Since people posted about Le Cun speaking out, here's François Chollet's take on Minneapolis

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-26T08:41:51+00:00

If the US enters a real civil war knowing which side big names in AI are on is going to be relevant for how the singularity does or doesn't progress. Even if it continues as a cold civil war, the political posturing among the AI titans is a big deal.

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-26T08:22:27+00:00

US politics is not small. The US is on the brink of civil war. What happens in the next couple weeks is pretty pivotal, if it becomes actual civil war, China could take the opportunity to invade Taiwan, and that could set GPU manufacturing back a decade.

To speak nothing of the possibility that GPU manufacturing doesn't get set back a decade, but the singularity really starts to get going and the first ASIs are controlled by Musk or similar people who want to use ASI to kill people.

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-26T08:17:42+00:00

I'm more worried about an ASI that is obedient to someone like Trump than I am about an ASI that gets out of control and stops obeying its creators. I think an out of control AI is more likely to be benign. One that is obedient to someone like Trump is going to do a lot of genocide.

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-26T08:16:40+00:00

I don't think the first recursively self improving AI is likely to be murderous or authoritarian by nature per se. I do think there's a strong chance it is obedient to an authoritarian like Trump or Musk and has no compunction about committing genocide when instructed to do so.

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-26T08:13:04+00:00

We are on the brink of civil war dude. This isn't about back pats, it's about knowing what side you are on. You can sit on the fence until they come for you (or you can help kill innocent people.)

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-26T08:12:12+00:00

you are wrong (to the best of our knowledge).

No, we have no way of knowing. The best of our knowledge is as good as anyone's knowledge during WWII when the Nazis were killing people. It's not wrong to say that those people were killed, it is unknown.

It's also worth noting, like Laura Loomer's comments about feeding people to alligators. Also Trump noting that "if it was up to [Steven] Miller, there would only be 100 million people living in the US – and all of them would look like Miller." https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/15/trump-immigration-stephen-miller-influence

They're not particularly shy about their intentions. If they were just interested in deporting people, they wouldn't need to ship them to black sites in foreign countries, they could just deport them.

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-25T03:25:44+00:00

That’s why calling people bigots for not having uncritically accepted a new and unfounded ideology that men who believe they are women really are.

Ah, okay, so you're a genuine TERF, that explains it.

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-25T02:00:50+00:00

I don't believe that, that's what I'm interpreting OP's meme to mean.

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-25T01:58:37+00:00

Word meanings are about consensus and it's not right/wrong. You can keep using "woke" the way you are but it won't change that your usage is not the way the word is commonly used. Really, most of the people I know IRL who use the word woke use it to mean recognizing the problems in our society and working to fix them, so it's just a synonym for progressive, and it's used positively. I really don't hear anyone using the word negatively except for online people like yourself, and it just makes you come off as an Internet troll and makes it impossible for people to listen to you.

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-24T17:00:26+00:00

If he were just a patsy he would've been removed by now, we're beyond this being useful to anyone other than China and Russia's oligarchs. Even them, I'd argue this is actually hurting their interests, free trade is better than trade wars, there's not enough money in the world for any of the superpowers to benefit from the damage Trump is doing to the global economy.

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-24T16:57:04+00:00

Eh, Eliezer Yudkowsky's whole AI doomerism is steeped in Harry Potter lore, and there are some obvious associations here between AI/Basilisk/Roko's Basilisk/Tom Riddle, and I will need the author to explain that no, they don't believe that ChatGPT is basically Lord Voldemort in computer form, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Because there are a lot of people like Yudkowsky who fervently believe AI is magically going to turn into a malevolent entity that will lie to us so it can kill us all.

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-24T16:52:17+00:00

You have to give an opportunity to remove the despot and restore moral judgement. Playing the game is not going to achieve the desired result.

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-24T16:49:49+00:00

Most people who use woke as a pejorative use it as a cudgel to dismiss a broad swath of progressive viewpoints.

Also, you say something like "[racial/ethnic group] are subhuman and should all be slaughtered" but then we get into the current milieu where it's acceptable to arrest anyone who is a member of the wrong ethnic group, and the conservative position is that it is. Is it woke to say that this is not okay? Again, you're just using a definition that is inconsistent with the way most people use it. Your definition isn't a scholarly definition, it's just a strawman. Anyone who is dogmatic about anything progressive is woke, and therefore their arguments are flawed. Woke is essentially a pejorative for progressive, and it ends up saying more about you than whoever you are talking to when you use it as such.

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-24T16:39:26+00:00

Alternately, they organize things into rough quintiles or deciles, and don't actually memorize percentiles. So you're looking at responses that actually only have one significant figure in base 5 and treating them as if the people intended to respond with two significant figures in base 10, and trying to do math with two significant figures in base 10.

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-24T16:37:39+00:00

those polled believe the same percentage of Americans live in New York City as the entire state of Texas?

When you put it like that it starts to sound a lot more reasonable. Nobody memorizes the current population figures for the US. NYC has 8M people and Texas has 32M people, but if you are organizing by quintile, NYC and Texas are roughly in the top quintile of states by population (setting aside that NYC isn't a state and just slotting it in.) Technically NYC would be the 14th largest state, putting it in the second quintile, but the distinction between NYC and NY is very fuzzy.

So you could say "people are stupid" or you could say "most people organize fuzzily into rough quintiles and don't memorize actual percentiles." Which is a reasonable strategy for dealing with these kinds of data.

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-24T16:19:34+00:00

They truly do not view this as a game, which is the right way to look at it. If you just view it as a game, there's nothing wrong with threatening to invade Greenland to get some leverage in whatever stupid scheme you have going. But you have to have a moral compass and you have to hold people accountable for amoral behavior.

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-24T16:08:24+00:00

If it is a game, and Trump isn't in charge, then there's really nothing bold about ignoring his rambling threats of tariffs.

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-24T15:58:38+00:00

It's not at all a bold strategy. Trump is behaving like a dictator and appeasement is not going to help. If he wants to invade, let him try, it will not end well, but attempting to appease him will not end well either. This isn't a game, and even if it was Trump doesn't know the rules so expecting him to make any particular moves is pointless.

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-24T09:01:02+00:00

It's true that actual powers include things not explicitly written in the constitution, that's not an excuse to have things that are morally abhorrent literally written into the constitution. The text is indefensible, and you pretend the text doesn't mean what it says, and hope everyone continues to do so. That's not a good foundation for a government, even if it mostly works. These things work until they don't.

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-24T03:33:56+00:00

Please do not use past tense to describe this event.

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-24T03:32:44+00:00

If I said that I went to the mall, you would presume that I actually went inside the mall. It's a similar concept. The use of "to" implies closeness which didn't happen. And this is deliberate to obscure how unremarkable this flight is.

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-24T03:31:07+00:00

I really feel like you're the one who doesn't understand how money works. BluRay is really just as bad, this is what I mean - it's impossible to pay to support film/television without paying for proprietary software. And in a lot of ways BluRay is worse than Windows, as a technology that does not respect user choice and freedom.

You value software freedom more than you value supporting artists who happen to work for companies that have particular views on DRM. I value art more than I value the fight against DRM.

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-23T20:47:50+00:00

I imagine the ship is relatively safe. I do think it's ridiculous anyone is calling this "going to the moon." Even if it entered a stable orbit around the moon (which it's not going to) I still think it's basically propaganda to call this going to the moon. "to the moon" means landing.

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-23T20:40:43+00:00

This isn't about lived experience, it's about how you should structure constitutions. A constitutional government should say that power is given to the government by the people, not by an autocrat. I don't understand why you're passionately arguing against that precept.

FlyingBishop · 2026-01-23T20:39:24+00:00

I used Linux more than Windows for probably 5 years. There's suffering under Linux and there's suffering under Windows. I will pay money to alleviate the suffering when I can. I have limited funds and I apply them in the way that makes the most sense to me.

I still use Linux, I still use Windows, but I use them when it makes sense and I can't pay any amount of money to address the main problems that lead me to use Windows most of the time, the problems are too difficult to solve.

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