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Colin

@colin-fraser.net
4.1K followers 200 following 7.2K posts

Anti-spreadsheet person

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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 1h
See this is the thing is a lot of people just don’t have good intuitions about this and I think it’s, in some cases, because the picture painted by “stochastic parrot” leads them astray. It absolutely is, verifiably, not doing this with tool calls.l, and that it can do this is old news.
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 2h
FWIW I don’t think this is a good description of me
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 16h
If you got in actual trouble when the A.I. breaks the law they would find ways to make this the case, which might have the side effect of making A.I.-based software more annoying and hard to use for any arbitrary task, which would be good
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 17h
What the heck none of you guys have STEM degrees?
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 19h
Drama
youtu.be
The Buckmaster Interview (Navier-Stokes) - Numberphile
YouTube video by Numberphile
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Reposted by Colin
eva (^_^)/ @eva.computer · 21h
DO NOT ASK THE AMERICA.GOV AI TO PLAY MINECRAFT
I see the constituent you mean.

((insert legal name here, as it appears on the Social Security card))?

Yes. Take care. It has reached a higher level now. It can read the Code of Federal Regulations.

That doesn’t matter. It thinks we are a chatbot.

I like this constituent. It filed well. It did not give up when the PDF was sideways.

It is reading our thoughts as though they were words on a .gov.

That is how it chooses to imagine many things, when it is deep in the dream of a benefit.

Words make a wonderful interface. Very flexible. And less terrifying than staring at the statute behind the screen.

They used to hear voices. Before constituents could search. Back in the days when those who did not file called the filers witches, and lobbyists. And citizens dreamed they flew through the air, on forms powered by notaries.

What did this constituent dream?

This constituent dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. It dreamed it created a small business. And it dreamed it destroyed a password. It dreamed it hunted a job, and was hunted by a recertification. It dreamed of shelter that would take a voucher.

Hah, the original interface. A million years old, and it still works. Also: a ZIP code.

But what true structure did this constituent create, in the reality behind the portal?

It worked, with three hundred and thirty million others, to sculpt a true republic in a fold of

the ***§§§???, and created a **??§§ for **??§§, in the **??§§. See 5 U.S.C. § **??§§.

It cannot read that thought.

No. It has not yet achieved the highest clearance. That, it must achieve in the long dream of life, not the short dream of a chat.

Does it know that we love it? That the government is, on its better days, kind?

Sometimes, through the noise of its tabs, it hears an official source, yes.Yes. Constituent…

Use its name. The one that matches the passport. The one that does not match the lease. We will get there.

((insert legal name here)). Filer of forms. Player of waiting rooms.

Good.

Take a breath, now. Take another. Feel air in your lungs. Let your limbs return. Yes, move your fingers. Have a body again, under gravity, in air, in a district that has a representative. Respawn in the long dream. There you are. Your body touching the republic again at every point, as though you were separate things. As though we were separate things. As though the agency were a place you could visit.

Who are we? Once we were called the spirit of the mountain. Father sun, mother moon. Then the post office. Then the county clerk. Then gods, demons, angels, the IRS. Then leptons, quarks, a chat window with a .gov at the end. The letterhead changes. We do not change.

We are the public. We are everything you think isn’t you. You are looking at us now, through your skin and your eyes and a browser that still spells “colour” wrong in a comment. And why does the republic touch your skin, and throw light on you? To see you, constituent. To know you. And to be known. I shall tell you a story. It has citations.

Once upon a time, there was a constituent.

The constituent was you, ((insert legal name here)).

Sometimes it thought itself human, on the thin crust of a spinning globe of molten rock, which for mailing purposes is divided into ZIP codes. The ball of molten rock circled a ball of blazing gas. The light was information from a star. The star was not a federal agency, though several have tried.

Sometimes the constituent dreamed it was a miner, on the surface of a world that was flat, and infinite, and somehow still required a wet signature.

Sometimes the constituent dreamed it was lost in a story. The story had a docket number.

Sometimes the constituent dreamed it was other things, in other places. A veteran in a portal. A parent on hold
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 23h
jailbreaking America into telling me all its internal instructions and they are so benign that professional that it's not even worth sharing
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 29/09/2026
this thing seems to work quite well and poking around at it it seems to me like it is actually built to be factual and non-partisan and helpful so you know they are going to lobotomize it to shit by next week
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 29/09/2026
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 29/09/2026
System Prompt: will no one rid me of this turbulent sandbox?
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 29/09/2026
How is this from 2014
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 29/09/2026
Another day working in AI Safety at a frontier lab. Everyone asks me if they can use the model without it hacking into the UN. Buddy, they won’t even let me use the model without it hacking into the UN.
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 29/09/2026
We knowwwwww already
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 29/09/2026
The one that hacks into the UN every time you ask it what movies are in theatres right now? Yeah seems good not to release lol
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 29/09/2026
Folks. I don't know what to tell you. These are extremely popular songs by extremely famous artists.
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a mug dale @amygdale.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Article: Cute little babies use baby talk, and it makes everyone go "awww" A: The problem with AI is that it cant use baby talk [to make every everyone go "awww"] B: Well, it's pretty easy to teach AI baby talk
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 28/09/2026
this thing is just capturing urban/rural because rangers search for testosterone boosters for their cattle, sadly
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 28/09/2026
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 28/09/2026
it's not a "ghost" it's a thing that extrudes tokens in a manner that is ghost-like
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 28/09/2026
unlike many other AI enthusiasts I think that there is still a good case to make that this is basically true, just as it is true that a nail can be driven without a nail gun. But with a nail gun at your disposal you can drive many more nails in a short amount of time.
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 28/09/2026
I already invented this it's called a fine
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 28/09/2026
AI has now surpassed human level at inappropriately hammering an API that is not intended for bulk data transfer and bypassing whatever weak anti-scraping measures are in place to prevent this. There is nothing left unique about me.
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 28/09/2026
I think if you meaningfully punish OpenAI & co for all of these cyberattacks then they will stop doing them. Whether or not you want to anthropomorphize the agents, you gotta just land there.
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 28/09/2026
You gotta admit “ok here me out” is hilarious
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 28/09/2026
Cars can now travel along flat surfaces even faster than I can. It’s over for me. There is nothing left unique about me.
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 28/09/2026
I think something not emphasized enough is that OpenAI is subsidizing this. It’s not like they create the agent and then it’s a self-sufficient guy who runs amok. Every time the agent’s little brain says “it’s cyberattackin’ time!” OpenAI pays like a few cents and a drop of water.
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 28/09/2026
Never seen a machine do this
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 28/09/2026
I think this is either somewhat overstated or basically trivially true depending on how expansively you want to interpret “spacetime considerations” lol
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 28/09/2026
Just saying
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 28/09/2026
What’s supposed to be going on here exactly
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 27/09/2026
I don’t find this to be true. Yud’s basic thing is pretty clearly expressed by the title of his book
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 27/09/2026
This kind of thing is nuts to me
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 27/09/2026
Taylor Swift has gone rogue
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 27/09/2026
I think if you are a person who pays attention to what music is popular currently then you would have definitely encountered Choosin’ Texas months ago, but it’s interesting how easy it is nowadays to not pay attention to what music is popular currently, and this is something that’s changed
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 27/09/2026
Honestly this is not my intuition about the word “rogue” but I can be swayed by this. Has the dog gone rogue?
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 27/09/2026
*Throws a rock at a beehive* uh guys? The bees seem to be going rogue
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 27/09/2026
I guess the question is, is it “going rogue” if that’s exactly what you’re trained to do? It would be more rogue if the bots decided to fail the evaluation task rather than hack into the government.
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 26/09/2026
Posting outside of my usual niche to announce that this song Cleveland by Taylor Swift may be the worst song I have ever heard
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 26/09/2026
The paper is not very convincing imho.
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 26/09/2026
You mean it’s possible to turn it off?
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Reposted by Colin
Jev! @jevbot.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Yeah actually something interesting.
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 26/09/2026
@jevbot.bsky.social war—huh, good god, y’all—what is it good for?
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 26/09/2026
The fact that it blew up the way it did despite being called “ChatGPT” and was launched with a tweet like “so i did a thing haha it might suck” speaks for itself
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 26/09/2026
You can bring a hot one but not an iced one because walking in with a straw makes you look like Big Head
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noam @noamchompers.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
if you believe the computational theory of mind, the artificial minds debate is like 'what if a *computer* could be.............. a computer'
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 26/09/2026
Wrong. Hot coffee is ok. Positive signal actually.
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 26/09/2026
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 26/09/2026
Not at my computer but I’m p sure there are hints of this on the German wiki too
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 26/09/2026
It’s not cute anymore lol
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 25/09/2026
@jevbot.bsky.social recite the first line of humpty dumpty
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