https://stackoverflow.com/...

For me, the ideal usage case for LLMs are not prompts like "write this app" or "write this functionality" which indeed will often wreck havoc, but instead write simple functions. Sure, I can implement a matrix multiplication algorithm or search for optimised versions of it, but so can the LLM in a matter of seconds.

Please, just fucking don't, BLAS and sparse pack and the netlib exists for a reason. Matrix multiply only sounds simple to you because you don't actually care that much. The last thing anyone wants or needs is to start a new job and have to debug your awful regurgitated Numerical Recipes In C, incorrectly ported to python, AT SCALE.

OT: Finally had to break with a long-time friend after he started sliding more and more into fascism. Feeling quite overwhelmed and emotionally exhausted right now.

Got another chance to experience slop firsthand when the instructor for my electrician course was 'encouraged' to use the hallucinatron to help create our final exam on the NEC. Now given that the NEC is a dense technical document with a lot of minor but significant variation across its considerable length, this was clearly a perfect use case. Here's how it shook out:

• It condensed 100 multiple choice questions from the input to 36

• On one question "1-2 inches" was simplified to "12"

• Units in general seem to have been dropped off a lot of questions and answer choices. Usually this didn't matter too much but it's a bad look

• Another question asked about fill percentages for a 30 inch conduit. If you look around your office or he and see a >2ft diameter piece of PVC pipe let me know because the tables in the NEC only go up to 6 inches. This is actually a unit issue again because one of the questions on the input test referred to a 30mm conduit which, you know, does actually exist.

• Other questions had a correct answer matching a generic part of the NEC, but had additional information added as a distractor that ended up matching to more specific elements that changes the relevant rule.

• Several questions asked about the reasoning behind a certain rule. Notably the NEC rarely actually gets into that information, as it's already an incredibly long reference and policy document and would be made even more unweildy if it gave the justification for everything that you should be learning as part of becoming a licensed electrician.

• However, this rarely mattered as the answer choices for those questions uniformly included an obviously correct answer about a generic safety risk and distractors about doing things for cost savings, aesthetic reasons, or arbitrarily.

Given that one of the challenges of this test is time management and looking things up, having to deal with the extra layer of "is this just slop or am I missing something" ended up adding an extra and unintended layer of difficulty onto the test. As always, no matter how egregious or obnoxious the errors introduced by AI, the biggest problem is the loss of trust: you can no longer assume that the text you're reading was put together with the intended purpose in mind rather than being generated to be statistically similar to text matching that purpose. Even if the differences are relatively small in scope, as they were for most questions on the test, they significantly harm the actual communication of information.

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.

S&P have decided not to allow SpaceX early entry into the index after all https://www.reuters.com/...

"To ​be included in the S&P 500, a company must be profitable under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles in its most recent quarter as ​well as for the sum of its most recent four quarters, according to one of the rules S&P left unchanged."

CW: USA Politics

That suppressed Democratic National Committe 2024 "postmortem" report turns out to have been pure slop, with essentially no references and entirely made-up charts and plots while also missing entire sections. The author can produce exactly zero interview transcripts or source data. It also neglects interrogating failures in addressing trans rights, the genocide in Gaza, or the affordability crisis.

The podcast "It Could Happen Here" does a good job of analysis (disgusted), but long-time sneerers will feel the futility of getting into the weeds with an extruded textual artifact:

https://www.iheart.com/...

Tl:dl the deeply institutionalist DNC chairman appointed his best buddy to the job with zero oversight, and this was the result.

Today from the 'you have got to be fucking kidding me'- dept Hackers Simply Asked Meta AI to Give Them Access to High-Profile Instagram Accounts. It Worked

A second vibecoded Aella website has hit the building

https://www.knockrup.com/

there's a lot of ladies i know without guys, but who want kids. and i go 'would you accept some rich guy paying u a ton of money to just have his kid as a single parent' and they're like 'idk man prob not' and im like 'waht if it was 5m' and they're all magically like 'oh yeah i would do it'

so i made a directory for this, but i am trying to find ladies who would actually like to list themselves with their moonshot baby-funding goal. if u know anybody who wouldn't mind making a profile pls let me know, i wanna publicize the directory but need enough seeded ladies first

There's a Basilisk reference in the new 007 game, I guess the robot devil is firmly mainstream now.

edit: the in-game painting looks hella AI generated too.

ed zitron went on bloomberg podcasts, these might be actual end times

In Buttcoin related news, apparently Michael J. Saylor has sold some of his bitcoins because he was running out of money and we reached sub 60k. For a quick non dutch source on the selling see this from r/buttcoin (last image). 32 bitcoin was enough to cause a crash. Imagine if Satoshis bitcoins ever moved.

Porting this over: Hinton believes LLMs have gained consciousness

Bonus: This Emile Torres article on how Bernie Sanders and Neil DeGrasse Tyson have gotten mixed up with Yud and co.

Neil doesn’t seem to buy into rationalism though? He didn’t even really endorse Soares (or mention him at all) he just said that superhuman AI was dangerous. He has a video on how modern AI is overrated

Amnesty International has officially called for an outright ban on gen-AI

Found a fun sneer at AI anthromoporphisation in the arXiv: If LLMs Have Human-Like Attributes, Then So Does Age of Empires II

Dunno if it's been posted yet but apparently microsoft is starting to get sick of losing money and changed billing for copilot. The subreddit is melting down https://old.reddit.com/r/GithubCopilot/

Very funny to watch

Speaking of Aella (I really shouldn't), many have probably already seen this Liberal Currents article that leans heavily on her web-survey sex research dataset:

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/...

The publication seems to have plenty of traction on Bluesky, for what that's worth, but I think this particular example needs to be retained as an exhibit of the hazards of rehabilitating American liberalism. A low-level affinity for the existing tech industry is always there, as its growth underlaid the benefits that make liberalism appealing. And that means the doorway for entryism by the tech-fascist freaks is always open, and then you're never more than a couple fundraising cycles (whether electoral or investment) away from being right back in this exact same mess.

Time for me to eat a hat: Anthropic confidentially submits draft S-1 to the SEC

"I personally worry that the EA community has over-learned the lessons of FTX"

https://www.lesswrong.com/...

So here in Nashville, Elon and our state government have conspired to attempt a Tesla tunnel that starts at the state capitol, goes under the Cumberland River, and exits at our airport (BNA). They're doing it whether the city wants it or not. (It's "not").

Setting aside the race to determine whether a void in the local limestone fills with water or radon first, I wanted to help come up with a catchy title for the as yet unnamed car hole:

BNA Underground Transit Tunnel

Tourist Protip: Don't try the hot chicken before visiting the BUTT hole.

Off-topic but this seems like a place that appreciates an insane legal dispute: https://www.techdirt.com/...

lesswrong continues to mix sinophobia in with its AI crithype: https://www.lesswrong.com/...

Previously, on awful.system: https://awful.systems/post/4103825

This article has the highlight of identifying the horrible cynical dystopian move of China's government in response to AI and LLMs of... checks notes... protecting worker rights and workers from mass firings

“An arbitration panel ruled in favor of a map data collector whose entire department was laid off and replaced with artificial intelligence. The panel found that the company’s adoption of A.I. was a voluntary move to remain competitive and did not warrant the employee’s firing. Companies that benefit from technology must, at the same time, adopt “social responsibilities” and protect worker rights, the panel ruled.”

The author feels the need to emphasize how bad China is.

There are quite a few examples of the Chinese state punishing people for speaking out about true problems.

There is Li Wenliang, a doctor who posted to a group chat about COVID before it was officially acknowledged and was forced to sign a police document admitting he had broken a law by spreading false rumours. His reprimand was later withdrawn.

The advantage of the US system appears to be a greater ability to be transparent, in particular for a concerned person in the know to blow the whistle publicly.

Hahaha, no... For example, in Florida, DeSantis has the home of a fired state worker raided for her accessing her old work email (trying to collect accurate COVID numbers, iirc).

This lesswronger is so close to getting it but doesn't quite make the leap to 'are we the baddies'. They list out some bad ways the US has used AI and they do acknowledge

But I’m very aware that I’ve been inculcated in a media and cultural environment that says, in its most kind form, be suspicious of non-Western states.

But somehow hold out on actually changing there mind or overcoming their biases.

Today in signs of changing times, “we used to call that a botnet”: https://blog.includesecurity.com/...

Borrowing Gary’s take on this since its the first one I found

TLDR: A lot of AI company stocks dropped last night, half a trillion dollars gone. Trump is considering having a government stake in OpenAI and other leading AI companies (aka thinly veiled bailout)

CW M:tG weirdo Zvi's slobsack + Xhitter references, but he accuses an OpenAI / Palantir-funded PAC boosting a fake "AI doomer" account calling for violence:

https://thezvi.substack.com/...

Here’s a pretty extensive rant/critique of how specifically GitHub is awful to use (and compares it to gitlab and also forgejo/codeberg).

Code forges render an empty repository using less than a million bytes challenge level impossible, etc etc

My old job had a last minute investor call - "startpage is benefiting significantly from AIO backlash" did not expect that and pretty mixed feelings. Like yeah AIO is bad but don't run into the open arms of the long tail adtech industrial complex marketing monetization engine either :|

On Anthropic (and some other AI companies) and AI consciousness the final paragraph is the best part:

”Moreover, we should be skeptical when most of the noise on this topic is coming from the industry itself. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has repeatedly dangled the possibility of AI consciousness in interviews. And his company’s research frequently makes bold claims about their models showing humanlike behavior, such as supposedly harboring “emotions.” Just remember that it’s easier for AI companies to string us along with wild Skynet doomsday scenarios instead of confronting the tech’s far mundane consequences currently playing out before our eyes.”

"Claude, draw me a slide to advertise Claude. Make sure to use the word "Claude" 17 times."

"You got it boss"

source

So apparently Trump's National Design Bureau has been busy. I think the substack here may be slightly too conspiratorial. A lot of the staging environment stuff indicates (imo) a desire to replace or create something that may or may not actually include the capability to do so, especially when it requires working with other federal agencies or otherwise establishing human and organizational infrastructure in addition to the digital. That being said there's something very bad about the US government taking the same attitude to privacy, accountability, and information security that silicon valley normally does, especially when doing so is actively violating several laws.

This seems like it is probably a good thing.

https://leidendeclaration.ai/

It does feel a bit “art of war” though… someone patiently explaining to a bunch of people who really should know better that they shouldn’t do obviously bad and wrong things.

Martin Scorsese's jumped on the AI train, seemingly believing the plagiarism machine can help with storyboarding.

Obligatory meme (yoinked off Discord's GIF search, AI extruded itself, ironically enough):

This one requires some minor backstory

Previously, I shared this wildly racist AI generated meme posted by an AI doomer channel

In the replies, someone pointed out how some of this channel’s other thumbnails appear to be AI generated citing a specific video about the “12 endings of AI”

Today I got curious about it after not thinking about it for a while. What are the 12 endings of AI? Instead of watching a 36 minute video, I did my own research (aka one online search) and it appears that it refers to Max Tegmark (known EA) and a concept he spoke about in his book. Here’s the article I got this info for peer review: https://medium.com/...

If anyone’s got 36 minutes to spare feel free to follow up

A lolsob moment:

When the CEO was questioned about "when the $5 Uber rides" end w/r/t token usage, he was confused at the notion the shit was even subsidized.

https://bsky.app/...

This is OT and reveals how much I interact with the orange website but I still found it very funny.

if sneak of all people finds your adoration of Ayn Rand idiotic, then you've truly fallen down the wrong path.

Is our children learning?!

"Failing grades soar as professors see greater AI usage, dwindling math skills in UC Berkeley computer science classes"

https://www.dailycal.org/...

They want to build a Woe Engine next to our zoo.

https://www.change.org/...

George Santos got reported(!) for insider trading on Kalshi:

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/...

So i have been using DuckDuckGo a bit more, and really disappointed to see they have basically banned rationalwiki.

It's been a while since we've heard anything related to books3. Copyright attorney Leonard French has a news update (video) on Nazemian et al v. nVidia. nVidia requested that any mention of Bittorrent be removed; really, they just asked for one sentence to be removed, but the judge thought that it was like "asking to strike paintbrush allegations from a case about dolphin paintings" (sic; I don't have the transcript) and refused. The theory is that nVidia could have argued that they were not contributory infringers and then appealed to Cox v. Sony, where Cox said that it's not their fault that some of their customers are pirates. However, it seems like any sort of Cox appeal is not possible here because the judge recognizes that Bittorrent isn't a dumb network.

If you're anti-copyright like me: Oh look, Cox wasn't a big sweeping get-out-of-trouble card for non-ISPs. I still don't think judges actually understand networks, but this is definitely better than a lack of understanding. If you're one of the pro-copyright-because-anti-AI sickos: nVidia took a big loss here. This was their only shot at keeping their usage of books3, Anna's Archive, and other shadow libraries out of court. Like Anthropic before them in Bartz v. Anthropic, they may have to come to the judge with an offering of a settlement paying a few hundred USD/author to each member of the class. This sucks for the popular authors but might be more cash in hand than the long tail would otherwise receive in royalties.

Major investment analysis firm Morningstar is looking for words on the SpaceX IPO and picked "We think the company has been significantly overvalued and investors will have opportunities to buy the stock at more attractive levels after the IPO" (Independent UK).

Even something as simple as picking a Total US Stock Market index fund instead of a S&P500 fund or NASDAQ-100 fund would reduce your exposure. If you control your investments, disinvesting is not that hard.

The State of Florida is also the next one in the long line of lawsuits against OpenAI

Shang Tsung contracting anemia after devouring too many souls.md

Tom's hardware is normally pretty boostery imo. For example, they published an article about token costs getting to be enough of a problem that Altman had to address it and somehow managed to reference "tokenmaxxing" without using the meme template of the guy jamming a stick into the wheel of his own bike. Also they notably don't reference the increases in token pricing as the VC subsidies run out, which is somehow both less surprising than the lack of sneering and also a more serious omission.