TechTakes

Stumbled across a particularly odd case of AI hype in the wild today:

I will say it certainly does look different than standard AI slop, but like AI slop, its nothing particularly impressive - I can replicate something like this pretty easily, and without boiling an ocean to do it. Anyways, here's a sidenote:

In the wake of this bubble, part of me suspects physical media (e.g. photographic film) will earn a boost in popularity, alongside digital formats which LLMs struggle to generate. In both cases, the reason will be the same - simply by knowing something came on physical media or "slop-hardened media", you already have strong reason to believe the piece is human-made.

In non-tsunami news tonight:

Starting August 13th, YouTube will detect underage users in the US based on their activity and the age of their account, allowing the platform to automatically apply restrictions.

Welp, I guess I have two weeks to download all the YouTube videos I will ever want to watch again.

(pauses, thinks)

The once-lost Evangelion AIDS PSA it is, then

Because I read Yudkowsky being interviewed about writing HPMoR, and you should suffer too.

Funniest bits:

Yudkowsky still thinks that he described Mendelian inheritance, despite everyone from FF.net commenters on pointing out his mistake.

Wandering off into "the multiverse" and algorithmic information theory to fumble at explaining that magic works the way it does in a book because the writer made it that way.

This paragraph:

So to generalize that, let’s talk about the principle of “Make All the Characters Awesome.” This was an explicit process as I was envisioning the story, where I thought, for each character, how can I make this character awesome?

This comment:

My own belief about why so many people didn't want to believe Quirrell was Voldemort is that Eliezer is nearly incapable of writing characters that people actually dislike (perhaps due to, as mentioned: "make every character awesome," "give characters understandable flaws drawn from real life").

Oh FFS, that couple have managed to break into Sweden's public broadcasting site

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/utrikes/har-ar-familjen-som-vill-foda-elitbarn-for-att-radda-manskligheten

the Nazi bar distributing leaflets about indie Nazi feature nights is Concerned about this “accidental” distribution coming from their own printers and being handled by their own towncriers

(the context, in case you haven’t seen it)

That couple update: That couple are being platformed again, this time on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

the kids are fighting

This is sort of OT, but since we discuss race science and dogwhistles so much:

A jeans manufacturer has put out an ad featuring Sydney Sweeney and is saying “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans”. People are interpreting this as a racist dogwhistle (it is). Comedian Akilah Hughes cooked up this glorious parody to kick off a twitter thread:

https://xcancel.com/AkilahObviously/status/1950224586278154577#m

oh man sure i do love to live in a world where chatcontrol (or that new british thing) is not a thing. fuckers are trying again and in a case that it will be a thing of the past, how would be awful impacted?

Found an attempt to poison LLMs in the wild recently, aimed at trying to trick people into destroying their Cybertrucks:

This is very much in the same vein as the iOS Wave hoax which aimed to trick people into microwaving their phones, and Eduardo Valdés-Hevia's highly successful attempt at engorging Google's AI summary systems.

Poisoning AI systems in this way isn't anything new (Baldur Bjarnason warned about it back in 2023), but seeing it used this way does make me suspect we're gonna see more ChatGPT-powered hoaxes like this in the future.

Saw this on my YouTube subscriptions: that creepy racist breeding kink couple are continuing their international press tour. Go away!