Adi Robertson

The decay of the internet isn't just on Meta/Google/etc., it's on governments that dragged their feet on privacy rules and failed to promote prosocial, non-profit-driven alternatives to corporate platforms.

Ready or not, age verification is rolling out across the internet An age-gated internet comes with huge privacy risks.

I wonder how much of the sudden acceptance of age verification would have been avoided if major digital platforms hadn't monopolized access, eroded privacy to the point that one more layer of surveillance feels minor, and stewarded their spaces so poorly that nobody sees value for children in them

The Secret Commonwealth can't overcome the problem of mapping a conflict that makes sense in our world (rationality vs. imagination and the supernatural) into a setting where being rational by definition means accepting the clear existence of witches and magic bears and Catholic zombie children.

I honestly don't think it makes much sense but I'm sort of charmed that a major plot point in the sequel trilogy to His Dark Materials is the main character having her soul run away because she got too into Ayn Rand

paying somebody to hold up a huge flashing sign at every big tech event talking up AR glasses that reads DISPLAYS ARE HARD

I find this as funny as anybody, but the serious answer is in the part where he carefully notes his *daughter* is the one who moved out of the city -- they're never (ostensibly) afraid for their own safety, it's the people they're manfully protecting who are scared

Why AI researchers are getting paid like NBA All-Stars Meta’s AI talent war is reshaping the industry and resulting in some of the most lucrative job offers on the planet.

Had a blast on Decoder chatting with @alexeheath.com about the AI talent wars & why some researchers are getting traded like NBA superstars.

Talked about my Windsurf scoop & Meta feature, plus tales from AI industry folks watching it all unfold on the inside. www.theverge.com/decoder-podc...

Accuracy: 96.95% Speed: 93wpm Time: 00:49 /goal

I think I'm better on chiclet keyboards weirdly because of the lower travel, but here's on my nuphy

the internet of real identities is cooked we gotta all go back to using True Names

In the world of adrenaline-fueled survival that epitomizes the video game Fortnite, winners are decided in blazes of destruction and glory. By contrast, the outcome of this case—centered on Fortnite’s developer, Epic Games, and the Google Android platform—turns on longstanding principles of trial procedure, antitrust, and injunctive remedies.

love the Epic v. Google ruling kicking off by basically narrating a Fortnite trailer www.theverge.com/news/716856/...

first line in an agatha christie murder mystery about 10 guys mysteriously killed with swords

at some point my first amendment coverage got me put on a PR list of "editorial submissions" by OnlyFans models about their random sexy-ish gimmick (being really tall, wrestling an alligator, carrying their dad's ashes to photoshoots) and I know I should unsubscribe but I find it oddly charming

I need somebody more rigorous than me to make the case that splitting media into "desexualized serious art" and "mindless porn" is both a disservice to art and a way to shut down discussion of sexuality in culture, because a defining element of porn is that it sits beyond serious commentary.

Worth remembering that Epstein was, generally, embedded in the science and tech world in ways that were far more than incidental www.theverge.com/2019/9/19/20...

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The best-case silver lining for the rise of age verification is that it drives people to reconnect offline, except that the people hit hardest are often also the ones with the steepest barriers to finding nearby in-person communities.

I admit I read the first half of your tweet and hoped it was about the even more notoriously awful single-person submarines

finally a movie adaptation of blitzed

Yeah the sticker shock is really something

It's a shame crypto is terrible for everyday censorship-proof payment stuff because a) it's functionally not a currency it's a speculative asset and b) spending it is remarkably convoluted and unpleasant, so the bar for using it as money is "are you doing serious crimes"

This is, to be clear, *after* OpenAI retooled its models to assuage conservative complaints about woke AI! www.theverge.com/openai/61137...

The suppression or distortion of factual information about race or sex; manipulation of racial or sexual representation in model outputs; incorporation of concepts like critical race theory, transgenderism, unconscious bias, intersectionality, and systemic racism; and discrimination on the basis of race or sex.

are trans people real? ChatGPT said: Yes, trans people are real. "Trans" is short for transgender, and it refers to people whose gender identity is different from the sex they were assigned at birth. This identity is deeply felt and valid. Trans people have existed across cultures and throughout history, and they continue to be an important part of human diversity. If you're curious or have more questions—about gender identity, biology, society, or anything else—I'm here to help provide respectful, fact-based answers.

a) Here is the definition of "wokeness" that must be purged from AI
b) Here is what happens when you ask ChatGPT if trans people are real
c) No company has ever successfully argued on the merits that something that makes Trump mad was not the result of deliberate bias and won.

It’s up to the companies to determine how to handle these demands. I spoke this week to an OpenAI engineer working on model behavior who told me that the company already strives for neutrality. In a technical sense, they said, meeting government standards like being anti-woke shouldn’t be a huge hurdle.

People at OpenAI are definitely smart enough to know this is bullshit and I am guessing they're banking on the Trump admin forgetting about this order or on having the in-group favor to not need to comply with it www.wired.com/story/trump-...

I've said this before but actual LLM humor comes from the fact it's the ultimate straight man, incapable of not just getting the joke but getting literally anything.

stunlock journalism

It's almost impossible to talk about without spoilers but man at about Episode 6 I'm pretty disappointed by the direction Death Stranding 2 took with Lou -- it feels like a mechanical and narrative cop-out given how ambitious Kojima's capable of getting.

The Atlantic recently received a tip from a person who had prompted ChatGPT to generate a ritual offering to Molech. He’d been watching a show that mentioned Molech, he said, and casually turned to the chatbot to seek a cultural explainer. That’s when things got extremely weird. He was alarmed by the results. (The Atlantic agreed to grant him anonymity because he feared professional consequences—though he said he does not work in the tech industry.)

This is straight-up an episode of Evil, it's just missing a b-plot where the protagonist's mom falls in love with michael emerson pretending to be grok www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

I know there's a lot going on but it's actually pretty weird the president appeared at an event about AI policy and spent several minutes doing a jokey routine about how inferior female athletes are. Just an objectively weird thing for somebody to do.

saying we opened japan up to trade for the first time was maybe my favorite bit, excited to be living through the meiji restoration

We must ensure that free speech flourishes in the era of AI and that AI procured by the Federal government objectively reflects truth rather than social engineering agendas. Recommended Policy Actions • Led by the Department of Commerce (DOC) through the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), revise the NIST AI Risk Management Framework to eliminate references to misinformation, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and climate change.

If you're not steeped in culture-war dogwhistles by the time you get to trump's AI plan "we must promote objective truth by not discouraging misinformation" must be a really strange thing to read