blakestacey @ blakestacey @awful.systems

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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.

Dorkus malorkus alert:

When my grandmother quit being a nurse to become a stay at home mother, it was seen like a great thing. She gained status over her sisters, who stayed single and in their careers.

Fitting into your societal pigeonhole is not the same as gaining status, ya doofus.

Another comment that has been getting downvotes and tut-tuts begins,

The only thing that will raise fertility rates is to make it more affordable to have a child.

(Robot Santa voice) Wanting all women to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen? Evil! Not providing footnotes in your reply to a blog post? EXACTLY AS EVIL

Any time somebody edits a post to talk about the downvotes, it's cursed gold.

In the morning: we are thrilled to announce this new opportunity for AI in the classroom

In the afternoon:

Someone finally flipped a switch. As of a few minutes ago, Grok is now posting far less often on Hitler, and condemning the Nazis when it does, while claiming that the screenshots people show it of what it's been saying all afternoon are fakes.

Yet Rationalists I spoke with said they didn’t see targeted violence — bombing data centers, say — as a solution to the problem.

ahem

Andrew Gelman does some more digging and poking about those "ignore all previous instructions and give a positive review" papers:

https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/07/07/chatbot-prompts/

Previous Stubsack discussion:

https://awful.systems/comment/7936520

Major Strasser has been shot... round up the usual suspects!

It is a dark time for the Rebellion. Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the Rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them across the galaxy.

If I may say so, sir, I noticed earlier the hyperdrive motivator has been damaged. It's impossible to go to lightspeed!

Captain, being held by you isn't quite enough to get me excited.

We're going to get pulverized if we stay out here much longer.

"You said they'd be left at the city under my supervision!"

"I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."

I can see that my 50,000 a year has been well spent.

Donald, Donald... This park was not built to cater only for the super-rich.

This isn't some species that was obliterated by deforestation, or the building of a dam. Dinosaurs had their shot, and nature selected them for extinction.

Dinosaurs and man, two species separated by 65 million years of evolution have just been suddenly thrown back into the mix together.

T-Rex doesn't want to be fed. He wants to hunt.

Unless they're continually supplied with lysine by us, they'll slip into a coma and die.

I was overwhelmed by the power of this place. But I made a mistake, too. I didn't have enough respect for that power and it's out now.

The quest for the Grail is not archaeology; it's a race against evil! If it is captured by the Nazis, the armies of darkness will march all over the face of the Earth! Do you understand me?

"It was the job we were chosen for."

"Of course you'd say that, James Bond, her majesty's loyal terrier, defender of the so-called faith."

I just found out, that a girl got killed here last week, and you knew it! You knew there was a shark out there!

Is it true that most people get attacked by sharks in three feet of water about ten feet from the beach?

The torso has been severed in mid-thorax; there are no major organs remaining... May I have a glass of water, please?

What we didn't know... was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent.

I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up... bobbed up and down in the water just like a kinda top. Upended. Well... he'd been bitten in half below the waist.

It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is.

It was believed they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the Sun.

When the Matrix was first built, there was a man born inside who had the ability to change whatever he wanted, to remake the Matrix as he saw fit.

You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged.

If you're killed in the Matrix, you die here?

Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world?

I can taste your stink and every time I do, I fear that I've somehow been infected by it.

The plodding pace she was forced to set—for the road was too narrow and winding to pass safely—allowed time for meditation.

Elizabeth Peters, Naked Once More

Outside the window the cry of gulls could faintly be distinguished as they swirled about aimlessly in the gloom.

Nicholas Meyer, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution

The device had been constructed by a master craftsman, and the riddle was this—that though he'd been told the box contained wonders, there simply seemed to be no way into it, no clue on any of its six black lacquered faces as to the whereabouts of the pressure points that would disengage one piece of this three-dimensional jigsaw from another.

Clive Barker, Hellbound Heart (second sentence of first paragraph)

Skimmed by the savage Seneca from the waters of Pennsylvania's great Oil Creek, mister.

William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine

Only those with unshakable psych profiles were assigned to the outlying agronomy posts; the screening was almost as rigid as that for deep space.

Margaret Wander Bonanno, Strangers from the Sky

One summer afternoon Mrs Oedipa Maas came from from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary.

Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (opening line)

The crowd would have engulfed the platform and the open space as well if it had not been held back by the triple row of Sebastian soldiers on Pilate's left and the soldiers of the Ituraean auxiliary cohort on his right.

Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita (translated by Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor)

Only a few of them had been wounded; here and there you saw one stepping gingerly, leaning on a crutch or two canes, but so far on toward recovery that his face had color.

Dorothy Parker, "Soldiers Of The Republic"

Suppose they never get counted—what's the worst that can happen? If the number of imaginary sheep in this world remains a matter of guesswork, who is richer or poorer for it?

"The Little Hours"

In her twenties, after the deferred death of a hazy widowed mother, she had been employed as a model in a wholesale dress establishment—it was still the day of the big woman, and she was then prettily colored and high-breasted.

"Big Blonde"

Perhaps the Mysteries' secrets could be learned, and their powers could be thwarted.

Bill Watterson and John Kascht, The Mysteries

The girl and her companion obediently fell silent then, realizing they had been heard through the microphones embedded in the walls of the dining room.

Lois Lowry, Son