He proposed a moon cannon. The moon cannon was wrong, as wrong as thinking an LLM can have any fidelity whatsoever. That’s all that’s needed for my analogy to make the point I want to make. Whether rockets count as artillery or not really doesn’t change that.

Cannons are not rockets. LLMs are not thinking machines.

Being occasionally right like a stopped clock is not what “fidelity” means in this context. Fidelity implies some level of adherence to a model of the world, but the LLM simply has no model, so it has zero fidelity.

Interesting article, but you have to be aware of the flipside: “people said flight was impossible”, “people said the earth didn’t revolve around the sun”, “people said the internet was a fad, and now people think AI is a fad”.

It’s cherry-picking. They’re taking the relatively rare examples of transformative technology and projecting that level of impact and prestige onto their new favoured fad.

And here’s the thing, the “information superhighway” was a fad that also happened to be an important technology.

Also the rock argument vanishes the moment anyone arrives with actual reasoning that goes beyond the heuristic. So here’s some actual reasoning:

GenAI is interesting, but it has zero fidelity. Information without fidelity is just noise, so a system that can’t solve the fidelity problem can’t do information work. Information work requires fidelity.

And “fidelity” is just a fancy way of saying “truth”, or maybe “meaning”. Even as conscious beings we haven’t really cracked that issue, and I don’t think you can make a machine that understands meaning without creating AGI.

Saying we can solve the fidelity problem is like Jules Verne in 1867 saying we could get to the moon with a cannon because of “what progress artillery science has made during the last few years”. We’re just not there yet, and until we are, the cannon might have some uses, but it’s not space technology.

Interestingly, artillery science had its role in getting us to the moon, but that was because it gave us the rotating workpiece lathe for making smooth bore holes, which gave us efficient steam engines, which gave us the industrial revolution. Verne didn’t know it, but that critical development had already happened nearly a century prior. Cannons weren’t really a factor in space beyond that.

Edit: actually metallurgy and solid fuel propellants were crucial for space too, and cannons had a lot to do with that as well. This is all beside the point.

Most commercially produced media is slop. Porn isn’t special in that regard.

That doesn’t mean porn is somehow specially devoid of artistic merit. Done well it can be beautiful and meaningful.

You’ve got a stereotype in your head that was put there by a misogynistic culture, but that’s not inherent to the genre.

Who was that? I said sex is about interpersonal connection. I didn’t learn that from porn, I learned it from sex.

I trusted the audience to understand that good porn or erotica in general should be about portraying that connection in some form, which is what is actually hot about sex, but maybe I gave you too much credit.

But hey, if sexuality to you is really that shallow, you’re free to pity me, because I put absolutely no stock in your opinion.

I’d suggest that if you think AI porn is anywhere near the real thing, that’s probably because you think porn is already slop in the same way that these AI bros think of code or creative writing or whatever other information-based thing you already know AI can’t do well.

Porn isn’t slop, people aren’t just interestingly-shaped slabs of meat. Sex is fundamentally about interpersonal connection. It might be one of the things that LLMs and robots are the worst at.

You are not worth talking to.

People are being miseducated about what they can achieve by charlatans looking to make a quick buck before the hype bubble implodes, and the tech is helping cook the planet.

It’s not “fine”.

Which is also not a real use-case. Like, just check your work, you don’t need a tool for that.

Hell I don’t even use spell-check because it’s just distracting, and it’s a fundamentally wrong way to think about language.

I don’t remember those being particularly emphasised traits of his.

Not since after I saw this graph:

From this paper:

https://archive.org/details/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc/page/n7/mode/1up

This was published in 2014, back when Obama was in office.

The institutions are completely captured. Yes, even the ones you thought were on your side all this time.

Capital calls its own theft “innovation” and that of the individual “crime”.

Excrubulently.

I have absolutely no idea, I’ve barely played it, I just saw an essay about the design and thought it was cool.

I use ctrl-s and ctrl-z for occasions just like this.

Gotcha, so when the boss tells me to “give 110%” I can go ahead and translate that to 55%.

And then not do that either.

Cool thing about rain world is that it has a whole ecosystem of critters that run around and do their own thing independently of you, so this gif might just be of the big guy having a snack and have nothing to do with the player directly.

Friend of mine who’d been in the room for bone surgeries said it was basically just carpentry. All saws, drills & screws.

I don’t think you’re going to get more efficient than “Luigi” right now, which I think might just do it.

Honestly the cultural power that word has right now is inspiring. They are so afraid, and people are seeing that they’re afraid, and that has power in itself.

I mean that’s a growth market if you can convince people it’s something they need.

The best part is it’s outdoors, so the bugs will come back and then you get repeat business! I bet you even get some whales who get you out for it every month!

This is actually how “entrepreneurs” think. They’ll come up with these evil, manipulative schemes and think they’re being clever.

I don’t understand why you’re taking this so seriously. You said yourself it’s insignificant.

So if that’s the case why not let it go? Is getting the last word important to you even though the discussion isn’t?