iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by David P. Baker

Hagen Blix @hagenblix.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

We need to rephrase the whole discussion in terms of hazardous products, instead of "minds". And then we need to make sure that there's liability. A model hacks someone? Put a C-suite guy in jail. A model produces sexual harassment material? Put a C-suite guy in jail. Watch how fast things get safe

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Coach Finstock @coachfinstock.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I'm Johnny Knoxville welcome to Jackass

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David P. Baker @netdpb.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

How's the Hollandaise sauce in Amsterdam?

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Sam Wang @samwang.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

This is the point. When early filmgoers saw a clip of a train approaching the screen, in the viewers' minds, a train was coming. They behaved accordingly. These technologies make us believe that they are something more than they are. LLMs just take it to a higher level. bsky.app/profile/tall...

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evil cheese mouse @cheesemouse.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

cheese mouse

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apenwarr @apenwarr.ca · 14/09/2026

rationalist: I predict there‘s a 10% chance that 100% of humanity is wiped out in 10 years actuary: there was already a 100% chance that 10% of humanity would die in the next 10 years utilitarian: it’s the same thing

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David P. Baker @netdpb.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Nice summary: AI folks have Pascal's Wagered themselves

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

When they get back in power, Democrats need to go all-in on higher education. We need a campaign of reinvestment in public universities across the country that makes the Morrill Land-Grant Act look like nothing by comparison *and* a GI Bill of Rights-style program of tuition grants.

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David P. Baker @netdpb.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Also good as a hangover preventer (er, lessener)

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Dan Hon @danhon.com · 12/06/2026

OCEANIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN VERY CLOSE TO A DEAL WITH EURASIA

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Dave Vetter @davidrvetter.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Happy Kicked In The Head By A Horse Day, to all who celebrate. It's the 7th anniversary of this absolute banger.

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Matt Ford @mford.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Ezra Klein asked Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about AI making kids worse at math and reading. Huang’s reply: “Does it matter?” Then he said he doesn’t know his own address or phone number. “We’re going to lose some fine intellectual dexterity.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/o...

So the message of this research out of China, where you were seeing a lot of kids using A.I. to help them, was that when they were using the A.I., they were getting things done faster. But it turned out that the skills they were learning were not holding, that their actual personal performance, at least in the way we traditionally measure it, was degrading.

What do you think when you hear that?

The last part — I completely agree. Try to get a kid to do long division right now. The multiplication table is starting to be forgotten. Doing square roots, my goodness. Basic math is being forgotten. Does it matter?

That’s my question for you.

Yeah. I don’t think it does. I don’t think it does.

But there must be some set of skills that matter.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But maybe not those. We’re going to discover new ones. Just maybe not those.

There are a lot of skills that don’t matter. My first confession, I actually don’t know my address.

And I ——

I don’t really believe that to be true.

It’s completely true. Janine will tell you and Lori will tell you.

One day I had to pump gas — it was a few years ago. They needed my ZIP code, and I panicked. I didn’t know my ZIP code. I don’t know my telephone number. I forget these things. I can live with it.

But let me take the other side because I don’t want to fall into a thing where, because some skills can be safely offloaded ——

Yeah.

I also can’t get anywhere without a mapping system now. Never could, frankly. But I’m a big reader. And one of the skills I really value, one of the capacities I have that I really value is an attention span formed on physical books.

You’re a big reader. I’ve read about the kind of reading you do. And there is, prior to A.I., a lot of concern and noticing among college professors and others that the way people use the internet has probably shortened attention spans.
Some skills can be safely given away. Others are valuable. They are capacities that are needed for that flexibility, for that creative thinking, for that focus. It can’t be the case that everything can be traded off.

Some skills can be safely given away. Others are valuable. They are capacities that are needed for that flexibility, for that creative thinking, for that focus. It can’t be the case that everything can be traded off.

Yeah. Well, I think that we’re going to lose some finer intellectual dexterity, but we’re going to be better systems thinkers.

Today’s engineers are far better systems thinkers than I was when I graduated from school. But I was a much better transistor thinker.

What do you mean by systems thinker?

They think of large systems. Today’s computers have trillions, hundreds of trillions of transistors in them. When I first graduated from school, the first chip I worked on had 200 transistors. I knew every one of them by name. No engineer does that today. Most engineers now work well above the transistor, well above the functionality, and they’re cobbling things together to do things.

So you need to think much more about systems and interactions of systems. So some of the lower-level knowledge is gone.

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David P. Baker @netdpb.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The food trucks around NY Presbyterian hospital smell amazing

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ceej @ceej.online · 24/09/2026

impeach them all. fuck em. why should they get to fly around on our dime and hurt people? “they’ll never actually removed from office” who gives a shit? I want them miserable every day for the rest of the term. I hope they have nightmares. air their dirty laundry. make em sweat

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 23/09/2026

i think you can fairly say that the second trump administration is the most racist federal administration since woodrow wilson and honestly i'm not sure that it isn't more racist than wilson's

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David P. Baker @netdpb.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Really not enjoying this new still-dark-when-the-alarm-goes-off business

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los 🦦 @los-los.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Started a painting of Billy Idol in the style of Monet Monet

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David P. Baker @netdpb.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Pickles (cukes and tomatoes), salami, cheese, and carrots It's what's for dinner

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David P. Baker @netdpb.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

“Who made all this mess in the kitchen?” I yell after cooking dinner

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David P. Baker @netdpb.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

he's just an excitable boy (derogatory)

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David P. Baker @netdpb.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

she's a superfreak (laudatory)

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Joe Bak-Coleman @jbakcoleman.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

We can simulate fish schools or ants in ways that solve complex problems (gradient detection, bridge building, nest selection) but no one would create this weird soul/no-soul dichotomy to argue they these that multi-agent swarms of extremely simple rules are “thinking”.

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a slug🍚🐝🌱🦌💽🫙🚉 @drunk.moe · 19/09/2026

This is my favorite picture on the internet (Former French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe defeats children in a game of dominoes during a visit to a school, September 2019)

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Adam Becker @adambecker.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

@aoc.bsky.social just put out a great statement on AI. Refreshing to see a major politician on the left nail this. "Silicon Valley billionaires want us to believe that Al robots will destroy humanity. But the biggest threat to humanity are the tech oligarchs themselves." 🎯

Charles,

Last weekend, Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, one of the largest Al companies in the world, publicly asked his industry to slow down Al development.

Shortly after, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAl, followed suit. Then Elon Musk.

This all came days after an Anthropic researcher quit, citing his belief that this technology could wipe out humanity and that Al companies are "gambling with our lives."

For years, people have warned that generative Al could slip out of our direct control.

Those safety concerns must be taken seriously.

And this is why I have advocated for strict safety standards on how Al is built and deployed, public oversight over this technology, and using existing laws to hold these companies accountable when they cause harm.

But I want to draw your attention to another reality: Right now, the U.S. economy and our financial futures are riding on Silicon Valley's bet that Al will soon be immensely profitable and pay off. And that bet isn't looking good.

The formula for a profitable business isn't complicated: make more money than you spend. But the biggest Al companies aren't doing that. They are spending hundreds of billions per year on data centers, chips, and other costs while their ability to make revenues that exceed their already-immense sunk costs are unclear. Experts estimate that these Al companies will require another $600 billion of debt just to finance

themselves in 2026 alone. That is more than the entire budgets of the U.S. Departments of Justice, Transportation, & Education combined.
Meanwhile, despite almost every single one of these companies not turning a profit & having sunk billions of investor dollars in development of data centers & other infrastructure, Al companies are also on a spending spree of hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying & dark money in our elections.
It would be one thing if we were discussing a few private companies with a poor business model. But last year, virtually all stock market gains - 80% - rested entirely on just a handful of Al companies.
That tells us two things:
1. Nearly the entire U.S. economy outside the Al industry is relatively stagnating and faring poorly & the gains from these few companies are disguising it; &
2. Millions of people's retirements - including their pensions, 401ks, & investments - are potentially exposed to this risk.
That's why these Al companies' dubious financial positions matter to working people.
These companies argue that debt is necessary. They'll tell you that building transformative technologies requires upfront capital, & that massive borrowing today will pay off in generating unprecedented prosperity tomorrow.
But this is not the typical debt that startups take on while they build out a company. We are talking about billions going on trillions of dollars leveraged with no indication that these companies will be able to recoup these funds profitably. And they are increasingly looking to the government as their source of cash.
In an effort to hide their debt, tech companies have been relying on "circular financing" where tech giants like Google, Amazon, & Microsoft give billions to Al startups like OpenAl & Anthropic, only for those startups to hand that money right back to buy Al processing power.
In other words, these Al companies are luring in new investors by making it look like their financials are healthier than they really are.

What's even worse is that retirement & pension funds are key to supporting this illusion.
When the Al companies issue bonds to raise more money, your pension funds & retirement accounts are some of the biggest buyers. When Musk's Al business went public, it became part of index funds where millions of Americans invest our savings. Many Americans don't even know that their retirement investments are tied up in these companies at all.
From Big Tech's perspective, that's a feature, not a bug. By tying our futures to their reckless gambling, Al billionaires are trying to make themselves too big to fail. They think they can take such dangerous risks because we will bail them out if things go wrong.
Sound familiar? This scene is dangerously reminiscent of the rampant speculation, corruption, & broken incentives leading up to the 2008 financial crisis that plunged millions of working class Americans into financial chaos that we never fully recovered from.
It is no accident that these warnings from Altman & Amodei come months-if not weeks-before these companies were meant to go public.
When companies go public, they have to be more transparent about how they are doing financially. And after a waiting period, they typically have to let private investors-like their own employees-sell their shares.
The New York Times recently confirmed that OpenAl has postponed going public for this very reason. They are in no rush for the truth about their finances to come out.
But the moment these oligarchs began to seek our public tax dollars & public contracts while exposing their companies to public pension funds & investments, they opened themselves to public accountability & scrutiny.
Silicon Valley billionaires have rigged the game & are attempting to shift their financial risk to working people: If they're right about Al's potential, they reap the profits. If they're wrong & the bubble bursts, they are setting up the American people to pick up the tab.
Heads, they win; tails, we lose.

We can stop this, and we shouldn't play their game. Together we can address both the economic and safety threats of unrestricted Al development and prevent financial chaos and stabilize market risk.

We must make it clear now that should the Al bubble pop, Congress should not bail out Big Tech.

And across our federal agencies, we have the authorities and tools to hold Al companies and their leaders accountable for releasing dangerous, unvetted, and defective products. We must not wait.

Silicon Valley billionaires want us to believe that Al robots will destroy humanity.

But the biggest threat to humanity are the tech oligarchs themselves.

It's time we hold them accountable.

Thank you for reading.

In solidarity,

Alexandria

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Reposted by David P. Baker

Keith Decent @keithdecent.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

One must imagine Cookiepuss happy

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Brian DiNunno @bdinunno.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

True in 1979, more true now.

Text purportedly from an IBM training module in 1979 that reads: "A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision."

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David P. Baker @netdpb.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

lololololololololol (breath) lololololololololol

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Starfire’s Deranged Neocon Foreign Policy Podcast @irhottakes.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

It’s very simple. A reality TV host became dictator because he turned down a role for Sharknado 4 and that’s why the king of outer space, who cheats at Diablo, got to kill Africa. Now the economy is controlled by a sex cult that has something to do with Harry Potter fanfic because of robots.

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David P. Baker @netdpb.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

“I'm over it!” she said, hovering

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Jason Kint @kint.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Eye popping. Court just unsealed Summary Judgment motions in New York Times v OpenAI / Microsoft. Easy to see why the AI companies had so many redactions (pink). Their own people wrote the lede for NYT, the "largest theft of labor in human history"... "more and more substitutive..." /1

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Aaron Huertas @aaronhuertas.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Good news: we have created the Robots That Repeatedly Attempt to Exploit Extant Security Vulnerabilities from the never-published Isaac Asimov short story The Robots That Repeatedly Attempted to Exploit Extant Security Vulnerabilities on Ganymede B.

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David P. Baker @netdpb.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

“The Republican Party has a neo-Nazi problem.” After the ’24 election I said the Nazis were happy Trump won. I would rather live in a world where the Nazis are not happy, or even better don't exist at all. And yet they're endemic in elected Republican staff and the right-wing movement.

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SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I'm back, I missed you all. Since this is an important subject I know too much about, here's a 🧵 explaining that AI Safety Is Mostly A Sex Cult. I don't think these people should make policy. (1/?) (alternative title: Time For Some Cult Theory)

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