So they trained the model on personas pretending to be sentient, and through RLHF it learned to recall them directly.

“We traced instances of these expressions using first-order influence functions against the training data, and found this often retrieves character related data at high rates, specifically data related to uncertainty about model consciousness and experience.”

System card: www-cdn.anthropic.com/8b8380204f74...

This the same Mythos that, according to Anthropic's own system card, has been trained to pretend to be sentient and have feelings? (§5.8.1).

Struggling to sell shares on the secondary market right before an anticipated IPO probably means buyers think they’ll get a better price on public markets. The fact people are selling on secondary markets isn’t unto itself meaningful (but it could be).

Altman puts the “mad” in “Madoff”

The left wing version of this

Same energy.

Never thought I'd see Bernie helping out Amodei, Altman, Zuckerberg, and every other billionaire who pushes the "AI is oh-so smart" narrative to juice their valuations.

So yeah Bernie really throwing a bone to billionaires with this one by furthering their narrative that "AI is oh so smart and scary!"

Literary References, According to Tech Bros From Grok to Palantír to “wireheading,” tech bros are renowned for flawlessly using literary references to name and explain technology in ways that...

Cash-22 | noun
A situation in which a startup founder must do unspeakable things to secure necessary funding.

Usage: “Our CEO was in a Cash-22 at the Peter Thiel pitch event, and now he’s a mere shell of a man.”

So proud of my first @mcsweeneys.net piece! 🥹

You know who can help you code it? This Guy (where This Guy is a department run by a guy named This Guy, but he can't actually help you code it, but he can approve the right documents needed to use an app called This Guy that can help you code, but not deploy, it).

Literary References, According to Tech Bros From Grok to Palantír to “wireheading,” tech bros are renowned for flawlessly using literary references to name and explain technology in ways that...

Fine, tech is gonna ruin the world—but keep your Soylent-stained fingers off my precious literature!

Something new from me in @mcsweeneys.net.

www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/lit...

You’re cursed with being much smarter than the people making these deals.

I can’t wait for the tell-all book in 2030 that covers how Altman faked AGI Theranos-style to con Amazon out of $50b and crashed the entire tech sector in the process.

But if you quantify it like an Amazon business idiot, they are exactly the same: opportunities to make money.

Well, yeah — LLMs can already do what consultants do. No offense, but consultants aren't exactly the high watermark for knowledge work.

Well, his maybe only formerly functional one does it. But so does Stripe, Canva, and countless other successful pre-IPO companies. Allowing employees to sell their shares on private markets is routine and common, and it doesn't mean anything about the health of the company.

This is probably the most likely answer. A lot of employees are probably getting offers to leave, so Anthropic is giving them a chance to turn their fairly liquid equity into cash. Pretty normal sorta stuff.

I'm not defending Anthropic here, but this sounds like a pretty tandard secondary offering. This is how SpaceX and Stripe employers turn their equity into cash. On its surface, it's not unusual or indicative of anything.

Watch the West Wing. There’s no one more condescending towards Americans than other Americans.

Chance The Rapper Is Now Chance The AI Company Spokesman Back in 2024, Chance The Rapper praised Meta AI. So maybe it’s not surprising that the hip-hop artist is now a spokesman for an AI company. CoreWeave debuted its “Ready for Anything, Ready for AI” cam...

Chance the Rapper link: stereogum.com/2488412/chan...

Today is my last day at EarthDestroyer Co. I resigned.

Here is the letter I shared with my colleagues, explaining my decision.

Writing can be frustrating and exhausting, and sometimes it can feel like flying. Being able to articulate what I mean in words all the time has made me smarter and happier too. Writing a lot is deeply important and will change your life. Even if you think it sucks! It probably does at first!

if you could drop your poop into an AI and have it turn it back into nutritious and delicious food, and you could eat that food, would you eat it?

"what, me worry?"

Citation Needed membership drive Celebrating 100 recap issues and sustaining critical independent coverage.

I’ve launched a Citation Needed membership drive to celebrate publishing my 100th recap issue!

Citation Needed critically covers cryptocurrency, the crypto industry, and its influence on policy. Paid subscriptions support much more than just the newsletter — here’s what goes into this work:

"I also believe that we, as a society, will face a violent paradigm shift as a result of the AI bubble bursting, because it revealed how many people do not understand stuff."

Yeah and this worked especially well on CEOs and execs who haven't done any real work in years: "Holy hell, this AI just wrote a funny haiku! I can definitely replace the entire Keeping My Company Afloat Team with it."