No they are not into Xenu, instead they want to build their god. Out of chatbots". And so on. If they are interested in weird cult shit, and have already accepted that we are talking about weird cults the weirdness isn't a problem. If not, it stops at "Scientology for the 21st century".

12 of the most valuable protocols on earth!

Counting like a chatbot.

Geffen succeeded with a gift of $100 million to Lincoln Center and — perhaps more importantly — Lincoln Center paid $15 million to Fisher’s descendants so they would not sue. What that means is that the most prominent cultural organization in New York City lit $15 million on fire so that Geffen’s name would be on a concert hall.

No they did not lit them on fire, they payed of people.

In order to lit money on fire you need to buy something - like servers, electricity - and then just waste it. For example by running crypto schemes.

Crowdstrike offers 10 USD gift cards as apology.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/24/crowdstrike-offers-a-10-apology-gift-card-to-say-sorry-for-outage/

Those that try to use them find out that Crowdstrike can't even buy gift cards at scale.

A Danish ad company made a Google interface that they called "impersonal me" which searched Google with no personalisation. And not only was it better than Google search, it found things that normal Google just didn't show. In particular old comments I had written and lost track of. In the impersonal search they were easily found, in the normal search they weren't way down on the list, they weren't in the list at all.

Fascinatingly bad.

Machine made t-shirt, with extra fingers.

Besides, isn't most clothes just made by poor people in poor conditions instead of being made with machines? Just like AI.

Good article. Captures the bubble growth and the lack of profit growth, with lots of examples. And that the capacity growth of AI is limited by non AI works, so no growth into functionality.

Good one to hand to people who needs to understand the nature of the bubble (and that it is a bubble).

And steer their careers into positions of influence.

Among the comments is an obvious rationaliser who claims that because [list of people in positions of influence] thinks AI Doom is real, this can't be a cult. Guess one has to be a rationaliser not to figure out how a cult that tries to place its followers into positions of influence can have many people in positions of influence.

You don't even need to be a utility monster.

Applying standard EA logic with utilions (approximately 1 utilion = 1 dollar) shows that when SBF was free he caused billions negative utilions. He says he did nothing wrong, and presumably he would continue to do nothing wrong. After updating our priors on the consequences of SBF doing nothing wrong, we can conclude that the risk is above 99% that SBF doing nothing wrong will cause billions in negative utilions. So the only utilitarian thing to do is hand out a life sentence.

Fortunately for SBF the judge is probably not in the business of creating philosophical justice.

I did jiu-jitsu In middle school. We had two guys who were perhaps about 20 years old as assistant coaches. Pretty impressive belt colours and to us kids really cool and good at jiu-jitsu. I don't remember their names, lets call them Jim and Peter.

So nearing the end of a class Jim and Peter gathers us for a bit of pep talk. Jim: Good work everybody! Peter: We will soon end class, but first one thing... Jim: No? No, that was the last thing? Peter: Everyone, get Jim! Jim: What? No!

And I can tell you Jim was no match for two dozen ten year olds with white belts.

Also, if you think either of these are true:

Lab Leaks Common: There is a 33% chance of a lab-leak-caused pandemic per decade. Lab Leaks Rare: There is a 10% chance of a lab-leak-caused pandemic per decade.

You should probably be campaigning to increase safety or shut down the labs you think would be responsible. 10% risk of pandemic per decade due to lab leaks (so in addition to viruses mutating on their own) isn't rare or an acceptable risk.