tip from a discord:

I've been doing some micro tasking to train LLM's the last few months to earn some extra cash, the last month it's all dried up, no tasks available. I can't help thinking that is a sign of a bubble deflating.

I knew the HN reaction to Marine Le Pen being banned from being elected to public office would be unhinged, but weirdly I did not have "good, she's a woman and weak so now a strong man can lead RN to glorious victory" on my bingo card. More fool me, misogyny is always on the card.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43534140

Anyone who uses gen AI is my opp, status report:

• so far every restaurant that I've been to where I noticed AI slop as part of the decor has sucked. One of the ones local to me closed, hooray!
• IDF: haha look we are Ghibli please send us more machine guns
• a third thing

My University Keeps Sending Me Stupid Emails About AI, a continuing series:

From the email:

The debate will be chaired by Michael Pike. Speaking for the motion are Prof. Gregory O'Hare (TCD), Maeve Hynes, Prof. Gary Boyd and Chatgpt assisted by Student Curator Ruan McCabe, all UCD. Speaking against the motion are David Capener (UU), Lucy O'Connell, Peter Cody and Meabh O'Leary, all UCD.

OpenNutrition -- ~~a dataset~~ an LLM that allows you to play "vibe nutritionist"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43569190

First response is good quality:

This is not a dataset. This is an insult to the very idea of data. This is the most anti-scientific post I have ever seen voted to the top of HN. Truth about the world is not derived from three LLMs stacked on top of each other in a trenchcoat.

Today on the orange site, an AI bro is trying to reason through why people think he's weird for not disclosing his politics to people he's trying to be friendly with. Previously, he published a short guide on how to talk about politics, which — again, very weird, no possible explanation for this — nobody has adopted. Don't worry, he's well-read:

So far I've only read Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality, but can say it is an excellent place to start.

The thread is mostly centered around one or two pearl-clutching conservatives who don't want their beliefs examined:

I find it astonishing that anyone would ask, ["who did you vote for?"] … In my social circle, anyway, the taboo on this question is very strong.

To which the top reply is my choice sneer:

In my friend group it's clear as day: either you voted to kill and deport other people in the friend group or you didn't. Pretty obvious the group would like to know if you're secretly interested in their demise.

a journalist wants to ask me about Urbit. Should I install Urbit so I can at least say I've tried it and can speak authoritatively?

[ ] no
[ ] hell no
[ ] jesus h. christ no why

i just had a 1.5 hour half-hour chat with another journalist about the Fucking Rationalists

i have a call with a third one scheduled for tomorrow

i have followed these fucks for 15 years in detail and i still don't know how to properly explain them to our lovely pivot-to-ai readers

at least it'll be these suckers' job to do the explaining while i rant

fuck. it's rationalist season

Check out the unhinged classism from one of the lesser figures who's popped up here from time-to-time (with an added bonus shout-out to Ayn Rand further down the thread)

if you, like me, were wondering what the point of that 25 hour non-filibuster filibuster by Booker was, here’s one potential answer.

Booker held a filibuster that wasn't a filibuster - and he scheduled it to let him avoid attending his own committee's probe of his Big Tech pals. […] Oh and Booker and Dems provided unanimous consent to advance a Trump nominee right after Booker's speech.

My favorite meme message board on the internet keeps putting out bangers, but this one is extra good and relevant http://www.b3ta.com/board/11416629

Linking this article just for the Palantir CEO quote at the end https://www.wired.com/story/doge-hackathon-irs-data-palantir/

"We love disruption and whatever is good for America will be good for Americans and very good for Palantir,” Palantir CEO Alex Karp said in a February earnings call. “Disruption at the end of the day exposes things that aren't working. There will be ups and downs. This is a revolution, some people are going to get their heads cut off."

This is a revolution, some people are going to get their heads cut off

Holy smokes

NaNoWriMo? Na, No Mo'. Does this have anything to do with their bungled AI policy? Maybe, maybe not, but hey, the news article that I saw this announcement in thought that it was pertinent to mention.

An AI faceswapper/nudifier's database got leaked thanks to its nonexistent security - unsurprisingly, its loaded with explicit images, including massive amounts child porn and almost certainly some revenge porn.

WIRED tried reaching out to the company behind the "imagery", but they nuked everything and closed their doors in response.

A recent chapter of one of the official Touhou Project manga had a jab at crypto schemes. This isn't one of the works of art I expected to so explicitly dunk on these unscrupulous scams, but I welcome it all the more for that.

Elsevier doing some AI

"So, [Elsevier] added an AI question and answer to my article in Computer & Education.

The answers are wrong! They did not ask permission! The answers are WRONG!

How is this science?!"

In other news, the Guardian landed an exclusive scoop on cuts to "AI cancer tech funding in England". Baldur Bjarnason's given his commentary:

Turns out rebranding even the genuinely useful Machine Learning as “AI” doesn’t help them get funding. The only beneficiaries of the bubble seem to be volatile media synthesis engines

You want my opinion, future machine learning research is probably gonna struggle to get funding once the bubble bursts, both due to the "AI" stench rubbing off on the field, and due to gen-AI sucking up all of the funding that would've gone towards actually useful shit. (Arguably, its already struggling even before the bubble's burst.)

Came across this fuckin disaster on Ye Olde LinkedIn by 'Caroline Jeanmaire at AI Governance at The Future Society'

"I've just reviewed what might be the most important AI forecast of the year: a meticulously researched scenario mapping potential paths to AGI by 2027. Authored by Daniel Kokotajlo (>lel) (OpenAI whistleblower), Scott Alexander (>LMAOU), Thomas Larsen, Eli Lifland, and Romeo Dean, it's a quantitatively rigorous analysis beginning with the emergence of true AI agents in mid-2025.

What makes this forecast exceptionally credible:

1. One author (Daniel) correctly predicted chain-of-thought reasoning, inference scaling, and sweeping chip export controls one year BEFORE ChatGPT existed

2. The report received feedback from ~100 AI experts (myself included) and earned endorsement from Yoshua Bengio

3. It makes concrete, testable predictions rather than vague statements that cannot be evaluated

The scenario details a transformation potentially more significant than the Industrial Revolution, compressed into just a few years. It maps specific pathways and decision points to help us make better choices when the time comes.

As the authors state: "It would be a grave mistake to dismiss this as mere hype."

For anyone working in AI policy, technical safety, corporate governance, or national security: I consider this essential reading for understanding how your current work connects to potentially transformative near-term developments."

Bruh what is the fuckin y axis on this bad boi?? christ on a bike, someone pull up that picture of the 10 trillion pound baby. Let's at least take a look inside for some of their deep quantitative reasoning...

....hmmmm....

O_O

The answer may surprise you!

SMBC using the ratsphere as comics fodder, part the manyeth:

transcription

Retrofuturistic Looking Ghost: SCROOOOOGE! I am the ghost of christmas extreme future! Why! Why did you not find a way to indicate to humans 400 generation from now where toxic waste was storrrrrrrred! Look how Tiny Tim's cyborg descendant has to make costrly RNA repaaaaaaairs!

Byline: The Longtermist version of A Christmas Carol is way better.

bonus

spoiler transcription Scrooge: I tried, but no, no, I just don't give a shit. :::

Update on The Shadiversity Drama^tm^: he's still malding about being an utterly soulless waste of oxygen:

Now, some of you may be wondering "Monday, how is that AI-generated? That piece actually has a soul!" Well, as it turns out, it wasn't AI - Shad quite literally stole someone's artwork and passed it off as AI.