Need to make a primal scream without gathering 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!

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.

    • ebu@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Asked to comment, a Meta spokesperson told The Register, “We value input from civil society organizations and academic institutions for the context they provide as we constantly work toward improving our services. Meta’s defense filed with the Brazilian Consumer Regulator questioned the use of the NetLab report as legal evidence, since it was produced without giving us prior opportunity to contribute meaningfully, in violation of local legal requirements.”

      translation: they knew we would either squash the investigation attempt outright or change their research methodology and results until we looked like the good guys, and that kind of behavior cannot be tolerated

  • FredFig@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    This is quite minor, but it’s very funny seeing the intern would-be sneerers still on rbuttcoin fall for the AI grift, to the point that its part of their modscript copypasta

    Or in the pinned mod comment:

    AI does have some utility and does certain things better than any other technology, such as:

    • The ability to summarize in human readable form, large amounts of information.
    • The ability to generate unique images in a very short period of time, given a verbose description

    tfw you’re anti-crypto, but only because its a bad investing opportunity.

    • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      in that thread: marketing dude who uses chatgpt, never had issues with incorrect results. i mean how would he even catch this, his entire field is uncut bullshit

    • earthquake@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Gross, that whole thread is gross. A lot of promptfans in that thread seemingly experiencing pushback for the first time and they are baffled!

    • o7___o7@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      While it’s always correct to laugh at crypto advocates, /b/buttcoin just isn’t very edifying lately. There’s no depth to the criticism. It comes across as the “anti” version of wall street bets for people who lost their shirts, especially since The Appening, when a lot of subject matter experts left town.

    • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      i came here from r/buttcoin and lmao

      i mean technically it passes the very low bar of having a single non-criminal use case (mass manufacturing spam and other drivel)

      some are not falling for it at least

    • Eiim@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      I don’t think that comment is unreasonable. LLMs can summarize large-ish amounts of information (as long as it fits in the context window) in a human-readable form, and while it’s still prone to getting things wrong and I’d rather a human do it all day, it does do it “better than any other technology” that I know of. We can argue about “unique” but strictly speaking it will almost certainly generate an image that didn’t exist before. I’d also rather a human make the image for quality’s sake, but being fast, cheap, and copyright-free is a useful enough combo in certain situations.

      It doesn’t really bring up the main issues with AI, but I think that’s acceptable in the context, which is “How is AI different from crypto in the context of r/Buttcoin”, and in that context “crypto is completely useless” and “AI has minimal uses which may or may not be worthwhile depending on how you evaluate the benefits and negatives” are meaningfully different.

      • FredFig@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        It’s “reasonable” in context, I just thought it’s funny that rbuttcoin would be headpatting AI at all, since its basically the exact same people pushing AI as the people pushing crypto with the exact same motives.

  • V0ldek@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    I just passed a bus stop ad (in Germany) of Perplexity AI that said you can ask it about the chances of Germany winning Euro2024.

    So I guess it’s now a literal oracle or something?? What happened to the good-old “dog picking a food bowl” method of deciding championships.

  • BigMuffin69@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    https://xcancel.com/AISafetyMemes/status/1802894899022533034#m

    The same pundits have been saying “deep learning is hitting a wall” for a DECADE. Why do they have ANY credibility left? Wrong, wrong, wrong. Year after year after year. Like all professional pundits, they pound their fist on the table and confidently declare AGI IS DEFINITELY FAR OFF and people breathe a sigh of relief. Because to admit that AGI might be soon is SCARY. Or it should be, because it represents MASSIVE uncertainty. AGI is our final invention. You have to acknowledge the world as we know it will end, for better or worse. Your 20 year plans up in smoke. Learning a language for no reason. Preparing for a career that won’t exist. Raising kids who might just… suddenly die. Because we invited aliens with superior technology we couldn’t control. Remember, many hopium addicts are just hoping that we become PETS. They point to Ian Banks’ Culture series as a good outcome… where, again, HUMANS ARE PETS. THIS IS THEIR GOOD OUTCOME. What’s funny, too, is that noted skeptics like Gary Marcus still think there’s a 35% chance of AGI in the next 12 years - that is still HIGH! (Side note: many skeptics are butthurt they wasted their career on the wrong ML paradigm.) Nobody wants to stare in the face the fact that 1) the average AI scientist thinks there is a 1 in 6 chance we’re all about to die, or that 2) most AGI company insiders now think AGI is 2-5 years away. It is insane that this isn’t the only thing on the news right now. So… we stay in our hopium dens, nitpicking The Latest Thing AI Still Can’t Do, missing forests from trees, underreacting to the clear-as-day exponential. Most insiders agree: the alien ships are now visible in the sky, and we don’t know if they’re going to cure cancer or exterminate us. Be brave. Stare AGI in the face.

    This post almost made me crash my self-driving car.

    • Mii@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Seriously, could someone gift this dude a subscription to spicyautocompletegirlfriends.ai so he can finally cum?

      One thing that’s crazy: it’s not just skeptics, virtually EVERYONE in AI has a terrible track record - and all in the same OPPOSITE direction from usual! In every other industry, due to the Planning Fallacy etc, people predict things will take 2 years, but they actually take 10 years. In AI, people predict 10 years, then it happens in 2!

      ai_quotes_from_1965.txt

    • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      If you’ve been around the block like I have, you’ve seen reports about people joining cults to await spaceships, people preaching that the world is about to end &c. It’s a staple trope in old New Yorker cartoons, where a bearded dude walks around with a billboard saying “The End is nigh”.

      The tech world is growing up, and a new internet-native generation has taken over. But everyone is still human, and the same pattern-matching that leads a 19th century Christian to discern when the world is going to end by reading Revelation will lead a 25 year old tech bro steeped in “rationalism” to decide that spicy autocomplete is the first stage of The End of the Human Race. The only difference is the inputs.

    • maol@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      It’s mad that we have an actual existential crisis in climate change (temperature records broken across the world this year) but these cunts are driving themselves into a frenzy over something that is nowhere near as pressing or dangerous. Oh, people dying of heatstroke isn’t as glamorous? Fuck off

    • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      humans are pets

      Actually not what is happening in the books. I get where they are coming form but this requires redefining the word pet in such a way it is a useless word.

      The Culture series really breaks the brains of people who can only think in hierarchies.

    • self@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Remember, many hopium addicts are just hoping that we become PETS. They point to Ian Banks’ Culture series as a good outcome… where, again, HUMANS ARE PETS. THIS IS THEIR GOOD OUTCOME.

      I am once again begging these e/acc fucking idiots to actually read and engage with the sci-fi books they keep citing

      but who am I kidding? the only way you come up with a take as stupid as “humans are pets in the Culture” is if your only exposure to the books is having GPT summarize them

  • BigMuffin69@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Found in the wilds^

    Giganto brain AI safety ‘scientist’

    If AIs are conscious right now, we are monsters. Nobody wants to think they’re monsters. Ergo: AIs are definitely not conscious.

    Internet rando:

    If furniture is conscious right now, we are monsters. Nobody wants to think they’re monsters. Ergo: Furniture is definitely not conscious.

  • o7___o7@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Off topic:

    Went to Bonnaroo this weekend and didn’t have to think about weird racist nerds trying to ruin everything for four whole days.

    It was rad af and full of the kind of positive human interaction these people want to edit out of existence. Highly recommend.

  • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Not sure where I got the link to this video from, could very well be from this place, but look ‘Gamers’ made an NFT game without blockchain and cryptocurrencies! And it will potentially lead to other Gamers being scammed! Innovation!

    • Eiim@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      akshually, the tokens are perfectly fungible, my stickernana is totally indistinguishable from the million other stickernanas out there. Not that it matters for the purpose of useless speculative trades.

      • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        Shit you are right, I should have said an NFT game without the NFTs. I stand corrected! Also would have been funnier.

  • hrrrngh@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    People are so, so, so bad at telling what’s a bot and what’s real. I know social media is swarming with bots, but if you’re interacting with somebody who’s saying anything more complicated than “P o o s i e I n B i o” it’s probably not a bot. A similar thing happens in online games, too, and it’s usually the excuse people use before harassing someone else

    But damn the lengths people will go to to avoid admitting they were wrong. This comment chain just keeps going on with somebody who’s convinced {origin="RU"}{faith="bad"}{election_manipulation="very yes"} must be real because something something microservices: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1dlg8ni/russian_bot_falls_prey_to_a_prompt_iniection/l9pbmrw/ It reads like something straight off /r/programming or the orange site

    Then it comes full circle with people making joke responses on Twitter imitating the first post, and then other people taking those joke responses as proof that the first one must be real: https://old.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1dimlyl/twitter_is_already_a_gpt_hellscape/l9691c8/

    This account kind of kicked up some drama too, basically for the same reason (answering an LLM prompt), but it’s about mushroom ID instead: https://www.reddit.com/user/SeriousPerson9 I’ve seen people like this who use voice-to-text and run their train of thought through ChatGPT or something, like one person notorious on /r/gamedev. But people always assume it’s some advanced autonomous bot with stochastic post delays that mimic a human’s active hours when like, it’s usually just somebody copy/pasting prompts and responses.

    Sorry if you contract any diseases from those links or comment chains

    • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      well count me as bamboozled then. stupider, pre-gpt version of this consists of robocalls that are really operated by people, but they don’t speak, they just choose one of several canned responses. why don’t they speak? because most of them are illegal immigrants and it would be obvious by accent

    • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      the first post (and some bits) was featured earlier in the stubsack, if you want to check some other parts

      but holy hell that reddit thread

    • o7___o7@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      It’s like young-earth creationists who believe that dinosaur bones were installed as-is at the beginning of time time in order to test us, so their existence proves nothing about geology or evolution.

    • Amoeba_Girl@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Yeah I thought this one looked very very made up and far too on the nose. I think it’s fine to label human-run spam/troll accounts as bots though.

      Somewhat related I stumbled upon robots flirting with eachother the other day.

  • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Not a big sneer, but I was checking my spam box for badly filtered spam and saw a guy basically emailing me 'hey you made some contributions to open source, these are now worth money (in cryptocoins, so no real money), you should claim them, and if you are nice you could give me a finders fee. And eurgh im so tired of these people. (thankfully he provided enough personal info so I could block him on various social medias).

  • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    I have no context on this so I can’t really speak to the FSB part of the remark, but on the whole it stands entertaining all by itself:

  • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPMEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    How do you deal with ADHD overload? Everyone knows that one: you PILE MORE SHIT ON TOP

    https://pivot-to-ai.com - new site from Amy Castor and me, coming soon!

    there’s nothing there yet, but we’re thinking just short posts about funny dumb AI bullshit. Web 3 Is Going Great, but it’s AI.

    i assure you that we will absolutely pillage techtakes, but will have to write it in non-jargonised form for ordinary civilian sneers

    BIG QUESTION: what’s a good WordPress theme? For a W3iGG style site with short posts and maybe occasional longer ones

    • self@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      How do you deal with ADHD overload? Everyone knows that one: you PILE MORE SHIT ON TOP

      how dare you simulate my behavior to this degree of accuracy

      but seriously I’m excited as fuck for this! I’ve been hoping you and Amy would take this on forever, and it’s finally happening!

      • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPMEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        molly is delighted that people might stop telling her to

        arguably we shoulda done it last year, but better late than never

        • self@awful.systemsEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          I wouldn’t even call y’all late; public opinion towards AI is just starting to turn from optimism to mockery, so this feels like the perfect opportunity to normalize sneering in a way that’s easier for folks without context to consume than SneerClub or TechTakes.

          • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPMEnglish
            0·
            3 months ago

            when I write the blockchain stuff, it’s like, here’s one paragraph of the actual thing going on, and here’s another thousand words to make it comprehensible

            • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
              0·
              3 months ago

              So much yak shaving involved with blockchain.

              Or any of this for that matter, I imagine you have already once answered the question of ‘how are you involved with twitter being bought by Musk’, ‘well in 1995, Scientology …’

      • V0ldek@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        how dare you simulate my behavior to this degree of accuracy

        @AcausalRobotGod frantically taking notes

      • self@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        it’s only a service account and a couple lines of bash away! but not automating for now makes it easier to evolve these threads naturally as we go, I think, and our posters being willing to help rotate and contribute to these weekly threads is a good sign that the concept’s still fun.

        • sc_griffith@awful.systemsEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          each sneer is drafted and redrafted for at least thirty hours prior to exposure to the internet, but in truth, that’s only the last stage of a long process. for example, master sneerers often practice their lip curls for weeks before they even begin looking at yud posts