Hackworth

While it’s one of my favorite words, “inexorably” does not fit here.

Death to Chronos?

The paper is more rigorous with language but can be a slog.

Anthropic has some similar findings, and they propose an architectural change (activation capping) that apparently keeps the Assistant character away from dark traits (only half of the time). But it hasn’t been implemented in any models, I assume because of the compute cost.

Patterns of linguistic simplification on social media platforms over time

add AI-slop elements in novel ways

Datamoshing can have an AI-generated quality.

Between 2020 and 2022, the US government found that over 300 US companies in multiple industries, including several Fortune 500 companies, had unknowingly employed these workers, indicating the magnitude of this threat.

So AI’s just making some things easier now.

North Korean remote IT workers require assistance from a witting facilitator to help find jobs, pass the employment verification process, and once hired, successfully work remotely. - Microsoft

I was gonna say… how do they deal with the HR paperwork and getting paid. They need Americans or at least people from other countries to help.

You got a genuine laugh outta me. Well put.

They keep trying to, but Hegseth formally designated them a supply chain risk just a few hours ago, right after using Claude in Iran.

and yet still preferable to OpenAI, Google, and xAI.

The bar is so low. Anthropic is only trying to raise it ever so slightly.

e: Also, the US military reportedly used Claude in Iran strikes despite Trump’s ban.

True! But that requires trust. Trust that the person transferring the knowledge correctly interpreted their experience and was able to communicate it well. As wisdom fades from living memory (as those who directly experienced it pass or are marginalized), it seems difficult for society to maintain the integrity of that knowledge across new contexts. The scientific method is supposed to help with this, but we have difficulty following it at scale. Reminds me of this comic about collecting questions.

I largely agree with Siddhartha that wisdom can only be gained through experience. I just think of all the times I knew something intellectually but didn’t understand it sufficiently to properly act on it until I lived it. But there is a more fun corollary from Zen Without Zen Masters, “If you think you can get beyond pleasure without going through it, we are definitely on different trips.”

Aye, Anthropic is head and shoulders above everyone else on guidance, largely because they focus entirely on text/code. They’re not simultaneously developing image, video, and audio generators. Even Claude’s voice is just an 11Labs model. Plus I get the impression they’re just smarter about what they choose to research and how they use that info to improve the model.

I did find an update on that funding, btw. Anthropic already took money from Qatar (the QIA), but the amount isn’t known - likely around $100M. The UAE has yet to happen, but if does, it would be “hundreds of millions”.

I mean, I’m not gonna defend him. But fucking up a discord that you’re a mod of isn’t really in the same ballpark as taking money from dictators or directing fully autonomous strikes. Also, from the read, it really sounds like that Deputy CISO was a prime example of cyber-psychosis, or AI mania, or whatever we’ve decided to call it. And I assume he is part of the same vulnerable minority?

Oh, that guy! To be fair, that’s one employee, not Anthropic’s actions or position. You mentioned forcing their software on minorities while insisting it was better than it was, and I was getting OLPC flashbacks. But Anthropic looking for funding in the UAE and Qatar is shitty. I can’t seem to find anything about whether or not they went through with those contracts.

They insisted Claude was human?

Amodei said in an interview that the DoW altered their contract to appear to compromise, so that it looked like they were agreeing to those use limits. But that legalese accompanying the updates rendered that text pointless. Basically, “We won’t use Claude for mass domestic surveillance and full automated killing, unless we really want to.” My guess is OpenAI signed the exact same contract and just pretended not to understand the toothlessness of the guardrails.

It’s more about post/message size for me. If ya post a few sentences that clearly and concisely communicate a point, I don’t really care if they’re crafted or generated. If ya post a wall of text, I wanna know ya put the kind of effort in that made its length necessary if I’m gonna put in the effort to read it.