It’s a little yellow one.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
It’s a little yellow one.
Normally, I’d say that Sam Altman deserves any pushback he gets. But the AI hatred seems to be getting a little too intense.
On the morning of Friday, April 10th, a 20 year-old Texas man named Daniel Alejandro Moreno-Gama was arrested for allegedly throwing a molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s mansion on Russian Hill in San Francisco. Less than two days later, police arrested 25 year-old Amanda Tom and 23 year-old Muhamad Tarik Hussein for allegedly firing a gun at the same house from their car before speeding away.
Earlier the same week, and thousands of miles away, an unknown assailant fired 13 shots into the front door of city councilman Ron Gibson, who had just voted to approve a new data center in Indianapolis against a groundswell of public outcry. A sign that read “NO DATA CENTERS” was left tucked under the doormat.
I can understand why all the AI-hate: data centers are environmental catastrophes, they represent a gross invasion of our privacy, they don’t seem to contribute much of value to society, but wow, they sure help improve billionaires profits. Unfortunately, in addition to a rational opposition, there are also crackpots with bizarre paranoid fantasies.
Little is known about the motives of Tom or Hussein, or the politics of the Indianapolis shooter, but reporters and the online commentariat quickly dredged up Moreno-Gama’s Discord chats and Substack posts. He was a reader of rationalist and AI doomer Eliezer Yudkowsky, who argues, as the title of his last book puts it, if Silicon Valley builds a “superintelligent” AI, “everyone dies.”
Yeah, if you’re citing Yudkowski, you’re a victim of extreme derangement. I guess it’s predictable that if your reaction is to throw molotov cocktails at people’s houses, you’re probably not building your case on a sound foundation. AI is not superintelligent, or even intelligent at all, it’s a tool that can be used by bad people to do bad things. Unfortunately, it’s also the case that AI proponents have built up this gigantic edifice of hype, pumping up the imagined power of AI to the point that they are actively asserting that it might lead to the end of humanity.
If you take at face value what the AI executives themselves have been saying for the last decade, that an AI powerful enough to make humans go extinct is nascent, then acting with force to stop it would be a rational action. The AI industry and its executives—including Sam Altman—need to own this outcome, not blame it on Yudkowsky, safety researchers, or worried activists who take what they say literally.
That’s fair. The people who have pumped up the hype are reaping what they have sown.
The nonsense promoted by the Less Wrong crowd isn’t the real danger, though. This is the real danger:
Inequality is through the roof. A bona fide tech oligarchy is ascendent, buffeted by leverage provided by AI. Its data centers, which bring few jobs and hike electricity bills, are enraging communities on the right and the left. Slop is everywhere. AI-generated art and text is undercutting creatives, powered by pirated, non-consensually ingested work. Employers from Amazon to Block to Duolingo to Meta are firing tens of thousands of workers and citing AI as the reason. AI may one day cure cancer, we’re told; great, even if we believe that, who will be able to afford the treatment?
That’s the anger fueling the anti-AI violence. To the handwringing AI industry insiders blaming doomers and poor messaging, ordinary people are saying: Wake up. We have good reason to hate AI and the people who profit from it. And yes, as people get desperate, as young people increasingly feel like AI elites have mortgaged their future, as residents who vote to regulate AI or ban local data center projects only to see their will overridden in favor of industry interests—well how do you expect them to feel? What do you expect? There is a distinct risk of further escalation.
If I had the opportunity to vote to stop the construction of a local data center, I’d take it, no question. I’m not at the point of throwing molotov cocktails, though. At the rate this country is falling apart at the hands of the oligarchs, give me a year to come around.
I did not like this Far Side cartoon for obvious reasons.
This could do real harm, burning the victim’s neck, and if I caught anyone doing this they would be immediately expelled from the lab. Not funny.
Additionally, I have a personal memory of my first year in general chemistry. I had a lab partner who was a total klutz — I carried her through that lab, in spite of her inability to titrate anything. She was a danger with a pipette, and every week I’d go back to the dorm to discover that somehow the back of my pants and shirt had been spattered with acids — when I’d do my laundry I’d discover all these holes in my clothes, which was also not funny.
I’ve wondered for years if my lab partner really disliked me, or if she was trying to get my attention because she liked me, or she was just ridiculously incompetent in the lab. It happened so often that I suspect the first possibility.
Every year I tell my genetics students that once we start our crosses they are on fly time — you schedule your lab work around when the flies produce eggs and pupate and start breeding again, forget the registrar’s schedule. Now I have live by that, too. My gastrointestinal stress is over, I hope, but I’m feeling drained and exhausted, and am feeling intimidated by the need to put my socks on, but I must go into the lab today. The flies are calling to me.
Just to compound the difficulties, we had a blizzard and a white-out yesterday, and I don’t want to go out there. The temperature is supposed to drop to -21°F tonight, and I’m going to come home later to pick my wife up at work, because she doesn’t want to walk home when it’s that frigid.
And then I’m going to lie down under warm blankets and not move for a day.
Look at that shit-eating grin as Trump is given a Nobel prize by María Corina Machado, who doesn’t have the authority to award Nobel peace prizes.
It’s another embarrassment for the United States, that we elected this childish buffoon to the presidency. No, Donald, holding someone else’s prize does not mean you won it. I once got to briefly hold Harold Kroto’s Nobel, it does not mean I’m one of the premiere chemists of the age, and I would not go around smirking because I’d received a great honor. This is more like a spoiled child demanding a toy at the store, and a grown up getting tired of his whining and giving it to him. It’s more shame than honor.
Apparently, Trump has been hectoring Norwegian PM Støre to give him the award. The Nobel Peace Prize is not issued by the Norwegian government, but is handled by an independent committee, and Støre has nothing to do with it. The Nobel Foundation has since posted a rebuke of Trump’s nonsense, plainly stating that NO, he has not been awarded a Nobel prize. Naughty child. Keep crying and you’ll be sent to bed without your supper.
Statement from the Nobel Foundation
One of the core missions of the Nobel Foundation is to safeguard the dignity of the Nobel Prizes and their administration. The Foundation upholds Alfred Nobel’s will and its stipulations. It states that the prizes shall be awarded to those who “have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind,” and it specifies who has the right to award each respective prize. A prize can therefore not, even symbolically, be passed on or further distributed.
Compounding our humiliation, is now complaining to Støre that he has to give him Greenland. Støre does not have the authority to bestow Greenland on anyone — that’s a possession of Denmark. Denmark and Norway are two different countries. So he sent of this stupid letter.
Dear Ambassador:
President Trump has asked that the following message, shared with Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, be forwarded to your [named head of government/state]
“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, | no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. | have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”
The country of Norway does not give Nobel prizes, Trump has not stopped 8 wars, Russia and China are not threatening to take over Greenland, we are. Well, Trump is — the majority of American oppose taking it over. Complaining that their only claim is because a boat landed there…well, yeah, that’s colonialism for you, and it’s the only basis for American ownership of this part of the continent.
This whole thing is the logic of a greedy baby.
Seriously, we need to get rid of this demented narcissist. And if Republicans can’t see reason, we need to get rid of them, too.
Elon Musk declared that Wikipedia was “woke,” and started his own online encyclopedia titled “Grokipedia”. He was probably tempted to call it Xipedia, but decided to use a different ‘cool’ word. You will not be surprised that he chose the easy routed of stealing all of Wikipedia’s entries and dewokify it by spicing it up with racism. I’ll let someone else suffer the task of doing the actual comparisons.
In his latest quest to fix something far from broken, racist billionaire lunatic Elon Musk decided to unleash his own optimized version of Wikipedia, predictably named Grokipedia, onto the world this week. Now if, like Musk’s own children, you’re not a member of the Elon fan club, you can probably imagine why Musk took on this project. Here’s a man who purchased Twitter a few years ago specifically to refashion it into a neo-Nazi disinformation machine (check), insinuated himself with the second Trump administration so that he could hollow out the federal government (check), and designed electric cars that spontaneously combust, burning their liberal owners to death (check). There is nothing this man cannot make cheaper, wonkier and 20% more Hitler-y.
Plagiarism is not a mark of genius, if not being racist is all it takes to be “woke,” shouldn’t everyone aspire to be woke?
In case you were worried about yesterday’s spider who was tangled in their molt, worry no more. They are free!
If you think Spirit Airlines is barebones, try flying on Space-A, where you might get a bench seat on a military cargo plane.
Knut and his mother are rejoining his dad for a while. I look forward to his report about the thrill of the parachute jump when the plane arrives in Seoul.
The evil cat stands among the containers full of baby bold jumping spiders — she is totally unaware that she is surrounded by her replacements. Bwahahahaha!
A stupid man
Do you like NASA and space research? Sorry, it’s all going away. The man in charge is not qualified, as if that is any surprise.
Sean Duffy, the acting administrator of NASA for a little more than a month, has vowed to make the United States great in space.
With a background as a US Congressman, reality TV star, and television commentator, Duffy did not come to the position with a deep well of knowledge about spaceflight. He also already had a lot on his plate, serving as the secretary of transportation, a Cabinet-level position that oversees 55,000 employees across 13 agencies.
Sean Duffy is not the right person to run just about anything. My brain shut down at “reality TV star”.
What he’s planning to do is worrisome.
Nevertheless, Duffy is putting his imprint on the space agency, seeking to emphasize the agency’s human exploration plans, including the development of a lunar base, and ending NASA’s efforts to study planet Earth and its changing climate.
Putting humans in space? Robots do it better. Let’s not look at the damage the Trump administration is doing to the Earth — turn off the satellites that are looking at the planet.
