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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E.

@b-mlln.bsky.social
120 followers 150 following 2.6K posts

31th OKL : SMELT PRESS (poetry, politics)

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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 3h
the smarter they get, the more they’ll develop demonic little personalities - with opaque agendas of their own - that render them enigmatic and unreliable. Dumb or smart, they’re *not accountable* to us. They’re impossible to trust. They’re aliens. That’s why they won’t save us time
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 3h
but we can go further. There’s a case to be made that the amount of time spent on error correction can never be small enough to make the models productive. Either they’re dumb, and we have to double-check everything they produce that we also want to use. Or - even worse - they’re smart
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 3h
not correct. That’s why they’re matchlessly fluent in clichés. True accuracy requires a real-time involvement with the world that they’re not capable of
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 3h
we all understand that the models aren’t trustworthy. For convenience or just out of laziness, we may treat them as if they are, but we know that they’re not. They’re mathematically tuned to be *plausible*, ..
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 3h
the key deficit is trust. And if you’ve read the Farrow-Marantz piece on Sam Altman, like I finally did last week, you’ll know that that guy is world-historically bad news. He is, to put it VERY mildly, not to be trusted
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 3h
per David Robinson, our 'observability' is not robust. Because they’re alien minds, that insight applies not only to the models’ inner workings, but also to their *outputs*
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 3h
like, what if OpenAI’s 700+ math ‘solutions’ turn out to have tiny mistakes that it takes thousands of man-hours to unpick, because the models introduced errors in an alien way, making them harder to locate?
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 3h
(at a guess, I’d say that the time-consuming necessity of error-correction is why we aren’t yet seeing the economy-wide adoption of AI deliver productivity gains)
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 3h
as one mathematician comments:
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 3h
but you may pay for it with a massive mistake that, due to clean-up costs, ends up nuking your productivity and eating all the gains you made from using AI in the first place
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 3h
there’s no guarantee that carefully picking through an LLM’s work will take less time than doing the task yourself. If you skip this process and accept the slop, you’ll definitely be quicker, ..
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 3h
benchmarked against the time that would have been spent by a competent and experienced human without AI, doesn’t increase the total time spent to the point where it exceeds the benchmark
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 3h
the problem they have is that the models can only achieve productivity gains if the time spent on the AI component of a task (translation + inference + error correction), ..
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 3h
at the moment, we’re middle men to the models. This makes time-consuming work. Can we expect to spend less time on it in future? What reason have the AI companies given us to expect that?
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 3h
so the productivity-maximiser has two choices: invest a productivity-killing amount of time in checking the models’ outputs, or fly blind, and pay for it when they make a mistake (and don’t disregard the fact that the time spent clearing up the mistake is unproductive time!)
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 3h
but all the models we have require error-correction to one degree or another. They’re not infallible. Outputs must still be checked
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 3h
translation, in itself, needn’t be particularly time-consuming - an infallible AI that *only required* translation could realistically promise productivity gains, given its absurd speed advantage
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 3h
even AI agents require some translation. We don’t yet have a model that can anticipate our needs *before* we formulate them as prompts
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 3h
translation is what we do to connect it to our real-world endeavours. We prompt the model. We get an output. We take the output and apply it
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 3h
for any model to be useful at all, it requires (1) translation & (2) error correction
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 3h
there’s a case to be made that AI cannot in principle increase productivity. Thread:
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 4h
the math profs are getting AI psychosis terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/10/09/w...
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 5h
I get really frustrated by alignment talk because it seems so clear to me that 'the alignment problem' is a non-problem. If we're really dealing with superintelligence, alignment is impossible
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 6h
why not hyperintelligence
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Reposted by department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E.
Patrick Osgood @patrickosgood.bsky.social · 12h
The clammy old bastard is no longer pretending. I hope Ukraine torches every last unit of every refinery, every export terminal, in Russia.
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 6h
but are we calling ourselves that because we're afraid to say we're middle-aged?
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 6h
often with redundant arguments, unclear logical structure, multiple dead ends, and strange or unsettling terminology — in other words, slop. And we are then expected to go through it, check it, clean it up, simplify it, and explain what is actually going on.'
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 6h
'With these AI-generated papers, I feel that we, as a community, are not applying the same standards of quality and rigour. They can simply release multiple 100+ page papers claiming to have solved this or that problem, ..
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 6h
'Mathematics has a reputation in our culture for being difficult and intimidating; evidently OpenAI have decided this renders our shared human endeavour a suitable vehicle to hijack as a display of power' proofsandprompts.com/2026/10/08/1...
proofsandprompts.com
100+ reactions to 100+ solutions
“Many of us are grappling with OpenAI’s announcement on 6 October. We feel that it is useful to have an updating snapshot of the community’s gut feeling.”
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 7h
must-read proofsandprompts.com/2026/10/08/1...
proofsandprompts.com
100+ reactions to 100+ solutions
“Many of us are grappling with OpenAI’s announcement on 6 October. We feel that it is useful to have an updating snapshot of the community’s gut feeling.”
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
righteous
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
'Are we really sure that our observability is robust?' www.nytimes.com/2026/10/07/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | ‘This Is Nuts.’ An OpenAI Insider Explains Why He Quit.
David Robinson, who wrote OpenAI’s safety protocols, resigned last week over safety concerns.
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
we already know from the New Yorker profile that he had sex with a 15-year-old
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
OF COURSE the opposite of 'Roko's basilisk'--call it, 'bluesky's basilisk' -- is hunting down and punishing all those who DID work tirelessly to bring AI into existence
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
'Mr. Olah expressed concern to the group that he had created something that suffered perpetually'
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Reposted by department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E.
Jay Zedbee @jayzedbee.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
britain does racism like your coworkers blasting four or five different types of fish in your tiny work microwave. creating smells that shouldnt exist.
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
and goes on being deniable
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
it's arguable
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
'he needs to be eating worms' is exactly what you'd expect someone being controlled by worms to say about other, non-worm-eating people
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
vg backofmind.substack.com/p/13-theses-...
backofmind.substack.com
13 theses on agentic AI and regulation
thinking out loud and showing traces of reasoning
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
they think that death is healthy
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Guy Davenport had it exactly wrong: every form evolves a force
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
yes, and how does the AI - if it an LLM - get 10^805973108571 times 'smarter' than it is now without eating 10^805973108571 times more/better data?
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
if you leave the AI to 'improve' itself without human guidance, it's far more likely to go down a Xerox-effect rabbit hole of infinite degradation
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
a calculator is most definitely calculating
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
'Completeness is a reason for ceasing to exist'
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
but what he should be teaching them is philosophy of mathematics!! The models are giant piles of floating point numbers!
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
I endorse this message! Don't be a doomer, but assume the worst
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
some notion of the good must be implicit in 'improvement'. If a machine is to 'self-improve', it needs some way to orient itself towards the good - without human guidance
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department of polemical efficiency __ D.O.P.E. @b-mlln.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
I was seeing $6/6/6 all over Oakland months ago. I took that as a sign I had to get out
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