Directly comparing Scientology-speak to the beliefs and practices of the rationalists and their offshoots seems like it should be a ground-floor understanding of the whole mess, but perhaps that sort of blunt simplicity is what some folks on the margins need to avoid being sucked all the way in.
Yah and sign up for their newsletter too
high end medical equipment like it was another AI powered furby knock-off
Bbbbbut making high-end medical equipment profit margins on cheap Furby knockoffs is the new Silicon Valley ideal!
A step up from last week’s uncritical fluffing of Aella, and the hard target on Pinker is nice, but still kinda highlights how the publication grows out of semi-parasocial social media crushes and grievances. I’ll take it, but they’ve still got a ways to go to convince me that they’re not gonna turn out to be Neo-The Atlantic 2029
This situation is the first time I’ve become aware that there was a longtime Dimes Square hangout called Kiki’s. I’m gonna go ahead and consider that a mental health check that I happily passed
Oh, OK, cool. Let me know how the chatbot handles temperature management, stock rotation, allergen cross-contamination for seafood, all that good stuff.
I keep on saying that there will be at least one more AI bubble before 2045, because apparently that’s the latest date Kurzweil gives for his Singularity™ (can’t be arsed to go reread his book and double-check, my copy was a PDF that came via the high seas 5 computers ago anyway)
Zefram Cochrane is supposed to invent warp drive in 2063, these guys need to be moving their timelines forward, not backward!
Dude why do we even need or want AGI?
We need salvation but it won’t come via rapture this decade
I trust Nate Silver’s writing advice exactly as much as I trust his recommendations for hair-care products
oppan Malkovich style
Can’t believe that these guys are forgetting Data on Star Trek needed an emotion-chip upgrade to feel emotions, and he didn’t even get it full-time until the series was over and they were doing movies. Dario and friends are just giving away what could be an entire upgrade/upcharge cycle! “Be more intimate than ever with your workflows! Upgrade to feeling agents on FeelsCloud today! (ignore that it’s just some bullshit we vibecoded in Verilog and then flashed to discount FPGAs we shoved in the bottom of the server racks)”
That’s OK, the next set of bankruptcy lawyers will again conduct clawbacks
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-interracial-cuck-porn-theory-of-everything/
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.
No way the facilitator will ever accrue any liability or get subpoenaed when the civil lawsuits (or worse) start flying!
Claude, write me an ironclad legal disclaimer, maybe something about this being for entertainment purposes only
“12 Endings of AI” definitely seems like another heaping helping of bland criti-hype, but it did remind me of the delightfully bizarre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_13_Ghosts_of_Scooby-Doo featuring Vincent Price
I strongly suspect there are an uncomfortably large number of Rust enthusiasts who tacitly assume that all the type-checking/borrow-checking/object lifetime tracking are primarily enabling features for AI coding.
Also note how his earlier message keeps talking about “we” and “our” and an “internal review” but then later one he claims to be a solo developer. Weird.
the temporarily-embarrassed royal “we”
why understand biochemistry, if you’re part of the cognitive elite who can reconstruct it from first principles should it become necessary
We’ve discussed before the influence of David Chapman and his Tibetan Buddhism among TPOT, but it’s worth also noting the fairly big notoriety and footprint that San Francisco Zen Center has in the Bay Area and northern/central California more broadly. Anyone who ends up in the Bay and goes looking for “alternative” spirituality with a relatively rigorous grounding is likely to encounter some aspect of SFZC or its outreach pretty quickly. To say nothing of enduring idol Steve Jobs’ association with the practice. It might seem surprising from the outside, but given the facts on the ground, I’m not surprised that dashes of Buddhism got roped into the techbro stew.
Note, of course, that Chapman’s Tibetan lineage is something notably different from SFZC’s lineage, and that the parent institutions can’t be held totally liable for misinterpretations by lay practitioners and dilettantes. (Myself being one of the dilettantes!)