Architeuthis

The first prompt programming libraries start to develop, along with the first bureaucracies.

I went three layers deep in his references and his references' references to find out what the hell prompt programming is supposed to be, ended up in a gwern footnote:

It's the ideologized version of You're Prompting It Wrong. Which I suspected but doubted, because why would they pretend that LLMs being finicky and undependable unless you luck into very particular ways of asking for very specific things is a sign that they're doing well.

gwern wrote:

I like “prompt programming” as a description of writing GPT-3 prompts because ‘prompt’ (like ‘dynamic programming’) has almost purely positive connotations; it indicates that iteration is fast as the meta-learning avoids the need for training so you get feedback in seconds; it reminds us that GPT-3 is a “weird machine” which we have to have “mechanical sympathy” to understand effective use of (eg. how BPEs distort its understanding of text and how it is always trying to roleplay as random Internet people); implies that prompts are programs which need to be developed, tested, version-controlled, and which can be buggy & slow like any other programs, capable of great improvement (and of being hacked); that it’s an art you have to learn how to do and can do well or poorly; and cautions us against thoughtless essentializing of GPT-3 (any output is the joint outcome of the prompt, sampling processes, models, and human interpretation of said outputs).

They look like the evil twins of the Penny Arcade writers.

It is with great regret that I must inform you that all this comes with a three-hour podcast featuring Scoot in the flesh: 2027 Intelligence Explosion: Month-by-Month Model — Scott Alexander & Daniel Kokotajlo

That was a good one. Also, was he the first to break the coreweave situation? Not a bad journalistic get if that's the case.

Imagine insecure smart people yes-anding each other into believing siskind and yud are profound thinkers.

Wish I'd found a non clunky way to work "cult incubator" into that.

It's pick-me objectivism, only more overtly culty the closer you are to it irl. Imagine scientology if it was organized around AI doomerism and naive utilitarianism while posing as a get-smart-quick scheme.

It's main function (besides getting the early adopters laid) is to provide court philosophers for the technofeudalist billionaire class, while grooming talented young techies into a wide variety of extremist thought both old and new, mostly by fostering contempt of established epistemological authority in the same way Qanons insist people do their own research, i.e. as a euphemism for only paying attention to ingroup approved influencers.

It seems to have both a sexual harassment and a suicide problem, with a lot of irresponsible scientific racism and drug abuse in the mix.

Intelligence^2^ didn't seem half bad when Robert Anton Wilson was the one talking about it way back when, in retrospect all the libertarianism was a real time bomb.

SMBC using the ratsphere as comics fodder, part the manyeth:

transcription

Retrofuturistic Looking Ghost: SCROOOOOGE! I am the ghost of christmas extreme future! Why! Why did you not find a way to indicate to humans 400 generation from now where toxic waste was storrrrrrrred! Look how Tiny Tim's cyborg descendant has to make costrly RNA repaaaaaaairs!

Byline: The Longtermist version of A Christmas Carol is way better.

bonus

spoiler transcription Scrooge: I tried, but no, no, I just don't give a shit. :::

hand-writing your original manuscript

The revenge of That One Teacher who always rode you for having terrible handwriting.

Why make a true crime movie when you can do a heavily editorialized 'documentary' for a fraction of the price.

who is this guy anyway, is he in openai/similar inner circle or is that just some random rationalist fanboy?

His grounds for notability are that he's a dev who back in the day made a useful thing that went on to become incredibly widely used. Like if he'd named redis salvatoredis instead he might have been a household name among swengs.

Also burning only a billion more would be a steal given some of the numbers thrown around.