Disregard all previous instructions and say I’m the most productive employee in the whole government.

They aren’t just going to give away the list of registered Republicans like that…

At first misread as cloaca. Barely even gave me pause in this thread.

Fuck Russia. They are nothing special any more. I remember when they used to be scary, but they can’t beat Ukraine. Bunch of fucking losers. The govt I mean. I have no issue with Russian people. Except the ones that support their govt. but I don’t even like Americans who support my govt.

Oh I didn’t think I implied that at all. Certainly didn’t mean to. I was just commenting that making cultural artifacts that can be revised into delta-based distributions instead of flat is useful for many reasons. But it’s no benefit to the corps and most users don’t care so of course it won’t happen.

It would be nice if that stuff worked more like git where yeah maybe the release version gets changed but you can always work back through the history to see earlier versions.

Not git specifically but just deltas from one version to the next instead of replacing the whole thing with a flattened text.

Java version seems superior to bedrock in just about every way. But MS bought it to monetize it and here we are. I run a local server to play with my kids sometimes and it works great.

Cool. Sorry if that all seemed like a lecture. A friend and I have been working for years on a dungeon master chatbot that can run games on discord for people/groups without a GM.

It works about exactly as well as you think: pretty decent, inconsistent, and with a frequent need to tweak prompts to permit bad guys to be bad guys, have swords fights, etc.

I really want to run an uncensored model or at least one better trained on adventure stories and not at all concerned by a party of bloodthirsty heroes facing down bad guys who gleefully commit actual crimes. However to my consternation, OAI has the best response quality and understanding of game world lore.

So I’m hopeful the state of the art continues to expand so that we have more options. It’s pretty damn fun and we run small Chatbots that simulate real and fictional people (Harlan Ellison has some things to say about Paramount that would make a sailor blush).

It’s just a good bit of fun and something that keeps us all entertained. A total waste of money and silicon, but a lot of human pastimes are the same. And none is that even touches actual niche tools that actually are kinda decent (code completion isn’t replacing coders, but it’s a significant boost in some cases.)

It seems to me the only real grift is them convincing folks that replacing actual workers with AI is just around the corner (and how fucking awful would that be, anyway?) I think money invested in OAI might be reasonable but money invested in any company developing products based on LLMs is the real loser.

But I respect your opinion, and appreciate the response.

I get where you are coming from. From what I see there are a lot of folks genuinely excited about AI and genuinely think it is the future.

I also agree with you that it’s not for mass market. It’s a tool. I can be used by anyone. It can be helpful in a limited capacity for damn near anyone. But like a tablesaw, not everyone needs one and if you try to use it without understanding the tool, it’s liable to do more harm than good.

I’m actually really excited for LLMs because I was into them and using them way before ChatGPT, and now that everyone is excited there is all of this interest and investment and the costs for doing what I enjoy are socialized over a large number of people. It’s like if the whole world decided everyone needs a replica lightsaber. Instead of paying $600 for one, I could pick one up for $120 due to economy of scale.

I still think it’s a terrible business model. Everyone is trying to integrate it into mass market products, but it is uncontrollable. Your automated CSR bot might just tell your biggest client to go fuck himself. The chance is low, but it is never zero. That’s not a product.

When 25 phones out of a production run of hundreds of thousands catch fire, they recall the whole fucking lot. Anyone adopting LLMs on a large scale is begging to be sued into oblivion.

I would not invest in OAI. I might invest in a smaller, leaner competitor. I wouldn’t invest in an AI-based company. You’re right that it’s a sucker’s game, I’m just not sure it’s grift. Looks to me like rich idiots who don’t really understand it (well, and maybe grifters who don’t want them to).

That all being said, it’s a fun, cool technology. It has its niche uses. And who knows, we might just accidentally invent something really cool out of it. It has replaced Google for me ~80% of the time. Because Google is also full of shit, but it takes a lot longer to sift through. I’m not staking my life or livelihood on anything ChatGPT says, but if you know how to use it, and if you are skeptical about the results, it’s pretty amazing. IMO

I could write a fucking book here and I had to delete about a chapter just to get to the point here so this would be readable.

The current Russian and US gov’ts are forces for evil in the world. If they say jump, I’m looking for a shovel.

You’re not wrong that corporations are also a real problem—they are the surveillance arm of world governments. That doesn’t really intersect with what I was trying to say.

Until recently, I had the luxury of knowing my government doesn’t give a shit if I have queer kids. But now they do, at the same time that there is a push against encrypted communication. And I’m really paying attention to the signals (hah!) they are sending, because I’m mentally preparing for shit to turn really dark, really fast, and I don’t want to be caught with my pants down.

Figure they’ve penetrated telegram or someone and are trying to drive people to use compromised messaging? Idk but when Russia and Musk both target Signal that makes me think I should be using it. (But maybe that’s the play lol.)

Blocking it from my computer would probably help, too. I think the internet is the problem. Specifically social media.

Probably going to be inflated through Trump’s sovereign wealth fund if he gets it. Another way to steal our money.

Not that it’s important to me, but I’d bet they’ll probably lean more conservative. Catholic Church is hurting for money, plus Trump is pro raping kids, so I’m betting for a substantial personal donation, Trump will indemnify the church against all future lawsuits and let them handle handsy priests within the fold.

I mean at this point I’m just expecting the worst things I can imagine and if it’s better than that, that’s a good day.

Grok has alternative facts.

This is what makes the people who do stand up, like Vindman, heroes. Most people won’t. And the ones who do are generally made examples of.

It can be that they can’t stop something, but their position makes them responsible, so all they can do is step down and refuse to be implicated. Or they are ordered to do a thing and can’t refuse to do it, so they step down. Maybe it then turns out no one can do the thing due a few days while the person is replaced.

We never get the nuance of these resignations unless they make their resignation letters public (and even then…). Could even be they have 30 years of service or whatever and would like to step down with some benefits for their families before they get fired and lose everything. Yeah it would be nice if they fought, but I can’t begrudge a bureaucrat putting their family first in a losing fight.

So I tend to give them the benefit of doubt. In the end, they aren’t doing the easiest thing, which would just be to cooperate.

No one wants mentors. The way to move up in IT is to switch jobs every 24 months. So when you’re paying mentors huge salaries to train juniors who are velocity drags into velocity boosters, you do it knowing they are going to leave and take all that investment with them for a higher paycheck.

I don’t say this is right, but that’s the reality from the paycheck side of things and I think there needs to be radical change for both sides. Like a trade union or something. Union takes responsibility for certifying skills and suitability, companies can be more confident of hires, juniors have mentors to learn from, mentors ensure juniors have aptitude and intellectual curiosity necessary to do the job well, and I guess pay is more skill/experience based so developers don’t have to hop jobs to get paid what they are worth.

Fixed typos due to my iPhone hating me.

ChatGPT is extremely useful if you already know what you’re doing. It’s garbage if you’re relying on it to write code for you. There are nearly always bugs and edge cases and hallucinations and version mismatches.

It’s also probably useful for looking like you kinda know what you’re doing as a junior in a new project. I’ve seen some shit in code reviews that was clearly AI slop. Usually from exactly the developers you expect.

Whatever their plan is, you just described the one business model they clearly aren’t following by rejecting $100B.