(wonder how long it is before the US degrades far enough that other countries start ratcheting up border/traveller defenses, compared to the current ~free rein they have (which, y’know, was owed to years of hard and soft power that the orange man is also rapidly pissing away))

By my guess, not that long. If you have reports of American inadequacy during an outbreak (pretty likely), or horror stories of your countrymen getting persecuted (should be easy to find), you should have a solid political case for border lockdowns.

Focusing on Canada and Mexico specifically, I expect Canada will build its metaphorical walls first - the ongoing drug war in Mexico, plus the brutality of its cartels, will likely act to deter would-be American refugees from there.

Discovered a solid sneer online today, aptly titled “I Am An AI Hater”

OpenAI has stated its scanning users’ conversations (as if they weren’t already) and reporting conversations to the cops in response to the recent teen suicide I mentioned a couple days ago.

So, rather than let ChatGPT drive users to kill themselves, its just going to SWAT users and have the cops do the job.

(On an arguably more comedic note, the AI doomers are accusing OpenAI of betraying humankind.)

Ethan Marcotte’s given his thoughts on the new “America by Design” web page, noting how its shittiness aligns perfectly with the Trump administration’s values.

Besides, there’s better things to scam the Saudis with. Like getting them to put money into Newcastle United, an investment which earned us our first domestic trophy since 1955 and earned the club a whole lot of money in general.

To repeat: $43 billion in imaginary dollars beats $22.5 billion in real, actual dollars in your hands.

If this doesn’t sum up the entire bubble in a single sentence, I don’t know what does.

Quantum as a concept doesn’t really have any way to co-opt creativity that I can see - its a rather “science-y” concept in the public eye, far away from anything associated with the arts.

Probably won’t stop the hucksters, though - they’ll happily make shit up if it means butting in on artists’ turf.

It also wouldn’t give Microsoft something to justify AI’s existence with - they aren’t selling “automated Excel commands”, they’re selling “magical chatbots which do everything”.

I struggle to imagine what might supplant the HTML generator suggestion in the future.

I can’t really think of anything to supplant it either. The only addition I can think of would be some complementary arts education, to build students’ creative abilities and further highlight the expressive elements of software.

Found the original Tweet, with a reply from Yud himself:

Thought 1: This is the kind of incident that makes politicians vote for a law named after a dead kid. It behooves us to think of what kind of legislation could actually address the problem without becoming a clusterfuck that worsens everyone’s life, including children’s. cough #OnlineSafetyAct cough

A complete ban on chatbots/LLMs would be enough. These things have basically zero ethical use case, it’d be a net positive if they were legally wiped from existence.

Thought 2: Hey, all you guys using LLMs to replace opinion surveys or do “research” on social interactions because it’s cheaper than gathering real data… How many human beings talk like the suicide-encouragement bot here?

Against my better judgment, I decided to follow that link and check the quotes. Thankfully, there was nobody defending this - calling for a ban on AI, calling for ChatGPT’s shutdown, calling for Sam Altman to be charged, pretty much everyone was out for blood.

Thought 3: Oh, remember when OpenAI paid $10 million to buy off the American Federation of Teachers? Because Pepperidge Farm still has that browser tab open. Every school administrator who breathes a word about bringing “AI” into the classroom deserves to get lit up by parents asking why they are embracing suicide tech.

If I had written this article I’d just be telling people to ban python in coding education.

I’d be happy to hear your reasons why.

The NYT’s reported on the suicide of a 16-year old boy, noting how ChatGPT assisted him in said suicide and deterred him from seeking help.

This is not the first time a chatbot’s driven someone to suicide. And I fully expect it won’t be the last.

Textbook case of anthropomorphisation from The Guardian, trying to posit that AI systems are capable of feeling pain.

You want my unsolicited opinion, machines cannot feel pain/emotion, only imitate it, and the rise of LLMs have made this crystal clear. Much like with being creative or making art, feeling genuine emotion is the exclusive domain of human/animal minds.

Someone tried Adobe’s new Generative Fill “feature” (just the latest development in Adobe’s infatuation with AI) with the prompt “take this elf lady out of the scene”, and the results were…interesting:

There’s also an option to rate whatever the fill gets you, which I can absolutely see being used to sabotage the “feature”.

New Public Good newsletter, talking about YouTube editing users’ uploads without their permission/knowledge.

I’m now realizing most programmers haven’t done a manual labor task that’s important. Or lab science outside of maybe high school biology. And the complete lack of ability to put oneself in the shoes of another makes my rebuttals fall flat. To them everything is a nail and anything could be a hammer if it gets them paid to say so. Moving fast and breaking things works everywhere always.

On a semi-related sidenote, part of me feels that the AI bubble has turned programming into a bit of a cultural punchline.

On one front, the stench of Eau de Tech Asshole that AI creates has definitely rubbed off on the field, and all the programmers who worked at OpenAI et al. have likely painted it as complicit in the bubble’s harms.

On another front, the tech industry’s relentless hype around AI, combined with its myriad failures (both comical and nightmarish) have cast significant doubt on the judgment of tech as a whole (which has rubbed off on programming as well) - for issues of artistic judgment specifically, the slop-nami’s given people an easy way to dismiss their statements out of hand.

It would be extremely funny if your prompt injection near the end actually caught someone using the Comet Assistant.

(It probably won’t, given the Venn diagram of “Comet assistant users” and “Pivot to AI readers” is two circles places a mile apart)

No, I do this for the love of the game

New Ed Zitron: “How to Argue With An AI Booster”, an hour-long read dedicated to exactly what it says on the tin.