William Wolf
10.4K posts
William Wolf
@willium
wearer of many hats: founder of https://t.co/K6ZBOItG2r, https://t.co/Tdur51jNFz (acq. @airtable), pm @twitter, vis @fivethirtyeight, cs @uwcse, research @uwdata, and more
New York Katılım Ocak 2010
1.8K Takip Edilen3.3K Takipçiler
@allisonbraley @BlackCatsCap which is ironically one of the questions the ad asks, and they don't attempt to answer
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@BlackCatsCap I'm not sure it will accomplish that goal of building trust. It feels more likely to make non-tech people ask -- if it's so risky, why build it? Why should I trust you? Just because you're telling me bad things might happen doesn't mean I trust you to act altruistically.
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I don't have a problem with the premise of this ad the way many do. Only 26% of Americans have positive views on AI, and Pollyanna messaging totally invalidates the average person when we communicate. It comes off tone deaf.
My issue is that the implicit message is "trust us bro"
Paint a dystopian picture... but the solution is buy Claude? Ask a bunch of hard questions, and the answer is... we've got you? Don't worry?
An ad like this begs for regulation and then staves it off by saying "but we're the good guys"
That's the part I don't think people will buy.
Claude@claudeai
There’s hope in hard questions.
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Anyone in SF want to grab coffee or take a walk at Salesforce Park this afternoon? Happy to chat about AI, tools for humans and agent, design engineeering, where things are going, career stuff ~
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@provisionalidea harnessing the frontier ads would be great. "go west, young man!"
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I think Mother London took very much the wrong approach with this campaign, and I see it significantly degrading public opinion amongst non-industry insiders who see it (granted not sure how much was poor framing by the client). It reads like the caricatured dystopian tech company ads that kick around in recent Hollywood movies, which I strongly doubt was the intent (who is this supposed to appeal to?). Stoking FUD + dread is not a good approach as the vibes turn!
The underlying drive is still very much “we are building something you should be scared of whether you like it or not”, which I obviously disagree with on principle (cut the Bond villain crap!). But assuming they really wanted to push the scary x powerful angle, there are ways to do it that don’t read as “we’re a big bad” or “hey, maybe the end of the world will be a good thing!”.
Here are three counterexamples off the top of my head as I’m out for a walk that are better, even while being divisive:
1. “Awe-inspiring”. Nature is powerful, beautiful, and also dangerous. Analogize the tool as a force of nature to be admired but also to be wary of.
2. “With Great Power…”: strong cultural trope. Can be self-aware and a little tongue-in-cheek, while emphasizing the need for responsible development and the potential for evil. Kinda super surprised none of the labs grabbed this angle, because it also inherently implies the tool gives you superpowers.
3. "Harnessing the frontier" -- tap into Progressive Era and a bit of Wild West Americana. 'We've always seen potential in the unknown'. Damming and redirecting rivers, building the Panama Canal, moon landing, JFK "we do things because they're hard", FDR "the only thing to fear is fear...". Do it in a modern way where you also capture the downsides, but show the net trajectory as upwards and the mistakes as something to learn from.
The other issue is how much the fundamental rule of "show don't tell" is violated. You can't reasonably say 'be scared be scared be scared' while doing clockwork-orange-subliminal-message-esque image flashes and then orwellianly tell people 'but actually scary is hope' at the end!
Claude@claudeai
There’s hope in hard questions.
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@mitchellh 100% - forensic accounting use case is generally underrated
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A ChatGPT automation just found ~$45K in erroneous invoices across 3 years of billing history that I've confirmed and already had resolved. My lifetime history for ChatGPT is ~$1,800, so it just paid for itself 25x over.
I setup an automation with read-only access to my email, and tasked this one specifically with analyzing construction invoices. It has access to prior construction invoices, emails, meeting notes, etc. It produces a report and emails it to me (the only email its allowed to send, enforced by API token) whenever I receive a construction invoice.
Across 3 years of construction projects, it found about $45K in issues. Some were wrong amounts, some were duplicate invoices, some were invoices addressed to the wrong person. I manually verified, emailed my GCs, and got refunded/credited.
I get multiple construction bills each month and each bill is ~50 pages in a PDF of low-quality scanned paper. I do manually review each bill but its pretty hard to be right all the time.
I do believe these were genuine mistakes and not done out of ill will just based on what the mistakes were. I don't want to share my full construction costs across the past few years, but $45K is a very small percentage of overall billed amounts.
Pretty sweet.
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@doodlestein great filmmaking and storytelling! just an insane story to tell.
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Apparently I’m the only one, but I liked this video from Anthropic. Not as a commercial or as PR, but just as art. The way the images and the music worked together, the lo-fi telephone sound of the voices, the staccato piano. Even the disturbing images. It made me feel something.
Claude@claudeai
There’s hope in hard questions.
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@milkkarten do you think this ad makes anthropic seem moral? or is just that it raises the moral questions and attempts to bank on the moral goodwill they won last year by going against the trump admin/dow?
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a lot of ai power users on here dunking on this ad, but i don’t think they realize how much the positioning of being “the moral one” is actually quite important to normal everyday people
Claude@claudeai
There’s hope in hard questions.
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@sh_reya we really don't talk about the insane jargon ai invents enough
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AI assisted writing and communication is truly one of the most important problems to work on right now.
But why is slop bad? Is it really bad? Yes
- branding is very important. It signals who you are and how you think. using AI to write for you rids you of your brand
- AI embellishes everything. If everything is embellished, embellishment loses value as a literary device. The reader wont know what’s most important or interesting
- AI invents too much jargon. Inventing jargon is probably efficient for training + learning how to reason but terrible for communication with humans. For as long as companies push performance on coding agents, I have little faith that writing + communication is going to improve
No disrespect to any companies or people in particular. The problem is a global phenomenon
Gergely Orosz@GergelyOrosz
The amount of AI writing on OpenAI's docs makes me sick. Filler sentences for nothing. Mannerisms and phrases humans would not write. Has a human even read this? And all of this will change how other docs are written, and how we all talk - for the worse IMO. 🤮
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i want to see legacy industries air out their beef in public like this. would be gold to see the CEO of Safeway slinging mud at the CEO of Albertsons on the timeline
Sam Altman@sama
i thought this was satire, kept looking for the handle to be spelled c1audeai or something
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@ritwickdsouza @GergelyOrosz surely we can expect more from trillion dollar companies
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@GergelyOrosz would you prefer having sloppy docs or stale incomplete docs which claude is infamous for?
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The amount of AI writing on OpenAI's docs makes me sick.
Filler sentences for nothing. Mannerisms and phrases humans would not write. Has a human even read this?
And all of this will change how other docs are written, and how we all talk - for the worse IMO.
🤮
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I had an awful voice AI experience with @Hertz last night
I was actually excited when the support bot came on the line. I spend so much time working with partners in the voice AI space who are optimizing for call centers, I’d assumed the experience these days would be incredible
Instead I got a masterclass in why voice is hard.
- Agent turn latency was long enough for me to be like… is this thing on?
- We both talked over each other multiple times.
- Getting my 9 digit reservation code was super painful. First try, the turn ended too quickly and what the agent saw was invalid. Second try, the transcription was wrong. Third try I had to speak at an extremely deliberate rate for it to work, and even then I was sweating. The agent never tried to piece it together from the transcript, weirdly.
- When the agent had to run tool calls there was no indication, no back channeling, and sometimes the turns seemed to overlap if I accidentally spoke during the tool call.
- The worst part was yet to come. I wanted to change my reservation drop off, so the agent asked me where - just say a location, we’ll find a spot nearby. I said my current town (suburban New York) and after a second it tried to switch my drop off to Helena Regional Airport in Montana (bad transcription, presumably).
The second time it tried to get me to drop off in a similarly named town in Alabama. Either change would have doubled my entire reservation cost. Hertz doesn’t geocode the location and *then* find the closest spot, they just choose from a prefabbed list of locations. I’m sure this is the same API that powers their site, it just doesn’t make sense over voice.
I finally got the agent to direct me to a human who fixed my problem in 30 seconds at no cost.
Bullish on voice but come on guys let’s step it up.
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I'd like to fund 20 people to go to Hoffman for free.
Fill out the application form below to be considered.
Erik Torenberg@eriktorenberg
PSA: The Hoffman Process retreat is transformative and I recommend it 10/10
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I'm sorry but 1) there's no way this was actually written by McConnell and 2) if we're so worried about age deteriorating one's reputation during expected age-related health troubles, maybe -- just maybe -- you should be retired and not grasping onto power until your last breath.
Mitch is 84. He should have retired 20 years ago.
Jake Sherman@JakeSherman
MCCONNELL releases a photo - and statement. “To my fellow Kentuckians – “When you elected me to a seventh term and made me our Commonwealth’s longest serving Senator, you did so trusting that I’d keep showing up to fight for you every day. And over the past several weeks, Elaine and I have appreciated both your well wishes and your honest questions about what was keeping me away from the Senate. “You all know how folks of my generation often hesitate to share the vulnerability that comes with growing older. Even in the public eye, I feel that same instinct – I can’t help it. “But at the same time, I’ve had more than my share of experience with physical vulnerabilities. Surviving childhood polio meant spending my entire life with mobility challenges. They haven’t exactly gotten easier to manage with age. And last month, I took a fall which landed me in the hospital. “My doctors have confirmed that I didn’t break any bones or suffer a concussion. I didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke. I don’t have any tumors or hemorrhages. But I was briefly unconscious and was taken to the hospital. While receiving excellent care over the past several weeks, I’ve also had to deal with a mild case of pneumonia. “I can assure you that I’ve been a good patient. At my age, I tend to do what my doctors tell me to do. I’ve submitted to every test they can think of to help figure out what caused this incident. And I’m continuing to do everything they ask to speed my recovery. In fact, with signs of continued progress, I’ve been able to move from hospital care to a rehabilitation center where I’ll keep regaining my strength. “As much as it frustrates me, this process takes time. And on the advice of my doctors, I won’t be able to return to the Senate floor to vote quite yet. But rest assured that, in the meantime, I’m not taking a break from the Senate business that matters to you. I’ve been working closely with my legislative staff on current issues, and with my Kentucky team who help me provide timely constituent services across our Commonwealth. I’ve also been keeping in touch with my Senate colleagues on the appropriations process, midterm politics, and everything in between. “You’re right to expect your representatives to work hard for you. And part of my decision to retire at the end of my term this coming January was being honest about the demands of Senate work. But I still have unfinished business to complete on your behalf, and I have every intention of finishing the job you elected me to do. “I’ll keep working hard to get back on the Senate floor as soon as possible. And I’ll keep you posted on the progress of my recovery. Until then, I’m so grateful for your prayers and well wishes.”
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And yes....
...I made myself into a sim because WE NEED MORE WHIMSY IN CONSUMER!!!!!
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Decided I wanted to be overstimulated by NYC all the time so I built its digital twin with real time data.
Now I can enjoy NYC from my couch at home, and you can too!
Track air traffic, subways, buses, ferries, Citi Bikes, traffic speeds, traffic cameras, 311 complaints, weather, news headlines...
...and even live bird migration patterns.
(Looking at you, pigeons 👀)
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