Tessera

There’s a dengue outbreak in Tampa?

Faine Greenwood@faineg.com · 2w ago

"Their most extreme conclusion was treated as an axiom"

The U.S. AI industry is being run by a batshit rationalist sex cult, and no, I am not being hyperbolic - they’re genuinely Like That:

Erin Redwing
@realizingerin
I went to an rationalist/EA Al doomer event last night with the goal of meeting someone who could calmly explain to me the argument for how they get to the conclusion that Al will kill everyone.
Because these are rationalists, I expected to find people who could lay out a serious extinction pathway, walk through the assumptions and intermediate steps, identify choke points where negative pathways could potentially be regulated, and entertain disagreement about where their assumptions might break down.
My experience was the exact opposite.
The people I spoke to seemed psychologically unable to entertain the possibility that their conclusion (that Al literally kills everyone, which was a point that many would not even budge on) might be wrong.
Their most extreme conclusion was treated as an axiom.
I had multiple people walk out of conversations with me when I questioned their inevitable extinction premise.
At one point during a panel, the moderator asked everyone in the audience who was still skeptical of Al doom to raise their hands. About half the room did. He then told all of the skeptics to leave the panel and go with one of the speakers, who would answer their questions separately. They filtered out all the skeptics, and continued the panel only with the subset who accepted their extreme position.
I genuinely felt like a heretic just for questioning whether superintelligent Al inevitably leads to the extinction of humanity, or entertaining the possibility that the future might actually turn out well.
That does not mean Al safety is fake. Obviously there are serious questions about rapidly advancing Al systems and what happens as they become much more capable. Those are exactly the conversations I went there hoping to have.
But what I encountered was an apocalyptic death cult. These people are not rational. They are deeply afraid, they reinforce that fear in one another, and they have become so emotionally committed to apocalypse

Alex Winter @alexwinter.com · 2w ago

True story.

Ben (Bee) Kahn@benkahncomics.bsky.social · 2w ago

BREAKING: Wyld Stallyns will no longer be opening for Ed Sheeran

Kevin M. Kruse@kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 2w ago

Opening act for next fifa tournament

Looking forward to the Ed Sheeran Open Mic Night

Raffi Melkonian@rmfifthcircuit.bsky.social · 2w ago

A huge percentage; they have a a lot of the money.

I wonder what percentage of the stock market is fueled by robbing old people

John Burn-Murdoch@jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 3w ago

“We take information, err, we actually just make a bunch of assumptions”

Also asked the meta-question of whether they appreciate that headlines of astronomical growth alongside soaring unemployment might be fuelling anti-AI sentiment

John Burn-Murdoch: The top line of the press release mentions the 44tn
[GDP figure by 2030] and the possibility of 15 per cent annual GDP growth by 2030. Given the whole mood at the moment - there are a lot of strong feelings around Al, and it feels like the most likely explanation for why everyone hates data centres is because they don't love what's going on inside the data centres and the implications of that. So when a report comes out that says we might have 15 per cent annual growth in 2030, that's going to wind up some people. When it's also saying we might have double-digit knowledge-worker unemployment, that's going to scare some other people. I'm curious, when you put together a piece of work like this, are you thinking about how that might come across? What's your intended impact?

Jack Clark: We build this stuff driven by a pure research goal of figuring out what's actually the truth. I lead the Anthropic Institute, which is a series of research teams here, and our mandate is to take information, or in this case, assumptions, that only the Al labs have, and get that information and that set of assumptions out to the public, so people can better understand the different views that Al companies have about the future. Some scenarios look like Al as a normal technology, other scenarios look like the singularity is nigh and very, very significant things are going to happen to the economy. So we built a tool that captures all of these different views. We don't build this stuff with a particular narrative in mind at the start. We're sharing this because if these scenarios end up being right, you probably want to make a bunch of different choices about the world. Part of why you share this is I think it's going to help focus the minds of economists, policymakers [and] others who study Al on how we may need to make very different policy decisions about this technology.

Well, jason meyers hasn’t been the issue today (yet)

This is has been really sloppy.

Asheesh Kapur Siddique@asheeshks.org · 3w ago

More liberal arts colleges. Make them public, subsidize tuition to make them affordable (preferably free)

We know how to teach books in the age of AI: small classes, close reading, research-engaged learning (which is how you ’let students see you struggle’). The issue is nobody will hire and pay the requisite # of faculty to offer this.

Sahil Kapur@sahilkapur.bsky.social · 4w ago

Inspiring.

What @hakeem-jeffries.bsky.social told me the House agenda will be next year if Democrats win —Reverse Trump’s Medicaid cuts —Extend expired ACA tax credits —Restore Congress’s authority on tariffs —“Decisively” end the Iran war Beyond that: “We’ve established five working groups on affordability”

𝕯𝖆𝖓🍂🎃🕸️@arepublic86.bsky.social · 3w ago

🇹🇭Nene Royal🇹🇭 doing Metallica's Master of Puppets. She's pretty damn good. Only 16 but you'd think she's a seasoned rock goddess with how confident she blasts through it. 🤘🤘🎸

Forbes@forbes.com · 4w ago

Just cancel them all. They keep changing the terms after the fact. How can you make an informed judgement under such circumstances? You can’t. Just cancel them and take away their power to hurt people.

The updates are a blow for borrowers, and particularly those who take out new federal student loans going forward, as they may now be cut off from the benefit entirely.

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 4w ago

Just quoting this so I can find it later

“Teams will race to navigate three of the planet’s most unforgiving landscapes — the jungle, the desert, and the Arctic — using Gemini to help them identify dangers, survive brutal weather changes, and stay one step ahead.”

Taylor Strong @taylorklong.bsky.social · 4w ago

Being a Seahawks fan and a Mariners fan this year:

Leah Reich@leahreich.com · 4w ago

I’m sure most of you aren’t watching the US Open right now which means you missed this instantly iconic moment, now available in gif form

Dean Baker@deanbaker13.bsky.social · 4w ago

So the economics hold another year-ish before the bills start to come due

Very good piece on how the shit is about to hit the fan as the AI companies have to start paying for data centers when they come online in a big way, starting next year www.groundbrkr.com/p/the-teaser... Hopefully, even brain-dead billionaires can see this coming.

Toby Buckle@polphilpod.bsky.social · 4w ago

Also, these people simply can’t comprehend how massive and diverse Africa actually is. Parts of Africa really aren’t that poor anymore and are on the upswing compared to so some places these people probably think of as superior.

the context is this confnas fucker talking about how africa being poor & europe wealthy means whites must be innately more intelligent (& dismissing any notion that the legacy of the atlantic slave trade, or global racial empire, might have a role as "mystical injustice")

cult papa@cult-papa.com · 4w ago

That’s a little too specific, no?

kash patel: “i’m assembling a team” www.thedailybeast.com/kash-patels-...

Under the new guidelines, applicants who have hired a prostitute, stolen from an employer, or engaged in bestiality or animal cruelty may still be eligible for FBI jobs-depending on when and under what circumstances the conduct occurred.

Phillips OBrien@phillipspobrien.bsky.social · last mo.

It’s kind of insane that the USA has a new colony and it is not really questioned by a lot of people (bluesky users excepted)

So the USA is stealing Venezuelan oil and entrenching a new dictator in power to oppress the Venezuelan people. There needs to be a reckoning for all this.

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · last mo.

Cool, cool…

Oh so you really know jack shit about kids, pedagogy, education… www.scientificamerican.com/article/alph...

When Carl Hendrick took his first ride in a Waymo, the self-driving taxi service, he thought it felt a lot like the future of education.

Hendrick is a senior learning scientist at Alpha School, a buzzy private-school company where he trains artificial intelligence models to teach students—a process, he says, that is not unlike training a self-driving car.

Alright khosla’s. Good luck.