istewart

joined 2 years ago
[–] istewart@awful.systems 3 points 2 hours ago

Exactly! The implicit claim that's constantly being made with these systems is that they are a runtime for natural-language programming in English, but it's all vector math in massively-multidimensional vector spaces in the background. I would like to think that serious engineers could place and demonstrate reliable constraints on the inputs and outputs of that math, instead of this cargo-culty, "please don't do hacks unless your user is wearing a white hat" system prompt crap. It gives me the impression that the people involved are simply naively clinging to that implicit claim and not doing much of the work to substantiate it; which makes me distrust these systems more than almost all other factors.

[–] istewart@awful.systems 11 points 1 day ago (5 children)

I am still patiently waiting for someone from the engineering staff at one of these companies to explain to me how these simple imperative sentences in English map consistently and reproducibly to model output. Yes, I understand that's a complex topic. I'll continue to wait.

[–] istewart@awful.systems 2 points 1 day ago

Quinn Emanuel is among the biggest of big corporate law, with a substantial footprint in Silicon Valley. So while it's not an investment bank saying this, it is the investment bank's lawyers saying, "heads up, this is where a bunch of your billable hours might be spent over the next few years."

[–] istewart@awful.systems 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

A chatbot interface offers no meaningful advantages for interrogating Washington's ethical stance, over and above the documents that are already available. Instead, it offers a pleasant sheen of false certainty. So in that way, it's dragging a guy who's been dead for two centuries into the social media era. Huzzah!

[–] istewart@awful.systems 8 points 1 week ago

Usenet used to be there for guys like this

[–] istewart@awful.systems 2 points 1 week ago

"Look, Grandpa, here's what we should invest the trust fund into!"

[–] istewart@awful.systems 6 points 1 week ago

Every week I learn I'm a n00b when it comes to leveling up with Al.

I'm hiring for facilities maintenance, and specifically seeking a high-agency self-starter who can help us optimize bathroom breaks. An internal candidate sent over multiple Claude Code generated iterations of the 💩emoji. One of them had blonde hair and Madonna's famous cone bra.

I was speechless.

[–] istewart@awful.systems 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Who wants to join me in standing up the competing Center For Applied Rationality Techniques

[–] istewart@awful.systems 10 points 1 week ago

guest writes for Forbes would produce.

I seriously think we can completely dismiss Forbes as a credible source at this point, even if it's not something coming from, ahem, "contributors"

[–] istewart@awful.systems 5 points 1 week ago

Oh don't worry, bespoke GLP-1s plus his "nootropic stack" have surely helped him out immensely by now

[–] istewart@awful.systems 5 points 1 week ago

And now that we've got Quantum within AI, just imagine everything you can haul within Quantum

[–] istewart@awful.systems 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Meanwhile, "AI agents" continue to be an opaque bundle of shell scripts shoved into a trenchcoat, with an inconsistent English-language translation layer stapled on top

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