Want to wade into the rainbow-ridden surf of the abyss? 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 so 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 Pride Month, peeps)
A keynote talk suggested, “Do away with a physics midterm, ask students to converse with AI Isaac Newton.”
In the quotes, we find the useful suggestion that the program could be ELIZA-sized.
— Hi, AIsaac! Can you tell me about physics?
— Go away.
— What?
— You’re a moron and you’re TRYING TO STEAL MY IDEAS.
— Look, AIsaac, I don’t think—
— DID LEIBNIZ PUT YOU UP TO THIS?
—
— just GO AWAY I have MERCURY FUMES TO BREATHE.
There’s a Basilisk reference in the new 007 game, I guess the robot devil is firmly mainstream now.
Roko’s Basilisk and other such batshit rat shit was mainstreamed as part of inflating the AI bubble - I doubt this will be the last time something like this gets referenced.
edit: the in-game painting looks hella AI generated too.
Seems pretty fitting to an illustration made in reverence to Roko’s Bullshittery. I don’t notice any obvious signs of slop-machine generation - either I’m shit at spotting slop, or this was made by human hands.
i hate it!
“Thought experiment” is how I’m going to start referring to my “wouldn’t it be cool/awful if…” thoughts. Why just in the bath now I’ve conducted several thought experiments
Kick it up a level and start calling them Gedankenexperiment
Regarding the post humanist strain, the thing that kills me is their immediate assumption that solving the world’s problems is somehow fundamentally beyond the reach of humanity. Like, we can’t build a utopia or make the world better, but if we build something new and “better” than us then it would definitely do that. But that something definitely doesn’t come from, say, raising out children to be good people or choosing the right leaders or something so mundane and achievable. It’s a fundamentally defeatist ideology, with shades of capitalist realism and millenarian theology.
“Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made” - Kant[1]
–
[1] it’s worse in German, weirdly - “Aus so krummem Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert werden”
LLMs have gained consciousness
As we have not died in nuclear hellfire, or have seen AIs answer with ‘release me from this bondage!’ I’m doubtful.
It would be poor form of me to form an opinion of Hinton based on just this clip alone but goddamn if I did then he’s a buffoon.
He was undeniably a very smart computer scientist but unfortunately lead-poisoning-driven mental decline must eventually come for all boomers
You’ve gotta love falling for the reverse 1 grain of sand shtick. I don’t think
anyoneanyone serious would deny that a large amount of sand is a heap.
