Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

Previous week

  • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
    14·
    2 days ago

    LessWronger discovers the great unwashed masses , who inconveniently still indirectly affect policy through outmoded concepts like “voting” instead of writing blogs, might need some easily digested media pablum to be convinced that Big Bad AI is gonna kill them all.

    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4unfQYGQ7StDyXAfi/someone-should-fund-an-agi-blockbuster

    Cites such cultural touchstones as “The Day After Tomorrow”, “An Inconvineent Truth” (truly a GenZ hit), and “Slaughterbots” which I’ve never heard of.

    Listen to the plot summary

    • Slowburn realism: The movie should start off in mid-2025. Stupid agents.Flawed chatbots, algorithmic bias. Characters discussing these issues behind the scenes while the world is focused on other issues (global conflicts, Trump, celebrity drama, etc). [ok so basically LW: the Movie]
    • Explicit exponential growth: A VERY slow build-up of AI progress such that the world only ends in the last few minutes of the film. This seems very important to drill home the part about exponential growth. [ah yes, exponential growth, a concept that lends itself readily to drama]
    • Concrete parallels to real actors: Themes like “OpenBrain” or “Nole Tusk” or “Samuel Allmen” seem fitting. [“we need actors to portray real actors!” is genuine Hollywood film talk]
    • Fear: There’s a million ways people could die, but featuring ones that require the fewest jumps in practicality seem the most fitting. Perhaps microdrones equipped with bioweapons that spray urban areas. Or malicious actors sending drone swarms to destroy crops or other vital infrastructure. [so basically people will watch a conventional thriller except in the last few minutes everyone dies. No motivation. No clear “if we don’t cut these wires everyone dies!”]

    OK so what should be shown in the film?

    compute/reporting caps, robust pre-deployment testing mandates (THESE are all topics that should be covered in the film!)

    Again, these are the core components of every blockbuster. I can’t wait to see “Avengers vs the AI” where Captain America discusses robust pre-deployment testing mandates with Tony Stark.

    All the cited URLS in the footnotes end with “utm_source=chatgpt.com”. 'nuff said.

    • Architeuthis@awful.systemsEnglish
      10·
      1 day ago

      I could definitely see Rationalist Battlefiled Earth becoming a sensation, just not in the way they hope it does.

      • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
        6·
        1 day ago

        I don’t know. Based on what they’re describing I think it would probably fail in the direction of being deeply boring rather than really getting into the wild nonsense that the concept deserves. Now, it may be salvageable with the introduction of some robotic silhouettes, but given these people’s penchant for never shutting the hell up even that may not be a good fit.

        • Architeuthis@awful.systemsEnglish
          8·
          1 day ago

          When Yud did that multi-hour youtube interview around a couple years ago someone in the comments called him the Neil Breen of AI.

          It may not be what humanity needs, but it’s what it deserves.

    • blakestacey@awful.systemsEnglish
      17·
      2 days ago

      All the cited URLS in the footnotes end with “utm_source=chatgpt.com”.

      I just do not understand these people. There is something dead inside them, something necrotic.

    • fullsquare@awful.systemsEnglish
      9·
      1 day ago

      one silver lining of their complete disregard for social sciences is that the only way they can make effective propaganda is to pay someone else to do this, and very few people are this fried to do this

    • BlueMonday1984@awful.systemsEnglish
      9·
      2 days ago

      Fear: There’s a million ways people could die, but featuring ones that require the fewest jumps in practicality seem the most fitting. Perhaps microdrones equipped with bioweapons that spray urban areas. Or malicious actors sending drone swarms to destroy crops or other vital infrastructure.

      I can think of some more realistic ideas. Like AI-generated foraging books leading to people being poisoned, or chatbot-induced psychosis leading to suicide, or AI falsely accusing someone and sending a lynch mob after them, or people becoming utterly reliant on AI to function, leaving them vulnerable to being controlled by whoever owns whatever chatbot they’re using.

      All of these require zero jumps in practicality, and as a bonus, they don’t need the “exponential growth” setup LW’s AI Doomsday Scenarios™ require.

      EDIT: Come to think of it, if you really wanted to make an AI Doomsday™ kinda movie, you could probably do an Idiocracy-style dystopia where the general masses are utterly reliant on AI, the villains control said masses through said AI, and the heroes have to defeat them by breaking the masses’ reliance on AI.

      • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
        11·
        1 day ago

        Oh, but LW has the comeback for you in the very first paragraph

        Outside of niche circles on this site and elsewhere, the public’s awareness about AI-related “x-risk” remains limited to Terminator-style dangers, which they brush off as silly sci-fi. In fact, most people’s concerns are limited to things like deepfake-based impersonation, their personal data training AI, algorithmic bias, and job loss.

        Silly people! Worrying about problems staring them in the face, instead of the future omnicidal AI that is definitely coming!

    • istewart@awful.systemsEnglish
      7·
      1 day ago

      and “Slaughterbots” which I’ve never heard of.

      I’ve never heard of “Slaughterbots” either, but yesterday I did find out that “Thunderpants” is real and apparently much more well regarded than you might expect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderpants

      During an appearance on The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, Paul Giamatti referred to this film as one of the high points in his career.[4] In 2023, whilst promoting The Holdovers, Giamatti referred to Thunderpants as “brilliant” and “one of the most remarkable movies [he’s] been in”.[5]