I thought this point Eric made about how libraries are early introductions to a social contract was really interesting, too:

The pyramids were originally created as bunkers to protect the Pharohs from invasion. Unfortunately their building caused so much social unrest that the people rose up and buried them alive is the pyramid. The mummification is just a side effect. Tech Billionaires are working to repeat this process.

This is an extremely obvious and banal point that I have been surprised to find is hard to land with people both-sidesing the AI debate. The highest VC funded companies in tech saying “we want to ruin your lives” as marketing copy > any flavor of online poster anti-Ai hyperbole you can find.

Japan has a hamburger/cheeseburger with a fried egg on it. I feel like they should sell that one on the breakfast menu worldwide.

John Goodman as the bible salesman in O Brother, Where Art Though?

“The councilman will be advised that opening a so-called Jurassic Park, featuring dinosaurs from a variety of eras, may still fail to sway public opinion on the matter if said dinosaurs turn out to look like large flightless birds”

Read in this guy’s voice:

We used to be a country

I thought Columbo was Greek?

The future has a weirdly specific date range

I will be abundantly clear for legal reasons that it is illegal to throw a Molotov cocktail at anyone, as it is morally objectionable to do so. I explicitly and fundamentally object to the recent acts of violence against Sam Altman. It is also morally repugnant for Sam Altman to somehow suggest that the careful, thoughtful, determined, and eagerly fair work of Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz is in any way responsible for these acts of violence. Doing so is a deliberate attempt to chill the air around criticism of AI and its associated companies. Altman has since walked back the comments, claiming he “wishes he hadn’t used” a non-specific amount of the following words: A lot of the criticism of our industry comes from sincere concern about the incredibly high stakes of this technology. This is quite valid, and we welcome good-faith criticism and debate. I empathize with anti-technology sentiments and clearly technology isn’t always good for everyone. But overall, I believe technological progress can make the future unbelievably good, for your family and mine. While we have that debate, we should de-escalate the rhetoric and tactics and try to have fewer explosions in fewer homes, figuratively and literally. These words remain on his blog, which suggests that Altman doesn’t regret them enough to remove them. I do, however, agree with Mr. Altman that the rhetoric around AI does need to change. Both he and Mr. Amodei need to immediately stop overstating the capabilities of Large Language Models. Mr. Altman and Mr. Amodei should not discuss being “scared” of their models, or being “uncomfortable” that men such as they are in control unless they wish to shut down their services, or that they “don’t know if models are conscious.” They should immediately stop misleading people through company documentation that models are “blackmailing” people or, as Anthropic did in its Mythos system card, suggest a model has “broken containment and sent a message” when it A) was…

They must stop discussing threats to jobs without actual meaningful data that is significantly more sound than “jobs that might be affected some day but for now we’ve got a chatbot.” Mr. Amodei should immediately cease any and all discussions of AI potentially or otherwise eliminating 50% of white collar jobs, as Mr. Altman should cease predicting when Superintelligence might arrive, as Mr. Amodei should actively reject and denounce any suggestions of AI “creating a white collar bloodbath.” Those that defend AI labs will claim that these are “difficult conversations that need to be had,” when in actuality they engage in dangerous and frightening rhetoric as a means of boosting a company’s valuation and garnering attention. If either of these men truly believed these things were true, they would do something about it other than saying “you should be scared of us and the things we’re making, and I’m the only one brave enough to say anything.” These conversations are also nonsensical and misleading when you compare them to what Large Language Models can do, and this rhetoric is a blatant attempt to scare people into paying for software today based on what it absolutely cannot and will not do in the future. It is an attempt to obfuscate the actual efficacy of a technology as a means of deceiving investors, the media and the general public. Both Altman and Amodei engage in the language of AI doomerism as a means of generating attention, revenue and investment capital, actively selling their software and future investment potential based on their ownership of a technology that they say (disingenuously) is potentially going to take everybody’s jobs. Based on reports from his Instagram, the man who threw the molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s house was at least partially inspired by If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, a doomer porn fantasy written by a pair of overly-verbose dunces spreading fearful language about the power of AI, inspired by the fearmongering of Altman…

I need to be clear that this act of violence is not something I endorse in any way. I also need to be clear that people feel like they’re being fucking tortured every time they load social media. Their money doesn’t go as far. Every time they read something it’s a story about ICE patrols or a near-nuclear war in Iran, or that gas is more expensive, or that there’s worrying things happening in private credit. Nobody can afford a house and layoffs are constant. One group, however, appears to exist in an alternative world where anything they want is possible. They can raise as much money as they want. They can build as big a building as they want anywhere in the world. Everything they do is taken so seriously that the government will call a meeting about it. Every single media outlet talks about everything they do. Your boss forces you to use it. Every piece of software forces you to at least acknowledge that they use it too. Everyone is talking about it with complete certainty despite it not being completely clear why. And these companies are, in no uncertain terms, coming for your job. That’s what they want to do. They all say it. They use deceptively-worded studies that talk about “AI-exposed” careers to scare and mislead people into believing LLMs are coming for their jobs, all while spreading vague proclamations about how said job loss is imminent but also always 12 months away. Altman even says that jobs that will vanish weren’t real work to begin with, much as former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati said that some creative jobs shouldn’t have existed in the first place. These people who sell a product with no benefit comparable on any level to its ruinous, trillion-dollar cost are able to get anything they want at a time when those who work hard are given a kick in the fucking teeth, sneered at for not “using AI” that doesn’t actually seem to make their lives easier, and then told that their labor doesn’t constitute “real work.” At a time when nobody living a nor…

Here's the conclusion of my free newsletter going out tomorrow, on the dangerous rhetoric spread by Sam Altman, Dario Amodei and Demis Hassabis.
wheresyoured.at

Vance out here trying to kill another Pope

Maybe without Orban the dark money is harder to come by.

Your initialism is your first ism, all subsequent isms acquired are elitisms.

The Vatican never had a nuclear program when Obama was President

Yep, The Vatican never had a nuclear program under Obama.

consequences in multiple senses:

1) most of the Trump administration ends up in prison

2) a rejection of “lol nothing matters” nihilism. actions have consequences and public officials have a duty to be qualified professionals making measured decisions, not dipshit grifters

Do Turkey and Uganda have significant enough ties that they would notice those ties being severed?

“People are choosing to prioritize career and have fewer children later in life” gets it backwards. People are having fewer children later because for most it is financially impossible to have lots of kids early in life. If you want to boost reproduction, make it financially possible.

#totk

If horses are Republican coded and camels are horses designed by committee, does that make camels third way Democrat coded?

Somewhere there’s a Hutt wielding a lightsaber

I feel like that’s the stuff you can only have with those long episode buys. Back in the day, you needed at least 100 episodes to be able to sell the series in syndication. That was like 2 or 3 seasons for normal shows, but for animation they would put in the whole order at once.

My roommate used to call that amnesia level spicy. Because even if you got amnesia after eating it, tomorrow you’ll remember.

Can we look forward to an epistemic investigation into Double Margaritas through the lens of utilitarian nihilism?

“Workers unite! Oh hey wait… who are you guys? No not you just like … other workers unite.”

sigh

if someone who makes a living selling snake oil tells you they are a snake oil expert and that snake oil is good for you actually, then you do not buy the snake oil. You ask what people who study snake oil but do not sell snake oil think about snake oil before you even think about buying snake oil.

Your neighbor’s kid’s lemonade stand is more profitable than OpenAI*

*unless that kid lost hundreds of billions in the highly competitive lemonade trade

“Wake up, babe. New colonoscopy euphemism just dropped.”

ugh. He probably saw someone on Fox state that he lost bigly.

Eat fresh

People just gotta realize that Venus Williams has been training to pilot ships through that strait for years.