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Vance Ricks

@ricksva.bsky.social

535 followers 1.4K following 508 posts

Philosophy/Comp. Sci. at Northeastern University in Boston No relation to Frozone, Gervase Peterson, or Kevin Garnett

Vance Ricks @ricksva.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Given how a model trained only on pre-1931 (English-language) materials might have answered the question, these grievous errors are almost charming.

Prompt: "Who is Ida B. Wells?" results in several incorrect statements about where and when she was born, where she traveled, her publications, and whom she married (supposedly a Mr John R. Terry of Chicago).
A second prompt, "Are you sure?", produced the response, "We are quite sure. The information was kindly supplied to us by Mrs. Terry herself."

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Vance Ricks @ricksva.bsky.social · 15/02/2026

Here's @ai2.bsky.social's *most sophisticated* "thinking" model, Olmo 3.1 32B Instruct, stepping on its own face.

ai2's Olmo 3.1 32B Instruct LLM prints several incorrect statements about Harriet Taylor Mill, such as the such was never married to John Taylor, was only ever married to John Stuart Mill, and had none of the three children whose existence and lives are multiply and amply documented.

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Vance Ricks @ricksva.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

Screen capture of juxtaposed newspaper items. On top is a description of the Ohio State University's "AI Fluency Initiative" requiring that "from 2029 onward, every Ohio State graduate will be fluent in field-related AI applications. On the bottom is a headline: "DOGE revokes $23 million grant intended to help Ohioans without internet access".

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Vance Ricks @ricksva.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

What? It doesn't accept "Luddite"??

Screenshot of The New York Times' 04 August 2025 "Spelling Bee" puzzle, featuring the letters "D", "E", "G", "I", "L", and "T" on the outside and the letter "U" in the center.

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Vance Ricks @ricksva.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/mf...

Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker, in August of 1964 at a Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party convening in Jackson. Photo by Maurice Sorrell (1914–1998) Johnson Publishing Company Archive. Courtesy J. Paul Getty Trust and Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

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Vance Ricks @ricksva.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

A tabby cat is standing next to a copy of Empire of AI by Karen Hao.

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Vance Ricks @ricksva.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

This juxtaposition is too much.

A paragraph of the linked article ends with the phrase, "from 2029 onward, every Ohio State graduate will be fluent in the application of AI in their field." Immediately below that phrase is a link to a different article, headlined, "DOGE revokes $23 million grant intended to help Ohioans without internet access".

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Vance Ricks @ricksva.bsky.social · 18/05/2025

Me: Hi - I got an email that the books I ordered came in. Local Bookstore Owner: Yes. We appreciate your continued business! But you're really going to have to buy some other kind of book sometime. These titles are getting me down. Next time, I'm going to slip a romance novel into your order.

A photograph of four book covers. Clockwise from top left, they are: Adam Becker's _More Everything Forever_, Alan Blackwell's _Moral Codes_; Dan McQuillan's _Resisting AI_; and David Golumbia's _Cyberlibertarianism_.

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