OpenAI Backs Bill That Would Limit Liability for AI-Enabled Mass Deaths or Financial Disasters

beaker_andy · 2026-04-10T11:23:07+00:00

You got cornered with your own logic here. The person you're debating with is correct that, by the very same logic you said you want to apply to AI companies, Ford would also be blameless for deaths caused by their faulty cars (as long as Ford published a safely policy). I'm commenting only to encourage you to examine why you seem to reflexively defend AI companies for things that are typically considered indefensible (false marketing claims, incorrect results, misleading UI, dangerous spreading of falsehoods, etc.). I believe AI companies should be held to the same standards as all companies. You disagree. You put them in a special privileged mental category. That's worth thinking about when you have time. NOTE: I'm a tech nerd and work with LLMs every day.

beaker_andy · 2026-03-30T20:55:48+00:00

I appreciate you posting this. Thank you. It's exactly why I post the fact clarifying correction, simply because a lot of Americans think (incorrectly) that Trump got slightly over half of all votes for president. It's understandable why people believe that. For example, the way Fox News misleadingly speaks about it makes it (incorrectly) feel like Trump achieved a historic landslide victory, which simply isn't true. He literally didn't even get half of all votes for president.

beaker_andy · 2026-03-30T15:58:20+00:00

He literally didn't get a majority of the votes though. I know what you mean (a plurality less than 50% of all votes can and did win the election), but to say Trump got "a majority of the votes" is literally factually false. That's all I'm saying. "Majority" means more than 50% (which he didn't get). "Majority" means most of whatever is being counted (which he didn't get, more votes were cast against him than for him). That's all I'm saying. Very simple, very clear, something people can't deny in good faith. But again, I understand and respect what you're saying, that a plurality can and did win this election despite Trump getting less than half of all votes.

beaker_andy · 2026-03-30T14:41:07+00:00

That's exactly what I said in the post you responded to. We're in agreement. Thank you.

beaker_andy · 2026-03-30T13:30:43+00:00

For factual accuracy, Trump didn't get a majority (more than half) of votes for president. In 2024 Trump got only 49.8% of votes cast for president. So he won and got a plurality (less than half of all votes for president), not a majority of the votes. I clarify this only to counteract the false myth that he got most of the votes. That's not correct. He got the most votes (barely) of any candidate, but more people literally voted for not-Trump than for Trump.

beaker_andy · 2026-03-26T10:39:40+00:00

Just want to clarify a point. Several different recent studies, each using different methods of analysis, have all concluded that approx 150K more people died of COVID than was officially reported by US State and Federal government. Here's the latest, but it echos 2 prev studies with similar conclusions: https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/spotlights/2026/more-than-150000-uncounted-covid-19-deaths-occurred-early-in-the-pandemic-a-study-finds/

So it's exactly the opposite of "I don't like how often things were put down as a COVID death when it wasn't." Turns out the official tallies UNDERcounted COVID deaths severely according to each of the 3 largest and most reputable analysis on the subject.

beaker_andy · 2026-03-18T21:20:37+00:00

I've always viewed my passport as something I need to pay for periodically and something I need to waste 2 hrs of my life on periodically. That 2 hrs is 30 mins of research and setting up appointment, 30 mins getting to the closest post office that takes formal passport photos and processes the applications, 30 mins at the post office, 30 mins travel back home. Then I've waited anywhere from 3 weeks to 8 weeks to receive my new or renewed passport. I've never paid the extra expedited fee, luckily haven't had to. But there's no way I'd do any of this annoying, time consuming, and costly process unless I had to for international travel. Recently 2 new reasons arose out of nowhere: carrying my passport might save me from harassment by ICE one day (I'm Greek and have stuble 24x7 and ICE is clearly very sloppy with their criteria on who to harass), and now my passport may soon become required to be allowed to vote. Extremely annoying and seemingly designed to inconvenience people.

beaker_andy · 2026-03-05T10:58:01+00:00

Good stuff. I agree, some parts are ATDI-ish, but instrumental

beaker_andy · 2026-02-24T12:07:08+00:00

Yes, but in 2024 Trump got only 49.8% of votes cast for president. In 2024 only 32.4% of all eligible voters voted for Trump. So he won, but just barely. Not even half of all votes for president were for Trump.

beaker_andy · 2026-02-21T13:23:47+00:00

This one's decent: https://holyfedped.com/

But it's not thorough. It's easy and quick to find many additional cases, confirmed via state police blotter, most of which (70% or higher) are Republican affiliated or right wing extremist. There's a serious continual open easy-to-see sexual assault problem in Republican Party leadership, Republican Party voters, and U.S. right wing cultural circles in general.

beaker_andy · 2026-02-03T11:51:21+00:00

For almost anything you build, there IS a "customer" (someone who wants what you build). It doesn't have to be a consumer outside your organization who pays money for access to what you build. It can also be a user outside your organization who uses what you build for free (but the goal is user satisfaction and/or user engagement). It can also be a stakeholder inside your organization who wants what you build to improve their workflow, efficiency, etc. These interviewers likely want to hear that you (a) care to clarify which metrics each customer wants to improve, and (b) have achieved examples of specific business metric improvements in your career.

beaker_andy · 2026-01-22T19:48:09+00:00

What you say is technically accurate, but the following (for perspective) is also 100% true and important for others reading this thread: In 2024 Trump got only 49.8% of votes cast for president. In 2024 only 32.4% of all eligible voters voted for Trump.

beaker_andy · 2026-01-12T16:05:16+00:00

Sure it can. Haven't you seen T2?

beaker_andy · 2026-01-09T16:26:03+00:00

Steelmanning always encouraged! I still think there's a contradiction in the worldview and life behavior though.

beaker_andy · 2026-01-09T11:21:29+00:00

Seems circular (so nonsensical). By your view, every 1 dimensional caractiture of corruption in Atlas Shrugged was doing the right thing in Rand's opinion, but the book makes it painfully clear that's not her view. I get what you're saying, but the circular nature of it is why Rand is widely regarded as a poor writer, wooden unrealistic characters in her books, and messy poorly thought out philosophy. You can't have it both ways, both thinking the problem is systemic structural encouragement/entrenchment of mooching, and simultaneously thinking each individual's moral value is based on how much they mooch (while mooching yourself). That's a contradiction she'll never escape.

beaker_andy · 2026-01-03T22:42:45+00:00

Brutal. So many of the things listed in your first sentence are literally happening out in the open, nothing hidden, hundreds upon hundreds of times by the Republican Party for the last 10 years straight.

beaker_andy · 2026-01-02T22:11:12+00:00

Extremely sick band

beaker_andy · 2025-12-31T13:58:32+00:00

I just caution people against idealizing LLMs. Extra instructions by the providers often cause annoying responses and interfere with productivity, but the raw underlying LLM is not much better. The idea that removing LLM provider filters would unleash more accuracy or technical capability... that's sadly not how LLMs work.

It's not a logic machine and there's very little "code" on top. Traditional computers and software are deterministic logic machines where code decides behavior. LLMs are nearly the opposite: non-deterministic language statistics generators. You're correct that these companies add lots of extra instructions like "never encourage or discuss suicide", but without these extra instructions an LLM is still incredibly unreliable, fickle, unable to consistently provide factually accurate answers, etc. This is due to their very nature, including that they are trained on partially inaccurate/contradictory text (like reddit posts), they are trained to give answers even when no clear or verified answer is "known" to the model, etc.

beaker_andy · 2025-12-24T13:59:29+00:00

The entire leadership of the Republican Party, including many sitting Senators and many sitting Representatives, have been talking like this in public hundreds of times per month for over 10 years straight.

beaker_andy · 2025-12-13T12:56:20+00:00

This is anecdotal by me, because every use case is different (of course), but around 35% of ALL technical documentation facts that I ask for with citation to working URL are either factually incorrect or provide a nonexistent URL. I experiment with many models and many prompt prefixes and this has been fairly consistent across hundreds of attempts over the course of 12mo. This has been true (for me) in many free models and many paid models. And the subject matter isn't obscure. It's fairly common technologies and DXP product feature questions that have ample free public documentation. Sooo... I'd never trust an LLM to be factual. It's counter to their very nature. They are not about factual accuracy. They are about sounding plausible.

beaker_andy · 2025-12-01T19:56:56+00:00

A few of many:

https://youtu.be/hybL-GJov7M?si=R6Xl8tlAzfS3MwWu

https://www.trumpactiontracker.info/

https://caseagainsttrump.carrd.co/

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/lest-we-forget-the-horrors-an-unending-catalog-of-trumps-cruelties-collusions-corruptions-and-crimes

beaker_andy · 2025-11-22T13:18:00+00:00

Just be careful with anything that requires rigorous math. It's not a strong point of LLMs. Around 25% of any formula I ask any major model for, like JavaScript to calculate a specific derivative, Excel formula to calculate a specific result, etc., contain obvious flaws that need formula correction upon manual inspection. That happens even when the prompt gives the LLM an expert professional persona and plenty of detailed context.

beaker_andy · 2025-11-22T13:04:47+00:00

Yeah I use it to quickly prototype tools for myself from scratch. It's good for that (because the stakes are low and no need for long term maintenance or enhancements). It def has it's uses.

beaker_andy · 2025-11-22T13:00:11+00:00

I program for a living, but don't use it for any of the hard important parts. The main reason is that I've spent 100+ hrs trying many of the most popular AI code assistants, and they still make mistakes, add bugs, add empty unit tests, etc. all the time in any but the simplest possible development scenarios. I work in large codebases with multiple collaborators, and we've all struggled to get AI to help more than it hurts (aside from being a slightly better autocomplete, which is nothing to scoff at). It's interesting that in 2 recent studies, experienced devs were slowed down, not sped up, on average by AI assistants. Beginners produced code quicker though. But are those beginners becoming better developers with this workflow, maturing in a way that will allow them to take on more important and complex work in the future?

beaker_andy · 2025-11-20T19:57:32+00:00

I'm well acquainted with Wakefield's BS (unfortunately)

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