TechTakes

as one of the two non-computer scientists here, every time I check in there seems to be some load bearing open source project I've never heard of that's gone fash. "GreenBlox is refusing to kick out a contributor who said the jewish question should be on the table??" "PipeLinux official account is posting that pronouns don't exist?" open source people, are you ok?

Bluesky going to bad for that poor, downtrodden, victimised and underrepresented demographic, uh, ai slop posters?

https://bsky.app/profile/carrion.bsky.social/post/3m2kf3rottc2h

“In the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science. It’s someone like Greta or Eliezer,” [Peter Thiel] said, referring to Thunberg and Eliezer Yudkowsky

I am going outside to smoke something. I don't care what, just… something

I just wanted to lob a sneer at this article fawning over Sora 2: https://spyglass.org/soras-slop-hits-different/

And again, a lot of this stuff — slop or not — is funny. Really, truly funny. Sora is scaling comedy in a way that we’ve never seen.

did this motherfucker just try to say "scaling comedy"? If you ever wondered why techbros are so unfunny, here's something to point at.

Oh my god, The Guardian with the sneer:

Take a look at Sam Altman. I mean, actually do it. Go to Google images, where you can find countless photos of the OpenAI boss smiling in a kind of wan genius way, the humble lost puppy of Silicon Valley. But I urge you to simply cover the bottom half of his face in any of these pictures, and you will immediately clock that Sam has the sad-psycho eyes of the lost woman’s boyfriend who the police have asked to front the missing person’s appeal. Please come home, Sheila – we’re all worried sick and we just want you back.

A new psychology preprint argues that "contemporary AI is research misconduct".

A quick OT post, to lighten the mood: https://mastodon.online/@danirabbit/115344203384433517

Is there a general term for the type of experimental or vaporware tech whose main function is creating FUD and FOMO which slows down the adoption and development of more mature conventional solutions? In the case of public transit these are collectively known as gadgetbahns. Examples from other fields include SMRs, direct air carbon capture, various embrace-extend-extinguish schemes in the software world, extraterrestrial colonies and a host of consumer IoT gadgets.

Bluesky's found another set of rakes to step on - after a user complained of ableism from the mods, Trust and Safety head Aaron Rodericks used the automated systems as an accountability sink, then let slip that users' work was being uploaded to AI slop service thehive.ai, seemingly contradicting Bluesky's promise to not dump artists' work into the slop machine.

a lobsters is mad that a middling Perl project gets upvotes just because it's "braincoded"

https://lobste.rs/s/bu1a84/i_brain_coded_static_image_gallery_few#c_um9usd

Framework fucked up: https://app.wafrn.net/fediverse/post/09cf3639-4e0c-4efd-91ef-8f0cf5c5cc66

https://wetdry.world/users/lucydev/statuses/115343806496681336

https://community.frame.work/t/framework-supporting-far-right-racists/75986/8

shot:

chaser:

(thread)

New AI alignment problem just dropped: https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1976304803744501775

Best I can do now is try to make sure that at least one AI is truth-seeking and not a super woke nanny with an iron fist that wants to turn everyone into diverse women 😬

Edit: It only just now occured to me that hes' probably whining about generative AI rather than an army of superintelligent robots marching across the earth transing people, but I'm leaving my comment.

In the Financial Times:

The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year. And some analysts believe that estimate doesn’t fully capture the AI spend, so the real share could be even higher.

AI companies have accounted for 80 per cent of the gains in US stocks so far in 2025. That is helping to fund and drive US growth, as the AI-driven stock market draws in money from all over the world, and feeds a boom in consumer spending by the rich.

Since the wealthiest 10 per cent of the population own 85 per cent of US stocks, they enjoy the largest wealth effect when they go up. Little wonder then that the latest data shows America’s consumer economy rests largely on spending by the wealthy. The top 10 per cent of earners account for half of consumer spending, the highest share on record since the data begins.

Also, reading up on the recent nix community mess (more fun interpersonal steering committee member conflict!), I’ve come to one conclusion:

One day someone will make a stage play out of this whole thing and the play will suck.

After kinda fence-sitting on the topic of AI in general for while, Hank Green is having a mental breakdown on YouTube over Sora2 and it's honestly pretty funny.

If you're the kind of motherfucker who will create SlopTok, you are not the kind of motherfucker who should be in charge of OpenAI.

Not that anyone should be in charge of that shitshow of a company, but hey!

Bonus sneer from the comment section:

Sam Altman in Feb 2015: "Development of superhuman machine intelligence is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity."

Sam Altman in Dec 2015, after co-founding OpenAI: "Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return."

Sam Altman 4 days ago, on his personal blog: "we are going to have to somehow make money for video generation."

A major Australian university used artificial intelligence technology to accuse about 6,000 students of academic misconduct last year.

The most common offence was using AI to cheat, but many of the students had done nothing wrong.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-09/artificial-intelligence-cheating-australian-catholic-university/105863524

Lately I've been mildly annoyed when I just want to relax and watch gaming videos on Youtube and I see recommendations for some AI critihype. Out of morbid curiosity, I decided to click on one of them and of course the "original paper" the video is based on is the stupid Anthropic blog post about how the AI blackmailed someone (after it was told to blackmail someone). I was even more annoyed to find out how popular it is, but at least it shows how the general public has such a negative opinion of AI. Some of the comments are thankfully pushing back against the video and focusing on the real harms.

I thought that by now we would have learned from the tobacco companies to never trust "research" done by a company about their own products.

what are some of the all time most ludicrous and/or bigoted lesswrong posts? i am starting a podcast where my cohost and i show each other shockingly weird or bigoted texts and discuss them. mostly we're doing historical ones but rationalist stuff is fair game

I could never live in a dyson sphere. I cant stand how they stop charging after six months.

jwz ditching basecamp - decent discussion. tbh, I ctrl-f'd for the Jira sneers. Also includes a GitLab sneer that was not on my radar.

Just here to note that @dgerard had a clippy pfp before it was cool

Think I’ve taken psychic damage reading this about moldbug contemplating leaving the country https://fxbsky.app/profile/helldude.bsky.social/post/3m2hltni4422n