this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
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TechTakes

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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

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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.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

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[–] mii@awful.systems 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

Road rage victim 'speaks' via AI at his killer's sentencing [Archive]

I fucking can't right now.

[Judge] Lang allowed Pelkey's loved ones to play an AI-generated version of the victim — his face and body and a lifelike voice that appeared to ask the judge for leniency.

“To Gabriel Horcasitas, the man who shot me: It is a shame we encountered each other that day in those circumstances," the artificial version of Pelkey said. "In another life, we probably could have been friends. I believe in forgiveness."

Edit: 404Media article on the story that's much better

[–] zogwarg@awful.systems 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This is beyond horrifying:

I don't know to decide wether I should be glad this wasn't show to a jury, or sad we don't get an obvious mistrial setting some kind of precedent against this kind of demented ventriquolism act, indirectly asking for maximum sentencing through what should be completely inadmissible character testimony.

Does anyone here know how 'appeals on sentencing' vs 'appeals on verdicts', obviously judges should have some leeway, but do they have enough leeway to say (In court) that they were moved for example by what a spirit medium said or whatnot, is there some jurisprudence there?

I can only hope that the video played an insignificant role in the judges decision, and it was some deranged—post hoc—emotional—waxing 'poetic' moment for the judge.

Yuck.

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[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 11 points 1 week ago

In other news, SoundCloud's become the latest victim of the AI scourge - artists have recently discovered the TOS allows their work to be stolen for AI training since early 2024.

SoundCloud's already tried to quell the backlash, but they're getting accused of lying in the replies and the QRTs, so its safe to say its not working.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

New eugenics conference just dropped

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8ZExgaGnvLevkZxR5/attend-the-2025-reproductive-frontiers-summit-june-10-12

"Chatham House rules" so they can happily be racist without anyone pointing fingers at them.

[–] Architeuthis@awful.systems 10 points 1 week ago

the genomic emancipation of humanity

ffs, the euphemisms keep piling on today.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Science writer Philip Ball observes,

Just watched Eric Schmidt (former Google CEO) say "We believe as an industry... that within 3-5 years we'll have AGI, which can be defined as a system that is as smart as [big deal voice] the smartest mathematician, physicist, [lesser deal voice] artist, writer, thinker, politician ... I call this the San Francisco consensus, because everyone who believes this is in San Francisco... Within the next year or two, this foundation gets locked in, and we're not going to stop it. It gets much more interesting after that...There will be computers that are smarter than the sum of humans"

"Everyone who believes this is in San Francisco" approaches "the female orgasm is a myth" levels of self-own.

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[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 10 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Polymarket on the new pope skeet

Also there already is a bsky user with the username leoxiv, who makes from what I can tell final fantasy poses, some nsfw. Lol.

Skeet descriptionG Elliott Morris ‪@gelliottmorris.com‬ :"A mere 2 hours ago, betting markets were giving the now Pope a 0% chance of becoming Pope. Lmfao"

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 10 points 1 week ago

Also there already is a bsky user with the username leoxiv, who makes from what I can tell final fantasy poses, some nsfw. Lol.

Being a bit more specific, its Final Fantasy XIV, which you've probably heard about from people using its free trial as meme material. Its also a better example of the metaverse than any actual metaverse out there, but that's a given for literally any MMO that has popped up for the last twenty fucking years.

Also:

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[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 10 points 1 week ago

Found a sneer in the wild, made in response to another piece of Deportee Slop™:

Searching through the quotes, I also found someone openly accusing AI of contributing to fascism:

[–] saucerwizard@awful.systems 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

OT: Estonia (and Helsinki) were very nice, but I did not see a single delivery robot running around. Stayed across from the MalwareBytes HQ tho, I thought that was cool.

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[–] aio@awful.systems 10 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (4 children)

Apparently MIT is teaching a vibe coding class:

How will this year’s class differ from last year’s? There will be some major changes this year:

  • Units down from 18 to 15, to reflect reduced load
  • Grading that emphasizes mastery over volume
  • More emphasis on design creativity (and less on ethics)
  • Not just permission but encouragement to use LLMs
  • A framework for exploiting LLMs in code generation
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[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 9 points 1 week ago (7 children)

Ran across a Bluesky thread which caught my attention - its nothing major, its just about how gen-AI painted one rando's views of the droids of Star Wars:

Generative AI has helped me to understand why, in Star Wars, the droids seem to have personalities but are generally bad at whatever they're supposed to be programmed to do, and everyone is tired of their shit and constantly tells them to shut up

Threepio: Sir, the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field are 3720 to one!

Han Solo (knowing that Threepio just pulls these numbers out of Reddit memes about Emperor Palpatine's odds of getting laid): SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!!!

"Why do the heroes of Star Wars never do anything to help the droids? They're clearly sentient, living things, yet they're treated as slaves!" Thanks for doing propaganda for Big Droid, you credulous ass!

With that out the way, here's my personal sidenote:

There's already been plenty of ink spilled on the myriad effects AI will have on society, but it seems one of the more subtle effects will be on the fiction we write and consume.

Right off the bat, one thing I'm anticipating (which I've already talked about before) is that AI will see a sharp decline in usage as a plot device - whatever sci-fi pizzazz AI had as a concept is thoroughly gone at this point, replaced with the same all-consuming cringe that surrounds NFTs and the metaverse, two other failed technologies turned pop-cultural punchlines.

If there are any attempts at using "superintelligent AI" as a plot point, I expect they'll be lambasted for shattering willing suspension of disbelief, at least for a while. If AI appears at all, my money's on it being presented as an annoyance/inconvenience (as someone else has predicted).

Another thing I expect is audiences becoming a lot less receptive towards AI in general - any notion that AI behaves like a human, let alone thinks like one, has been thoroughly undermined by the hallucination-ridden LLMs powering this bubble, and thanks to said bubble's wide-spread harms (environmental damage, widespread theft, AI slop, misinformation, etcetera) any notion of AI being value-neutral as a tech/concept has been equally undermined.

With both of those in mind, I expect any positive depiction of AI is gonna face some backlash, at least for a good while.

(As a semi-related aside, I found a couple of people openly siding with the Mos Eisley Cantina owner who refused to serve R2 and 3PO [Exhibit A, Exhibit B])

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 11 points 1 week ago

I've noticed the occasional joke about how new computer technology, or LLMs specifically, have changed the speaker's perspective about older science fiction. E.g., there was one that went something like, "I was always confused about how Picard ordered his tea with the weird word order and exactly the same inflection every time, but now I recognize that's the tea order of a man who has learned precisely what is necessary to avoid the replicator delivering you an ocelot instead."

Notice how in TNG, everyone treats a PADD as a device that holds exactly one document and has to be physically handed to a person? The Doylist explanation is that it's a show from 1987 and everyone involved thought of them as notebooks. But the Watsonian explanation is that a device that holds exactly one document and zero distractions is the product of a society more psychologically healthy than ours....

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[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 9 points 1 week ago

Found a rando making a very safe prediction on Bluesky:

And by "very safe", I mean "its technically already happened". Personally, I expect marketing things as AI-Free™ will explode after the bubble bursts - the hype will die alongside the bubble, but the hatred will live on for quite a while, and hate is real easy to exploit.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 9 points 1 week ago (6 children)
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[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 9 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (6 children)
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[–] nightsky@awful.systems 9 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Update on my comment from yesterday: it seems I fell for satire (?). (I don't know the people involved, so no idea, but it seems plausible.)

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 9 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Looks like elon and the others fell for it tbh, not so much you. (Note his screenshot showed he liked and retweeted it).

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[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 8 points 1 week ago

Quick update from Brian Merchant: he's looking for stories about AI screwing people over.

If you've got any, send them to AIKilledMyJob@pm.me

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