We really need to work harder at poisoning the training data for math problems.

My generous statement: Knuth, being a scientist, is used to an “adversary” that plays fair. As we have known for decades, a scientist can be tricked in situations that a magician will see through. This applies all the more now with the Sycophancy Engines, which make mathematics into a casino vacation. Just one more prompt, bro. Just one more prompt.

My less generous statement: Knuth is almost 90 years old. Sure, age doesn’t imply a person will become a doddering fool, but people do tend to slow down, to have less energy and more need to spend it managing their health. “Thinking about a problem for a few weeks” counts for less in a situation like that.

My extremely ungenerous statement: Hey, remember when Michael Atiyah claimed to have proved the Riemann hypothesis in 2018? And the community reaction was a pained, “Atiyah is one of the great mathematicians… of the 20th century.”

I know I’ve said somewhere on here before that “Harry Potter for pop science nerds” is fanfiction on easy mode, but I’ll stand by it.

Anyone Else Have Those Weird Dreams Where Sobbing Future Generations Beg You To Change Course?

You can’t build a fandom full of that many fucked-up people without some of them getting horny in a fucked-up way.

Edit to add: example of a non-erotic fanfic https://archiveofourown.org/works/73396436

That header pic sure takes me back

Felicitations!

(“A job,” Blake thinks. “I need to find one of those.”)

I would also not put my finger on those microscope slides

womp, and wait for it, womp

Do you want Tylers Durden? Because this is how you get Tylers Durden.

Train your chatbot on TV Tropes, and the password will always be swordfish.

The post names Joscha Bach as someone Aella tried to exclude.

You do not under any circumstances have to hand it to Aella

“Yes, I am hammering myself in the balls. But maybe its worth it?”

The phrase “ambient AI listening in our hospital” makes me hear the “Dies Irae” in my head.

A longread on AI greenwashing begins thusly:

The expansion of data centres - which is driven in large part by AI growth - is creating a shocking new demand for fossil fuels. The tech companies driving AI expansion try to downplay AI’s proven climate impacts by claiming that AI will eventually help solve climate change. Our analysis of these claims suggests that rather than relying on credible and substantiated data, these companies are writing themselves a blank cheque to pollute on the empty promise of future salvation. While the current negative effects of AI on the climate are clear, proven and growing, the promise of large-scale solutions is often based on wishful thinking, and almost always presented with scant evidence.

(Via.)

“This pull request Merlin shall make; for I live before his time.”

It’s morgin’ time

Limor Fried and I had a class together at MIT in 2001. This has no bearing on the present circumstances and offers me no real insight (anything I could say about our extremely limited interactions would amount to confirmation bias). It’s just the odd little factoid that comes to mind whenever adafruit Does Something Online.

Presuming that they are all liars and cheaters is both contrary to the instincts of a scientist and entirely warranted by the empirical evidence.

First of all, like, if you can’t keep track of your transcripts, just how fucking incompetent are you?

Second, I would actually be interested in a problem set where the problems can’t be solved. What happens if one prompts the chatbot with a conjecture that is plausible but false? We cannot understand the effect of this technology upon mathematics without understanding the cost of mathematical sycophancy. (I will not be running that test myself, on the “meth: not even once” principle.)