I’ve started referring to them as language models again. Somehow suggesting a language model is conscious seems weirder to people than saying an “AI” is; it escapes this particular coin trick.

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)@doctorow.pluralistic.net · 3d ago

"Predicting what you'll say through an understanding based on a theory of your mind" and "predicting what you'll say based on a statistical analysis of your utterances" might produce the same *outputs*, but they are *not* the same trick. You can tell by what happens when the trick fails. 14/

"Predicting what you'll say through an understanding based on a theory of your mind" and "predicting what you'll say based on a statistical analysis of your utterances" might produce the same *outputs*, but they are *not* the same trick. You can tell by what happens when the trick fails. 14/

“Tchk aww, we shoulda put *soldiers* in it!” —Kenneth Williams’ Odysseus

“It’s a social construct that means it’s not real” No, we constructed it, it’s real now, that’s what happens when you build things

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 5d ago

there are a lot of philosophical concepts that get egregiously misused out of the seminar room (and in the seminar room, to be fair). but in terms of sheer pernicious misuse "social construct" has gotta be top 5 somewhere and it's not number 5

We have the “how”. As to OpenAI’s great good fortune that the target was another AI company who would play along with the “whoah, scary achievement” framing? Still smells like a setup or at least a deliberate stunt (depending on whether Hugging Face were in on it).

Kevin Riggle@kevinr.free-dissociation.com · 6d ago

In the same way that if you have an improperly sealed ant farm then the ants getting out is not the ants exhibiting any kind of superintelligence

"Go back to where you've come from, you loudmouth!" New Zealand's minister of foreign affairs (!) displaying his enormous talents for tact, diplomacy, and generally getting along with people from other countries and cultures. www.france24.com/en/live-news...

New Zealand foreign minister in racism row with Chinese ambassador

New Zealand's top diplomat Winston Peters drew the ire of Beijing's ambassador in Wellington on Thursday after telling a lawmaker of Chinese descent to "go back to your own country".

france24.com

“What problem do they solve” does not seem like a hard question. If you have nuanced savvy policy nerd questions, maybe, you know, ask those instead. This just looks like hippy-punching.

paul khruangbin (Dan Lehner)@danlehner.bsky.social · last wk.

if there’s anything I would want to drill into the public consciousness it’s that there are almost always like a dozen ways to approach any given problem and some of them will be more effective than others and we have to stop acting like the questions around it are against fixing the issue

“In a sign of waning investor interest in AI debt, Meta’s latest borrowing cost for its $12bn Texas data centre has risen significantly to levels closer to junk-rated bonds.” Nice to see the bond vigilantes using their powers for good. www.ft.com/content/ac13...

Big Tech credit risks rise sharply as AI spending soars

Investors are increasingly concerned over rush of borrowing to fund huge investments in data centres

ft.com

When reading about this US debate it helps to remember that US schools start at Four Yorkshiremen o’clock in the morning. High schools earliest of all, perversely.

Roxanne Darling 🌱@roxannedarling.bsky.social · last wk.

The health researchers and commenters all want year round standard time. Me too. gift link www.nytimes.com/2026/07/27/s...

No. No it doesn’t. No it hasn’t. Vernor Vinge, please come back and haunt this sleazy bastard.

Al Jazeera English@aljazeera.com · last wk.

The 'singularity' refers to the point at which AI outpaces human intelligence and becomes difficult to control.

Tired: AI has feelings. Wired: windows can be terrified. www.ft.com/content/4271...

Prosecutors call for Barclays protesters to be sentenced under UK terror laws

The defendants, who are affiliated with Palestine Action, were found guilty last month of criminal damage

ft.com

The very definition of criti-hype coverage.

Casey Newton@caseynewton.bsky.social · last wk.

Unfortunately you are a lost cause. This all began when I posted a story about a tech company's agent breaking containment and attacking another company — the very definition of critical coverage. If you have an issue with Byte Magazine, go back in time to 1998 and write a letter to the editor

Seems weird that “keeps heat in but not out” and “lets heat in but not out” mean the same thing. I now have a new appreciation for German’s directional prepositions.

Adrian Boutel@aboutel.bsky.social · 2w ago

Ah now that’s double-magic insulation. I’m more familiar with the ordinary magic kind that keeps heat in but not out.

Surface Detail came out in 2010! Banks was a perceptive, not to say prescient, man.

Charlie Stross@cstross.bsky.social · 2w ago

I knew Iain and he *definitely* despised Musk! (Joliet Veppers in "Surface Detail" is a brutal caricature of Musk. Musk either skipped that Culture novel or didn't recognize himself ...)

I knew Iain and he *definitely* despised Musk! (Joliet Veppers in "Surface Detail" is a brutal caricature of Musk. Musk either skipped that Culture novel or didn't recognize himself ...)

“The world’s organisations have been captured by people in the throes of frothing excitement, and saner people who now live in a state of constant commingled fear and frustration.” ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/ai-mani...

In the aggregate, there is no return to pure risk. If you’re making a long-term profit off risk premia, something else is going on. And if you’re making a profit off risk premia charged to poor people, not a great surprise that “something else” is ripping them off.

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)@doctorow.pluralistic.net · 2w ago

It's a way to eat your cake and have it too: even though you've reduced the likelihood that you'll have to write off your loan, you still charge the borrower as though that risk is unchanged. 10/

Hard endorse. The only purpose of a flag is to identify who it’s the flag of! If you have to be a subject-matter expert or a vexillology geek to tell it apart from others, it’s not doing its job. (This is a post about the NZ and Aussie flags, but also most flags frankly including all the Nordics.)

This is about counterfactuals, not grammar. If the woman wasn’t trans she’d be… cis. Assuming she’d be a cis *man* tells us that JKR thinks sex is less mutable than gender. It has nothing to do with whether “trans woman” is a compound noun (which can of course be of adjective-noun form).

Alan Driscoll@alandriscoll.com · 2w ago

I'm not saying she's necessarily the stupidest person of all time, but she's definitely the person with the biggest ever gap between how clever they think they are, and how stupid they actually are.

In its defence, it made the super yacht beside it look rather titchy

When your victim is your biggest hype man www.bbc.com/news/article...

Co-founder of firm hacked by rogue OpenAI models says it is 'a wake-up call'

A co-founder of start-up Hugging Face told the BBC that most firms are not aware that the "game has changed".

bbc.com

The risks of believing what LLM-makers say about their product, maybe. Again: how lucky for OpenAI that, of all the targets on the internet, its agent attacked *another AI company*, that would (a) not sue and (b) provide breathless comments about how awesome this was. www.ft.com/content/7e55...

OpenAI hacking incident exposes mounting risks in AI arms race

Increasing use of aggressive training techniques sharpens threat of bad behaviour by leading models

ft.com

It gives me no pleasure to report that my cynicism was justified. And enhanced, because Enemalta’s website says we have power. But the roofscape says otherwise.

Adrian Boutel@aboutel.bsky.social · 2w ago

When an electricity official says he hopes power will be back by morning, I need one (1) journalist to reply “and when do you *think* it will be back?” www.independent.com.mt/articles/202...

When an electricity official says he hopes power will be back by morning, I need one (1) journalist to reply “and when do you *think* it will be back?” www.independent.com.mt/articles/202...

Enemalta says Valletta power supply to return by morning as heatwave strains electricity network - The Malta Independent

Enemalta has said that it expects electricity supply in Valletta to be restored by Thursday morning after a fault in an overloaded underground cable left parts of the capital relying on temporary

independent.com.mt

I feel like people have forgotten that ad blockers weren't popular because people just wanted to get something for free, it's because we can't trust ads not to fuck up our computers. If we still just had quiet simple banner ads or sideboard ads, ad blockers wouldn't have gotten as much traction.

Today in “using language models for things that aren’t predicting language”. I get the feeling this will be a long series.

UK Research and Innovation@ukri.org · 2w ago

The UK Metascience Unit has launched the ‘National AI in Research’ Survey. We're looking for researchers across all disciplines and career stages to share their views on the use of AI in research. The survey will be published and used to inform national policy on AI in research.

“It’s quite mind-blowing that all of this happened autonomously!” said the “victim”, a company with exactly the same interest in AI hype as the “perpetrator”. www.ft.com/content/9db7...

OpenAI admits an AI ‘agent’ caused a major cyber breach by itself

AI lab’s advanced models escaped testing ‘sandbox’ to hack Hugging Face

ft.com

Goodnight from same

Germans to be forced to wait for delayed trains sober www.businesstraveller.com/news/deutsch...

Deutsche Bahn: Alkoholkonsum wird an allen Bahnhöfen verboten

Bis Mitte Oktober soll der Konsum von Alkohol bundesweit an allen Bahnhöfen untersagt sein. Dadurch erhofft sich die DB weniger Konflikte und mehr Sicherheit für Mitarbeiter und Kunden.

businesstraveller.com