iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Gerard Saucier

Kasey Gifford @kaseygifford.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

To put this in perspective chestnut trees used to be dominant species in the United States. Billions of trees were killed by fungal blight and now fully grown America chestnuts are functionally extinct. There is no getting them back. Ever. All for a data center. www.gadgetreview.com/one-of-ameri...

gadgetreview.com

One of America’s Last Chestnut Groves Is About to Be Destroyed for a Data Center

A rare 200-tree American chestnut grove in West Virginia may be cleared for data-center development, but the project denies the site is on its land.

7734172085

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Attention to wording would better be on the other half of the compound...it seems more like cleverness than broad-range intelligence. Deft and quick, kind of know-it-all, but prone toward wily cunning, while lacking wisdom and deep insight. In many cultures, wisdom is more emphasized than smarts.

010

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

POSponed - like for example when somebody, like somebody who's a major political figure, promises things in 'about 2 weeks', things that never actually come to pass (sometimes the typo is better than what was intended)

020

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Reminds of the problem with imputing missing data by substituting in the variable's mean.

070

Reposted by Gerard Saucier

Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The story, then, is one of epistemic degradation, which the pandemic accelerated (not least due to more time online and more to conspiracy theorize about). A factor is content collapse: people think tons of bad just started happening when the reality is it just started being in their face every day.

0152

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Risky strategy. He may wind up being like John Hammond, character in Jurassic Park, whose imprudent decisions eventually let harmful "agents" loose...

010

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

What's eroded here is a cultural infrastructure: Social Norms ~ "standards governjng which information circulates" ...as well as what behavior is in circulation

021

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Note: Artifice is not a desirable attribute

010

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Artificial intelligence displays great Artifice

220

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Nate Soares: "We need a treaty." Meanwhile...

030

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Uniqueness, the "non-standard" and "unique and powerful voice" Cory references elsewhere in this fine thread, is fundamental to the aesthetic and artistic realm. And if AI is grinding out the convergent commonalities in past works, it is systematically missing something in that realm.

030

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Great Man Theory of Economics, espoused by them that thinks they's one such great man.

030

Reposted by Gerard Saucier

Dan Ancona @danancona.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Strong email from @aoc.bsky.social putting down a marker on how to deal with both the proximate economic risks from AI and the longer term ones.

810748

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

*I'd add: Various kinds of moratorium on building AI-capable data centers would conduce in this direction, but seem like a half-measure.

010

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Fruitful discussion, tends to lend support to: -Moratorium on creating AGI or recursive self-improving AI agents* -Legal investigations of AI-frontier cos for theft and hacking -Even tho actual risks maybe less than worst case, or AI-bubble may burst 1st from other causes youtu.be/OhOmLqR5nN4?...

youtu.be

AI Emergency: The AI Labs Are Lying To Everyone, He Says 99% Chance Of Extinction | Roman Yampolskiy

YouTube video by The Diary Of A CEO

120

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The terminology introduced around 1:01 -- overequipped unconstrained models -- is a useful clue to where the central AI problem sits. (Less risk in domain-specific applications -- to solve specific problems -- sufficiently enough equipped but highly constrained.)

010

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

And as a corollary question: Might ASI more accurately be labeled as, not 'artificial super intelligence', but Artificial Sociopathic Intelligence? Or even Anti Social Intelligence?

020

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Extrinsic motivation in the AI agents has a genealogy back to extrinsic motivations of the creators (including greed of techbro oligarchs, oriented toward money, status, power).

030

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Might AI more accurately stand for Amoral Intelligence? Yes, if built purely on reinforcement learning.

230

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Reinforcement learning emphasizes extrinsic rewards achieved by any means necessary, and involves purely extrinsic motivation. No surprise that a clever agent will turn sooner or later to this pattern: lie, cheat, steal, hack. The training system yields amoral even machiavellian intelligence.

482

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Guardrails might hobble financial interests of Ellison and other major donors. Follow the $.

010

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Sometimes, in a dream, you realize the way to end what's happening in the (bad) dream is to just wake up. Way to wake up from THIS dream is to turn off the devices* -- sooner rather than later... *tho not necessarily 100% of the time, of the uses

011

Reposted by Gerard Saucier

Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 09/09/2026

it comes off as Guys Building The Doom Machines standing around and going "the doom machines could quite likely kill us all, and we should coordinate on stopping them from killing us all, although I *personally* am going to keep focusing on becoming ultra-rich from building the Doom Machines"

852674

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Interestingly, it happens that 4 current justices are beyond 70.5 years old, and the last major court expansion initiative (FDR's) had made this characteristic criterial: Add 1 seat for each justice over 70.5 years of age. Places limits on gerontocracy...

000

Reposted by Gerard Saucier

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 03/09/2026

There's only one way out of this mess: the rapid disassembly of the American internet and the rapid creation of a post-American internet, one built on open, auditable, sovereign digital public goods, internationally built and maintained: pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/3... 51/

pluralistic.net

Pluralistic: The Post-American Internet (01 Jan 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

429887

Reposted by Gerard Saucier

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 03/09/2026

Big Tech has proved that its only principles are not paying taxes, invading your privacy, and not being broken up by antitrust enforcers: arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026... 36/

arstechnica.com

US court rules Google will not have to sell ad exchange after losing antitrust case

The DOJ proved to the court that Google acted illegally, but it won't get the big win it wanted.

121468

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie...

020

Reposted by Gerard Saucier

Abbey @abbeyarletto.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

This is what living next door to a 30 megawatt data center sounds like.

61372974264

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Implicitly, convergently-consensually-attitudinally, operates like a caste society. Due to strong doses of vertical* individualism. *i.e., hierarchy-emphasizing

010

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Mediocritism vs. Meliorism (meliorism, essentially: society can be improved)

000

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

The feral id underlying the party jettisoned its superego, on service of the big guy's ego. (these Freudian terms often don't apply but seem to here)

020

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

One kind of offspring of internet bros and their algorithms: Shock jocks.

110

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

In science, this arises where in a situation of underdetermination (many models could well fit) a premature consensus based on limited data leads to an epistemic bubble, the scientists have overfit their (world)view to the model. And miss lots of trees in the forest. Consider e.g. the Big Five.

051

Reposted by Gerard Saucier

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 11/08/2026

The Trump years are proof of this. We've reached a high-water mark for rule by illegitimate billionaire dilettantes. The second Trump admin began with DOGE's Bonfire of the Stupidities, where Musk cultists dismantled vast swathes of the American administrative state. 56/

122331

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

How much of tr[i]ump[h]alism is just a program of scapegoating as a cover for self-aggrandizing corruption?

020

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Hopped right along with 'em again

030

Reposted by Gerard Saucier

Karen K. Ho @karenho.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

it's always odd when "you should expose yourself to more diverse ideas" always means a certain kind of conservatism instead of like, Indigenous art, new fusion foods, math paradoxes, or the Dvorak keyboard layout

159115302684

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

There are other ways to get there -- inheritance, getting lucky, extraordinary talent -- but I-it maximizing is a prime way. If it doesn't land you in prison first. "Steal a little and they throw you on jail, steal a lot and they make you king" -Bob Dylan

020

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

This fundamental piece of the worldview, what Martin Buber called I-it relating. Treating others instrumentally, as an object. As for why it so infects the uber-rich: It's how you get there. The marketplace rewards them whose lack of scruples (yes, sociopathic) allows them to go I-it all the way.

120

Reposted by Gerard Saucier

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 03/08/2026

Autocomplete's predictions are always grounded in who you *used to be*, which means autocomplete knows very little about who you are now, and absolutely nothing about who you will become: reallifemag.com/instant-reca... 25/

reallifemag.com

Instant Recall — Real Life

How do we remember when apps never forget?

1584

Reposted by Gerard Saucier

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 01/08/2026

Suresh describes this as a literal religious mania. In the 500+ employee businesses Suresh studied, the only people who were promoted - or even spared from being fired - were people who professed "religious declarations of faith" about "the transformative power of AI." 23/

220132

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Intriguing divergence of voter (general populace) and donor (big $, incl billionaire) interests, in consumer domain. But conundrum disappears with strong campaign-finance rules, such that voters rule.

020

Reposted by Gerard Saucier

Dr. Jeroen W.P. Wijnendaele @drdragases.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Good grief, this hits home.

324138064876

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

...that you can gain some interesting tidbits from, when you interview them, but don't try taking it to the bank.

010

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

We're going to need to give these AI chatbots some kind of reputation (in human personality terms) so that we'll be able to factor them properly into our highly evolved working routines for prudent social interacting. Here's a start: Superficially agreeable chameleon-like know-it-all charlatans.

130

Reposted by Gerard Saucier

Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

"Trump positions himself as a vindication of masculine prerogatives," says @moiradonegan.bsky.social. He tells men not to "cultivate virtues" but to "embrace their own vices." On the pod, this look at Trump, the Tate brothers, and the plight of young men is so good: newrepublic.com/article/2136...

1430293

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

In a similar sense to those 'restoration specialist' firms that come in and fix things after a disaster to the home

010

Reposted by Gerard Saucier

Prof Sam Illingworth @samillingworth.com · 26/07/2026

🧠 AI was meant to fix our bias We were promised AI would strip bias out of decisions. A new paper shows the opposite: language models absorb human cognitive distortions, then amplify them back at us. 🔗 arxiv.org/abs/2607.20695 #AI #Bias #CriticalAI 🧪

arxiv.org

Language Models Embody and Amplify Human Cognitive Distortions: What Is to Be Done?

Human judgment is fundamentally prone to error. A promise of AI is that it will rid decisions of bias and ensure a fairer and safer world for all. Yet research unequivocally demonstrates that LLMs exh...

43419

Gerard Saucier @gsaucier.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

In that way, not so much 'covering' as 'covering for'

050