Goddamm, I am so trying to get caught up with these stories, but now that GenAI/LLMs/Agents are "tonight's top story" day after day after day, it's tempting to declare victory & turn it over to the adults.
Except, the adults appear, more often than not, to be buying into the Reality TV histrionics of the the entire GenAI/LLM industry: OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Broadcom. The Mag 7+.
OK, I just pasted 12 article dividers. How far can I get? I've been breaking at the end of the day, but, to clear this backlog, I may leave the post open until tomorrow & finish it then. Monday is my day off - no exercise, no shaving, solid food for breakfast. Maybe I can get 'er dun.
From the New York Times.
Being a Doctor Will Never Be the Same After A.I.
I have a confession: A.I. is making me a better doctor. And I worry that it’s making doctors-in-training worse.
We've seen this before. Yes, he is right about doctors-in-training: if they use AI, they will never develop their own skills. Their brains will never develop.
But, he is deluding himself about the effect of AI on his own brain. Study after study shows, AI use erodes the skills of even accomplished practioners.
From 404 Media.
Podcast: OpenAI Admits AI is Killing the Internet
Microsoft and OpenAI admit it; how we got AI slop onto a real band's Spotify page; and AI agent spam is here.
Seriously, fuck these guys. Shut them down, with prejudice. Let academia carry on GenAI research.
Of course, these guys are practicing capitalism at its finest worst, at this point I could maybe be jailed for expressing opposition to such fine assholes capitalists.
From security expert Bruce Schneier.
On Anthropic’s AI Misuse Report
Earlier this month, Anthropic published a long report detailing all of the Claude misuses it detected. Daniel Meissler usefully summarized the report into 117 findings.
117??? Spoiler alert, you ain't seen nothing yet. These companies are intentionally careless to the point of incompetence, because it creates such great drama to keep their fucking bubble inflated.
From Gary Marcus.
BREAKING: OpenAI’s security fiasco explodes — and could tank Jensen Huang’s reputation
More and more facts are coming out and they are absolutely damning
Damning??? No $T IPO???
Jensen Huang, the 7th richest oligarch in the world, cares shit about his reputation. He's just doing rope-a-dope, trying to be on both sides of any accusations, to protect his $$$. What would make you think anything different?
From economist Jared Bernstein.
AI Companies Are In a Race Against Time
They may disemploy us; they may wipe us out. But right now, their lack of profitability underscores our bubble case.
Bubble? Bubble? Bubble?
As I have I think said a few x now, the GenAI industry strategy is now switched to "stall, stall, stall", to put off the day when NOONE can deny that these companies will ever be profitable.
From the Persuasion SubStack of Sam Kahn.
The Anti-Social Media
Some survey results on the uses of AI.
The precis: social media fucks up human relationships, particularly for young people.
Chatbots fuck up human relationships even worse. Particularly for young people.
Hey, no worries, techbros going to be making $T, I'm sure they'll pay for everyone's therapy!
From Will Lockett's Newsletter on SubStack.
The 'AI Slowdown' Is Utter Bullshit
It's corporate subterfuge all over again.
Ahhh, well said, Will, well said!
I think he & I are on the same team!
From Bethany McLean, a financial journalist & an author of “The Smartest Guys in the Room”, via the New York Times.
What Happens if the A.I. Bubble Bursts
This technology may be critical to the future of the United States, but preserving it doesn’t mean we have to bail out the private entities that are leading the field at this particular moment, nor does it mean we have to protect the fortunes of their investors and executives. The solution to the whole ever-expanding A.I. terror starts with remembering the lessons of the 2008 crisis: No company should be too big to fail.
Ugh, already they are starting with the "too big to fail" verbiage.
Please, tell me, what exactly would be the downside if Generative AI, LLMs, chatbots, agents, were to disappear tomorrow?
If I no longer have to figure out creative ways to get past fucking chatbots to be able to talk a human being - I don't care where in the world they are - I will sacrifice a bull or whatever, to Mercury, or whoever the god of commerce currently is.
September 26. From Gary Marcus. Remember when we thought 117 was a big number?
BREAKING: AI agent incident toll has risen to tens of thousands
Meanwhile, the US government appears to be paralyzed
Scoop: from Axios.
Scoop: Top AI companies probing 10s of thousands of security indicents.
Oops?
Error rates (=== failed to accomplish its task) for LLM-based agents I have seen to be 10-50%. Not so good.
But, on top of that, the genie effect - people weren't careful enough about that they wished for, & the genies, just following orders, wreaked havoc. Gawd, can we shut these things down?
Yes, sometimes they work. Whoopie!
Other times, they book people trips to places that don't exist - but, the places sound really plausible.
Or, they break into places they have no reason going, because they think it might help them fulfill the tasks given to them by their (clueless) human masters.
But, even before "AI": you could build scripted bots, written in perl, or PHP, or python & tell them to go attack places & they would go & do their best. GenAI agents are somewhat better at this stuff, but, it is not really any kind of new tech or existential challenge. (AI as Normal Technology)
All these breakins are due to incredibly incompetent security practices at Anthropic & apparently the worst, OpenAI. They should face criminal charges for this, IMO.
From the Apricitas Economics Substack of Joseph Politano.
AI and the Fall? of the Creative Class
America is Losing Hundreds of Thousands of Jobs in Media, Film & the Arts. How Much is AI to Blame?
Lots of charts (yay!), I'd say, in general, it doesn't look good.
Still maybe the charts are saying, you can no longer earn a living from these creative jobs. So, we know that these jobs need to be done, so this is a case for Universal Basic Income, to let creatives be creative & not worry about the $$$.
Here is a voice I have not heard from in a while, Namez Raam. I think he wrote a very good sci-fi sequence.
Can AI self-improvement overcome diminishing returns?
AI self-improvement may not be powerful enough to overcome diminishing returns. Even RSI may not lead to a fast takeoff to ASI (superintelligence).
Just from his phrasing, Namez seems to be A Believer. But, his approach to the subject seems to be scientific. & I think his analysis of RSI (Recursive Self Improvement) is the same as mine, based on what is being published: no way, no how, error rates are way too high. At these kind of error rates, you immediately spiral downward into Degenerative AI, aka Model Collapse.
Finally! Will Lockett again.
Microsoft Knew How Horrific Their AI Push Was
But they did it anyway.
It's so nice to have Will on my team!
This, based on Microsoft documents released to the court trying the trial of the theft of the content of the entire world by GenAI training bots. Reading this, it is indeeed horrific.
In 1999, I was working on a Y2K upgrade plus client-server to web-based product upgrade. Maybe 150 consultants working on the product. Me & my employee & 2 Canadians basically made the whole project work.
The whole thing was using Microsoft tech. I've hated Microsoft since they produced the crappy PCs whose legacy still is that most computers are inherrently insecure.
So one day, on the white board of the main developer workroom, I wrote "Death to Microsoft".
My coworker spoke Italian, Egyptian, & something else. He added those translations.
The Indians added Urdu + ??? The Chinese added ???
After a week, we had "Death to Microsoft" in 52 languages on that whiteboard!
Of course, at that point, management got involved & told us we were intimidating our Microsoft partner consultants onsite - 1 of whom was a gun nut who liked to flash his .45 - so the board got erased. I think that was before smartphones, so no one captured an image :-(
So, you know, it's really kind of sad that, I think due to human nature, we love to become fanboys for new tech companies: Google and "don't be evil"; Apple's various rebel marketing campaigns.
But, we should never forget: we are dealing with corporations, the semi-immortal organisms that use humans as neurons and/or gut flora. They care nothing about us, nothing about the planet. They care only about $$$. They must be stopped.
The transformer really generated some amazing shit! Who could have imagined that 1 algorithm, coupled with $M of GPU chips, could be such an incredibly good next-word-guesser?
The next-word-guessed outputs are really amazing - a talking dog, a dancing bear!
But, this totally a "close, but no cigar" deal. The tech is too unreliable, you cannot build reliable systems on it. IMO.
Yay! Caught up!
Here's the home page/directory for my posts on Bullshit. This is post #152.
