Techie Photographer

Turning my Highlights section into a repository for information regarding Artificial Intelligence. I'll be adding references, videos and info I think people would find useful. Will also add things I write that I think are useful. May be a tiny bit of other random stuff too.

Seems there may be a bubble. Nope, not AI, but will likely impact AI, keep reading. Not the evil enshitifying force that is private equity. Private capital - the finance bros that underpin private equity by lending business money so they can finance their own buyout with piles of debt. BlackRock limited withdrawals recently due to limited liquidity. Oops. That's not good. The thing is, and I was not aware of this, it seems private capital is also financing many if not most of the AI data centers. But of course they are. This whole private equity/capital shite pile is starting to like like a big ole nasty bubble that is much larger than the sub-prime bubble was (at least 2x). Only instead of people's homes, its massive quantities of businesses - many of which are rather important. Not only are many of your favorite chain stores owned by private equity but some of your favorite YouTube channels are too. Oh and probably most if not ALL of your local plumbers. No, seriously. Private equity has been eroding the foundations of our whole economy so the wealthy can extract even more wealth in the darkness of "private" while society wasn't watching. See private equity owns lots of retail and service businesses and those businesses rely on average people to spend money. We're starting to see job losses, some of which are due to AI. Plus rising interest rates. This is very, very bad for businesses which have massive debt and constant, loan payments that they struggle to make every month. A slight decline in the economy - in consumer income - and those businesses can start to miss load payments. And then the dominos start to fall... If this goes "pop" (and it will at some point) its going to get real ugly, and its starting to look likely. This is going to hit hard and its not going to be fun nor comfortable. But, on the bight side, there will be absolutely no money available to build AI data centers or buy vast quantities of super expensive AI computer chips. All those plans will disappear in an instant. Not because AI is a bubble - it actually isn't. AI is progressing and has vast potential. But because the billionaires pushing AI are of course finance bros and so they built their empires on loaned capital because, of course, finance bros are always gonna use someone else's money - even for a nearly sure thing. lol So if private capital goes "pop" it will take private equity with it (oh thank you, can't die soon enough) and it will - at least for quite awhile - have a very similar effect as if AI was a bubble that went "pop". Which I'm totally down for. AI is great, but its moving far too fast with ZERO safety. The frontier labs are just playing dress up and pretending they care about safety or alignment - but they don't, they only care about racing to AGI because that will make their billionaires even richer. It will fuck everyone else, but if we haven't figured it out yet - they don't care about anyone else...

Sadly the best frontier models are quickly getting to the point that they are smarter than most of the morons who post on this site. They absolutely are better at holding intelligent conversations already. Which is epically tragic.

@BladeoftheS Only idiots, liars and people completely not paying attention think AI isn't improving. Literally ALL of the factual, measurable data clearly shows it is not only improving - but the pace is speeding up.

Now they are complaining that AI isn't getting better because they are simply put more power into this same process. Do you get better mince if you put more meat in the machine?

Apple have just released a research paper saying that AI doesn't think. No it doesn't, there is no AI to it. All it does is feed information put into it through a bunch of algorithms and spit out what is basically the result of a complex search engine. It's almost useless.

@BladeoftheS LLMs are more useful and, at this point, better at rational reasoning than anyone who believes they aren't intelligent or can't reason. Many humans are quite irrational and terrible at reasoning - that's the only point you're actually making.

@HansMahncke All this does is go to show just how clueless and out of their depth Apple truly are when it comes to AI. I mean, why is ANYONE listening to anything they have to say on the subject? They failed so entirely at it they had to pay Google to save their asses and use Gemini.

Finally, someone talking sense. AI is made of algorithms, which are structured sets of instructions. This makes it extremely effective at recognizing patterns and producing outputs based on statistical learning. But it is tiresome to watch people insist that it is somehow more than that, or that it will transcend the computational framework it runs on. It will not. There are limits to what formal systems can do. Spend a few minutes reading Kurt Gödel and his incompleteness theorems. Algorithms, precisely because they operate by fixed formal rules, will always encounter propositions that are true but unreachable from inside the system. In other words, even in theory, algorithms will always hit dead ends they can never solve. None of this denies that AI is powerful. It makes many tasks dramatically easier, for good actors and bad ones alike. But by design it is computation. It processes inputs according to predefined mathematical structures. That is not the same thing as thinking. And it certainly is not consciousness. At the hardware level, AI systems consist of billions or trillions of transistors switching between 0 and 1. That’s it. Scaling that up does not suddenly generate subjective awareness.

@zzenrocker @gmiller @HansMahncke And on some level human brains are just biological prediction engines. I guess we're not really having this dumb conversation because we can't actually exist based on your logic.

@gmiller @HansMahncke While true, it doesn't make the OP wrong. AI will never be sentient--it's just advanced compute, etc. I'll add: what's wrong with that? Why is that so heretical to the maximalists

@mitchstadt @gmiller @HansMahncke ROFL. I really hope you enjoy being very, very wrong. Unfortunately we'll all probably end up extinct as a result of you and similarly closed minded, short-sighted individuals so really wish you all would get your collective heads out of your....

@gmiller @HansMahncke Fortunately it doesn't really need to be argued. I can very easily just state the obvious "AGI will not emerge from more compute on your word guesser" and enjoy the long slow vindication.

I was a top listener of Faderhead globally. If you get their vibe you probably know why #SpotifyWrapped spotify.com/wrapped-share/…

@wesroth Who's standards? Most human coders suck.

Google DeepMind and U.S. researchers introduced "Vibe Checker," a new system to evaluate AI-generated code based not only on whether it works, but also how well it follows human-like coding standards. Traditional benchmarks like pass@k only check if code passes unit tests, ignoring style, documentation, and error handling. Vibe Checker uses a tool called VeriCode, built from 30 rule categories to score code on real-world developer expectations. Even top models struggled when asked to follow multiple instructions, most dropped below 50% accuracy with three or more directives. This work could reshape how AI coding tools are trained and trusted.

But that is so completely, ludicrously naive. Your "hope" is going to leave you and everyone else helpless and doomed. Do you think rich, powerful people just give away wealth and power out of the goodness of their hearts? Almost never happens, it's a fucking rounding error in all of recorded history. Once AGI exists very rapidly mkst wealth and power will become concentrated into a very small group of people. In all history the wealthy needed the poor to work. With AGI and robots the poor will be dead weight and completely unnecessary. If you think that small group of people are going to give up 90%+ of their wealth continuousy to fund UBI for the useless dead weight of the poor - you are out of touch. Maybe they will at first just to pacify them. But they will build up theit power and robot security forces and eventually they will get tired of funding UBI and they will stop. But before then there will be restrictions and surveillance. There absolutely will not be freedom. No one on UBI will have any leverage, so they will have no freedom.

@gmiller My hope is that the gains will be distributed fairly & we will be the owners of our time. If people like working, I think we will develop a parallel system where people will still do fulfilling work. It just won’t be work that is necessary for our survival.

Conservatives wake up. Millions of tech bros like this guy below are eager to totally replace our existing, rather successful civilization with their AI-powered 'Fully Automated Luxury Communist Utopia.' They don't understand Chesterton's Fences. They despise tradition. They think you're retarded for finding any meaning in your work or your contributions to society. They want everyone utterly dependent on the charity of Big Tech & government. They want to tear down everything your ancestors ever worked for or aspired to. Wake up.

@MikeWestmeyer @gmiller @DaveShapi Blind, dumb sheep gonna walk themselves right into the slaughter house....

That’s not what @DaveShapi saying, but your interpretation of it is telling. Framing it through your lenses doesn’t make you a traditionalist, it makes you whaler in a post oil age. Furthermore clinging on to old paradigms doesn’t prove your traditional values. Horse and buggy people gonna horse and buggy into the future! ~ lmao

Ite NOT a winner take all scenario though, its everyone loses. If AI is that incredibly powerful (ASI) then its not something wr can control and thus long-term humanity does not benefit, we ALL loose. Sure maybe one country or another benefits for a short period before humanity loses control and we all lose. But in the end, we all lose. The only way to win is not to play.

This is like saying the Earth is doomed because eventually the Sun will become a red giant and consume it - so we might as well get rid of all environmental regulations and trash the place ASAP. Or that everyone eventually dies so it doesn't matter if someone is murderer. Its a stupid argument. The right choice is obviously to maximize the amount of time one has, not rush the end.

Even IF UBI is put in place, it will be at the whim of whomever is pulling the strings. Others will have control over where people live, what they can buy, etc. And its extremely unlikely it will continue forever. The ultra wealthy will gain power, resources and jnfluence every year. Just a matter of time until they get tired of paying for freeloaders.

@gmiller This particular post from him is grandiose, or rather might seem that way in a vacuum. I watched some of his content and ideas explained in long form and while I disagree with him, having that context, I understand his point of view. He's sold on UBI. I am not.

@gmiller @Mircea_CL Exactly.

@Mircea_CL UBI is a false god. Maybe the AI industry pays 10% of what would be needed for a couple of years. But why would they support 8 billion unemployed humans forever?

The point is being able to control your own future and ensure your own survival. Working means you earn money and can then use that money however you choose. Not working and having only "hobbies" means you have absolutely no means to earn money, sopport yourself or control your own future. It makes people completely 100% dependent on whomever is dolling out the handouts and subject to their whim. One must live where they are told and do as they are told with absolutely no freedom. No thanks, I'd rather work and have freedom and choice. And this assumes there are handouts, which is absolutely NOT guaranteed.

@gmiller I don't understand why people think no job = no work. Do you think that you can't do any work just because a machine also does that work? Have you not heard of hobbies? Contribution is not purpose. For purpose, see religion.

There is something regarding progress towards AGI that I had not fully considered previously which could have a major impact on the future and the stop/pause AGI efforts. If China invades Taiwan in 2026 it will likely force AGI progress to pause. Most GPU chips come from Taiwan. Plus in the case of an invasion the US is likely to get involved, so the military will be wanting/needing GPUs to run AI for military purposes which will likely override AI research to some degree at least. If China invades in 2027 its more of a race condition, meaning its less clear how much of a delay it will cause. If AGI was already created before war breaks out or is very close to completion no difference. But if AGI needs another year or more then it would slow it down in 2027 as well. I'd guess an invasion could slow AGI progress by 3 to 10 years, maybe more depending on the details. Not that I want war to happen, but its important to consider all relevant factors. If AGI were to be suddenly delayed multiple years without advance notice due to something like a war that would almost certainly cause the investment "bubble" to burst. Its not a bubble if they can achieve AGI before the investment money runs out. But if the money does dry up before they do - it takes a LOT of money to research AGI. The AI companies would go bankrupt and that would further delay AGI.

Even if we could just delay it 5, 10 or 15 years the odds of not getting a. horribly bad outcome increase. Right now a horribly bad outcome is vdry liky because we have no clue what we are doing or how to control AIs that are as smart or smarter than us. Learning how to do a. technology responsibly takes time, time we. currently don't have on this path.

@AspexPhoto @gmiller @jackclarkSF I'll ask you the same question: Do you see a realistic path to globally disarming a technology that has both the benefits of mass automation AND risk of nuclear? How? x.com/ideafaktory/st…

Technological Optimism and Appropriate Fear - an essay where I grapple with how I feel about the continued steady march towards powerful AI systems. The world will bend around AI akin to how a black hole pulls and bends everything around itself.