blakestacey @ blakestacey @awful.systems

Posts

51

Comments

1,194

Joined

2 yr. ago

Moderating

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Let's see who he reads. Vox Day (who is now using ChatGPT to "disprove" evolution), Christopher Rufo, Curtis Yarvin, Emil Kirkegaard, Mars Review model Bimbo Ubermensch.... It's a real Who's Who of Why The Fuck Do I Know Who These People Are?!

It also gave Allie Brosh cancer:

https://bsky.app/profile/erinabanks.bsky.social/post/3ltxeyn4wtc23

Want to feel depressed? Over 2,000 Wikipedia articles, on topics from Morocco to Natalie Portman to Sinn Féin, are corrupted by ChatGPT. And that's just the obvious ones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=insource%3A%22utm_source%3Dchatgpt.com%22&title=Special%3ASearch&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&ns0=1&searchToken=8ops8b9qb8qmw8by39k248jyp

https://xcancel.com/jasonlk/status/1946069562723897802

Vibe Coding Day 8,

I'm not even out of bed yet and I'm already planning my day on @Replit.

Today is AI Day, to really add AI to our algo.

[...]

If @Replit deleted my database between my last session and now there will be hell to pay

Seems overly generous both to Christopher Hitchens and to Julia Galef.

(putting on an N95 before I enter the grocery store) dun dun DUN DUN dun dun DUN DUN deedle dee deedle dee DUN DUN

The more expertise you have, the more you can use ChatGPT as an idea collaborator, and use your own discernment on the validity of the ideas.

Good grief. Just take drugs, people.

Don't worry; this post is not going to be cynical or demeaning to you or your AI companion.

If you're worried that your "AI companion" can be demeaned by pointing out the basic truth about it, then you deserve to be demeaned yourself.

Evan Urquhart:

I had to attend a presentation from one of these guys, trying to tell a room full of journalists that LLMs could replace us & we needed to adapt by using it and I couldn't stop thinking that an LLM could never be a trans journalist, but it could probably replace the guy giving the presentation.

After understanding a lot of things it’s clear that it didn’t. And it fooled me for two weeks.

I have learned my lesson and now I am using it to generate one page at a time.

qu1j0t3 replies:

that's, uh, not really the ideal takeaway from this lesson

We—yes, even you—are using some version of AI, or some tools that have LLMs or machine learning in them in some way shape or form already

Fucking ghastly equivocation. Not just between "LLMs" and "machine learning", but between opening a website that has a chatbot icon I never click and actually wasting my time asking questions to the slop machine.

I like how quoting Grimes lyrics makes the banality of these people thuddingly clear.

Yud:

ChatGPT has already broken marriages, and hot AI girls are on track to remove a lot of men from the mating pool.

And suddenly I realized that I never want to hear a Rationalist say the words "mating pool".

(I fired up xcancel to see if any of the usual suspects were saying anything eminently sneerable. Yudkowsky is re-xitting Hanania and some random guy who believes in g. Maybe he should see if the Pioneer Fund will bankroll publicity for his new book....)

Previously sneered:

The context for this essay is serious, high-stakes communication: papers, technical blog posts, and tweet threads.

More recently, in the comments:

After reading your comments and @Jiro 's below, and discussing with LLMs on various settings, I think I was too strong in saying....

It's like watching people volunteer for a lobotomy.

Kaneda just scooting to the side at the 14:05 mark like a Looney Tunes character caught with their pants down is comedy gold. I want to loop it with a MIDI rendition of Joplin's "The Entertainer".

The top comment begins thusly:

I think you make a reasonably compelling case, but when I think about the practicality of this in my own life it's pretty hard to imagine not spending any time talking to chatbots. ChatGPT, Claude and others are extremely useful.

I didn't think it was possible, but the perfection continues! Still, no notes!

This N is too small: _N

Paragraph 2:

METR funded 16 experienced open-source developers with “moderate AI experience” to do what they do.

https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-study/

When developers are allowed to use AI tools, they take 19% longer to complete issues—a significant slowdown that goes against developer beliefs and expert forecasts. This gap between perception and reality is striking: developers expected AI to speed them up by 24%, and even after experiencing the slowdown, they still believed AI had sped them up by 20%.

womp, hold on let me finish, womp

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JspxcjkvBmye4cW4v/asking-for-a-friend-ai-research-protocols

Multiple people are quietly wondering if their AI systems might be conscious. What's the standard advice to give them?

Touch grass. Touch all the grass.