TechTakes

if you saw that post making its rounds in the more susceptible parts of tech mastodon about how AI’s energy use isn’t that bad actually, here’s an excellent post tearing into it. predictably, the original post used a bunch of LWer tricks to replace numbers with vibes in an effort to minimize the damage being done by the slop machines currently being powered by such things as 35 illegal gas turbines, coal, and bespoke nuclear plants, with plans on the table to quickly renovate old nuclear plants to meet the energy demand. but sure, I’m certain that can be ignored because hey look over your shoulder is that AGI in a funny hat?

Saw a six day old post on linkedin that I’ll spare you all the exact text of. Basically it goes like this:

“Claude’s base system prompt got leaked! If you’re a prompt fondler, you should read it and get better at prompt fondling!”

The prompt clocks in at just over 16k words (as counted by the first tool that popped up when I searched “word count url”). Imagine reading 16k words of verbose guidelines for a machine to make your autoplag slightly more claude shaped than, idk, chatgpt shaped.

LWer suggests people who believe in AI doom make more efforts to become (internet) famous. Apparently not bombing on Lex Fridman's snoozecast, like Yud did, is the baseline.

The community awards the post one measly net karma point, and the lone commenter scoffs at the idea of trying to convince the low-IQ masses to the cause. In their defense, Vanguardism has been tried before with some success.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qcKcWEosghwXMLAx9/doomers-should-try-much-harder-to-get-famous

Quick update on the Conover Catastrophe: the man's making an attempt to recover his dignity:

Not sure if satire. https://carebestie.com/

Beff back at it again threatening his doxxer. Nitter link

New piece from Brian Merchant: De-democratizing AI, which is primarily about the GOP's attempt to ban regulations on AI, but also touches on the naked greed and lust for power at the core of the AI bubble.

EDIT: Also, that title's pretty clever

Satya Nadella: "I'm an email typist."

Grand Inquisitor: "HE ADMITS IT!"

https://bsky.app/profile/reckless.bsky.social/post/3lpazsmm7js2s

More of a notedump than a sneer. I have been saying every now and then that there was research and stuff showing that LLMs require exponentially more effort for linear improvements. This is post by Iris van Rooij (Professor of Computational Cognitive Science) mentions something like that (I said something different, but The intractability proof/Ingenia theorem might be useful to look into): https://bsky.app/profile/irisvanrooij.bsky.social/post/3lpe5uuvlhk2c

Local war profiteer goes on podcast to pitch an unaccountable fortress-state around active black site (what I assume is to do Little St James-type activities under the pretext of continued Yankee meddling)

Link to Xitter here (quoted within a delicious sneer to boot)