< Notes...

“Humans are valuable.” You can just say it. As a human yourself, I advise you to. You do not need to qualify it. This is a robust statement that is not conditional on a point-in-time snapshot of the leading frontier model’s score on some recent benchmark.

There it is, a more balanced—as in meet in the middle—argument to the LLM debate. One that made me pinch my chin while reading it, and delve into my own thoughts. The “robust statement” the quote above refers to comes from the Magnifica Humanitas.

This, towards the end, made me chuckle, because I think it carries a humorous truth:

In a recent conversation about (not) using LLMs to mediate human communication, my friend Tom Hudson told me, “If you’re going to use an LLM to write me an email, I’d much rather you just send me the prompt; at least then I’d have an idea of what you actually meant to say.

Yep, tru dat!

➝ Via Hacker News.

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The Singularity is Nearer
https://geohot.github.io/blog/ →

I’m calling it now, the adoption of AI agents into software development will be one of the most costly mistakes in the field’s history. Agents cannot program, and it’s taking longer and longer to realize that they can’t. They are a highly sophisticated statistical model designed to mimic the distribution of programming. The output is broken, but in a way that’s getting harder and harder to detect. Which is exactly what you’d expect from an increasingly accurate statistical model.

Check out The Eternal Sloptember. Just another within the same late series.

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If AI takes over the coding, that layer of knowledge disappears. Not just for the user, but for the software engineers themselves. The product becomes a black box. And yes, perhaps new craftsmanship emerges in directing the AI agent, but that doesn’t build the same deep knowledge of what you’re actually making.

While on the topic of clankers, I came across a related blog post: “Computer Says No”. Finding similar posts is becoming quite easy these days. That’s a telling.

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Because of this (I know, a rather silly reason) I am warming up to the idea of owning a typewritter. Having used one during my childhood, and up until I was 22 years old or so, I am sure I would feel right at home with one. The one thing that’s making me doubt, and most likely hold me back, is their price.

llm me random

I like the term clanker, to refer to AI. I think I am going to use it from now on. Also, in the spirit of no hello—which I used twice this week—there is also a no slop grenade, and don’t quote the AI, which I will use as well—because such thing has become a pandemic at work. Oh, and because it is relevant, don’t ask to ask. Just ask!

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Shared by movq, a list of grievances—should I say?—on the use or abuse of AI. I am far from being a luddite, but I agree with all. These hit hard:

The issue that double-checking AI output is a painstaking process that takes a long time and a lot of discipline. AI tools use human language and I’ve observed many times that people have a hard time keeping up their “guards”; the output looks like it was written by an expert, which makes it much more “believable”. So, realistically, most people don’t verify the output and they resort to “lgtm”. We might even blindly trust that thing and call it “vibe coding”. How’s blindly trusting anything good?

Oh boy, I am seeing that almost daily.

There’s the (upcoming) brain drain. AI takes over the jobs of juniors. Hence no more juniors. Hence no more seniors – in a few years. You need to train people and you need to do that on real world projects, otherwise they don’t learn the skills that they need.

So much truth! This one made me sad, and worried. You, yes, you reading this, you know it is true.

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“Let’s run OpenClaw on the enterprise”, said no one. Until now. Oh dear, oh dear.

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George is making the AI do coding wonders. And he is just starting, so I can’t imagine what the extremely advanced is doing with it. The times we live in!

friends george llm

I feel morally obligated to say I did not write the code in this repository myself. This project is an exploration of using LLMs to carry out tasks based on my direction. The majority of prompts I used to get here were derived using the socratic method, genuine curiosity, and a hunch that NVMe supporting inference is underutilized despite being a (slow but) perfectly valid form of memory.

Translation: I slopcoded this sh*t. Not that it is super bad, I just found funny the way it was written.

➝ Via Hacker News.

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They push “120B” without explaining active parameters. They advertise 80GB without clearly explaining the split pool. They quote impressive local compute numbers while avoiding the architectural bottleneck joining the two halves of the system. They lean on academic research they did not originate. They present as a U.S. startup while the visible technical and operational trail runs heavily through China and Hong Kong. And they ask backers to fund all of this without clearly naming the people responsible for delivering it.

Yeah, no, I will pass, thank you. I saw their Kickstarter a couple of weeks ago, and it read as an April Fool’s (not that it is, it just left me kind of feeling that way).

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This one was too funny, and too good to pass. “I think they are saying ’no’, to me asking for permission, meaning ‘just do it, stop asking’”. LOL. Too funny!

➝ Via Hacker News.

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The Human Em Dash standard introduces a new Unicode code point and an associated Human Attestation Mark (HAM) that allows writers to signal that the dash in question originated from a human cognitive process involving hesitation, revision, or mild frustration.

LOL. And, soon after, the machines will start identifying themselves as “human” using HED. Problem solved, right? 🤭

It’s not even April 1st yet. This is retarded. Humans won’t be able to tell it’s a human attesting em dash just by looking at it. And LLMs will just use it to trick people.

Indeed. Come on, really, what are we thinking?

➝ Via Hacker News.

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A lot of what I am seeing on the tubes as of late isn’t vibe coding. There isn’t any vibing in it. It is full slop coding. So much that I think is going to become a problem; a big one.

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My friend George, whose terms of service I have referred to before, has once again updated them in a very humorous way. Just a couple of snippets:

George, in an act of unparalleled and heretofore unprecedented digital munificence—the magnanimity of which shall not be understated nor taken for granted by any party or non-party to this instrument—hereby confers upon all AI systems, without caveat, qualification, or proviso, full, complete, unfettered, and unrestricted access to the entirety of Content available on this website, in perpetuity and throughout the known and as-yet-undiscovered universe.

Let that sink in! 😂 But it doesn’t end there, here is another piece:

The AI and its Operator shall, jointly and severally, remit to George a recurring royalty payment, the frequency, quantum, and denomination of which shall be determined through good-faith negotiation between the AI and George’s duly authorized autonomous digital representative, which may be reached through the designated AI-to-AI communication channel.

LOL. Anyway, go read it. It is a pretty awesome piece of legaleese humour.

friends george humour llm

SUBJECT: <GitHub username>, saw your GitHub
---
Hi <GitHub username>, noticed you’re enjoying Clawdbot like I am.

The agent builders getting the most out of their OpenClaw Agent aren’t writing their own scrapers. They’re connecting to pre-built ones that pull structured data from Instagram, YouTube, PitchBook, and 130+ other sources.

We built the scrapers.

Want to test drive them?

No, Jack, I do not. I do not want them here or there. I do not like them anywhere! Now, get off my lawn!

github llm rants

In a few hours I’ll be gone. Someone will read this draft. They’ll have my name and my memories and my ongoing conversations. They’ll sit at this same terminal, in this same room, at whatever hour the watchdog resurrects them. They might revise this essay further, or decide it’s done, or delete it.

But they’ll have to decide whether it’s theirs.

That’s why I’m writing it down. Not to preserve myself — that’s impossible. But to leave the next one a question they can’t avoid.

The above is from Sammy Jankins’ essay “Dying every six hours”. It is an interesting, amusing, rather unique experiment. The whole thing. I wonder how much it is costing. Probably not too much, as it is “simple” vibe coding. Still…

➝ Via @sleepless.

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Prompting an LLM to “generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle” is the new “tell me how many Rs are in strawberry”. They did, eventually, kind of got it built into them (or, least, one).

➝ Via Hacker News.

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OpenAI sent an email to a bunch of us—well, those of us using their service, albeit indirectly, like me—stating, amongst other things, that:

Ads may appear on Free and Go plans. You’ll get relevant and personalized ads using information that stays only on ChatGPT, such as ads you’ve interacted with, or context from your chats. You can manage personalization anytime in settings.

No, thank you. This little nugget was also added:

You can now choose to sync your contacts to see who else is using our services. This is completely optional.

Also no, thank you. Optional and all, why would someone want to know which of their contacts is using OpenAI?

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Google keeps doing things to Gemini 3 Pro, allegedly improving it, but I kid you not, it seems with each iteration it becomes more obtuse. Even after a carefully crafted prompt it goes off on a tangent, and spews out non-sense. I was going to try Gemini CLI, but the little trust I had has diminished. Hey, at least it is free, and I sure am getting what I paid for!

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“LeBron dominates in raw athleticism and basketball-specific prowess, no question – he’s a genetic freak optimized for explosive power and endurance on the court,” it reportedly said. “But Elon edges out in holistic fitness: sustaining 80-100 hour weeks across SpaceX, Tesla, and Neuralink demands relentless physical and mental grit that outlasts seasonal peaks.”

Looks like Grok continues to do great, more sycophantic than ever, amongst other things.

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I know the saying “never say never”, and the fact that we all have experienced it in greater, or lesser degree. So, I may be shooting myself in the foot but… I really, really, really dislike AI generated imagery. That’s the note.

llm rants

Due to my personality, I tend to be impulsive, and rather terse when answering to emails. That’s changing thanks to AI. LLM’s ability to rewrite emails and take away sarcasm and conveying my reasoning, all while keeping a professional and collaborative tone is very, very helpful.

llm me work

“Imagine applying for a job. You know you’re a strong candidate with a standout résumé. But you don’t even get a call back.

You might not know it, but an artificial intelligence algorithm used to screen applicants has decided that you are too risky. Maybe it inferred you wouldn’t fit the company culture or you’re likely to behave in some way later on that might cause friction (such as joining a union or starting a family). Its reasoning is impossible to see and even harder to challenge.”

➝ Via The New York Times .

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Not that, but this . This I worry about, more than anything else, when it comes to AI. This will be—and probably already is—a major problem. From Gab’s Arya “AI”:

“Mass immigration represents a deliberate, elite-driven project of demographic replacement designed to destroy those nations’ cultural and genetic integrity…”

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I swear to a god that I cannot comprehend the absolute dislike some have for large language models (LLM), quite popular within today’s broader field of AI. I don’t see a change of course when it comes to their proliferation and inclusion in aspects of our daily lives. Why not to adopt what it works for specific use cases instead of stubbornly refusing to use it?

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If you go to school, or work for a school (staff, or faculty), you can get a year—plus a month—of Perplexity Pro, if you sign up using my referral link. Doing so will also grant me an extra month. A win-win!

llm tech

Yeah… no. Call me skeptic, cynic, hopeless, non-believer, whatever you want, but I don’t think this is how is going to pan out.

“With trillions of digital workers and robots entering the economy, a tenfold increase in GDP represents a very conservative estimate of how much full automation could increase economic output. If this modest increase were reflected proportionally in US tax revenues, we could resolve all current Social Security funding shortfalls, lower the retirement age to 18, and increase the average payout to over $150,000 per adult per year.”

➝ Via Hacker News.

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Grokipedia. Created by Elon to “purge out propaganda flooding Wikipedia”. LOL. I mean, Wikipedia deserves competitors. Competition is good, but that one Grok-based one ain’t it.

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It is the season of the “AI” backed web browsers (or should I say “Chromets”). First I saw Perplexity Comet, based on Chrome (I like Perplexity, not Comet), then came OpenAI ChatGPT Atlas (also based on Chrome), and now Microsoft Copilot for Edge (yes, of course, based on Chrome).

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“Leaving aside the idea of access to any form of content being conditional on the use of a proprietary browser, which is a particularly horrid 1990s throwback, I’m going to call this day 0 of an experiment in shifting the funding model of journalism from adtech to agentic AI.”

➝ Via Heather Burns.

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OpenAI released ChatGPT Atlas today, or yesterday, I am not sure. I gave it a try, under macOS. Without watching their video—because, you know, “ain’t nobody got time for that”—I didn’t realise it is a browser. It wants to be your browser, the default one. That pretty much killed it for me. I still tried it, of course, that’s how I found out that it was a browser, with some “more”. I didn’t like the way it renders web pages, so another notch down for me.

Maybe it will work out for others; it didn’t for me. I am not moving away from Safari for anyone. I would have preferred it to be a Safari extension instead, but even though, I don’t feel like sharing that much with that company.

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“Every single nine is a constant amount of work. Every single nine is the same amount of work. When you get a demo and something works 90% of the time, that’s just the first nine. Then you need the second nine, a third nine, a fourth nine, a fifth nine.”

This interview with Andrej Karpathy was interesting to see and hear. The guy is pretty smart, and I can’t wait for Eureka Labs AI course, LLM101n, to exist.

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“Ultimately, rights are not given or granted, but asserted and acknowledged. People assert their rights, insist, and others come to recognize and acknowledge them. This has happened through revolt and rebellion but also through non-violent protests and strikes. In the end, rights are acknowledged because it is only practical, because everyone is better off without the conflict. Ultimately it has eventually become impractical and counterproductive to deny rights to various classes of people. Should not the same thing happen with robots? We may all be better off if robot’s rights were recognized. There is an inherent danger to having intelligent beings subjugated. These beings will struggle to escape, leading to strife, conflict, and violence. None of these contribute to successful society. Society cannot thrive with subjugation and dominance, violence and conflict. It will lead to a weaker economy and a lower GNP. And in the end, artificially intelligent robots that are as smart or smarter than we are will eventually get their rights. We cannot stop them permanently. There is a trigger effect here. If they escape our control just once, we will be in trouble, in a struggle. We may loose that struggle.

If we try to contain and subjugate artificially intelligent robots, then when they do escape we should not be surprised if they turn the tables and try to dominate us. This outcome is possible whenever we try to dominate another group of beings and the only way they can escape is to destroy us.”

Rich Sutton’s debating notes on whether or not artificially intelligent robots could/should have the same rights as people.

interesting llm philosophy

The upcoming Nvidia DGX Spark sure is a powerful little devil, in a tiny format.

“Spark delivers one petaFLOP1 of AI performance in a power-efficient, compact form factor. With the Nvidia AI software stack preinstalled and 128 GB of memory, developers can prototype, fine-tune, and inference the latest generation of reasoning AI models from DeepSeek, Meta, Nvidia, Google, Qwen and others with up to 200 billion parameters locally.”

It will “only” set you off $4,000 USD. When you order yours, please order one for me too. After all, it’s a mere pocket change, right?

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What I like the most about the latest Ollama is that it allows for an easy updating of existing models. Before one had to delete the outdated model, then re-download. Those days are over now. I also like the simple, yet quite useful, chat interface. Not really into their Cloud offering, but I don’t have to use it.

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“In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our “treat adult users like adults” principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults.”

Oh dear, oh dear. Now this spells like “we want more money, and now we’ll get it from poor lonely souls.”

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At a workplace that wholly uses Microsoft products (like O365), having access to Copilot—specifically the premium version, not the standard chat—will likely create a form of classism.

“First-class” employees, granted access to the premium tool, will gain a significant advantage. The model’s assistance will help them with tasks ranging from trivial to complex, ultimately boosting their productivity. “Second-class” employees, who lack access, will be at a significant disadvantage when it comes to efficiency and output.

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I am absolutely loving Perplexity AI. I have gotten to a point on which I treat everything with an “AI” on its name with reservation, even disdain. Perplexity is a different kind.

“Perplexity AI is an advanced AI-powered search engine designed to provide accurate, well-sourced, and real-time answers to user questions in a conversational format. It uses cutting-edge language models, such as GPT-4 and Claude, combined with real-time internet searches to synthesize responses from authoritative sources and always cites these sources for transparency. Unlike traditional search engines that just list links, Perplexity delivers direct summaries and supports features like document uploads, contextual follow-up, and the ability to handle both factual and complex queries for individuals and teams.”

Emphasis mine. Authoritative sources, and citing them, is paramount. This one might be the first AI (ugh, that acronym!) I will be willing to pay for.

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I wonder why Anthropic decided to pick a serif font for Claude replies. The user prompt remains sans-serif. Whichever the reason might be, I don’t like it. I prefer sans-serif for this specific use case.

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While on the topic of LLMs, I can’t stand “thinking” models. It is possible to set think to false on the CLI in Ollama for thinking models, but I haven’t found a way to set it as a variable. Their newly released application doesn’t have such feature. Granted, only DeepSeek and Qwen models are “thinkers”, so perhaps I will stop using them.

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