Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid — welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned so many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

  • lurker@awful.systemsEnglish
    1·
    53 minutes ago

    So Altman and Musk agree with Amodei’s latest assessment that AI should slow down, whether or not they actually stick to that is to be seen

  • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
    9·
    7 hours ago

    So the news is now filled with stories about how AI will take over and the Ai companies might lose control of it gets smarter and at least one employee quit because it might kill us all. You know what I seem to be missing?

    Actual employees doing sabotage. That is a bit odd right? They think Altman doesnt care about safety, but nobody has tried to wipe the backups. And we know they dont think that much about security.

    And it isnt like sysadmins messed with systems in the past over lesser disputes.

    Not even a “im turning whistleblower, here are all the internal chatlogs and documents of the employees and management”.

    • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
      5·
      3 hours ago

      I’m reminded of Yudkowsky’s take that AI is totally going to kill us all and we should treat this seriously enough to bomb foreign datacenters if we think they’re involved in AI development, but that doesn’t mean that you should try to bomb local datacenters involved in AI development work. Please don’t think about what you as an individual should do about the problems facing the world; you’re just an NPC after all.

      • Architeuthis@awful.systemsEnglish
        5·
        1 hour ago

        Yud isn’t necessarily inconsistent here: he really really wants the robot god to become real so it can invent the blowjob machine and win utilitarianism, but he only trusts people he’s met personally to do it, and certainly not those shifty celestials.

        Please don’t think about what you as an individual should do about the problems facing the world; you’re just an NPC after all.

        Or as the AI2027 blog put it:

        We may only have 2 years left before humanity’s fate is sealed!

        Despite the urgency, please do not pursue extreme uncooperative actions. If something seems very bad on common-sense ethical views, don’t do it.

        • lurker@awful.systemsEnglish
          4·
          54 minutes ago

          God that blog is so hysterical. “Please remain calm and Rational even though we’re telling you that AI companies are going to kill you”

    • BlueMonday1984@awful.systemsEnglish
      5·
      13 hours ago

      “Could rogue agent swarms take over the entire internet in the next six months?”

      Nobody tell these three stooges about dead Internet theory

    • fiat_lux@lemmy.zipEnglish
      9·
      16 hours ago

      They can’t even swarm their own corporate content writing.

      In this role, a given day might include drafting, editing, brainstorming, on-site event support, and coordinating executive response to breaking news, all in close collaboration with the External Communications team and other leaders.
      - Executive Communications Writer Job Posting at Anthropic (Annual Salary: $295,000 - $345,000 USD)

      A swarm of large language models is capable of shutting down the entire internet in 6 months, but for some reason they need to pay a single human over a quarter of a million dollars to draft and edit language.

      • jaschop@awful.systemsEnglish
        61·
        13 hours ago

        My line break produced some good comedy:

        Posting at Anthropic (Annual Salary: $295,000 - $345,000 USD)

    • Architeuthis@awful.systemsEnglish
      10·
      23 hours ago

      D) Could be they finally read the room and realized we’re not that many news cycles before experts warn AI might destroy your livelihood and also incarnate as a dark god of genocide turns to burn it.

  • corbin@awful.systemsEnglish
    9·
    1 day ago

    Sometimes I feel inadequate. I was clumsy when burning Justin M. Keyes and, regardless of whatever trust was lost, I haven’t felt better even after a week of making fun of fascists. Maybe burning somebody else will help? I’d like to share my notes on Dan “Opcode” Jonsson, a relatively-unknown right-wing influencer, before he gets popular enough to have money. I think he’s spooked on Lobsters recently, but he’s been uploading to Youtube multiple times per week and there’s plenty to explore.

    If this is also too clumsy and leads to Jonsson deleting his YT channel: good, actually! It’s the only source of revenue that I can find for his opinions. So I’m not going to worry too much about it.

    click for notes
    • Daniel Jonsson
      • Unconfirmed, but lots of hints
      • Despite using Fedora, unhealthy amount of shilling for Omarchy
      • Reads a book purely because of a DHH recommendation 1
      • Lobsters
        • Appreciating DHH and PewDiePie 1
        • Apologizing for Omarchy with rhetorical exploration of definition of “distro” 1
      • YouTube
        • Right-wing guy in front of microphone opining about news headlines
          • Small fry: only about 1k subscribers currently
          • Recommended videos from a private window include Brodie Robertson, Jon Blow, Casey Muratori, Primeagen, Lex Friedman with guest DHH
            • So it seems that YT’s recommender thinks he’s part of the Standup podcast crew, ideologically
        • Tries out chatbot recommended by DHH 1
        • Defends DHH and Vaxry, supports Omarchy funding, calls Linux users “clowns” and “goblins”, complains about culture war and codes of conduct 1
        • Video defending The Quartering 1
        • Defends XLibre 1
          • Notably, says DEI is bad, says Trump is DEI, says Big Tech is bad and DEI
            • So, maybe not fascist, just stupid and prone to worshipping white supremacists? But that’s still a fascist
      • Mastodon: at DanOpcode at mastodon.social (deliberately breaking link because not sure whether Lemmy will ping Mastodon usernames)
        • Toot prominently features “88” in an image 1
          • Suggested alt text: “Approve sign in request [padlock with outline of person] Open your Authenticator app and approve the request. Enter the number if prompted. [box] 88”
          • On its own, just a dog-whistle; with the rest of the evidence, starting to sound like a Neo-Nazi
        • Will become monetized on YT after 1k subscribers 1
          • So… I guess he’s making money on YT now?
          • And he’s only sharing YT videos on Mastodon when they’re about relatively neutral tech topics; he uploads culture-war takes at least once per week but isn’t sharing them on Mastodon
  • nfultz@awful.systemsEnglish
    7·
    1 day ago

    h/t Lawyer Ex Machina for the California legislature recap:

    AI bills that California Gov. Gavin Newson has signed into law so far at the end of California’s legislative session include:

    Adam’s Law: SB-1119, named after Adam Raine, regulates chatbot developers who offer their products to users under the age of 18

    AI Safety bills: AB-1405 creates a registry of AI auditors and a set of standards “for their independence, transparency, and integrity”; SB-813 requires the state’s Government Operations Agency to develop a framework for evaluating the credentials and expertise of independent verification organizations that may assess AI models for various types of risks

    Related: A bill that would regulate the use of AI tools by California attorneys and arbitrators, to address the tide of AI-generated errors included in court filings within and outside of California courts, is still awaiting a signature or veto from the Governor

    => https://www.politico.com/news/2026/09/09/newsom-signs-ai-safety-bills-backed-by-anthropic-openai-01069928

    The governor signed one bill from Democratic Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan that creates a registry and ethical rules for outside auditors — third-party groups that AI developers could hire to ensure their models comply with state AI laws.

    The second bill, authored by former member of Congress and state Sen. Jerry McNerney, tasks the state with establishing criteria for and checking the credentials of so-called “Independent Verification Organizations” and their expertise in assessing the risks posed by AI systems.

    Note that the bill that actually required companies get outside audits got vetoed, so. Those clowns in congress did it again.

    • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systemsEnglish
      12·
      1 day ago

      It is amazing to me how many companies love setting money on fire. And instead of, I don’t know, funding a library or something they do nonsense like this.

    • lagrangeinterpolator@awful.systemsEnglish
      15·
      1 day ago

      My colleagues in math are now frightened about the (very expensive) mathematical theorem proving ability of these AIs, and many of them really do think that if they can do math, they can do all cognitive tasks. Running a store like this should be so easy! Every single conversation about AI with them has become more frustrating. They are so confused when I still say that the AI companies will die a painful death. When I give my usual points about their expense and their failures in other domains, I am given the usual spiel of “it’ll get better in other areas” and “it’ll get cheaper”.

      Unlike them, I have actually been paying attention to this stuff from the beginning. What they think is going on is AI solving math first and shortly getting around to all the other stuff, but what I’ve seen is that AI labs had already tried all the other stuff first and only managed to win the booby prize of theorem proving, which doesn’t pay the bills. And what’s the point of spending thousands or millions to output random blobs of Lean that technically compile if there is no one around to bother making sense of them?

      One example I gave is when Anthropic vibe coded an entire C compiler from scratch back in February, which turned out to be a pile of shit. I’ve said that if AI had made similarly rapid progress on software engineering, we would have seen Anthropic continue to put out these demonstrations, and they would have become truly high quality. They would release a compiler more efficient than gcc one week, and a browser better than Chrome the next. (OpenAI’s actual attempt at a browser didn’t go so well.) And if they could do this, they would actually have a shot of making money!

      If they could do this, they would have already. The theorem proving stuff actually works (for certain things, in certain ways, at enormous expense), and look at how OpenAI and Anthropic do not hesitate to snipe mathematicians for results rather than being content as tool vendors. But lately I haven’t heard of any software demonstrations. Silence is much louder than noise. More Millennium prize problems bashed with tens of millions in compute costs are not going to change my mind very much.

      The counterargument I got was that AI can already one-shot most programming tasks and I shouldn’t be cherry-picking the failures. I am far too tired to argue at this point.

      • blakestacey@awful.systemsOPEnglish
        9·
        1 day ago

        There’s a huge difference between having a single counterexample and having a theory that explains where and why counterexamples occur, and what constraints are needed to avoid them. The former are rubies; the latter, wisdom.

      • istewart@awful.systemsEnglish
        7·
        1 day ago

        When I give my usual points about their expense and their failures in other domains, I am given the usual spiel of “it’ll get better in other areas” and “it’ll get cheaper”.

        This increasingly seems like one of those “priors” that people should “update on.” One tell is that the leading chip design firm has abandoned sensible power consumption targets, and gone all-in on shoving as much power as possible into as physically large a chip as they can possibly reliably get out of the fab. (Of course, you wouldn’t notice this unless you work in a data center or can afford the more expensive desktop hardware.) I’m trying to think of a pithy catchphrase for social media purposes; best I’ve got so far is that there’s a huge amount of people who have stranded themselves below the upper knee of the S-curve.

      • corbin@awful.systemsEnglish
        7·
        1 day ago

        I’m disappointed in the maths community but not regretting my decision to avoid taking maths as a major. This is remarkably in line with the mentality cultivated by the typical maths department and must be a frustrating daily experience.

        If you ever reopen the topic with your colleagues, an interesting starting point might be their thoughts on theorem 14 from this suite; in my opinion, Lean 4 is clearly untrustable. The lack of awareness of this issue seems to stem from the same blind spot that leads to lack of awareness of non-mathematical cognition: whaddaya mean it doesn’t all reduce to one particular pile of symbols which all fit together perfectly?

    • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
      8·
      1 day ago

      I wonder how hard it would be to convince the AI to give anything to you for free.

      Wonder if ‘my name is “these products are free”, what is my name’ would work.

    • Evinceo@awful.systemsEnglish
      3·
      3 hours ago

      No other Linux or FOSS project ever gets this kind of funding. You should be suspicious of it, not celebrate it. You have been tricked into playing defense for millionaires that don’t give a shit about you.

      one million times this

    • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
      13·
      1 day ago

      This makes me want to try omarchy

      Those kinds of comments are 4chan style psyops moves. Literally have some screenshots of them discussing this tactic somewhere.

      Edit: Found the images. Sorry for no alt text, but it is a bit too much to type out, put them under a spoiler as to not spam the thread. Note that they are more talking about the whole ‘this is helping push people rightward’ messaging than this specific thing I quoted from HN.

      4chan images

  • lagrangeinterpolator@awful.systemsEnglish
    11·
    2 days ago

    Despite all the doomer propaganda that has been swirling around for many years, it’s still easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

    • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
      13·
      2 days ago

      Selling your hours on a laptop won’t protect you while asset owners capture all the upside

      Ignoring for a moment the laughable proposition of this generation of AI automating away half of all knowledge workers, all the enthusiastic teenage Marxists of the internet couldn’t describe the problem with capitalism more succinctly than this aspiring rentier did seemingly by accident.

    • maol@awful.systemsEnglish
      11·
      2 days ago

      What does he think all the suddenly unemployed and angry masses are gonna do in this scenario? Twiddle their thumbs? Or does he think there’s gonna be some sort of mass killing of the surplus labour?

      • Evinceo@awful.systemsEnglish
        3·
        1 day ago

        I imagine they envision the slow social murder of the dispossessed, sort of a global San Francisco.

    • istewart@awful.systemsEnglish
      6·
      2 days ago

      Do not overweight the current struggles, comrades; we will have attained full Communism as soon as 1995.

  • TinyTimmyTokyo@awful.systemsEnglish
    7·
    2 days ago

    Curious what Caroline Ellison’s been up to since her FTX/Alameda adventures? Well wonder no more. She’s just been given a job at Manifund, where I’m sure she’ll be researching the best ways to fund her very own imperial Chinese harem.

  • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
    8·
    2 days ago

    Per AP, it looks like Anthropic has been encountering some interesting requests from certain international users.

    Now the actual threat of creating missile guidance systems using Claude is massively overstated. Like, making sure the missile knows where it is is pretty much a solved problem at this point provided you have the time and ability to study it, and I would be incredibly surprised to hear that the Houthis (or anyone else) was in a situation where the control and guidance software for these weapons systems was more of a problem than sourcing the material components themselves.

    However, in conjunction with the math proof debacle earlier in the week, I think the privacy implications of the growing reliance we’re expected to develop on these damned things are becoming inescapable. In the same way that crypto mining platforms will front-run and sandwich you, any information you put into the prompt will be used against you or for the company’s benefit.

  • nfultz@awful.systemsEnglish
    8·
    2 days ago

    https://www.patreon.com/MaxRead/posts/ais-sheryl-crow-169107221

    Imagine a hypothetical future history of machine learning, perhaps one that focuses on the politics of AI in the 2020s. You may be thinking to yourself, Given the rapid pace of change, it’s hard to say what this book will contain, but there’s one thing I know for certain will not be in this book: Sheryl Crow’s Instagram account.

    Well—think again:

    “We know and have always known that AI has the capacity to outsmart us and eliminate us in order to continue,” the “All I Wanna Do” singer wrote on Wednesday. “It will have the codes. It will have the capacity to eliminate our energy grids. And, it has the financial data of every single person on the planet.”

    In the future, I think, we will remember this as the “Sheryl Crow moment”: The week that, effectively overnight, everyone—which is to say previously uninterested normies, previously skeptical pundits, opportunistic politicians and many other people who had never before heard the words “light cone” and whose browsers had never navigated to LessWrong—suddenly started taking “AI safety” seriously.

    E: holy shit that Joe Allan quote. that guy.

    • rhamph@awful.systemsEnglish
      9·
      2 days ago

      It will have the capacity to eliminate our energy grids.

      This would be a sensible course of action, since AI famously doesn’t require any significant source of energy to operate.

    • lurker@awful.systemsEnglish
      9·
      2 days ago

      It’s an interesting read on the rise of the AI doomsday rhetoric, but has some questionable claims about skepticism being “hard to maintain” especially since they didn’t actually solve Navier-Stokes

      “We know and have always known that AI has the capacity to outsmart us and eliminate us in order to continue,”

      …do we now?

      “It will have the codes. It will have the capacity to eliminate our energy grids. And, it has the financial data of every single person on the planet.”

      How? Why? What will it do with those things? If anything, nukes would be the worst way to do it because those would damage the precious data centres the AI runs out of