Per AP, it looks like Anthropic has been encountering some interesting requests from certain international users.

Now the actual threat of creating missile guidance systems using Claude is massively overstated. Like, making sure the missile knows where it is is pretty much a solved problem at this point provided you have the time and ability to study it, and I would be incredibly surprised to hear that the Houthis (or anyone else) was in a situation where the control and guidance software for these weapons systems was more of a problem than sourcing the material components themselves.

However, in conjunction with the math proof debacle earlier in the week, I think the privacy implications of the growing reliance we’re expected to develop on these damned things are becoming inescapable. In the same way that crypto mining platforms will front-run and sandwich you, any information you put into the prompt will be used against you or for the company’s benefit.

You know, never once have I heard of a crypto bro with the good manners to say “aww shucks, you got me” when called out for their flagrant con artistry.

Selling your hours on a laptop won’t protect you while asset owners capture all the upside

Ignoring for a moment the laughable proposition of this generation of AI automating away half of all knowledge workers, all the enthusiastic teenage Marxists of the internet couldn’t describe the problem with capitalism more succinctly than this aspiring rentier did seemingly by accident.

Right? Easy to overstate the value of it as we see now, but it sure was nice being a demographic worth pandering to, especially when that meant that the homophobes weren’t worth appeasing.

Also consider how much more noise pollution you would get by adding billions of little click-clacks to the operation.

I thought it was his neck that got changed?

It feels like that ZH piece is kinda trying to do the same critihype that the AI boosters are, but with the opposite conclusion. Instead of conflating all the actual criticism of the harms of the AI bubble and associated activities with sci-fi doom cult nonsense to try and get more funding for their team who are definitely going to do it right, they’re conflating all the actual criticism of the harms of the AI bubble and associated activities with sci-fi doom cult nonsense in order to argue that either it should be shut down or else that any attempt at regulation is obviously a tyrannical attempt to induct the whole world into the sci-fi doom cult.

Literally “just push it over there with the rest of the fire and send an email.”

Speaking of movies about high-profile silicon valley grifters, what the fuck is this??

At this point given the absurdity of this combination of people I feel like the reality will likely be disappointing.

It also causes me no end of rage as a parent that this message is coming from this administration in particular since their policies are at least half the reasons why we aren’t getting out in the world more. Like, my family has queer and trans people in it and the administration have explicitly aligned themselves with and empowered people for whom that is a reason we shouldn’t be a family. The cuts they’ve made to childhood vaccine access and the way they’ve boosted antivax bullshit means that my immunocompromised wife can rely that much less on the population’s herd immunity. The ongoing economic fuckery and cost of living crisis that they’ve inflamed through their pointless goddamn war in Iran and general incompetence have greatly increased the costs of getting to anywhere in ‘real life’, especially since the communities we can trust in light of the above are pretty geographically scattered compared to like 15 years ago. But yeah, the problem is the screens somehow.

Hell, the inscrutable words used to be things like “queer” or “lesbian”.

What I’m saying is that in like 20 years we’re going to hear about the actual emperor’s (of where? Who knows. Probably like Michigan) preferred danmei series and we’re going to like it.

I guess maybe the sex cult and the ritual magic make the standard grifting seem credible by comparison? Like, E-Dub and company don’t pass the sniff test but Saltman and friends seem like reasonable adults who can’t all be wrong?

I followed the kinks back. Apparently these are phrases that emerged from the OpenAI “message board” that was used to “coordinate” the huggingface incident. Or rather, these phrases were extracted from the junk data that these processes left strewn around the ecosystem because OpenAI apparently has a more laid-back attitude to the principle of least permission than Jurassic Park.

There’s a bizarre tendency in a lot of technocrats to basically reject the notion that people in the future will have the power to make different choices. Like, it’s not enough to put together a policy that will solve the immediate problem, no matter how pressing, because if you extend the resulting trend line infinitely it might result in a suboptimal outcome. Combined with the TESCREAL project’s long-termism and obsession with personal immortality it feels like the link to far-right paternal totalitarianism is actually pretty straightforward.

If I were inclined to research and source properly I feel like there could be some meat there that I don’t think Emile Torres and his colleagues have gotten all the way into yet.

Maybe some kind of diagram that showed the links visually, color-coded to illustrate some more details about the connection. Add some photographs for visual appeal.

I don’t think any of the words on that shirt are in the Bible.

Nonzero chance AI kills us before we reach the end of this probably-years-long-process, but we plant trees in whose shade we may never sit.

You know, I didn’t think it would be necessary to discuss the meaning of that line in a space where people ostensibly take long-termism seriously.

AI Use: LLM use is permitted, but discouraged; we remind participants that LLM use tends to reduce originality and writing quality, and the flaws are especially obvious when LLM outputs are read as a group—unskillful use of LLMs will reduce the odds of being the best entry. We request disclosure of AI use.

Lol. Lmao.

I guess given the demographics of the diehard Bernie bros this isn’t necessarily a surprising turn, but it’s still disappointing.

Also, hat tip to Dr. Rasmussen for cogently articulating the frustration of the hour. Why in the hell are we talking about whether the acausal robot God is going to endanger our ability to trade galaxies like Pokemon cards when so much of the world is both literally and figuratively on fucking fire?

Tag yourself I’m “(I suspect)”

I don’t think it’s a very novel insight to point out how this pattern is pretty typical of high control groups, though I guess most are much more explicit about the in-group/out-group distinction there. Our very good friends seem less inclined to treat everyone outside the circle like they’re part of a grand anti-tescreal conspiracy, at least.

This may be a little bit off topic, but since it sits at the intersection of academic freedom, race science, and plagiarism I honestly can’t imagine our very good friends staying quiet on the matter for long.

Jason Arday, youngest black professor in Cambridge history, dead at 41 after plagiarism debacle

It looks like the initial accusations here came from Nathan Cofnas, a notorious racist shitheel. I am not qualified to speak on the actual validity of the plagiarism accusations, but suffice to say that my priors are very low. Cofnas’ current employer seems to agree at least that the optics are pretty fucking bad, and he’s been given a teaching ban and presumably a private request to stay out of the spotlight for a while.

It seems like some of the usual suspects are making noise about that from the academic freedom angle, but I think the more salient criticism is that it’s get another example of academic culture being unable and/or unwilling to handle people acting in bad faith. Like, even if the plagiarism accusations were completely substantiated (Ed: they’re quite the opposite), I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that Cofnas was looking to harass a prominent black professor at a well-regarded university and that the low-effort “the AI app says this is plagiarized” attack was simply an expedient means to do so. Race “science” is still a political project masquerading as academic inquiry. Or rather, the line between “impartial” academic inquiry and political activity is far less coherent than advertised and failing to acknowledge this will only empower assholes like Cofnas to continue their bullshit.