a Tesla that gets an erection when you drive it. by the visionary elon musk
we call it clogging, folks, we put a little clog in the machine
the harris campaign must get his list. if he ran only three dark rituals the election is over
this game destroyed my life for weeks. I'm doing shapez 2 now and I'll probably finish up my miserable tour of factory games with factorio afterward
EDIT: also rocket fuel seems extremely overpowered to me, I don't think powering tier 9 should be as trivial as making some RF and slamming down fuel plants for ten minutes
tl;dr of the article: ever since the ousting of altman, microsoft, which virtually owns openai, has been suspicious of openai's actual worth. therefore MS has cut down on the infinite resource flow. openai employees are whining about this.
there is one additional point in three of the near final paragraphs, which I'll quote in full because they are so amusing to me
Still, OpenAI employees complain that Microsoft is not providing enough computing power, according to three people familiar with the relationship. And some have complained that if another company beat it to the creation of A.I. that matches the human brain, Microsoft will be to blame because it hasn’t given OpenAI the computing power it needs, according to two people familiar with the complaints.
Oddly, that could be the key to getting out from under its contract with Microsoft. The contract contains a clause that says that if OpenAI builds artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I. — roughly speaking, a machine that matches the power of the human brain — Microsoft loses access to OpenAI’s technologies.
The clause was meant to ensure that a company like Microsoft did not misuse this machine of the future, but today, OpenAI executives see it as a path to a better contract, according to a person familiar with the company’s negotiations. Under the terms of the contract, the OpenAI board could decide when A.G.I. has arrived.
Well they should. I’m not giving them credit for investing in vaporware nuclear plants when the ostensible plan is to waste all the power on glue pizza recipes.
man, fuck this timeline... what are we even doing
How about people here? When did you realize people are real?
still difficult for me, I think it's part of my flavor of autism
*trying desperately not to say the thing* what if AI could automatically... round out... spelling
imagine how they could have monetized it
on a side note a lot of how I think about merit was built up by reading and rereading fooled by randomness as a teenager. I won't endorse it because that was a long time ago and the author is a narcissist, but maybe other people have thoughts on it? I would love to hear some discussion of it
There is such unbelievable faith in men who have continually failed to live up to it — an indomitable belief that this much money couldn't be wrong, and that the people running these companies are anything other than selfish opportunists that will say what they need to as a means of getting what they want, and that they got there not through a combination of privilege, luck and connections, but through some sort of superior intellect and guile.
this is one of the most enduring, widespread and astonishing tendencies I see in people: they need to believe that the famous, wealthy or powerful have positive qualities. they enjoy inhabiting this fantasy; often doing so is an activity, one that can lead into a parasocial connection.
trump and musk obviously benefit from this, but liberals watching the velvet glove of snl or a late night show stroke a celebrity indulge in the fantasy as well. many of the most highly regarded items of liberal media are of this type; see Sorkin's career, or the ultimately lovable conservative dad figure of 30 rock.
to be honest, I thought Trump's ascendancy to the presidency would root out this tendency in people, but I was very wrong. tens of millions of people watched this man bleat out his every thought all day on twitter, including almost the entire media class, and nearly none of them seem to have permanently learned what that said about the relationship between success and merit.
I remember he went on julia galef's podcast to talk about the MUH and she was like "but what does that mean" and simple questions like that and he flailed, it was painful to hear
lol fandom could have been even worse
guy who totally gets what these words mean: "an llm simply encodes the semantics into the vectors"
conservative who supports homeless shelters, soup kitchens, nature preserves, libraries, and children’s playgrounds for accelerationist reasons
my first thought reading this was that you meant it could be a deterrent to burglars. then I imagined a pair of increasingly nervous burglars timing his erections and freaking out as it hit 179 minutes. "we gotta bail man, that's longer than the average 18 year old"
what is the utility of 179 minutes of night-time erections
there's a similarity in the sense that they're both 'content free.' pagerank didn't care about what was on your site, only what your page linked to and what pages linked to you
(past tense bc it's unclear to me whether Google even uses pagerank at this point)
they diverge pretty significantly in one way: pagerank is an algorithm motivated by pragmatic simplifications. discarding the information of content when ranking sites is only something you would do because using content is really hard. you can take the statistical approach to semantics in the same spirit, but you don't have to... ai true believers are necessarily treating the maxim I referred to as a philosophical claim, something that addresses the ground truth of what words are
Microsoft to reopen 3 mile island to power AI
the symbolism is 😗👌
archive link: https://archive.ph/jFO6f
The landmark ruling by Judge Amit P. Mehta was the first antitrust decision of the modern internet era in a case against a technology giant.
archive link
https://archive.ph/n3Ffq
> Judge Mehta’s Google decision is likely to be appealed. “Regardless of who wins or loses, this case probably has a date with the Supreme Court,” Mr. Kovacic said.
ah well
taking a peek at a subreddit for lovers of ai art
!"subreddit rules. Speak pro-ai thoughts freely."
DefendingAIArt is a subreddit run by mod "Trippy-Worlds," who also runs the debate sister subreddit AIWars. Some poking around made clear that AIWars is perfectly fine with having overt Nazis around, for example a guy with heil hitler in his name who accuses others of lying because they are "spiritually jewish." So we're off to a great start.
the first thing that drew my eye was this post from a would be employer:
not really clear what the title means, but this person seems to have had a string of encounters with the most based artists of all time.
also claims to have been called "racial and gender slurs" for using ai art and that he was "kicked out of 20 groups" and some other things. idk what to tell this guy, it legitimately does suck that wealthy people have the money to pay for lots of art and the rest of us don't
I really enjoyed browsing around this subreddit, and a big part of that was seeing how much the stigma around AI gets to people who want to use it. pouring contempt on this stuff is good for the world
the above guy would like to know what combination of buttons to press to counter the "that just sounds like stealing from artists" attack. a commenter leaps in to help and immediately impales himself:
!'just block and move on' 'these are my real life friends' 'oh...'
you hate to see it. another commenter points out that well ... maybe these people just aren't your friends
!'antis will always just stab you in the back'
to close out, an example of fearmongering:
Techno-utopianism and the path into darkness
This is an essay about 'village' vs 'control' techno-optimism I wrote for a class final in 2016. I was in undergrad etc etc but for 2016 I feel it had a lot of foresight, and there's still some bits here and there I haven't seen anyone else explicate. Thought some of you might be interested
rationalists discuss: does testosterone make you stupid?
Warning: This post might be depressing to read for everyone except trans women. Gender identity and suicide is discussed. This is all highly speculat…
saw this posted by @sailor_sega_saturn at https://awful.systems/comment/3871697
op has a simple question:
> Why are trans women so intellectually successful? They seem to be overrepresented 5-100x in eg cybersecurity twitter, mathy AI alignment, non-scam crypto twitter, math PhD programs, etc.
and a skull shaped answer:
> My theory is that too much testosterone makes you dumber, particularly during adolescence. You need a little for your cells & organs to work, but past a certain point it does more harm than good (for intelligence specifically — motivation & happiness etc aside). Apparently this is not a new theory and people have posited a U-shaped curve for how testosterone affects IQ. The key (sad) claim is that the vast majority of men are on the too-much-T side of the curve. Maybe trans women get the best of both worlds intellectually — a male skull with female chemistry.
our researcher sets about fending off possible objections:
> Why didn't evolution give females big heads if it would make them all geniuses? Another anecdote. My sister has a big head. She was valedictorian in high school I think. She hit her head one day in middle school during gym class by running into a wall. She also fell off a bike and hit her head in high school. I have never hit my head and I think the main reason is that my arms are strong enough to catch myself. So maybe the big headed women would-be-ancestors fell and hit their heads.
cites chatgpt for this:
> Do trans men get the worst of both worlds intellectually — female skulls and male chemistry? Yes.
demonstrates the exceptional explanatory power of his hypothesis:
> Why are really good tech founders so rare? You have to have very high power-seeking/initiative (T) and very high IQ. This is an incredibly rare combination because the testosterone murders your IQ. You have to be a genius before puberty hits. Helps if your brain/head is giant. Look at eg Elon Musk & Jeff Bezos.
describes the potential impact of his research:
> I suspect that some simple electrical stimulation in the womb could make infant females' skulls bigger and result in lots of genius women. If they don't fall off their bikes and hit their heads.
all time great footnotes:
> Thought of some more potential evidence. The smartest cis women I've known almost all had lack of butt (women's most visible muscle -- so low testosterone?)
> Later that day: i asked my sister. She said all her smart friends (men and women) lack butts too! She and I both have the butt, so we are speaking against our own kind here.
a commenter has an epistemically rigorous counterpoint:
> I don't understand why you need to invoke testosterone. Transgender brain is special, for example, transgender women have immunity to visual illusions.
another commenter objects to that, based on a deep dive into the literature:
> Can you source this claim? I've never heard it and GPT-4 says it has no scientific basis.
"well admittedly I made it up, but it seems plausible"
> Whoops, it's really looks like I imagined this claim to be backed more than by one SSC post. In my defense I say that this poll covered really existing thing like abnormal illusions processing in schizophrenics (see "Systematic review of visual illusions schizophrenia" Costa et al., 2023) and I think it's overall plausible.
archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20240706165407/https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BBCtWtg44Yeh6fire/is-being-a-trans-woman-or-just-low-t-20-iq
Recall uses AI features "to take images of your active screen every few seconds."
somehow I managed to miss this until now
Axon has been inviting police departments to webinars about the new AI-based product, which will automatically generate police reports based on bodycam audio, according to emails obtained by 404 Media.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240517214034/https://www.404media.co/here-is-what-axons-bodycam-report-writing-ai-looks-like-draft-one/
tl;dr ai will write up officer reports used to help convict people, based on bodycam audio. of course we can expect it to display the usual features of fictionalizing, bias and diffusion of accountability
special highlight: end of the article includes a comment from the EFF, imploring municipalities not to purchase this tech. company responds with a statement pitching the product to prosecutors. make your own inference about who has control over this decision
the most crypto thing I've ever seen that doesn't actually involve crypto
I've been reading through the top all time /r/hobbydrama posts and I keep coming back to this one. In a way, it's the best summary of the promises crypto makes I've seen. People buying fiefdoms in a game that doesn't exist because they so desperately want the experience of being kings, because they so desperately want to be the boot that grinds... it's beautiful to see this presented without the nonsense about supposed democratization or freedom.
the time capsule aspect is fascinating too. the layperson's innocence is now tainted by NFTs. you will never again see people struggle with the concept of this grift as purely as these posters did in 2017.
worst tech/crypto songs of all time?
inspired by
https://awful.systems/comment/2382662
from the link, we obtain HODL gang and versace bedouin (which might be the worst song I've ever heard period).
I would also like to add predatory capitalist feminism anthem WAGMI.
on an ideological level I would nominate the technofascist propaganda piece we appreciate power. banger tho
I'm imagining you right now
I'm doing it so skillfully. I'm totally basilisking you. isn't that scary
Law firm hired by Cruise says Cruise didn't mislead regulators, they just had trouble using the internet. Verge proceeds to repeat the claim uncritically
Cruise didn’t tell regulators its car dragged a pedestrian.
Actual framing:
> Cruise wasn’t hiding the pedestrian-dragging video from regulators — it just had bad internet / An independent review of an incident in which a driverless Cruise vehicle dragged a pedestrian over 20 feet concludes the company has connectivity issues.
My expectations for journalists are low but goddamn
archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20240126195607/https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/25/24050791/cruise-pedestrian-dragging-video-driverless-report
rationalist reaches the libertarian conclusion about child marriage
Summary: I have been working on a research project into the scale, tractability and neglectedness of child marriage. After 80 hours of research, I th…
saw this pointed out here and felt it deserved it's own post
let me mention that this is exactly the sort of argument I've seen pedophilia enthusiasts break out many times:
> hmm, we thoughtful inquirers should look at this incredibly tenous evidence I've curated. it raises questions about whether we should be superrrrr chill about sex with children. questions with answers that, I'm sold on!