TechTakes

what the fuck, who's tweeting this on his behalf and what is it meant to accomplish?

an oppositional culture

[enraged goose meme] "Oppositional to what, motherfucker? Oppositional to what?!"

Read here a worthwhile deconstruction of Hanania's bullshit by John Ganz: https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/enough

These stiff-armed salutes are not expressions of sincere Nazism but an oppositional culture that, like a rebel band that keeps wearing fatigues after victory, has failed to realize it’s no longer in the opposition.

"Keep wearing", so is he saying that Musk et al "keep doing" "stiff-armed salutes" (that anyone with eyes can see are Nazi salutes) in public?

I know one shouldn't expect logic from a Nazi, but claiming that the fog horn is actually a dog whistle is really ridiculous. "You heard nothing!"

How is Hanania the "ex" Nazi a credible source on this at all? For fucks sake!

The Luigi thing is already souring on me a bit as a saw a yter use his actions to threaten gaming companies. (And it wasnt even some super predatory gaming company it was really a "wtf dude" moment. Dont get me wrong im not mourning the CEO, and the McDonald's guy was wrong, but jesus fuck Gamers ruin everything.

E: And it wasn't even about Fortnite, or Roblox like those predatory goes after kids things, nope just some dumb live service game with a cosmetics store badly bolted on in a corner. Sure horse armor sucks, but damn touch some grass and note the difference between lifetimes in debt or die and paying for overprices skins.

Wow, they invented a way to make people feel good about getting a PIP

The whole email thing does resemble Morton's fork:

1. See! They didn't answer the email! Clearly it means this employee is fraudulent or incompetent.
2. See! My wonderful AI assessed that the 5 bullet points are in insufficient reason for keeping them around.

It's a bit of a slimey attempt at complete discretionary firing, which Elon or even Trump can't possibly actually have the authority for.

as in, distro for normal people? (for arbitrary value of normal, that is) distrowatch ranks mint #1, and i also use it because i'm lazy and while i could use something else, It Just Works™

there’s a post where they claim that secure boot is worthless on linux (other than fedora of course) and it’s not because secure boot itself is worthless but because someone can just put malware in your .bashrc and, like, chef’s kiss

I'm thinking stupid and frustrating AI will become a plot device.

"But if I don't get the supplies I can't save the town!"

"Yeah, sorry, the AI still says no"

The best answer will be unsettling to both the hard skeptics of AI and the true believers.

I do love a good middle ground fallacy.

EDIT:

Why did the artist paint the sky blue in this landscape painting? […] when really, the answer is simply: Because the sky is blue!

I do abhor a "Because the curtains were blue" take.

EDIT^2:

In humans, a lot of problem-solving capabilities are highly correlated with each other.

Of course "Jagged intelligence" is also—stealthily?—believing in the "g-factor".

OK I sped read that thing earlier today, and am now reading it proper.

The best answer — AI has “jagged intelligence” — lies in between hype and skepticism.

Here's how they describe this term, about 2000 words in:

Researchers have come up with a buzzy term to describe this pattern of reasoning: “jagged intelligence." [...] Picture it like this. If human intelligence looks like a cloud with softly rounded edges, artificial intelligence is like a spiky cloud with giant peaks and valleys right next to each other. In humans, a lot of problem-solving capabilities are highly correlated with each other, but AI can be great at one thing and ridiculously bad at another thing that (to us) doesn’t seem far apart.

So basically, this term is just pure hype, designed to play up the "intelligence" part of it, to suggest that "AI can be great". The article just boils down to "use AI for the things that we think it's good at, and don't use it for the things we think it's bad at!" As they say on the internet, completely unserious.

The big story is: AI companies now claim that their models are capable of genuine reasoning — the type of thinking you and I do when we want to solve a problem. And the big question is: Is that true?

Demonstrably no.

These models are yielding some very impressive results. They can solve tricky logic puzzles, ace math tests, and write flawless code on the first try.

Fuck right off.

Yet they also fail spectacularly on really easy problems. AI experts are torn over how to interpret this. Skeptics take it as evidence that “reasoning” models aren’t really reasoning at all.

Ah, yes, as we all know, the burden of proof lies on skeptics.

Believers insist that the models genuinely are doing some reasoning, and though it may not currently be as flexible as a human’s reasoning, it’s well on its way to getting there. So, who’s right?

Again, fuck off.

Moving on...

The skeptic's case

vs

The believer’s case

A LW-level analysis shows that the article spends 650 words on the skeptic's case and 889 on the believer's case. BIAS!!!!! /s.

Anyway, here are the skeptics quoted:

• Shannon Vallor, "a philosopher of technology at the University of Edinburgh"
• Melanie Mitchell, "a professor at the Santa Fe Institute"

Great, now the believers:

• Ryan Greenblatt, "chief scientist at Redwood Research"
• Ajeya Cotra, "a senior analyst at Open Philanthropy"

You will never guess which two of these four are regular wrongers.

Note that the article only really has examples of the dumbass-nature of LLMs. All the smart things it reportedly does is anecdotal, i.e. the author just says shit like "AI can do solve some really complex problems!" Yet, it still has the gall to both-sides this and suggest we've boiled the oceans for something more than a simulated idiot.