overview for dgerard

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 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 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

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 5 points 3 weeks ago

just started a Ziz thread over on the Reddit sneerclub too

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

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 9 points 3 weeks ago

Vice signalling. https://awful.systems/post/3520479

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: