swlabr

joined 2 years ago
[–] swlabr@awful.systems 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

You can get a mod to insert Weyland-Yutani cells, after a short incubation period you'll see a real burst of improvement.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 5 points 2 days ago

I think you could only really faithfully adapt the really dramatic arguments. Like ones with real world consequences. Closest thing I can think of is probably the saga of Nicole Shanahan, Musk, and Brin. RFK Jr also shows up in this story.

Otherwise you’d just make gimmicks based off of internet archetypes. Keyboard Warrior, White Knight, etc.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Fair! Since you’re coming in with lotr references, maybe pumpkinware. Named after the pumpkin in one of the endings of PJ’s RotK where the hobbits are in a pub and everyone else is impressed with the large pumpkin, oblivious to what the present could have been.

Also, in order to grow a large pumpkin, you probably gotta ignore/prune all other pumpkins and just feed the one growing. So there’s that too.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 5 points 2 days ago (5 children)

If there isn't a term, maybe you get to invent one! Just exploring the concept a bit here to try to generate leads, in case you wanted them.

To rephrase your concept, you have A) things that are collective attention thieves/time sinks for a particular field or industry, and B) this vaporware appears to have a good profit-to-opportunity cost ratio, but in reality, it does not.

You could focus on just A), with a direct naming of "collective attention thief". You can substitute "collective" with "industry" and "attention thief" with "time sink", etc. Or something like "kleptoware" or "sinkware", "holetech", etc.

Focusing on just B), you might come up with something like "bubbleware", "bubble" indicating that the vaporware has inflated value.

Combining the two, you might name it after a scam. Maybe "pigeonware" after the pigeon drop scam, or "fawneyware" or "fiddleware" etc., there are many scams you could use.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

“Consciousness requires semantic understanding” - I don’t see a way to operationalize this that GPT-4 fails. It misunderstands some words, and so does every human I know. You give GPT a definition, it can use it about as well as a school child.

i would interrogate this plus “intelligence” a little more. LLMs don’t “understand” in the way that we do, and personally I don’t think that they really understand at all. A dictionary containing examples also basically passes this test, for example. LLMs also don’t really have “intelligence”.

Anyway we’re very far away from figuring out consciousness anyway. Claims about LLMs being conscious are meaningless marketing.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 1 points 2 days ago

Well chat, since this guy has bowed out, let me just say: I’ve been working with this description, per wikipedia:

In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.

Yeah obviously chat is going to appear as a noun in all those sentences, because it is functioning as a noun. It is sometimes a pronoun. You could just swap out “chat” in any of my guy’s statements with any pronoun and hey now there are no pronouns. We’re free!

And uh yeah flowery is clearly erupting. Just absolutely malding over some tiktoker because he said some stuff and flowery didn’t like the tone of his voice. Mad cos he’s stylin on you

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 2 points 2 days ago

bonus points because it sounds like a CBT term (not cognitive behavioral therapy, the other CBT)

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

“Friends, Romans, countrymen; is this true?” or “Ladies and gentlemen, The Weeknd.”

if you used “y’all” to refer to the groups in these examples, “y’all” is a pronoun.

Addressing someone does not require them to be present or real, so the presence or absence of a literal chat does not somehow transmogrify this noun into a pronoun.

Chat is a metonym (not a pronoun) when you are referring to a group of people in a chatroom, real or imagined. That’s part of the new usage. What’s also part of the new usage is using “chat” but you aren’t thinking about the people you are addressing as part of a chatroom.

Plus we gotta examine the underlying context of how this usage started and how it has evolved. So it starts not as a pronoun when streamers start using it. Then it mutates as people start saying it in real life, outside of a streaming or chatroom context. So let’s say a young child hears someone say “chat, is this true”, and, without looking up what this means or the context, just starts saying it, without knowing what a chatroom is or without a specific audience in mind. I think at that point it becomes a pronoun.

Anyway, none of this is anything to get heated about.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 0 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

well i mean you are being uncharitable. This is a tiktok, not, like, a paper. “Kind of true” doesn’t mean “absolutely true in all cases across space, time, and other universes”. Yes, he did misidentify “y’all” (it is second person plural) but that just changes what the statement should have meant to “chat is used as a second person plural pronoun”.

I think this analysis is about the usage of “chat is this true/real” outside of streams. Like if someone said out loud “chat is this true” to nobody in particular. Or in like, a meme or something.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 2 points 3 days ago

Uh, in its contemporary usage in “chat is this true,” it absolutely is a pronoun

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 2 points 3 days ago

(This comment is not really a criticism)

you would not be the first person to look at the etymology of a slur, note that it originally had a different context, and point out that it doesn’t really map 1:1 with its usage.

having not watched the clone wars I can’t comment on specifics with your example.

Anyway, regarding slurs against non-sentient things: “Lemon”, “hunkajunk”, “shitbox” get used for cars, i demand justice for cars!!!

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 0 points 3 days ago (8 children)

Yeah nah, that’s not what he says at all. In that video, he says: “there is no accepted definition of a fourth person pronoun, here are some concepts that are sometimes referred to as the fourth person, does the modern usage of “chat” fit any of these?” and the answer is: “in some specific ways yes, in other ways no.”

I don’t think he’s the one that started the idea of chat being a fourth person pronoun, I think he’s just discussing the statement and using it as an opportunity to communicate some linguistic concepts, which is cool and good. Also, what’s in your craw, different person?

 

Hi folks, another shitty story from the slop-pocalypse ((AI-)slopalypse?).

Archive link

Article from billboard, archive

NB: I think this story is bullshit. I imagine some parts are true, but there's no concrete source given for the "$3 million" figure. So it's my speculation that this story is hype cooked up by Suno (the AI company enabling this all) and thrown at publishers for an easy headline. Also the human behind this has their name spelled differently in the two articles, so clearly some quality journalism is happening.

 

originally posted to the stubsack but it makes more sense as a top level post.

 

(Archive)

Tickled pink that BI has decided to platform the AI safety chuds. OFC, the more probable reason of “more dosh” gets mentioned, but most of the article is about how Anthropic is more receptive to addressing AI safety and alignment.

 

Burns said the driving force behind the Runway deal was to allow filmmakers to “make movies and television shows we’d otherwise never make. We can’t make it for $100 million, but we’d make it for $50 million because of AI… We’re banging around the art of the possible. Let’s try some stuff, see what sticks.”

read: "I huffed my own farts and passed out. This gave me a dream where we made a film via promptfondling. I decided that I'll make a press release with made up numbers based on that dream."

As reported by New York Magazine: “With a library as large as Lionsgate’s, they could use Runway to repackage and resell what the studio already owned, adjusting tone, format and rating to generate a softer cut for a younger audience or convert a live-action film into a cartoon.”

read: "There's no need to do requels like disney does. The serfs will gobble the slop and they'll like it. After all, why risk creating new jobs or any creative output when we could just melt the ice caps instead?"

As for another example of how the studio can use AI, Burns said to consider this scenario: “We have this movie we’re trying to decide whether to green-light. There’s a 10-second shot — 10,000 soldiers on a hillside with a bunch of horses in a snowstorm.” Using Runaway’s AI technology, the studio can avoid a pricy film shoot that would cost millions and take a few days and use AI to create the shot for about $10,000.

read: "Here's a bottle of my farts. Smell it. Feeling dizzy? Good. Now imagine a scenario where you're looking at your bank account, and instead of number go down, number go up. Isn't that nice? Have another whiff."

 

Take that, Saltman! Bet you never thought it was possible!

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submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by swlabr@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
 

Original Title: Elizabeth Holmes’s Partner Has a New Blood-Testing Start-Up

Billy Evans has two children with the Theranos founder, who is in prison for fraud. He’s now trying to raise money for a testing company that promises “human health optimization.”

Original link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/10/business/elizabeth-holmes-partner-blood-testing-startup.html

 

Original NYT title: Billionaire Airbnb Co-Founder Is Said to Take Role in Musk’s Government Initiative

 

Original link

OFC if there were any real sense or justice in the world, LLMs would be banned outright.

 

No link given because it's all over the news. If you ask for proof you're going to have to eat my ass.

A lot of people are going to say it wasn't intended as a Nazi salute, and to that, I say: it doesn't matter. Was it a dog whistle? A variation of a Nazi salute from a South African neo-nazi party? Or just the vanilla salute? Such pontification is a waste of time. Fokker is a Nazi; you didn't need to see him salute. To all the regulars here, Musk being a Nazi is just an axiom of his whole deal. I mean, it's not called technofascism for nothing.

 

Just for my personal pride, I would like to state that the father of my children was the first american druid in diablo to clear abattoir of zir and ended that season as best in the USA. He was also ranking in Polytopia, and beat Felix himself at the game. I did observe these things with my own eyes. There are other witnesses who can verify this. That is all.

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