blakestacey

joined 2 years ago
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[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 12 points 1 week ago

Previously sneered:

The context for this essay is serious, high-stakes communication: papers, technical blog posts, and tweet threads.

More recently, in the comments:

After reading your comments and @Jiro 's below, and discussing with LLMs on various settings, I think I was too strong in saying....

It's like watching people volunteer for a lobotomy.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 10 points 1 week ago

Kaneda just scooting to the side at the 14:05 mark like a Looney Tunes character caught with their pants down is comedy gold. I want to loop it with a MIDI rendition of Joplin's "The Entertainer".

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 10 points 1 week ago

The top comment begins thusly:

I think you make a reasonably compelling case, but when I think about the practicality of this in my own life it's pretty hard to imagine not spending any time talking to chatbots. ChatGPT, Claude and others are extremely useful.

I didn't think it was possible, but the perfection continues! Still, no notes!

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 15 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

This N is too small: ~N~

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 22 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Paragraph 2:

METR funded 16 experienced open-source developers with “moderate AI experience” to do what they do.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 18 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-study/

When developers are allowed to use AI tools, they take 19% longer to complete issues—a significant slowdown that goes against developer beliefs and expert forecasts. This gap between perception and reality is striking: developers expected AI to speed them up by 24%, and even after experiencing the slowdown, they still believed AI had sped them up by 20%.

womp, hold on let me finish, womp

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 16 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JspxcjkvBmye4cW4v/asking-for-a-friend-ai-research-protocols

Multiple people are quietly wondering if their AI systems might be conscious. What's the standard advice to give them?

Touch grass. Touch all the grass.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 14 points 2 weeks ago

Dorkus malorkus alert:

When my grandmother quit being a nurse to become a stay at home mother, it was seen like a great thing. She gained status over her sisters, who stayed single and in their careers.

Fitting into your societal pigeonhole is not the same as gaining status, ya doofus.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Another comment that has been getting downvotes and tut-tuts begins,

The only thing that will raise fertility rates is to make it more affordable to have a child.

(Robot Santa voice) Wanting all women to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen? Evil! Not providing footnotes in your reply to a blog post? EXACTLY AS EVIL

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 10 points 2 weeks ago

Any time somebody edits a post to talk about the downvotes, it's cursed gold.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 14 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

In the morning: we are thrilled to announce this new opportunity for AI in the classroom

In the afternoon:

Someone finally flipped a switch. As of a few minutes ago, Grok is now posting far less often on Hitler, and condemning the Nazis when it does, while claiming that the screenshots people show it of what it's been saying all afternoon are fakes.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yet Rationalists I spoke with said they didn’t see targeted violence — bombing data centers, say — as a solution to the problem.

ahem

 

Many magazines have closed their submission portals because people thought they could send in AI-written stories.

For years I would tell people who wanted to be writers that the only way to be a writer was to write your own stories because elves would not come in the night and do it for you.

With AI, drunk plagiaristic elves who cannot actually write and would not know an idea or a sentence if it bit their little elvish arses will actually turn up and write something unpublishable for you. This is not a good thing.

 

Tesla's troubled Cybertruck appears to have hit yet another speed bump. Over the weekend, dozens of waiting customers reported that their impending deliveries had been canceled due to "an unexpected delay regarding the preparation of your vehicle."

Tesla has not announced an official stop sale or recall, and as of now, the reason for the suspended deliveries is unknown. But it's possible the electric pickup truck has a problem with its accelerator. [...] Yesterday, a Cybertruck owner on TikTok posted a video showing how the metal cover of his accelerator pedal allegedly worked itself partially loose and became jammed underneath part of the dash. The driver was able to stop the car with the brakes and put it in park. At the beginning of the month, another Cybertruck owner claimed to have crashed into a light pole due to an unintended acceleration problem.

Meanwhile, layoffs!

 

Google Books is indexing low quality, AI-generated books that will turn up in search results, and could possibly impact Google Ngram viewer, an important tool used by researchers to track language use throughout history.

 

[Eupalinos of Megara appears out of a time portal from ancient Ionia] Wow, you guys must be really good at digging tunnels by now, right?

 

In October, New York City announced a plan to harness the power of artificial intelligence to improve the business of government. The announcement included a surprising centerpiece: an AI-powered chatbot that would provide New Yorkers with information on starting and operating a business in the city.

The problem, however, is that the city’s chatbot is telling businesses to break the law.

 

a lesswrong: 47-minute read extolling the ambition and insights of Christopher Langan's "CTMU"

a science blogger back in the day: not so impressed

[I]t’s sort of like saying “I’m going to fix the sink in my bathroom by replacing the leaky washer with the color blue”, or “I’m going to fly to the moon by correctly spelling my left leg.”

Langan, incidentally, is a 9/11 truther, a believer in the "white genocide" conspiracy theory and much more besides.

 

Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid!

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut'n'paste it into its own post, there’s no quota here and the bar really isn't that high

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

 

If you've been around, you may know Elsevier for surveillance publishing. Old hands will recall their running arms fairs. To this storied history we can add "automated bullshit pipeline".

In Surfaces and Interfaces, online 17 February 2024:

Certainly, here is a possible introduction for your topic:Lithium-metal batteries are promising candidates for high-energy-density rechargeable batteries due to their low electrode potentials and high theoretical capacities [1], [2].

In Radiology Case Reports, online 8 March 2024:

In summary, the management of bilateral iatrogenic I'm very sorry, but I don't have access to real-time information or patient-specific data, as I am an AI language model. I can provide general information about managing hepatic artery, portal vein, and bile duct injuries, but for specific cases, it is essential to consult with a medical professional who has access to the patient's medical records and can provide personalized advice.

Edit to add this erratum:

The authors apologize for including the AI language model statement on page 4 of the above-named article, below Table 3, and for failing to include the Declaration of Generative AI and AI-assisted Technologies in Scientific Writing, as required by the journal’s policies and recommended by reviewers during revision.

Edit again to add this article in Urban Climate:

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines HW as “Sustained periods of uncharacteristically high temperatures that increase morbidity and mortality”. Certainly, here are a few examples of evidence supporting the WHO definition of heatwaves as periods of uncharacteristically high temperatures that increase morbidity and mortality

And this one in Energy:

Certainly, here are some potential areas for future research that could be explored.

Can't forget this one in TrAC Trends in Analytical Chemistry:

Certainly, here are some key research gaps in the current field of MNPs research

Or this one in Trends in Food Science & Technology:

Certainly, here are some areas for future research regarding eggplant peel anthocyanins,

And we mustn't ignore this item in Waste Management Bulletin:

When all the information is combined, this report will assist us in making more informed decisions for a more sustainable and brighter future. Certainly, here are some matters of potential concern to consider.

The authors of this article in Journal of Energy Storage seems to have used GlurgeBot as a replacement for basic formatting:

Certainly, here's the text without bullet points:

 

In which a man disappearing up his own asshole somehow fails to be interesting.

 

So, there I was, trying to remember the title of a book I had read bits of, and I thought to check a Wikipedia article that might have referred to it. And there, in "External links", was ... "Wikiversity hosts a discussion with the Bard chatbot on Quantum mechanics".

How much carbon did you have to burn, and how many Kenyan workers did you have to call the N-word, in order to get a garbled and confused "history" of science? (There's a lot wrong and even self-contradictory with what the stochastic parrot says, which isn't worth unweaving in detail; perhaps the worst part is that its statement of the uncertainty principle is a blurry JPEG of the average over all verbal statements of the uncertainty principle, most of which are wrong.) So, a mediocre but mostly unremarkable page gets supplemented with a "resource" that is actively harmful. Hooray.

Meanwhile, over in this discussion thread, we've been taking a look at the Wikipedia article Super-recursive algorithm. It's rambling and unclear, throwing together all sorts of things that somebody somewhere called an exotic kind of computation, while seemingly not grasping the basics of the ordinary theory the new thing is supposedly moving beyond.

So: What's the worst/weirdest Wikipedia article in your field of specialization?

 

The day just isn't complete without a tiresome retread of freeze peach rhetorical tropes. Oh, it's "important to engage with and understand" white supremacy. That's why we need to boost the voices of white supremacists! And give them money!

 

With the OpenAI clownshow, there's been renewed media attention on the xrisk/"AI safety"/doomer nonsense. Personally, I've had a fresh wave of reporters asking me naive questions (as well as some contacts from old hands who are on top of how to handle ultra-rich man-children with god complexes).

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