HN discusses aliens https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46111119
"I am very interested."
Bet you are, bud.
gerikson
joined 2 years ago
That popular piece on why it's dumb to build (GenAI-scale) in space hit lobste.rs, and while most commenters agreed it is indeed dumb, fascist Flask founder felt the need to "well ackstually" for some stupid reason
duh ofc there are computers in space, there are computers everywhere, but the whole fucking point of the piece is you can't take thousands of racks of GPUs and launch them into space and expect them to work
oh yeah the relationship between the fusion-device wielding 30-something Aluetian freedom fighter and the 16 year old skateboard courier in Snow Crash is... of its time
coming soon to whatever remains of CBS with an introductory 1 hour lecture by Bari Weiss
Neal Stephenson comes out strong and funny against GenAI here:
https://nealstephenson.substack.com/p/a-remarkable-assertion-from-a16z
"Hypothesis 1: it was written by a clanker"
I've worked in an adjacent field (workforce planning) and I deliver B2B software support for a living, so I too have Thoughts.
At least here in Schwedenland, contact centers have been filed down by relentless cost and tech pressure to be about as automated as can be. You have websites with FAQs, simple chatbots that basically repeat the FAQ for those for whom reading more than a sentence of text is too hard, phone trees to gatekeep you from the Inner Sanctum, etc. etc. The end result is that the actual people taking the calls are gonna be the ones who can make human decisions - troubleshoot a complex issue, handle insurance claims, upsell your mortgage.
Trying to att LLM voice tech to that is just going to add another filter between the customer and the center, with the additional reputational risk of the robot fucking up and losing the customer.
There's base-level sneer as this is posted on LW, but I found this comparison of LLM in call centers to cheap human labor for the same interesting:
He's also found a lucrative niche being the "serious" AI booster. No doubt he gets something from it, if nothing else consulting work.
FFS so many promptfondlers and gish-gallopers in there. Echoes of pro-crapto (can't criticize if you don't buy in, use case is coming bro, it's actually decentralized)
Edit the worst thing isnt't the number of fondlers, it's the upvotes they're getting.
"Enjoy" this toxic stew of prediction markets, racism, and the objectifying of women:
https://protos.com/polymarket-criticized-for-racist-post-targeting-fake-baddies/
Saw this quality nickname for prompt receivers: Chet Jippity
This looks like it's relevant to our interests
Hayek's Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right by Quinn Slobodian
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9781890951917/hayeks-bastards