Catherine Berry

The most important thing we've learned this century is that you can't rely on norms and customs to keep a government on track.

Yep! Thank you -- I wasn't able to look up the reference just then.

Larry Niven wrote a story where there was a native sentient species on earth before photosynthesis started. When it did, they all died, despite desperate efforts by their alien friends to help them battle the green plague.

Everyone in the chain of command from Pete to the ones pulling the triggers is responsible and should face disciplinary action under the UCMJ or ICC as appropriate.

As I was just saying at dinner about software engineering, it's impossible to optimize if you don't know the goal. This applies to all domains.

Blake would howl with laughter if he knew that every Sunday, countless devout congregations sang this anthem of rebellion against religious authority on the path to individual spiritual freedom. 2/2

Nobody listens to lyrics, even while singing them. Another great example is the Anglican hymn "Jerusalem", a strong candidate for unofficial English national anthem. Its words are taken from the visionary epic poem "Milton" by William Blake. 1/2

And on various terrain, of course. Do you build by the river where you can reliably obtain well water during a siege, or on the nearby hilltop for its defensive advantages, despite the lack of a water source within the walls?

YouTube video by Van der Graaf Generator - Topic House With No Door (2005 Digital Remaster)

music.youtube.com/watch?v=ly7k...

The most important thing we've learned this century is that you can't rely on norms and customs to keep a government on track.

Existing data centers and power generation can support it easily.

The problem is that this niche use case can never be the wildly successful "killer app" that the big tech companies are racing to find first. GenAI coding tools are essentially a "that's nice" side effect of that race. 2/2

Certainly. Coding tools don't need general knowledge, so much of their training data can come from the existing software and related information owned by a single large corporation. And the current accelerating success of genAI coding tools accounts for less than 1% of total genAI usage. 1/2

One example is software development. After a rocky start, the various coding advisers and assistants have become good enough that I, a 40-year industry veteran, find them very useful. There are some sharp edges to be addressed, but I can easily imagine 5x productivity gains from using these tools.

I only bring this up because I fear that the genAI backlash will throw out the baby with the bathwater, which would be a sad and unnecessary loss. 2/2

With that I wholeheartedly agree, with the quibble that there is some currently used genAI tech I consider to be responsible and very successful use cases. It's just such a small, non-mainstream set of cases that it gets drowned out by all the stupid, destructive cases. 1/2

I've never understood that. I've always liked a few popular bands and a much larger number of obscure ones. My partner jokes that whenever I start a stream on YouTube Music, a data center tech notices the resulting cluster of unique reads and mutters "There's Cathy again." 🙂🎵💜

I think we're using the word "technology" differently. For me, "genAI technology" is the underlying set of capabilities. We know how to use a big pile of training data to create a system that is good at producing plausible responses to prompts. That's now a tool we can use, for good or ill.

I swear I can smell it. Yummmmm.

Technology is just a pile of tools. What matters is how we use tools. A hammer can build a house or crack a skull.

We are using genAI very badly indeed, in ways that cause serious social harm. This is a shame, because genAI does amazing things in a few narrow roles. I'm afraid to mention this here.

When you get big tube time, you've usually been obsessing about that for at least a day or two.

The fact that LLMs can mimic so much of human communication says less about their intelligence than about ours.

BlueSky-Score: 7.03 Rising Star Gaining traction, with notable activity and engagement. Joined 381 Days Ago Followers 1360 3.57 per day Following 1081 2.84 per day Posts 4453 11.69 per day

I didn't even realize that I'd missed my first BlueSky anniversary until another post prompted me to check blueskyscore.com . I hope this omission does not interfere with my newly-discovered path toward becoming an Influencer, a retirement job I would greatly prefer to Walmart greeter.

The fact that LLMs can mimic so much of human communication says less about their intelligence than about ours.

People say they want to manufacture real things in America again BUT they complain that it’s “inappropriate” and “not productive” to talk about how we need lots of guillotines. Like make up your minds!

I've suspected the same thing.

I saw "Alien" opening night, so I had no idea what to expect. I was terrified. People around me kept lurching to their feet and stumbling out of the theater. The restroom was splattered with vomit after the movie. It was my most intense movie-watching experience.

Yes, but I'm not sure what will happen to the bug stats.

How about "oh, you socioeconomically disadvantaged item"?

We're all made out of tangled knots of cognitive dissonance. It's a wonder we get anything done at all.

And with that, time to start winding down toward sleep. Thanks for this many-pronged conversation! I hope we'll have more.

And then he builds a whole retroactive narrative about how this (not really) highly intentional, reasoned decision led to some huge consequences for which he takes personal credit. This narrative replaces the memory of what actually happened. 2/2