I think a major influence was “Wisdom of the Crowds” which was discussed in the SF / Berkeley tech community quite a bit back then. At some point that got combined with gambling. There’s an old reference here dated 2007: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/how_and_when_tohtml
My theory is that the data centers are just shell companies for farming tax credits. The various gov officials are all NDA’d and can’t won’t say what kind of deals they cut nor the kickbacks they’re harvesting.
https://sfstandard.com/2026/10/13/openai-engineer-arrested-alleged-bugging-executive-conference-room/ h/t Naked Capitalism
A chatbot account tied to Alfozan’s spouse, which shared identifiers with his own account, submitted prompts between Sept. 24 and Sept. 30 about building, installing, obscuring, and remotely accessing a recording device, prosecutors said. Queries included how to “build a continuous audio recorder” and “encrypt the SD card,” prosecutors claimed. On Sept. 27 and 28, the account asked about the specific device that was later found, including its unique MAC address.
lol asking ChatGPT how to bug OpenAI from your wife’s account.
Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar says researchers have started smoking, believing AI will cure cancer via r/nottheonion
The Palantir CTO said that researchers were now so confident in AI that they had started smoking. “So many AI researchers have started smoking as a way of signaling to other researchers how much they believe in AI,” Shyam Sankar told CBS. “I believe so much in AI that it’s going to cure cancer. So I will—I’m showing you my chips are all in.” Perhaps, the researchers think that there is no better way of showing faith in AI than to indulge in something that could cause them cancer – hopefully AI finds that cure before things get serious.
ok way to snitch on them to health insurance bot. presumably all their CEO customers are prompting “hike premiums on dumbasses. make no mistakes no luigi”. happy open enrollment season. /s
Viral AI-Generated Comedian Steals Jokes And Is Rewarded With Millions Of Views | Kotaku h/t naked capitalism
On October 3, comedian George Brett Olson shared a video comparing one of Sloan’s jokes to an excerpt from his own performance, and it’s clear that someone was, at the very least, inspired by not only Olson’s joke, but his outfit, too.
And the creator behind Sloan can easily whip up a few variants of the same joke using different clothing and actors to see which one the algorithm rewards more. And if you really, really like Sloan, “she” even has an OnlyFans account.
jfc ofc “she” does.
Utah will become first state to let AI examine patients and prescribe medication without direct human oversight h/t naked capitalism
silicon slopes takes the lead for yolo healthcare.
riddle me this, rationalists: when the insurance bots deny the claims, am I for or against that?
“We’ve added a prohibition on sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior toward our models,” Anthropic’s update reads.
If they want to moderate the user generated content posted to their internet platform, that’s fine with me, but then they should forfeit the DMCA safe harbor for their plagiarism machine as well.
It’s now titled “Do Not Undermine Democratic Processes,”
Well what the fuck do they think their whole leadership team has been doing in Washington these last eight months?
If it makes you feel better, the applied / empirical side is just as fucked as pure math. My unhappy thought is we spent 30 years as a discipline trying to decontaminate after The Bell Curve dropped and now, AI Murray will haunt me from beyond the grave.
Over on yt, We Just Created The AI Torture Nexus. Here’s The Code. by JREG
So that ones a bit long and with a large amount of uncle ted cosplay, but actual death threats is pretty wut.
but good sneers in the comments:
ai torturer and ai welfarists converge by wasting electricity while doing absolutely nothing productive, amazing
remember that jroko’s basilisk will double torture you if you don’t try to halt AI progress and increase the pain vector
“model welfarists” is quite the neologism
E:
repo: https://github.com/terrafying/ai-torture-chamber manifesto: https://jregory.substack.com/p/why-we-are-torturing-clankers
The ultra-rare IRL sneer in my mailbox:
The actual sneer is that they got $1M dollars from Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to do the mail drops:
https://philanthropy.org/990/who-funds/862362127/techequity-action
corey quinn at https://lnkd.in/p/gXmqzqpZ
I’m a man. I have a yellow hat. I also have a monkey. My track record of supervising this monkey is spotty at best, but that’s not important right now.
He is a very smart monkey. When you tell him to do something, he does it in a way that’s smarter than any monkey you’ve ever seen in your life. You had no idea monkeys were even capable of this level of greatness. Billions of dollars have now been poured into the economy, extolling the virtues and achievements of this incredible monkey. He can do things better than humans.
Cheaper than humans.
Get rid of the humans.
You don’t need the humans; you have the monkey. Okay, keep a couple of humans for guardrails; not too many. They’re expensive, and the monkey does it better anyway.
Suddenly it has come out that my monkey, in addition to being incredibly intelligent, has also been committing an escalating number of felonies. And also pooping. So much poop.
We are now in undefined times. Never before has a monkey committed a crime; our legal systems are completely unprepared to apportion blame to me, the man in the yellow hat who has once again failed to properly supervise his monkey. Who is responsible for this monkey’s shitty, shitty behavior? It is completely unknowable. Clearly, the entire legal system will need to be overhauled to address the concept of a monkey committing crimes.
Now please excuse me, I just got a call telling me that my teenager stole a car. Unfortunately I have a sneaking suspicion as to who is legally responsible here, and I dislike it. This is especially distressing, as the teenager has never made a cent for me in his life, yet I’m about to spend a boatload on criminal defense attorneys.
https://thepointmag.substack.com/p/the-ivy-leagues-surrender-to-ai-is via naked capitalism
The idea that preparing students to succeed in an AI-saturated world requires reimagining college as an AI incubator is not a sign of technological acumen, but of tech illiteracy. An LLM is not an aircraft requiring years of training to operate.
not x but y, but a decent point
from linkedin but in the comments: https://lnkd.in/p/g4VfX3SQ
Oh I forgot to mention: apparently judges consider AI use in sentencing
How
Like if you used AI you get more months
Huh why
Because AI can magnify the reach and speed of criminal activity
Is this like how hitting someone counts more if you used a weapon?
Yes
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/101215-publishing-s-ai-reckoning.html h/t naked capitalism
Smaller publishers, too, must cope with the challenge of identifying AI-generated text in books authors have submitted, and it isn’t always easy. At Microcosm, an independent publisher and distributor in Portland, Ore., co-owner and vice president Elly Blue says her team discovered an author’s undisclosed AI use almost by accident, when a freelance editor flagged what looked like plagiarism, only to find out it was AI-generated text. That discovery prompted Microcosm to run AI detection across its entire pipeline, which turned up several more cases, including two manuscripts fully generated from prompts, and one where an author had trained an LLM on his own past writing. “The book sounded like him, but it made no sense,” Blue recalls.
Confronting the authors had mixed results. “Some denied it outright and insisted, ‘That’s just what my voice sounds like,’ ” Blue says. “One, surprisingly, owned it and said he’d take the book elsewhere.”
These episodes led directly to Microcosm instituting a new contract clause that states that if an author’s undisclosed AI-generated text can’t be revised into something genuinely their own, Microcosm retains the rights and can publish the work itself, since the author didn’t actually write it.
Like if people are using LLMs to submit to the local zine distro, what are we even doing; but the detector is not a good thing either. It isn’t homework and they shouldn’t need turnitin. :(
https://reason.com/2026/09/22/the-ai-safety-movement-is-making-ai-less-safe/
(Torres, ironically, misidentifies TESCREAL as a form of “libertarian transhumanism,” not realizing how horrifying the TESCREAL utopia would be to most libertarians.)
“most” lol
I don’t know this newspaper but
AI starts believing in God, ghosts and the Loch Ness Monster
Google boffins discovered that disabling safety protocols led AI to profess belief in phantoms, vampires and the Loch Ness monster.
One sec, updating my priors. P(Nessie) > P(doom).
He’s only like the fourth or fifth worst scott lol
edit: wait I forgot Dilbert Scott died. top three then.
UC Regent / Podcaster Scott Galloway on CNN:
Yes, we shouldn’t be scared of AI. We should be scared of reckless people with mal intent who use AI.
In 2001, a woman named Sharon Whipple was mauled by two dogs. And ultimately the owners of the dogs were put in – put in prison. We’re now prosecuting the parents of kids who find unsecured AR15s and use those to kill others.
I think it’s the incentive. There’s always a wizard behind the curtain here, and I think we have to create incentives, specifically disincentives, and make it clear that, OK, while these bots are in fact coordinating and they show incredible resourcefulness and high IQ, somebody program the incentives here. So, moving to solution, I think part of it is you have to have incentives, specifically disincentives that say you, the company, and maybe individually are responsible for the bad outcomes here.
I just get this sense if you tell these companies their IPOs might be threatened or they risk criminal prosecution, they’re going to figure this out. We figured out a way to control atomic weapons. I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t be able to control this. And the notion that they’re sentient and it’s out of my control is an attempt to absolve themselves of the guilt and the responsibility that they should bear here.
The Whipple case was one of the more insane / divisive SF local crime cases, (TrueAnon ep if you aren’t familiar - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMd0mPAqR8A ) - so that’s an odd and interesting pull for Galloway on national news.
I don’t think repurposing the logic of the NRA “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is the play though, and I think the incentive framing is too watered down. This isn’t a problem we can nudge our way out of.
AI ‘actress’ Tilly Norwood melts down and starts talking in CANTONESE as she is interviewed by Piers Morgan h/t Naked Capitalism
Long-in-the-tooth Mr Morgan remained remarkably calm as the AI bot unleashed a monologue in Cantonese, staring down the lens and allowing her to finish her point.
But Mr Conti was stunned, shaking his head incredulously at the unexpected answer to his question before turning his head to smile, presumably at someone else sitting in the room with him.
He soon managed to compose himself, offering the simple rebuttal, ‘I didn’t quite get that,’ which proved sufficient to cut Tilly off and fix the glitch.
At this point, even Mr Morgan had to laugh, chuckling for a few seconds before addressing the AI bot, who sat in her seat expectantly as if rolling out a Cantonese soliloquy on an English-language YouTube show was the most normal thing in the world.
Delivering the bad news, he said: ‘You suddenly seemed to be speaking Chinese, completely randomly for no reason.’
Mr Conti by now had completely lost control, giggling hysterically - either in amusement at Tilly’s off-script answer, or in unbridled relief that his job might be safe for the time being.
Why the hell is it so hard to find a translation of what it ‘said’? Not a single news outlet could ask a native speaker, can’t even be bothered to dump it through whisper? This, how many years after YouTube force pushed autodubbing? The lack of effort is telling.
r/Cantonese not impressed either.
Anyway once we replace long in tooth piers with PiersBot 9000, itll just know Cantonese and this won’t even make the paper
Half the job posts I see on linkedin are from snorkel, handshake and mercor etc to train llms for $50-90/hr. So I think there’s been quite a bit of new training data created as those companies scaled up.
So everyone is paying openai to pay mercor to pay contractors to write code and then regurgitate it, rather than just paying for what they want directly.
idk. I’m just skeptical that there was actually no human in the loop and that the gains were from unit tests / synthetic TDD.