Loving the combination of xml, markdown and json. In no way does this product look like strata of desperate bodges layered one over another by people who on some level realise the thing they’re peddling really isn’t up to the job but imagine the only thing between another dull and flaky token predictor and an omnicapable servant is just another paragraph of text crafted in just the right way. Just one more markdown list, bro. I can feel that this one will fix it for good.
It’s been a while since I watched idiocracy, but from recollection, it imagined a nation that had:
- aptitude testing systems that worked
- a president people liked
- a relaxed attitude to sex and sex work
- someone getting a top government job for reasons other than wealth or fame
- a straightforward fix for an ecological catastrophe caused by corporate stupidity being applied and accepted
- health and social care sufficient for people to have families as large as they’d like, and an economy that supported those large families
and for some reason people keep referring to it as a dystopia…
eta
Ooh, and everyone hasn’t been killed by war, famine, climate change (welcome to the horsemen, ceecee!) or plague, but humanity is in fact thriving! And even still maintaining a complex technological society after 500 years!
Idiocracy is clearly implausible utopian hopepunk nonsense.
Today’s man-made and entirely comprehensible horror comes from SAP.
(two rainbow stickers labelled “pride@sap”, with one saying “I support equality by embracing responsible ai” and the other saying “I advocate for inclusion through ai”)
Don’t have any other sources or confirmation yet, so it might be a load of cobblers, but it is depressingly plausible. From here: https://catcatnya.com/@ada/114508096636757148
From linkedin, not normally known as a source of anti-ai takes so that’s a nice change. I found it via bluesky so I can’t say anything about its provenance:
We keep hearing that AI will soon replace software engineers, but we're forgetting that it can already replace existing jobs... and one in particular.
The average Founder CEO.
Before you walk away in disbelief, look at what LLMs are already capable of doing today:
- They use eloquence as a surrogate for knowledge, and most people, including seasoned investors, fall for it.
- They regurgitate material they read somewhere online without really understanding its meaning.
- They fabricate numbers that have no ground in reality, but sound aligned with the overall narrative they're trying to sell you.
- They are heavily influenced by the last conversations they had.
- They contradict themselves, pretending they aren't.
- They politely apologize for their mistakes, but don't take any real steps to fix the underlying problem that caused them in the first place.
- They tend to forget what they told you last week, or even one hour ago, and do it in a way that makes you doubt your own recall of events.
- They are victims of the Dunning–Kruger effect, and they believe they know a lot more about the job of people interacting with them than they actually do.
- They can make pretty slides in high volumes.
- They're very good at consuming resources, but not as good at turning a profit.
A real ceo does everything. Delegation is for losers who can’t cope. Can’t move fast enough and break enough things if you’re constantly waiting for your lackeys to catch up.
If those numbers people were cleverer than the ceo, they’d be the ones in charge, and they aren’t. Checkmate. Do you even read Ayn Rand, bro?
It’s a long read, but a good one (though not a nice one).
- learn about how all the people who actually make decisions in c++ world are complete assholes!
- liking go (the programming language) correlated with brain damage!
- in c++ world, it is ok to throw an arbitrary number of highly competent non-bros out of the window in order to keep a bro on board, even if said bro drugged and raped a minor!
- the c++ module system is like a gunshot wound to the ass!
- c++ leadership is delusional about memory safety!
- even more assholes!
Someone on mastodon (can’t remember who right now) joked that they were expecting the c++ committee to publicly support trump, in the hopes he would retract the usg memory safety requirements. I can now believe that they might have considered that, and are probably hoping he’ll come down in their favour now that he’s coming in.
They’re rebranding American Christian milenaranism. Much like the second coming and/or the rapture, the AGI god will be here Real Soon Now, so please pay your tithes and trust that the church fathers are doing the right thing.
Much like the older cults it mirrors, it isn’t capable of delivering on its promises, but it is capable of doing substantial amounts of regular damage in the meantime, and that’s the only thing worth freaking out about.
You would choose your nationality like you choose your broadband provider. You would become a citizen of the franchised cyber statelet of your choice.
Ahh, I can’t wait.
Notification of planned maintenance
Rule of law will be suspended between midnight and 6am
pacific time to upgrade the constitution. We apologise for
any inconvenience or loss of life.
Interview with the president of the signal foundation: https://www.wired.com/story/meredith-whittaker-signal/
There’s a bunch of interesting stuff in there, the observation that LLMs and the broader “ai” “industry” wee made possible thanks to surveillance capitalism, but also the link between advertising and algorithmic determination of human targets for military action which seems obvious in retrospect but I hadn’t spotted before.
But in 2017, I found out about the DOD contract to build AI-based drone targeting and surveillance for the US military, in the context of a war that had pioneered the signature strike.
What’s a signature strike?
A signature strike is effectively ad targeting but for death. So I don’t actually know who you are as a human being. All I know is that there’s a data profile that has been identified by my system that matches whatever the example data profile we could sort and compile, that we assume to be Taliban related or it’s terrorist related.
Do any “ai” companies have a business plan more sophisticated than
- steal everything on the web
- buy masses of compute with vc money
- become too important to be busted for mass copyright infringement
- ?
- profit
I don’t recall seeing any signs of creativity, or even any good ideas as to what their product is even for, so I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for one of the current crop to manifest creativity now.
Perhaps I missed something, though?
They could have just sat there and slurped up enormous profits from the bubble as all the people who can’t find a use for their “AI” systems buy nvidia hardware, but no. They had to get high from their own supply. I can’t see this boding well for them.
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rook
joined 2 years ago
When confronted with a problem like “your search engine imagined a case and cited it”, the next step is to wonder what else it might be making up, not to just quickly slap a bit of tape over the obvious immediate problem and declare everything to be great.
The other thing to be concerned about is how lazy and credulous your legal team are that they cannot be bothered to verify anything. That requires a significant improvement in professional ethics, which isn’t something that is really amenable to technological fixes.