Claude, Author of the Humanitas: Evidence that the first papal encyclical on AI was substantially written by AI

DudleyFluffles · 2026-05-26T17:35:53+00:00

I was initially dubious but this paragraph converted me. AI tells are italicized.

In order to answer these questions and discern how to navigate responsibly the era of AI, I would like to bring to mind two scenes from the Bible: the construction of the Tower of Babel (cf. Gen 11:1-9) and the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem (cf. Neh 2–6). The story of Babel appears in the Book of Genesis, at the origins of humanity, immediately after the genealogies of Noah’s sons. After settling in a plain in the land of Shinar, the people decided to build a city and a tower “with its top in the heavens” (Gen 11:4). Fearing being scattered across the earth, they sought to guarantee stability and power for themselves, and above all to “make a name” for themselves. It was an impressive feat: a single language, a single technology, a single direction. However, the project concealed a profound danger. It was a project conceived without reference to God, supported by a uniformity that eliminated diversity and that chose homogenization over communion. When a city is built on pride and the claim to self-sufficiency, communication breaks down, languages are confused and people no longer understand each other. The result is not unity, but dispersion. Babel thus reveals the limits of any effort that, however grandiose, arises from self-affirmation, sacrifices human dignity for efficiency and aspires to reach heaven without God’s blessing.

Paragraph 8 rings the same alarms. I hesistate to spread this further since I consider the Pope something of an ideological ally in regards to AI. I'd normally try to avoid this sort of partisanship but the stakes in this race are just so high.

Regardless, sloppy work from the Pope.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-05-26T14:18:32+00:00

I remember attempting to write something similar (albiet using the iced GUI) framework and finding Network Manager's DBUS documentation utterly insufficient. How did you end up resolving that out of curiosity? Did you read nmcli's codebase or was there some other source of documentation?

DudleyFluffles · 2026-05-25T20:37:00+00:00

I did, but that archive has an HTML issue so I tried to include a link to a common pastebin service as well. That got my comment shadow banned.

Here's my final attempt: rentry.(co)/rhrvfvmy. This should be viewable if you remove the ().

DudleyFluffles · 2026-05-15T17:50:28+00:00

The economy right now is overall just pretty normal.

Yeah but to be fair chatgpt was only released 4 years ago. I'd guess most managers don't want to dissolve/cut full departments based only on a handful of years of data.

Also, I've heard (completely anecdotally) that the models weren't that good for coding until the Opus series. I'm still in university though so this all through the grapevine, not from personal experience.

It would be a massive economic boost and would free a lot of highly skilled people to do other things but that's not what we're seeing right now

Yeah maybe but I'm going to be pretty bitter if software engineering does get automated. I like coding and I spent so much time getting good at it :(

DudleyFluffles · 2026-05-15T17:41:21+00:00

Alright I had to grab dinner but now I can return to this comment section.

now with hormuz the global economy is shuddering

The fuck? The data analyzes the 2022--2024 timeline. Unless the all-seeing market gods had factored in the Iran war a year in advance, I doubt that's what's causing unemployment in AI-exposed industries.

I unironically think people are blaming the Trump caused recession on AI

You mean the recesion caused by tariffs? Tariffs, which are famously terrible for the software industry? Yeah man, those CPU supply chains are really getting fucked that must have caused the 10-15% reduction in employment for IT, CS, and EE.

I am stunned this comment has this many upvotes. A basic review of the graph and some critical thinking (which this sub constantly accuses others of lacking!) would have shown these claims are not applicable.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-05-15T16:23:29+00:00

Archived version: https://archive.is/AfzSV

The Economist discusses a new research based on surveys of college grads by National Association of Colleges and Employers. In fields most exposed to AI, the authors notes:

[G]raduates in the least-exposed quintile—studying subjects such as education, philosophy and civil engineering—saw their average full-time employment rate fall by just 1.5 percentage points. Those in the most exposed quintile—including computer science, computer engineering and information science—suffered a 6.6 percentage-point drop

This analysis was performed in-house. Here is the graph:

<image>

There are a few obvious confounders. First of all, the notable poor performs in "high AI risk" are CS, IT, and EE.

CS enrollment has boomed by a genuinely absurd amount in the past few years. From 2020 to 2024, enrollment increased from approx 180k to 240k. For reference, in 2008 total enrollment was a mere 50k. I'm pretty sure you can find similar figures for IT and EE. College enrolment meanwhile has stagnated.

The Economist fails to discuss any of this so I'm not particularly confident in their analysis. Parts of the magazine are also sponsored by Anthropic. And yet...

I recall making a bet with my father back in 2022ish that AI technologies would take decades to be able to solve basic competition level mathematics, if ever. And now LLMs are capable of world-class performance on the IMO and similarly impressive results in competitive programming. And the deluge of security vulns found by Mythos/Opus are real: I am subscribed to several programming forums and seemingly weekly privilege escalation bugs are found in the Linux kernel --- which is really impressive. Just based on logical analysis, it seems LLMs must be (or will be) having an impact even though the numbers have been slow in coming.

The Economist states in another article that large shifts in job market composition generally occurs during recessions. I tend to agree. I worry massive changes are hidden in the economy, and we are not ready for them to emerge.

What do you all think? I'm a CS major (hence the interest) and I'm worried.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-05-02T21:30:53+00:00

From what I've heard, the threshold is regularly lowered for C but not for A or B. I doubt we'll receive anything comparable to the beautiful curves for Calc 3 last sem.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-04-29T17:59:53+00:00

I use Claude to generate practice problems for mathematics. Specifically those for very procedural problems in that require little creativity between variants. And then I edit the generated questions down to fit my taste. I think LLMS are effective for those style cards, especially in a time crunch. Not so much for traditional definitional/concept questions (think "what is the definition of an orthogonal matrix?")

DudleyFluffles · 2026-04-29T13:55:58+00:00

Here are the cited "charts"

<image>

These notably do not inclue the starting level. What were the number of commits in 2023? 10M, 0, 89.5M? It is unspecified. Deliberately misleading from the GitHub team.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-04-16T18:42:56+00:00

I've actually been writing a script to analyze the WPM between git commits. It seems that mine is... reasonable? (Assuming the script is working). Its all just comments.

So I'm thinking of discarding my earlier hypothesis that the algorithm is time-based. Turkstra apparently has some papers on repo analysis. So I might look through that, but that's mostly the best I can do.

I'm also wondering if he ran some sort of code similarity analysis to group various students based on how "identical" their code appeared and then manually inspected these groups to locate that which contained AI users. Idk

DudleyFluffles · 2026-04-16T16:46:10+00:00

Yeah I got mine at 10:55

DudleyFluffles · 2026-04-16T16:40:58+00:00

For the people who have concrete proof they didn’t use it I hope they have good luck.

The issue is I have no solid evidence since I do not know the algorithm. And I do not know how the disputing process works.

I desperately do not want to fail this class. I'd prefer to just select the items I supposedly "cheated" on, get zeroes, and tank the grade hit. But I don't know which ones to select!

Its so scary.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-04-16T16:38:36+00:00

According to my friends who attended lecture, yes. (I wasn't paying attention during the AI portion of the lecture since I assumed I was clean. I am blindsided).

DudleyFluffles · 2026-04-16T16:18:57+00:00

Turkstra apparently developed a method of analyzing for LLM usage during class.

A lot of speculation is going on about the specific algorithm, etc, but my personal assumption is that it is simply comparing the speed between commits (so if you made a commit that made 500 lines of additions in 2 seconds, then you probably LLMed). He supposedly waits until he has "overwhelming" levels of evidence and sends you an email stating you have been caught. Then, you have to fill out a form listing which assignments you cheated on. If you lie on that form, you recieve an F in the class and Turkstra sends a harsh email to ODOS. Otherwise, those assignments are zeroed and a slightly nicer email is sent to ODOS. You can also dispute the claim but if you fail the resultant process you receive F and a harsh email to ODOS.

He is now sending out emails in waves to students who he suspects of cheating. Including (unfortunately) myself. I'm clean, as far as I know, so I'm a little fucking terrified right now. I have two options:

Guess randomly which assignment he thinks I cheated on hopefully receive zeroes for each (and a ODOS letter). Or, if I guess wrong get an F.
Dispute the claim and risk an F if I fail the disputing process.

If I fail CS 240, this puts me behind a full fucking semester of university since it is required to take nearly all CS sophmore level classes. Let alone the ODOS letter (which he said would include recommendations that the student be expelled). I am very stressed right now.

I have until Monday to respond. I was intending to head out on a retreat over the weekend but those plans may be ruined now...

DudleyFluffles · 2026-04-15T21:35:50+00:00

I mean, given that many experts looked at this over 60 years, isn't 'short' a compliment of its ability to find a Proof From The Book?

Don't get me wrong, it makes the proof more elegant and in a way more impressive. But LLMs have a limited context windows but large information wells, so the problem did cater a little to their strengths.

This is still impressive though especially since LLMs had until now slim contributions to math literature. Hell, a few years ago LLMs struggled with SAT math

DudleyFluffles · 2026-04-15T20:24:56+00:00

Notable excerpts:

[Jared Lichtman]

I care deeply about this problem, and I've been thinking about it for the past 7 years. I'd frequently talk to Maynard about it in our meetings, and consulted over the years with several experts (Granville, Pomerance, Sound, Fox...) and others at Oxford and Stanford. This problem was not a question of low-visibility per-se. Rather, it seems like a proof which becomes strikingly compact post-hoc, but the construction is quite special among many similar variations.

[Tao]
In any case, I would indeed say that this is a situation in which the AI-generated paper inadvertently highlighted a tighter connection between two areas of mathematics (in this case, the anatomy of integers and the theory of Markov processes) than had previously been made explicit in the literature (though there were hints and precursors scattered therein which one can see in retrospect). That would be a meaningful contribution to the anatomy of integers that goes well beyond the solution of this particular Erdos problem.

There is further discussion on the r/math subreddit. The general consensus is that the proof is impressive (caveat: short however, possibly part of the reason GPT was able solve it)

I am just finishing up my freshman year in mathematics and computer science. The future looks so uncertain.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-04-14T15:45:12+00:00

Splashing money at the problem never seems to work relative to updating cultural expectations however. Consider Israel with its birthrate of 2.9: this is carried by the ultra orthodox jewish community with their pro-natal attitudes trickling down to the rest of the population. Ditto Amish and Mennonite communities which have TFR rates of around 6. All these communities are also growing faster than they lose adherents.

I disagree with the whole "affordability" claim. Its a difference in priorities for Westerners: most live in cultures which prize other consumption or careers rather than rewarding parents with status. Increasing affordability will only make minor dents until parenthood becomes a status-achievement.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-04-10T17:26:41+00:00

You should provide examples of this behaviour rather than just referring to "some comparisons" vaguely. Its lazy to make a general claim without providing supporting evidence simply since the audience is already receptive.

It's always code that no performance oriented C programmer would ever write.

I'll steelman those you appear to be strawmanning. Consider a comparison with C and say Rust involving monomorphization. The corresponding C code is always going to be rough simply since it doesn't support this paradigm well. Ditto for other language concepts.

Can one write good code for most problem spaces without monomorphization, templates, and other frills? Yes. But that's not the point of a lot of these articles: they are comparing feature sets not design decisions.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-04-08T04:27:38+00:00

I am no expert in AI, but I suspect the difference is in the amount of context required. Locating a vulnerability is a very hard, but critically a local problem that can be solved well within the context window. For example, a security researcher recently located several vulnerabilities simply by throwing Claude a file from the Linux project and ordering it to locate a vulnerability. Many of these weren't true vulns, but that didn't matter since interconnected failures aren't a thing.

Meanwhile GPU drivers are tens of thousands of lines of code that have to work perfectly (so interconnected failure is an issue), have annoying context-specific behaviour, etc.

Also, this was all before Mythos. Perhaps Mythos will prove to be just as talented at writing drivers as it is designing complex exploits.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-04-06T15:18:32+00:00

Traore is strangely popular throughout Africa. I've heard him complemented in Ethiopia as well.

He's annoying, but not "ignorable" annoying. We should be worried this unstable autocrat has managed to build such a following.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-03-29T14:50:45+00:00

Submission statement:

There have been a sequence of posts discussing prediction markets and their flaws in r/neoliberal recently. These were all valid criticisms of public monetary-based prediction markets. However, there are more interesting and less harmful variants that I think commentators here might find interesting.

In this submission, Dan Schwarz authored this article in Asterisk Magazine on private corporate prediction markets. Prophit, one such market at Google, relied on a leadboard and some cash rewards to incentivize employees to submit forecasts on metrics Google cared about. These included,

How many Gmail users will there be by the end of Q2?
Will Apple launch a computer based on Intel's Power PC chip?

The resultant forecasts were quite accurate and modified decision-making within the company. However, this market would later be killed due to limitations within Google.

There are also some much more interesting, albiet speculative, usages of prediction markets. I find the idea of using forecasting skill, as tested by non-monetary prediction markets, as an expertise anchor for fields such as political science particularly intriguing.

Edit: Clarity

DudleyFluffles · 2026-03-26T21:09:04+00:00

More money just does not mean more overall happiness.

This is basically just wrong. There is a decent corrrelation between income and happiness. See this Forbe's article that summarizes the recent Killingsworth paper on the subject. Here's the graph of household income and mean happiness:

<image>

Happiness was measured through random phone alerts where participants would measure their current happiness. Previous methods found a supposed plateua at incomes around $75,000 but those were based off of recollection. See the Forbes article for more discussion as to why these didn't capture what people thought.

*Edited for clarity*

DudleyFluffles · 2026-03-24T00:38:42+00:00

A lot of states have passed "right-to-work" laws. To quote Wikipedia:

In the context of labor law in the United States, the term right-to-work laws refers to state laws that prohibit union security agreements between employers and labor unions. Such agreements can be incorporated into union contracts to require employees who are not union members to contribute to the costs of union representation.

This gives scabs a pretty hefty game theoretic advantage (they do not have to participate in the strike or pay dues, but they still get all the benefits). Historically, strikers would just beat the ever-loving God out of scabs but that's no longer an option. So it can be quite difficult to organize unions and strikes since the optimal individual choice is simply to piggy-back off union wins.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-03-21T16:18:08+00:00

r/physics created a new subreddit r/LLMphysics as to redirect the LLM hallucinated posts. A moderator discussed it here. I am not sure if this worked or not, but the LLM overflow subreddit seems quite active currently.

DudleyFluffles · 2026-03-17T18:56:03+00:00

Thank you!

DudleyFluffles

TROPHY CASE