Travis Mushett

I'm Jewish and I think about antisemitism all the time. I can't tell you how fucking weird it is that Homeland Security posting literal neo-Nazi propaganda generates less discussion about the threat to Jews than a mayoral candidate who believes Palestinians are human beings.

Yeah, Y'all—This is Fascism: The Paxton Mixtape, Pt. I The Haunted Screen · Episode

This is such an amazing encapsulation of the state of America by @travismushett.bsky.social

open.spotify.com/episode/6uZ3...

Really great history of fascism and the path we are on stitched with film history/ clips/ great segments. Well done

Yeah, Y’all—This is Fascism: The Paxton Mixtape, Pt. I — The Haunted Screen We knew it would be bad, but holy shit. With the collapse of the American project, it's been hard to focus on film history. So in this two-part series, we're switching things up. Using the five-stage...

I had an extensively researched, heavily produced panic attack and made it a podcast. www.hauntedscreenpod.com/episodes/yea...

Apple - tinyurl.com/4j9cxfpf
Spotify - tinyurl.com/79cjr3ys

I guess I'm less AI skeptical than most people on Bluesky (think the tech is powerful, interesting, and likely to have big social consequences, quite probably net negative).

Stancil RT'd me, and jfc some of the bad-faith replies I got make me never want to post on the topic again.

If you're ever in the mood to have bad-faith pricks call you names and impute nefarious motives to you, may I suggest being retweeted by Will Stancil?

Oh yeah I forgot the part where I talked about awe and beauty good point.

I've found the social media analogy valuable. Facebook was hyped by assholes, too. A lot of smart people were (understandably) dismissive of it. But it's had big (mostly shitty) consequences for society, which makes it worth of attention.

I don’t think I’m a king. I think I’m an adjunct professor who knows most undergrad papers suck.

It does Woodo. I teach undergrads. It’s a low bar.

That's fair. And I'm less interested in what AI "is" (sentient, intelligent, whatever) than in how it impacts society. A dumb machine capable of convincing a critical mass of people (gullible or not) to engage with it like an intelligent entity still seems like a big deal.

Agreed!

It reminds me of how in like 2012 every website and media platform tried to shoehorn in a "social" element. Most of them sucked and were pointless, and social media writ large has on balance been bad for society. It was still worth paying attention to, though!

And Deep Blue couldn't write a passable undergrad paper. Different technologies have different strengths.

Yeah, my interest is less in what it "knows" or "is" than in how it impacts society. AI tools can be worse at stuff than humans, but if its cheaper, it can still put a lot of us out of work.

Sure. If I were on Twitter, I'd probably be among the most AI-skeptical. Silicon Valley is definitely overhyping it, and with malign intent. On here, though, I run into the other extreme a lot more often. I'm not drawing an intellectual or moral equivalence.

Exactly. My point isn't that AI is a net good. Like, you can lament that the internal combustion engine destroyed the environment, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a hugely powerful technology that reordered society in important ways.

I think it doesn't have to get that good to fundamentally reorder a lot of industries. Like, I used to edit articles for ESL scholars for clarity and style. I think I can still do that better than ChatGPT, but when their subscription costs $20/mo and I cost $50/hr, I'm out of a gig.

I'm not an AI booster—it has serious, obvious limitations, and it's getting relentlessly overhyped by some of the worst people in the world. But I also think it's weird, impressive, and is gonna have serious knockdown effects on society. Worth understanding rather than dismissing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"Consensus" is overstating it—no social media platform is monolithic—but my notifications rn are full of people calling me a stupid rube lol.

Oh, I agree with you! I'm not an AI booster—I think odds are strong it'll end up a net negative for society. I just don't see how it's self-evidently uninteresting and useless.

The rigorous "eyeballing my timeline" metric.

I don't think he is either. He's just pointing out that it's genuinely impressive!

K. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Less than three years ago, a machine passing the Turing test was sci-fi. Now everyone on Earth has free access to tech that blows past that benchmark, but the Bluesky consensus is that there's nothing to see here and you're a rube if you think otherwise.

That's great that you offer help with prose. I used to have a side hustle helping ESL scholars revise books & articles. Best I can tell, ChatGPT has hoovered up that market. It's actually impressive at that work—and I can't compete with $20/mo!

I’ve run into so many people on here who are both certain LLMs are useless and proud to tell you they’ve never tried them. Like, what are they basing their takes on? Other Bluesky posters??

Jfc. You storm in smug & unsolicited, call me disingenuous, and refuse to read a handful of sentences. Have a good night, Dr Jennifer PhD.

Ok.

To clarify for any other pedants out there pretending to miss the point: "Curious as to what 'using' means in this context. People use [chatbots built on LLMs] in a lot of different ways: a search engine to find sources, a tool for ESL scholars to polish prose, a sounding board for ideas."

Ok except the OP says none of that. They bluntly stated a policy and I thought they should clarify what use cases they're talking about.