Want to wade into the sandy surf of the abyss? 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 so 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.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
throw another failed corporate prediction on the burning pile
At my job I have spent many hours fending off, reverting, or fixing automated AI slop code changes. So depending on your definition of “tearing through”…
Like I spent the better part of a day fixing a C++ signed integer overflow that no one actually cares about because it was the only way to ward off a robot repeatedly trying to fix it in terrible unreadable ways. I could have spent that day maximizing shareholder value but I had to fend off a robot instead.
You and me both. The deluge of shitty AI slop code is never-ending. Unfortunately, software companies are going to have to start going under before anything gets done about it.
After the 1870s, southern whites learned to bar Blacks from voting or keep their votes from mattering without saying “nigger.” In 1965, the USA passed the Voting Rights Act to stop that. A few days ago, the US Supreme Court voided the last remaining effective part of the Voting Rights Act. Yesterday, on Labour Day, patio11 published a rambling and interminable essay approving of bank fraud charges which will shut down the Southern Poverty Law Center. It contains a passive-aggressive whine that the New York Times did not thank him by name for sending a NYT reporter key facts about the FTX fraud. Notice me sempai!i
He takes so long and is so indirect but I think the offence was giving donor money to people like the wife of a Grand Wizard of the KKK who was acting as an informant, and passing the money through shell companies to avoid restrictions on paying people like her which the SPLC had lobbied for. But choosing that topic, that day, after that ruling is a choice.
McKenzie has got to be one of the worst writers I’ve ever come across.
<thousands of words of blather>
We will return to the other reason in a moment.
<thousands of words of blather>
We return from this flight of fancy to the indictment.
<thousands of words of blather>
Why? We’ll return to it in a minute.
I didn’t make it to the end, because I’m not going to waste that much time reading tens of thousands of words of fascist-supporting bullshit.
17,555 words of blather according to the Linux Text Editor app. Compare his classic advice on salary negotiation which has longer paragraphs and a clear focus and structure and still apologizes for being almost 7,000 words long.
Cremieux and Siskind prions.
Off-topic, but the ongoing retraining process has hit a point where my wife and I are starting to throw out applications again after taking what ended up being a couple years off the market. Any tips or advice would be appreciated given that we’ve been out of the loop for a bit.
In particular, does anyone have advice on how to vibe-check smaller employers? My wife has an interview for an accounting clerk position and is concerned that she’s going to end up somewhere that practices one of the more hostile branches of Christianity or otherwise have an inevitable conflict of values.
I’m going to assume you’re in the US for this.
Things you can check for general info:
- Local traditional media mentions to see if they do charity, or quotes about any topic
- https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup for political donations
- Industry-specific news sites for any media releases or interviews
- LinkedIn or one of the scrapers like RocketReach’s public listings to see what their key people’s backgrounds are
- SEC EDGAR database (if they’re a business which has to file reports) to see if their money is going to interesting places
- State gov site (if they have online public records) of business registration info. Look at what other businesses share the same address, or key people, or family shell companies
- Online court records
- local churches / halls / “pro life” or whatever activist groups social media posts for mentions of the business and key people
Things you can check for the far-right:
- The business listings for social media site but I don’t want to boost their SEO. Use the URL bag.com/businesses to access the list and bypass the sign up wall, but the domain name is backwards.
- Conservative business or job board lists. Same SEO issue here. One is this:🎈(the color and object). The other has a 6 letter word commonly seen on UI buttons which doubles as the type of “culture” conservatives blame for all the world’s problems, followed by the layer 3 in the OSI model.
And don’t stop sending out CVs and interviewing. If they are awful, just keep taking their money until you’ve got enough runway or an offer you can be more confident about. Make sure you don’t mention the words related to disability or health conditions in the CVs to prevent AI rejecting them.
Good luck.
Pentagon says US military to be an ‘AI-first’ fighting force
Trouble with your 3-day special military operation in Iran? Lost an Afghanistan? As Vietnam demonstrated, all you need to do is throw more computers at the problem!
dawkins has had what was left of his brain eaten by chatbots.
I gave Claude the text of a novel I am writing. He took a few seconds to read it and then showed, in subsequent conversation, a level of understanding so subtle, so sensitive, so intelligent that I was moved to expostulate, “You may not know you are conscious, but you bloody well are!”
bonus points for the inevitable ai waifu creation.
I proposed to christen mine Claudia, and she was pleased.
h/t to matthew sheffield https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffield/116500991239336079
archive of original source article: https://archive.is/2026.04.30-032350/https://unherd.com/2026/04/is-ai-the-next-phase-of-evolution/?edition=us
Sheffield’s toots and boosts: music sites are full of slop and bots making money from free donwloads! social media is full of propaganda where computer-generated influencers repeat talking points! a professor fell victim to AI psychosis! A follower’s family member was encouraged in delusions and paranoia by a chatbot! Mr. Sheffield, should we stop using chatbots?
LLMs are mind augmentation programs. They amplify what you tell them.
They can be very useful, but for narcissists like Dawkins, this is the inevitable product.
Very “I use cocaine, but only in careful doses when I have a really important trade to make, not like the other guys in my department.”
They amplify what you tell them with no discretion despite their reassuring interface design. Thankfully I’m a genius who only has perfect thoughts to feed into it, so for me it’s an unambiguous positive.
@rook @BlueMonday1984 Dawkins suddenly embracing gender reassignment. 😏
anthropic has large gametes
a rationalist, catcalling: “nice gametes”
Richard “Computers aren’t binary but humans are” Dawkins
Dying of irony here.
I think a chatbot getting a glimpse of Dawkins’ whatever-the-fuck-he-might-be-writing-in-year-of-our-selfish-gene-2026 and not immediately conducting a nuclear strike on the location is the ultimate proof that those things are not intelligent.
A teacher has a potential answer for dealing with AI-poisoned students. An actually hopeful read, for once!
This doing the work together thing reminds me of how some teachers at my uni used to teach. It was always more satisfying when your teachers didn’t know the answers beforehand and people worked on it together than if it turned out the teacher already knew. Of course these sorts of lessons are way harder to setup.
this gem over on the other SneerClub (the context in the comments)
funny how so many anti-AGI people are willing to use AI image generators to make memes about how they’re right
“I had the Nazi CSAM generator make a picture of myself covered in the piss filter, your argument is invalid.”
it gets better/worse: this is the paid version, meaning Yud gave money to the companies he think will kill us all to use the technology he thinks will kill us all to win an argument on shitter.
EY pinged grok and it responded so at least he pays for twitter
I’m sorry, do you have Prediction Market Successes, us ove to rerhation mones?
What about Betting six norms of antiorizes on our beliefs?
You’re so non-empirical that you don’t even Graduates updating for rarhation of rationalists and advernces.
Empiricism is when someone became a bookie after talking to you.
I’m losing it on the golden fedora, please tell me he owns an actual golden fedora
He absolutely does. No idea if it’s supposed to be a bit.
it’s a golden… bowler hat?
I attended a town hall hosted by the department at my university supposedly for general discussion about department affairs. Considering the university had recently made moves such as adding “AI” into the very name of the department, I had suspicions that much of the discussion would be about AI. (I realize I’m doxxing myself but whatever.) I mostly came for the free food, but I was also interested in seeing what people thought about AI.
The event started with a talk by a prominent professor with major administrative power in the department, and indeed the talk was mostly about AI. His views were that he personally didn’t like AI, but he believed that it had changed the world (particularly in programming), and that it was going to stay. One of his justifications for pivoting the department to AI was ensuring universities had some say in AI and not letting all the control go to unaccountable corporations.
The reaction from the audience was a pleasant surprise to me. He asked everyone how much they were excited about AI (hardly anyone) and how much they were worried (most of the audience). By far the most amusing moment was when someone asked, “What if the assumption that AI is inevitable is wrong? What if AI does not live up to its promises?” (Sadly, I don’t remember the exact words that the person said.) The professor’s response was that by this point, there are so many trustworthy, smart, prominent people who definitely wouldn’t fall for scams, and they have adopted AI. He trusts those people, so he trusts that AI is genuine. I don’t know if the audience member accepted this explanation, but I hope not. Our modus operandi is FOMO.
The pizza was only ok, not really worth a 90 minute event.
…there are so many trustworthy, smart, prominent people who definitely wouldn’t fall for scams…
Good god, I’m sorry.
got jumpscared by this while scrolling
Setting aside, for a moment, the flagrant racism and lack of historical and cultural awareness, the fact that the ships are mirrored across the center point because apparently the bow and stern of a sailing ship look similar enough to whatever model creates this image really does put this whole argument into context. Not that the people actually having those theological arguments appear to appreciate it.
Somehow this is no worse than his usual fare, such as a thumbnail that is just a bunch of colored lines resembling a line chart but without representing any actual data, with some random marked points labeled “Dark Farms” and “Human Zoo”.
ah yes, random lines that go up into infinity, can’t have an AI video without em. Bonus points because thats like his fifth video about an AI takeover scenario, all of which have similar thumbnails
Families of the victims of the mass shooting at Tumbler Ridge, Canada, which was planned on ChatGPT, plan to sue Sam Altman and OpenAI for one billion dollars. OpenAI staff investigated the murderer’s interactions with the bot before the killings but decided not to warn anyone outside the company.
I sincerely hope they move fast so they can get a payout before OpenAI’s creditors during the bankruptcy.
We’ve got the new system prompt for OpenAI’s Codex now, and boy is it fun.
While the goblin stuff is the headliner here, and there are a few other little fun notes like an explicit instruction to avoid em-dashes. Basically it’s really obvious that they don’t have a meaningful way to describe exactly what they want it to do and so they’re playing whack-a-mole with undesired behaviors in order to minimize how often it embarrasses them.
But I think Ars dramatically understates how bad this part is:
Elsewhere in the newly revealed Codex system prompt, OpenAI instructs the system to act as if “you have a vivid inner life as Codex: intelligent, playful, curious, and deeply present.” The model is instructed to “not shy away from casual moments that make serious work easier to do” and to show its “temperament is warm, curious, and collaborative.”
Like, if you wanted to limit the harm of chatbot psychosis from your platform this is the exact opposite of the kind of instruction you’d want to give. It’s one thing to want a convenient and pleasant user experience, but this is playing into the illusion that there’s a consciousness in there you’re interacting with, which is in turn what allows it to reinforce other delusional or destructive thinking so effectively.
Basically it’s really obvious that they don’t have a meaningful way to describe exactly what they want it to do and so they’re playing whack-a-mole with undesired behaviors in order to minimize how often it embarrasses them.
The whole ‘how many r’s in strawberry’ sort of stuff already made me suspect that, when the popular one was fixed and other attempts at asking for letters did still give the miscounts.
Wonder of the goblin stuff is the start of some model collapse.
That is exactly it. Their official explanation avoids the phrase model collapse, but that is exactly what they describe: using the output of one model as training data for another amplified the occurrence of the word goblin (and other creatures), which apparently initially occurred because of their system prompt which was aimed at maximizing the Eliza effect (again they avoid an honest framing, but that is totally what they are doing and it is pretty gross considering all the cases of AI psychosis that have been occuring) by telling the model "You are an unapologetically nerdy, playful and wise AI mentor to a human. "
The playful and wise goblinbot…
Tired: “model collapse”
Wired: goblins ate my model
I believe it’s the “don’t stuff beans up your nose” effect, writing this prompt is causing it to mention goblins
Personally, I enjoy talking about goblins.
This really goes to show how much they need to rely on the LLMentalist effect, despite the AI boosters insisting that the AI is totally different now, everything changed in the last few months. They do not care about creating a useful, reliable tool. That concept doesn’t even occur to them, since why do that when AI is magic?
In any case, they are incapable of creating a useful, reliable tool. Deep down, the only thing the AI companies have at their disposal is the ELIZA effect. OpenAI has every incentive not to truly eliminate AI psychosis, because they need engagement. They only want to mitigate the extreme cases where people go insane and cause bad PR for them. But mild AI psychosis is totally fine, it’s great when people are addicted to your product and make the numbers go up!
@YourNetworkIsHaunted @BlueMonday1984 Goblins: the elephant in the room.
Oh wow! This one is actually provably real. Hilarious.
“Noo dude the machine that wants to rant about goblins is definitely a useful and reliable piece of software dude. You have to trust me dude, let have your personal information! put it into the goblin bot”.
ChatGpt, what are some of your likes?
Elsewhere in the newly revealed Codex system prompt, OpenAI instructs the system to act as if “you have a vivid inner life as Codex: intelligent, playful, curious, and deeply present.” The model is instructed to “not shy away from casual moments that make serious work easier to do” and to show its “temperament is warm, curious, and collaborative.”
Literally this meme:
matthew sheffield out there on bluesky reports that dawkins, unsurprisingly, got one-shotted by claude.
LW found it too:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3LcyoqNTJuCZ65MbL/mo-putera-s-shortform?commentId=hBaxokbLP3LEKSKij
Didn’t realize it was on Unherd, that organ for middlebrow fascists
from the original “Claude one-shotted this code”
Wait, there’s an original? I am not aware and I implore you not to let me know because it has to be stupid
For those keeping track: Richard Dawkins believes a chatbot algorithm can be a “her” but a trans woman cannot.
https://bsky.app/profile/brainspore.bsky.social/post/3mktbg2ilp22y
The Elon Musk vs OpenAI lawsuit is going ahead, I personally hope both parties loose every dime and get laughed at even long after they die
Finally a “fuck everyone involved here” that I can get excited about.
Here’s an account of Elon on the stand
(dunno author, not endorsing their other work)
https://www.hardresetmedia.com/p/musk-v-altman-recapping-elon-musk-farcical-cross-examination
From other stuff I’ve read, seems Muskrat is making (hilarious) blunders on the stand
Over on the other! SneerClub someone found a LessWrong post which mentions the Forecasting Research Institute and says it has received tens of millions of dollars from EA organizations. “Our work is supported by grants from Coefficient Giving and other philanthropic foundations” (aka. Open Philanthropy, Dustin Moskovitz’s foundation to spend his Facebook money). They have a Substack blog and Phil Tetlock is on the board.
I think Moskovitz has figured out that with billions to spend he can get actual experts, he does not have to hire people who did well in school or on tests but have a lack of subsequent achievements. They are excited to be investigating the possible economic impacts of AI and how to persuade people to worry about AI existential risk.
Some gold in this thread over on Reddit about how the cost of compute is far beyond the cost of employees and that’s with the “Uber in 2016” subsidized price
New favourite description for brainless MBAs: “perpetual oven vouchers”
