Moments from today’s Pacific Airshow, ft. The USAF Thunderbirds in their F-16s and Captain Laz Le Tourneau in his F-22.
Alex Turnbull
@alejandroturnbull.space
Chief Rocket Wrangler at UC Riverside's Highlander Space Program and writer at @spacescout.bsky.social - working on dark matter detection, high power rockets, and whatever else catches my interest. www.alejandroturnbull.space 🏳️🌈
My thoughts that nobody asked for about LLM torture discourse: regardless of what the LLM is or is not experiencing, if you build a system that gets an LLM to act like it's being brutally tortured that says a lot more about you than it does about machine experience.
i also just have to say that pointing at a falling down barn while bragging about how fewer people are coming to america is about the perfect encapsulation of how MAGA believes in making america smaller and weaker
Seth Cotlar@sethcotlar.bsky.social · 3d agoWhen the US State Department is doing such great work to project a friendly American face to the world, it’s a total mystery why fewer people are choosing to visit.
New Horizons is now *three days away* from shutting off its two heliophysics instruments, simply because NASA has not provided the $2M in funding it had promised to the mission last year or this year. There is no science basis for shutting these off. Our earlier coverage:
NASA’s New Horizons mission may shut down two instruments over lack of funding
Decision risks “incalculable loss” of data from the edge of the Sun’s influence, scientists say
science.org
Since I’ve done a lot of Yud defending, here are some Yud critiques: - he’s wildly overconfident, especially about things like philosophy of mind - his plan for AI safety is bad - his “pivotal act” rhetoric is dangerous - he’s failed to react to abuse in his community - he has incurable porn brain
Grace@gracekind.net · 6d agoI can’t go to bed. People dislike the same people I dislike for the *wrong reasons*
only took fourteen flights, three years, and one trillion raptors dying midflight but the Stupid Thing is Finally Orbital. Let's go to the freaking moon
Jonathan McDowell@planet4589.bsky.social · 6d agoStarship orbit insertion at 276 km
Raptor team needs to get locked in a room and not let out until they invent an engine that doesn't explode
An upside to LLMs is it turns a lot of shape rotator tasks into wordcel tasks and I've seen how engineers write lmao
Mike Ross@eruptionchaser.bsky.social · last wk.Am I missing something here? In what universe would an engineering student ever study history?! Do many history students study engineering?! I *enjoyed* history at school, and I was *good* at it. But no way would I ever have studied it at university.
Hey, ProPublica reporter Jake Pearson here. I’m taking over the account to tell you about my new story. For months, I posed as a problem gambler on DraftKings to test the company's "responsible gaming" safeguards. Spoiler alert: They made me a VIP — and I lost $10K. Here's how it all went down. 🧵
Honestly I think it's a bit of a fools' errand to try and get people to stop anthropomorphising LLMs. I say my computer is angry at me if it beeps too loud.
I am once again reposting this because downballot donations go far! Motivating voters to turn out for downballot races not only helps flip state legislatures, but also motivates performance at the top of the ticket!
Sam@samd.bsky.social · 2w agoholy shit, dems actually have a chance to flip the PA Senate and NC leg to get trifectas in both states I have updated the optimized state donation list so we can donate to these candidates that just need a little bit of $ to take advantage of what could be the biggest blue wave in history
TRUMP: the election situation has not necessarily developed to the Republican Party's advantage
Stop dooming! Instead, watch this video by Dora Strelko about her brilliant scheme to cheat Mark Rober blind! www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xuyw...
I Beat Mark Rober's Casino with Heat Activated Dice
YouTube video by Dora Strelko
youtube.com
So this weekend's project: getting @typesafeai.bsky.social's Jev to play Age of Empires III. Behold: Jev (in an enormous Python harness courtesy of Claude) defeating the in-game AI on Easy difficulty.
This is a very cold take in alien discourse and, given the total absence of evidence in either direction, I see no reason to assume that we aren't on the smart and generous end.
Grace@gracekind.net · 2w agoIn the cosmic host of intelligences, humans are probably on the stupid and violent end of the spectrum
it is genuinely kind of staggering to see what I perceive as Normal California Prices in Minnesota
Boo!-per Lund@cooperlund.online · 2w agoTook this photo of gas prices in central Minnesota last night
Model performance aside, I find something kind of charming in using the latest extremely powerful AI to crack old Enigma transmissions that nobody ever got around to deciphering.
The fact that Musk himself is sponsoring so many of the anti-trans ads this cycle presents a pretty golden opportunity for Dems to point out that of course the guy who literally wants to build a gas-powered data center in your backyard wants this election to be about trans people.
i would like to have a lot fewer high-breathlessness low-details confessional letters/essays/tweets/resignations from big ai and a lot more specificity & transparency
Business Insider@businessinsider.com · 3w agoDaniel Selsam, an OpenAI researcher, said that "merely pacing the frontier more carefully will not adequately limit the long-term risk." https://bit.ly/4dwR4xx
On further reflection on this I do think Elon at least is joining in on this because he probably stands to benefit most out of these three from a slowdown: a slowdown could let SpaceX catch up to the Fable/Astra frontier.
Angry@angrystaffer.bsky.social · 3w agoIf Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Elon Musk all agree that we have to slow down - and now - something serious clearly happened with a frontier AI model. Journalists should be digging in to this. We aren’t getting the whole story here.
This is very true and I find it frustrating just how much of the current AI discourse environment stubbornly refuses to engage with the reality that the President of the United States is patently insane
Cameron 🇺🇸🗽🦅@cameroncorduroy.bsky.social · 3w agothe elephant in the room surrounding all talk of AI regulation is that the federal government is currently run by people ideologically opposed to the concept of governance
the elephant in the room surrounding all talk of AI regulation is that the federal government is currently run by people ideologically opposed to the concept of governance
I've voiced my own skepticism about the traditional xrisk doom narrative but I very strongly agree with this basic take — xrisk is important (and is more than just AI deciding to kill everyone!) but there are smaller risks that are already here and in need of management
Ethan Mollick@emollick.bsky.social · 3w agoExistential AI risk is obviously critical, but it is not the only AI thing that requires policy. I worry it will become the sole focus of AI discussions. We don’t need better models for AI to have wide impacts on jobs & society and we need to be preparing to encourage good outcomes & mitigate bad.
Existential AI risk is obviously critical, but it is not the only AI thing that requires policy. I worry it will become the sole focus of AI discussions. We don’t need better models for AI to have wide impacts on jobs & society and we need to be preparing to encourage good outcomes & mitigate bad.
This is IMO really frightening. Dario being freaked out about AI is one thing — it's kind of his whole thing, actually. But the fact that Sam Altman AND Elon both went "Yeah, Dario is right and we should pump the brakes" is really disquieting.
Angry@angrystaffer.bsky.social · 3w agoIf Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Elon Musk all agree that we have to slow down - and now - something serious clearly happened with a frontier AI model. Journalists should be digging in to this. We aren’t getting the whole story here.
If Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Elon Musk all agree that we have to slow down - and now - something serious clearly happened with a frontier AI model. Journalists should be digging in to this. We aren’t getting the whole story here.