> Authors, screenwriters, et al. have a new niche to explore. Any day now I expect an A24 trailer featuring a villain who speaks in the register of ChatGPT. “You’re absolutely right, Kayleigh,” it intones. “I did drown little Tamothy, and I’m truly sorry about that. Here’s the breakdown of what happened…”<p>May I recommend <i>Pluribus</i> (2025-)
Also, the show Devs (2020), by Alex Garland. The joke is "Devs Ex Machina", Ex Machina being another film of his.
Eh. I enjoyed it enormously and I do likewise recommend it, but its story isn't related to AI (either the concept of its moment or the technology of ours) even slightly, nor trying to be, or at least not in any way I saw. It was pretty open with its themes, so I would expect that one to have been pretty noticeable if it was present alongside the questions of reality, artifice, grief, and simulationism with which the miniseries does concern itself.
There's literally an ad for Amazon's Alexa devices that features not just the gist of your example, but that specific cause of death (which is itself predated by a murderous digital intelligence doing the same thing in AMC's Pantheon series).<p>Guys I thought it was the fire next time.
Best line:<p>> I am concerned that ML systems could ruin our lives without realizing anything at all.<p>It's hard to say it's not actively happening. And we don't even know it, don't realize it? don't care?<p><i>(Claude Code got mandated at my work this week. Like literally engineers must use CC.)</i>
> (Claude Code got mandated at my work this week. Like literally engineers must use CC.)<p>As I haven't been a typical full-time employee in software development for some time, could you possibly just like leak the entire email where this was announced or something? (open invitation to others who could too, if parent cannot) I'm very curious to see how it was announced and what possible reasoning they could have for that.<p>Don't get me wrong, I use agents for lots of coding too, but forcing people to use tools they might not want to use doesn't feel like the right way. I was also allowed to use vim whenever I wanted for most of my career, something that feels more and more rare when speaking with people just starting their careers now.
The official declaration came about in a team-meeting. We're a tiny startup, 3 full-time eng with the CTO co-founder driving the AI transformation. We have scheduled onboarding meetings to get the entire company finding automation opportunities with specifically Claude (CC, Cowork). For eng specifically, there is "acknowledgement" that we all may have different setups, but we should all be unifying our prompts, strategies, pipelines, Agents, and so... it's CC. I still use Cursor so I'm the only one not on CC; my eye-brow was especially raised.<p>I don't want to be doxxed lol, so ironically I'll be sharing in the sense that on one hand I am unsettled by the mandate, on the other hand, for a tiny startup it's seems the state of the industry, less so company specific.<p>Startups (think they) are in a fight for their life, so the mandate comes from everyone contributing 10x or whatever. The expectation is that agentic coding should 3x/5x/10x your feature output, because that's how we're going to win.<p>I have many thoughts. But I'll focus on that last one: the mandate is literally more features, more code, because it gets us closer to winning. In my small engineering circles, surprisingly, this is like the defacto stance. All things considered, <i>might as well</i> ship more code!
> (Claude Code got mandated at my work this week. Like literally engineers must use CC.)<p>I'm taking a break from this industry until the madness blows over. I cannot even, anymore.
If 'aphyr is reading comments here, I'm curious: have you read Joseph Weizenbaum?
> I can think of a few good myths for today’s “AI”. Searle’s Chinese room comes to mind, as does Chalmers’ philosophical zombie. Peter Watts’ Blindsight draws on these concepts to ask what happens when humans come into contact with unconscious intelligence—I think the closest analogue for LLM behavior might be Blindsight’s Rorschach.<p>LLM's remind me of sprites, pixies, and the like, who are situationally helpful but require constant supervision. We're like modern magicians who learned how to summon these sorts of spirits and bind them -- imperfectly -- to our will. But their perception of truth and reality is "through the looking glass" relative to our own. They aren't lying, from their own frame of reference, even though what they say is untrue relative to ours.
Speaking of myths, pixies, and spirits:<p>> I. DEFINITION:<p>> MAGICK is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.<p>> (Illustration: It is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge. I therefore take “magical weapons,” pen, ink, and paper; I write “incantations”—these sentences—in the “magical language” i.e. that which is understood by people I wish to instruct.<p>> I call forth “spirits” such as printers, publishers, booksellers, and so forth, and constrain them to convey my message to those people. The composition and distribution is thus an act of MAGICK by which I cause Changes to take place in conformity with my Will.)<p>- Aleister Crowley, "Magick Without Tears," Chapter I, 1954. <a href="https://hermetic.com/crowley/magick-without-tears/mwt_01" rel="nofollow">https://hermetic.com/crowley/magick-without-tears/mwt_01</a>
A common definition anthropologists use for magic is occult technology: a system of laws that can be manipulated to create desired changes. There's a lot of value in thinking of programming as a form of magic.
A definition by which every human alive ever qualifies as a magician, and which is therefore not very useful as a distinction.
> A definition by which every human alive ever qualifies as a magician<p>Exactly correct.<p>Chapter 2: "No, every act of your life is a magical act; whenever from ignorance, carelessness, clumsiness or what not, you come short of perfect artistic success, you inevitably register failure, discomfort, frustration. [...] Why should you study and practice Magick? Because you can't help doing it, and you had better do it well than badly."
If you called him on it he would say that was on purpose, then talk your ears off about how. He was a ferociously effective charlatan, which is why people still remember the name he made up for himself. (And even invented a rhyming couplet to prate as a pronunciation guide!)
<p><pre><code> Oil is the medium of time manipulation magic. Created through ancient sacrificial rituals, it is is a substance that can be used to create aging/rot-retarding barriers, or refined into derivatives that increase the rate of plant growth and mechanical work. To be handled with care, as extended contact can lead to corruption of the body, as well as increased susceptibility to fire elemental spells.
Simple rituals can render an inferior product from most living things; the time-manipulation abilities of such substances will be weaker, but the substance will be safer to handle, and can even be imbibed (this is a double-aged sword, reducing one's vital life force while increasing one's bodily proportions to that of a toddler).
</code></pre>
-Me, "Early Morning Bed Thoughts", a few months ago.
You either see it or you don't.
There's actually a useful and quite generic metaphor to be excavated here. I would just tell you what it is, but I think you'll more enjoy finding it for yourself.
Crowley is full of shit.<p>By this definition a hammer is a magical implement, which of course can be true if someone decides as much, but the only reason to couch such trivia in the pettifogging obscurity Crowley favored is because doing so will help you nail bored young socialites, an activity which Crowley <i>also</i> famously favored. (Gotta watch out for that neurosyphilis! What a shame he never did.)<p>Try thinking for yourself, instead.
For sure. Despite all the talking about "self-deification" and all that shit, they sure seem to care a lot about what society (and their imaginary demons) think about them.
> pettifogging<p>Off-topic but just wanted to thank you for teaching me a new word. I try to always reply to HN comments that expand my vocabulary.
Our collective learned helplessness in the face of being bombarded with advertising, propaganda and outright lies is just astonishing to me. Not an article about fighting back, or doing anything, just the resignation of a follower.
There's a lot of people who are comfortable (socially or professionally) with diagnosing and analyzing problems. Those same people are often indifferent or outright hostile to people proposing solutions, not least because solutions that brought about change would make the analysts less relevant.
It's a hard problem because it reduces to the fact that narcissists and sociopaths are a significant proportion of the population, and they're strongly attracted to money, power, attention, and status.<p>So even though they're a small minority they infest politics, business, and the media, and create a culture in their own image.<p>Most proposed solutions end up in superficial tribal arguments about standard economic and political positions. Not about the underlying issue, which cuts right across the usual battle lines.
reminds me of the college scene in the movie Tomorrowland where all the teachers going on and on about about the things that would end us and when she asked "Can we fix it?" and teacher is like "What?" "I get things are bad but what can we do?"<p>learned helplessness is really a problem, but personally all I have gotten is scorn and hatred for trying to make a difference/improve things that I managed/had control of. All people care about is precious number go up/ignoring the future while everyone around me is looking at me like I have two heads for not blindly following the insanity<p>what do we honestly do?
Unfortunately the political movements most interested in the relationship between society and technology were wrapped up with Nazis and so the line of thinking is underdeveloped, as it has had to start again.
Ok. How do you propose one fights back? Do you really viscerally understand what it is you are fighting against?
This has already happened with media for the past 100+ years. We're shown what companies and governments want us to see. People develop parasocial relationships with people they see on tv...
If fear is the mind-killer, then sexy chatbots are the libido-killer, for me. Hard no.
> Unavailable Due to the UK Online Safety Act<p>NSFW blog content on HN? Really?
Woah you can't see this in the UK? Without age verification?<p>Update: there's a section called "Pornography". It does not contain pornography.
perhaps the safety filter is wrong instead of the post?
Most likely it's a protest. Badplace passed Badlaw, so residents of Badplace can't see my content, so nyah!<p>But, topics of a sexual nature—nothing really NSFW, just mentions of various fetishes that online people have developed and popularized, and the possibilities for AI to realize those fetishes and potentially spawn new ones—are discussed in the blog post, so it may be illegal to present to minors under the OSA.