Guy Hoffman

AI Is a Mass-Delusion Event Three years in, one of AI’s enduring impacts is to make people feel like they’re losing it.

www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Hearing Sam Altman, who didn't finish his undergraduate degree describe GPT-5 as "Ph.D-level", is like me saying that my new running shoes make me run at "Olympic level" (to clarify, I barely finish a sub-30-minute 5k).

🧵3/5
"The dark areas are receding fast."

Metaphor with juvenile simplicity; vague and ungrounded.

"We’ll all get better stuff."

Casual phrasing—"better stuff" is vague and childlike in tone.

🧵2/5
"A lot more people will be able to create software, and art."

Extremely basic structure, generalization with no depth.

"The future can be vastly better than the present."

A feel-good, vague proclamation—could be in a motivational poster.

The Em Dash Responds to the AI Allegations “In recent months, a curious fixation has emerged in corners of academia: the em dash. More specifically, the apparent moral panic around how it is...

"Let’s be honest: The real issue isn’t me—it’s you. You simply don’t read enough. If you did, you’d know I’ve been here for centuries." www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the...

I have also been reading more novels per month than ever in my life. I feel like it's a necessary antidote to the social media feed and AI-generated content.

You Don't Have to Use AI My Commencement Address to our 2025 Graduating Class This is what I said to this year's graduating class of Mechanical and Aerospace Eng...

In my commencement address to the graduating class of engineering in my departments, I encouraged them to:

1. Doubt Generative "AI" Models
2. Remember the unseen work of those who enabled them to succeed.

write.guyhoffman.com/my-address-t...

Google Brings People and AI Closer Together (but not the way you think) Google has been showing a lot of AI technology recently, garnering the Oohs and Aahs of audiences and tech blogs. For example: Gmail will…

My almost-7-year old post aged very well, if I may say so myself. medium.com/datadrivenin...

The Heart of Robotic Manipulation - Matthew T. Mason Contact is the heart of robotic manipulation. To understand manipulation, you must understand contact.

Matt Mason (former Director of the CMU Robotics Institute) explaining how even simple manipulation tasks in the home require a lot more than simply learning a trajectory...and the mathematical difference between wedged and jammed drawers. mtmason.com/the-heart-of...

Came across this 1995 email from the MIT AI Grad Student Group mailing list, and thought it was too precious to not share:

www.ai.mit.edu/lab/gsb/gsl-...

Great thread. I have read and re-read and re-read Weizenbaum's "Computer Power and Human Reason" in recent years, and it should be required reading for all college students.

they used to sell this backflipping dog toy out the front of the toy store at the mall for like $15 in 1996 youtu.be/7PCCvOcSCqQ?...

Struggling With Errors, DOGE Deletes Billions More From List of Savings (Gift Article) For the second time in a week, Elon Musk’s government overhaul effort updated its “wall of receipts” to remove mistakes that inflated its success.

If this were an undergrad research assistant in my lab, we would have parted way right there and then. #DOGE

Little known, recently discovered fact:

Measles wipes out immune protections OTHER diseases: many who recover actually face big future risk.

Earlier measles may be implicated in HALF OF ALL LATER CHILDHOOD DEATHS from ALL infectious diseases before vaccines.

Gift🔗👉
www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/o...

So I did try Grok 3 out today, and I managed to throw it into an infinite "thinking" loop in my first try, with the simplest of questions. 🤦 #Grok3 #XAI #AI #LLM

...
There’s a subtle reason that programmers always want to throw away the code and start over. The reason is that they think the old code is a mess. And here is the interesting observation: they are probably wrong."

This is one of the dangers when we let technologists "fix" government.

As Joel Spolsky wrote then, about completely rewriting old code:

"the first thing [programmers] want to do when they get to a site is to bulldoze the place flat and build something grand. We’re not excited by incremental renovation: tinkering, improving, planting flower beds.
...

Things You Should Never Do, Part I Netscape 6.0 is finally going into its first public beta. There never was a version 5.0. The last major release, version 4.0, was released almost three years ago. Three years is an awfully long tim…

If you know this kind of immature software dev mindset, it makes it not surprising that he has 20-something "genius" coders doing his bidding.

I learned about this mistake almost 25 years ago, when I was a 20-something "genius" developer:

www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/t...

Elon Musk's wrecking-ball strategy to government, recently exemplified by his idea to make away with regulations, which should be "default gone. And if it turns out that we missed the mark [...] we can always add it back in” is classic inexperienced software developer mindset.

You Can Call the Super Bowl the "Super Bowl" Are you going to a Big Game party on Sunday? Or perhaps going to watch the pro football championship game? Or take in the majestic splendor of the Superb Owl? You can also just call it by its real nam...

Are you going to a Big Game party on Sunday? Or perhaps going to watch the pro football championship game? Or take in the majestic splendor of the Superb Owl? You can also just call it by its real name: the Super Bowl.