https://futurism.com/openai-investor-chatgpt-mental-health

(From last year…)

That’s all well and good, but I think he needs to take a closer look at some of the resulting prose and clarify a little more. Most of it is good, but there are some unclear statements, like this (right after his descriptions of “Camp A” and “Camp B”):

> Sutton says Camp B wins. My essay was filed under Camp A. But decision theory belongs to neither camp.

The second sentence quoted above doesn’t specify, but I’m pretty sure it means that it was filed under Camp A by the commenters, and incorrectly at that. If so, it would probably read better as:

> Sutton says Camp B wins. Commenters seemed to file my essay under Camp A, and then dismissed it. But that’s incorrect; decision theory belongs to neither camp.

Or something along those lines.

I honestly think this isn’t nit-picky feedback, either. This is a crucial set of sentences which appear to lay out the main point of the essay, so it’s vitally important that they be clear … who “filed” it as a particular camp, and was that correct or incorrect? It should be revised to convey that, as well as better connecting that to what incorrect conclusions might have been drawn from that. The information can be gleaned from the surrounding context of course, but I found that crucial sentence to throw off the flow what was otherwise a really great essay.

Who seriously claimed that it “cures cancer”? There have been some claims that it helps alleviate nausea associated with chemotherapy, which is quite reasonable and will likely be proved out by evidence over time.

Really … who genuinely claimed it “cures” cancer?

https://www.reddit.com/r/codex/s/Y52yB6Fg3A

I pretty much never even went there for technical topics at all, just funny memes and such, but one day recently I started seeing crazy AI hype stories getting posted, and sadly I made a huge mistake and I clicked on one once, and now it’s all I get.

Endless posts from subs like r/agi, r/singularity, as well as the various product specific subs (for Claude, OpenAI, etc). These aren’t even links to external articles, these are supposedly personal accounts of someone being blown away by what the latest release of this or that model or tool can do. Every single one of these posts boils down to some irritating “game over for software engineers” hype fest, sometimes with skeptical comments calling out the clearly AI-generated text and overblown claims, sometimes not. Usually comments pointing out flaws in whatever’s being hyped are just dismissed with a hand wave about how the flaw may have been true at one time, but the latest and greatest version has no such flaws and is truly miraculous, even if it’s just a minor update for that week. It’s always the same pattern.

There’s clearly a lot of astroturfing going on.

X link: https://x.com/paulg/status/2008989862725341658

Screenshot: https://old.reddit.com/r/GenZ/comments/1q6zgq5/theres_someth...

Capitalists always hate capitalism when it comes to employees getting paid what they are worth. If the market will bear it, he should embrace it and stop whining.

> And then I saw this in the Google I/O keynote a few weeks ago, in a blink and you’ll miss it moment! There’s a pelican riding a bicycle! They’re on to me. I’m going to have to switch to something else.

Yeah this touches on an issue that makes it very difficult to have a discussion in public about AI capabilities. Any specific test you talk about, no matter how small … if the big companies get wind of it, it will be RLHF’d away, sometimes to the point of absurdity. Just refer to the old “count the ‘r’s in strawberry” canard for one example.

That angle unfortunately just doesn’t give me much hope.

The best we can hope for is to all end up in permanent slums picking through garbage to survive.

One peep of protest a little too loud and suddenly we’ll all be living the same scenario that’s visible all over the “combat footage” portions of the web: you are walking along outdoors, you hear a buzz, and then suddenly you look up to realize there’s a drone coming at you. You panic and try to run but by the time you hear it, it’s too late. It catches up to you easily and drops a bomb on you. Or maybe it’s a smaller more targeted (and disposable) one that zips straight at your forehead and explodes on contact, destroying your brain.

People may say I’m a doomsayer but just look back at the history of labor in the US. They sent out privatized security to shoot anyone who didn’t cooperate. And that was when they still needed the workers! Just imagine what they’ll do when they no longer need anyone!

Richard Edlund’s team’s work on various films of the 80s was impeccable (including Ghostbusters, Die Hard, Big Trouble in Little China, and more). They were the inheritor of the crown of high quality 65mm VFX after Douglas Trumbull quit the business (the pinnacle of his work being films like Blade Runner and Brainstorm).

I have to wonder what was wrong that caused the last minute switch to ILM!

Prove it.

They keep saying “fraud” without proof of anything other than just spending they disagree with. Spending, I might add, which was previously duly authorized by Congress.

The use of the word “fraud” is a smoke screen. To unquestioningly accept it is to be complicit in their lies. And that’s what they’re doing: lying.

If there really is fraud, let’s see it prosecuted via due process, like it should be. The fact that that isn’t happening speaks volumes.