dgerard

joined 2 years ago
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sneerclub
techtakes
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Yudkowsky: eugenics is now "the third most important project in the world." After AI doom and anime, presumably. in c/sneerclub@awful.systems
[–] dgerard@awful.systems 18 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (10 children)

Superbabies is a backup plan; focus the energy of humanity’s collective genetic endowment into a single generation, and have THAT generation to solve problems like “figure out how to control digital superintelligence

The academic institutions in charge of exploring these ideas are deeply compromised by insane ideologies. And the big commercial entities are too timid to do anything truly novel; once they discovered they had a technology that could potentially make a few tens of billions treating single gene genetic disorders, no one wanted to take any risks; better to take the easy, guaranteed money and spend your life on a lucrative endeavor improving the lives of 0.5% of the population than go for a hail mary project that will result in journalists writing lots of articles calling you a eugenicist.

oh no, not a eugenicist!

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 23 February 2025 in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] dgerard@awful.systems 6 points 2 weeks ago

apparently video is just huuuuge

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 23 February 2025 in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] dgerard@awful.systems 7 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

this is also why pivot to AI is mostly 200-250 words, not 1200 or 2000 or 8000

Humane AI finally shuts down, HP pays $116m for the pieces — not including the Ai Pin in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] dgerard@awful.systems 11 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

per link, venture capital has been very reluctant to unambiguously realise the losses. a $1b book value is an (imaginary) asset you can hug and hold, a $114m loss is not.

Ziz update thread, started 19 February in c/sneerclub@awful.systems
AI chatbots test as having cognitive decline in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] dgerard@awful.systems 10 points 3 weeks ago

there were counterarguments that the authors anthropomorphised the LLMs inappropriately - which is a valid objection - and therefore these tests shouldn't have been run at all. The answer to that is that the companies are marketing this shit by anthropomorphising the hell out of it and literally claiming these spicy autocompletes are on the path to artificial super intelligence. So of course cognitive tests are gonna be appropriate.

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 23 February 2025 in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] dgerard@awful.systems 10 points 3 weeks ago

see also: Yudowsky has never consumed fiction targeted above middle school

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 23 February 2025 in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] dgerard@awful.systems 25 points 3 weeks ago

https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@lritter/114001505488538547

master: welcome to my Smart Home

student: wow. how is the light controlled?

master: with this on-off switch

student: i don't see a motor to close the blinds

master: there is none

student: where is the server located?

master: it is not needed

student: excuse me but what is "Smart" about all of this?

master: everything.

in this moment, the student was enlightened

"Tracing Woodgrains" starts a eugenics-oriented education policy "think-tank" in c/sneerclub@awful.systems
Guardian does OpenAI deal, New York Times goes AI for newspaper content generation in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] dgerard@awful.systems 13 points 3 weeks ago

it's getting a bit thin! Here's the Press Gazette page, which they keep up to date, of media outlets that have done AI deals, whether they're adding slop to their output or just taking bribes from OpenAI:

https://pressgazette.co.uk/platforms/news-publisher-ai-deals-lawsuits-openai-google/

AI image gets a US copyright — or some of a copyright in c/techtakes@awful.systems
[–] dgerard@awful.systems 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

i am sorry to say it's the actual AI image the story is about!

Argentinian president Javier Milei promotes memecoin that then crashes 95% in apparent $100 million+ rug pull in c/buttcoin@awful.systems
[–] dgerard@awful.systems 15 points 3 weeks ago

i'm sure they're working for someone

52
How to remove Copilot AI from your Office 365 subscription: hit ‘cancel’ (pivot-to-ai.com)
22
Trump starts a presidential shitcoin (davidgerard.co.uk)
109
Do be evil: Google now OK with AI for weapons and surveillance — for ‘freedom, equality, and human rights’ (pivot-to-ai.com)
35
Iris Meredith: Licking the AI Boot (deadsimpletech.com)
 

"the AI thread in our society now is nothing more or less than a demand by the wealthy creators of it for submission. It's a naked show of force by the powerful and stupid: you will use this tool, and you will like it."

38
Forum admin’s madness, AI edition: the old Physics Forums site fills with generated slop (pivot-to-ai.com)
49
Popular anonymous race scientist "Crémieux Receuil" is actually a graduate student named Jordan Lasker (www.polemics.md)
19
Oh no! AI can replicate itself! … when you tell it to, and you give it copies of all its files (pivot-to-ai.com)
18
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 9th February 2025 (awful.systems)
 

Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? 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 soo 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.

last week's thread

88
Skynet, but it’s Wheatley: OpenAI sells ‘reasoning’ AI to US government for nuclear weapon security (pivot-to-ai.com)
68
Cleveland police use AI facial recognition — and their murder case collapses (pivot-to-ai.com)
22
Post your current Ziz news and discussion here (awful.systems)
 

a place for it

29
DeepSeek AI leaves glaring security hole exposing user data, Italy blocks DeepSeek (pivot-to-ai.com)
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