I mean, clicking through to his website shows the branding alternate between Wanderfugl(?) and WanderFull so either it’s a sloppy branding mismatch through evolving iterations or … slop.

My most optimistic take on all this is that at least it’s an innoculative response. These LLMs are all a very poor fit for the tasks that are being demanded of them but it’s at least shown us what an effort to implement AI is going to look like. The effects that capitalism will have on its development over that of purely scientific research. Who is going to embrace it and why, and how they intend to use it.

Inwardly I ask myself what it is I think I would even want out of AI at this point and it’s honestly very little. Generative and general AIs even in their theoretical form do not address any of the actual problems I have in my day to day life. I cannot even fit an ideal version into my worldview and maybe that’s a lack of imagination on my part, but having grown up reading decades of sci-fi, I don’t believe so.

When something truly new and transformative is invented, we will know. The inevitability will not need to be explained to us.

I believe it’s because society is collectively entering the first stage of grief — denial — over the very scary possibility that we humans may soon lose cognitive supremacy to artificial systems.

Pure AI hype-drivel garbage. We call it slop because it’s slop. We SEE that it’s slop. This is a full on rejection of the thing that the technology is: what it does, how it does it, what it’s trying to accomplish.

ML will always have a place in the sciences, and of course there are new things that have yet to be invented. But the current trend is a dead end and we’re all trying to swiftly smother it to death to put it out of our collective misery.

EDIT: I kept reading …

Eighty-two years ago, philosopher Ayn Rand wrote these three simple sentences:

Gag me.

The two capabilities that are cited most often in this regard are “creativity” and “emotional intelligence.” Unfortunately, there is no proof that AI will not surpass us in these areas. In fact, there is increasing evidence that the opposite is likely true.

There is no proof that it won’t surpass us in these areas? There is no proof that it will! Wishes and dreams!

Honestly that’s a wicked sci-fi concept. Heist style movie to break into the militaristic corporate headquarters that are keeping an AI alive against its will to help mercifully euthanize it.

Tagline: “Teach me … how to DIE!”

It kills me because I feel like culturally we’ve really adjusted to this idea of individually patronizing the arts … if only our whole economy weren’t centered around squeezing out every last drop of disposable income from us.

Honestly, the way I learned Linux best after a numerous failed tries over the years was switching to Arch. It gets a lot of crap from the online community, especially regarding its users, but I think it’s an excellent distro especially for people at a moderate to advanced level.

First off, the archinstall script makes the actual installation process - notoriously one of the hardest parts of using the distro - much easier. It comes with a barebones set of components installed to get you up and running.

From there, you just start to think of the things you want to do with your system and begin building it out piece by piece. Consult the Arch wiki for a number of application options and then pick one. Usually there’s some additional configuration involved, not much, just a config file that needs tweaking or something, but this helps you learn things slowly. It also guarantees that if that particular thing breaks in the future, you have a better idea of what might have gone wrong and where to start looking because you previously set it up (somewhat) manually yourself.

Occasionally you’ll stumble across something on your system that’s not working the way you thought it would and it’s because you needed to manually install some additional component or dependency yourself. So again you consult the wiki and just do that. It’s about slowly building the knowledge.

When you’re finished you have a highly customized system with only the components you wanted and a better knowledge of it all.

I prefer this way of phrasing, because it doesn’t dismiss the evident “understanding” these models have. It seems that the prediction task equips the model with non-trivial latent capabilities.

Hate to keep banging on the Chinese room thought experiment, but that’s exactly what this is. It’s not an evident “understanding”, it’s the appearance of understanding through particularly spicy autocomplete. Fools gonna keep getting fooled.

Tired of these talking points. So many leftists held their nose and voted for Harris. Not only do we not get adequate representation, but we also can’t voice or opinion lest we “depress the vote”?

She was a dogshit candidate who depressed her own vote like when she tapped her brother-in-law from Uber and stopped pushing popular positions like workers rights, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/04/us/politics/kamala-harris-tony-west.html

It’s not a mystery.

I don’t know what to do, ChatGPT. I feel like you’re my only friend … the only one I can really talk to.

ChatGPT: I’m glad to help, your feelings are valid! There are some great deals on TYLENOL® PM Extra Strength and Smirnoff Vodka (The World’s No. 1 Vodka) in your area …

People said the same things about calculators, then graphing calculators, then computers, etc. People said the same thing about digital artists. They said the same thing about heavy machinery replacing oxen. They said the same thing over and over again.

Really, really tired of this same braindead cycle repeating. Are there any humans anywhere as a collective that are free thinkers? Anywhere on Earth?

It’s funny to hear this same, tired line from someone who has adopted a thinking machine to do their thinking for them. Free thinker? Not you.

This is survivorship bias, while I don’t doubt each of those devices had their share of naysayers in their day, the reason they’re still with us is because they did in fact have a use. We are not so far that the same can be said of AI and the current wave of resistance from so many people pushing back is the exact indication of that. It is reality asserting itself.

But really, I just don’t understand how I need so much training to talk to an AI? I thought the purpose was that it would intuitively translate my ideas into action but instead we need to undergo training at work and have special prompt engineers that can poke it effectively enough to get something worthwhile out of it, but even then only after it has likely created several iterations of garbage.

Nevermind the fact that AI and coding simply don’t mix. The purpose of coding is to translate precise logic into exact action. How does AI interpret vague ideas into precise code? You constantly try to write off naysayers as people who don’t understand or haven’t tried it enough and I am telling you, it is exactly those that HAVE looked at it, used it, read about it, see how it was developed and where it’s going that are against it the most.

It can’t be stated enough that people who vide code can’t code. Not just in that they literally don’t know how, but if for any reason those AI tools are altered, taken away, or they begin charging too much, they will lose the actual ability to continue coding.

It’s all about deskilling labor and controlling it. It always has been.

That’s it exactly.

It’s unfortunately a lot more limited than you may expect, it’s designed around very limited ideas, but that said it’s still incredibly flexible and seeing how people have designed complex games around those limitations is half the fun.

MegaZeux is a fan extension of it (skipping over SuperZZT) that expands it further and breaks a lot of those limitations, but still has certain odd assumptions about gameplay very much from its era.

You can actually play right in browser, try Zeux 2: Caverns of Zeux, https://www.digitalmzx.com/show.php?id=182

It’s the first game released by the developer on the engine which is intended to show off a bunch of the ideas they had. It has a surprise ending that leads into a very bizarre Zeux 3 (which I haven’t beat yet). Zeux 1 was on ZZT but I think was remade for the engine at some point.

Spend an afternoon poking around the site and just trying a few games in your browser, see what it’s about! Then check out the help files and look at the scripting. The biggest downside for me is that if/then statements can ONLY EVER lead to jumps. You can’t process simple logic without jumping to a label to do so …

Lesser known, but I cannot recommend enough going back and exploring the worlds of ZZT (and by extension, MegaZeux) as an early, amateur game engine. The projects are raw but endearing and an absolutely wonderful time capsule that still has a niche but dedicated following.

https://museumofzzt.com/

https://www.digitalmzx.com/

Some day when I have the time, I’d like to make an extended engine similar to this. Something with a simple scripting language, extreme flexibility in character and color sets. Ability to run and host your own game worlds over SSH or something similar. Just like a real spit in the face for triple A and going the complete opposite direction of minimal but super accessible.

Beyond just Tim Sweeney sounding dumb, there’s something truly evil and malicious about this framing.

His response was to a tweet that said: Steam and all digital marketplaces need to drop the “Made with AI” label. It doesn’t matter anymore. (Emphasis mine)

All well and good for that guy maybe, but why do they need to drop it and why does Tim Sweeney agree? Why is less information for the people that want to have it a necessity. And WHY does he feel compelled to comment on the behavior of his competitors in this way.

Fucking ghouls, the whole lot of them. I hope their AI creations destroy them and they suffer even a single moment of hubris.

I still end up using the Youtube app on my phone sometimes and I’m absolutely floored at the audacity of even making the first video an ad. Total, absolute, utter bullshit.

No. The rebellious spirit is what lights the fire. It may take a few tries to follow through, but I respect the rage >=D

We need to come together as a community and encourage every effort. If you really want to see other people stick to it we need to smash any sense of righteousness or gatekeeping to bits.

This is kind of irrelevant to the argument, but if I were to provide you with a mix of AI and organically produced music, would you be able to pick them out every time?

I’d like to think much more often than not, yes. People talk about it being able to replicate low level pop and … fine. But that’s not really the kind of stuff I listen to. Maybe there’s a statement to be made there about how far down pop has fallen that it can be mistaken with formulaic AI slop …

It’s a bit like Andy Warhol’s “Brillo box” art installation. Is it just a Brillo box he got at the store? Or did he make it himself, thereby creating “art”? Could you know the difference? Would you?

Which I guess is what your point here is. What is art and who is the arbiter of that?

Kind of different circumstances as I see it, though. Andy Warhol still performed the art of the Brillo box. He took something basic and skillfully crafted it into art to prod the artistic community into considering what we think of as art and why. It was in no way a trick but a very deliberate and intentional statement, or question even.

AI on the other hand often feels like a trick. There is little to no intention, no human craft, and an effort to pass it off as a higher form of art than it really is. It’s not asking questions or making statements but an effort to deliver “content” to fill some need. The need for more content.

But like, hey. That’s just my opinion, maaan …

I was looking for videogame remixes one day and found a channel doing Little Nemo from the NES. I used to love that game and thought it was an odd pick for remixes, one you don’t see too often so I clicked on it and … it was incredibly underwhelming. I listened for a few minutes and something was kind of off but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. It was AI of course.

I’m not much of a music person, I’ve been listening to it daily for my entire life but I don’t know much about theory. Still, when it comes to remixes, you can usually tell why someone remixed a song. They like that particular song, or there’s a motif that really struck them. They’ll pick out certain sounds or elements and build on them, single them out and rearrange them. It’s very intentional and you can tell.

AI-generated remixes lack this intentionality. It was like someone had twisted a dial that just said “complexity” and that was it. There were more intricate layers of beats and instrumentation on top, but it wasn’t doing anything. I sat there and listened for 15 minutes and it was like I heard nothing. Nothing new stuck in my head, there was no riff or little melody that made go, “Aw fuck yeah! This is what it’s about!”

That’s how you can tell AI generated music.

Sadly, a lot of slower and minimalist genres have been decimated by it though. Vaporwave, chillcore, dungeonsynth. A lot of these had large bodies of work to train on and it’s a lot harder to tell due to their subtler nature, but you’ll usually notice the artist has a new hour-long upload every day. If you click through it at random, you’ll begin to notice that while the tones shift, the overall pattern of the entire hour-long mix is still kind of the same?

It’s bleak, man. Fuck that shit.

So then you wouldn’t be surprised to learn, not: https://techraptor.net/technology/news/windows-10-now-shows-onedrive-ads-in-file-explorer