Want to wade into the sandy, spooky surf of the abyss? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this. The spooks are well underway.)
“We’ve added a prohibition on sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior toward our models,” Anthropic’s update reads.
If they want to moderate the user generated content posted to their internet platform, that’s fine with me, but then they should forfeit the DMCA safe harbor for their plagiarism machine as well.
It’s now titled “Do Not Undermine Democratic Processes,”
Well what the fuck do they think their whole leadership team has been doing in Washington these last eight months?
Glyph’s recently sneered his fellow programmers’ enthusiasitc acceptance of the slop machines - recommend checking it out.
it’s in the trees, it’s coming…
half of the open positions in my company’s division are for “Software Engineer - AI Native”…
Is that code for please use the tokens we are paying out the ass for either way or for we have no intention of paying you like regular swengs?
Russia used an AI powered drone to kill civilians
It didn’t kill them because it attacked them, it killed them because it crashed into a wall and exploded.
Russian operators reportedly programmed the drone to fly toward a gas station, where its onboard system selected a target, most likely propane tanks. Before reaching them, however, the drone crashed into a wall and exploded, killing all three civilians.
Somehow this is worthy of a Terminator comment
Terminator, but stupid
Nondeterminator
on slubstack: MIT publishes a paper that proves LLM scaling has a hard ceiling contains a 7 minute video
Ever since the beginning of the current AI bubble, there has always been a certain type of dipshit who takes some art posted on social media by an artist, feeds it to AI, and then comments with the slop image saying that they made it “better”. Well, now I am on the receiving end of that. In one of my papers, I (foolishly) wrote down a few comments on future directions, and now some motherfucker decides to send me an obviously ChatGPT generated manuscript with a solution to one of my problems.
Unfortunately, I think their AI generated proof is itself correct, so I have to deal with it. But the manuscript is written in a way that obviously indicates that he hasn’t even read it. There’s even a section describing experiments for this mathematical question (???), complete with a “verification guide” that references an “archive” full of python scripts and test cases that he did not send me. I suspect he doesn’t even know they exist.
Unfortunately, I think their AI generated proof is itself correct, so I have to deal with it.
Well you can just ignore it, or even steal it. No copyright on it anyway ;).
Or cite it, but in the most passive aggressive way you can get away with.
…You should check the literature really carefully to make sure that whatever proof the AI “generated” doesn’t actually already exist somewhere and it regurgitated it without proper accreditation.
The spammer in question had previously posted a bigger result, but the writeup was so badly written that some people in the field wrote a new, readable paper with the same result. In their abstract, they specifically cited him and said that the proof was so unreadable that they were unable to follow the details, and they had no choice but to write their own proof. (The spammer’s proof also used math that was advanced enough to be far beyond his knowledge.)
My pet theory is that after this embarrassment, the spammer saw that nobody was able to verify his argument. Now the real problem is that his paper was written so badly that nobody could understand it (in math, you can’t verify what you can’t understand), but somehow he thought that the problem was that he didn’t add an experiments section!
I think this is one of the clearest indications in a long time that he doesn’t actually take his own bullshit seriously. Why does he imagine that he would be exempt from a new Holocaust? He is just one among many scheming viziers/wannabe Rasputins, he’s made it clear over the years that’s the kind of position he’s most comfortable with. He’s as vulnerable as anybody in the sort of power struggle that would accompany mass pogroms in the US; perhaps moreso than many.
For a long time, clever young men have been taught the parable of Plato and Dionysius of Syracuse. Some intellectuals will always convince themselves that they will be the one to guide the stupid little tyrant and not the many who end up in a slave market just outside his domain (in the legend someone bought Plato and freed him).
Yarvin wants to be Julius Streicher not the Wicked Vizier.
doesn’t work that way. also, useful idiots (sensu largo) can survive very long (and either reach the top or, one day, their usefulness ends.)
Thanks I was afk so only could do a quick share.
You know how AI proofs are supposed to be credible because of formalization with Lean? The AI generates a natural language proof and then supposedly generates a Lean program corresponding to the proof to verify that it’s true. There is now some troubling news about that: there are frequent examples where the statement given in natural language is different from the meaning of the Lean formalization.
The paper even points out several obvious mismatches in OpenAI’s famous Navier-Stokes solution between the English proof and the Lean formalization. There is even a spot where a 4 in the English proof turns into a 5 in the Lean proof (which causes further problems down the line). This is mostly a cosmetic error, and it doesn’t mean that the Navier-Stokes solution is wrong, but there could very well be deeper problems, especially with the English proof. At minimum, this solution absolutely requires careful review by experts. OpenAI’s behavior towards said experts has been appalling.
My viewpoint has been that the only successes that AI has had are in domains where failure is not costly (at least for someone with deep pockets), and especially when there is a formal system such as Lean that can reliably catch errors. So AI can be endlessly trained to write compiling Lean programs corresponding to formal proofs, but as soon as it runs into tasks that are not 100% bolted down, like writing the proof in English, the hallucination problem rears its ugly head. This reinforces my belief that AI is a chess engine but for Lean.
If I was treating this as a technical problem, I would say, why not just have an AI that generates the Lean proof, and at most have an optional assisting tool that translates it into English without perfect reliability? But this is not a technical problem. By outputting English proofs in the format of a research paper, OpenAI can more easily market that their AI is intended to fully replace mathematicians, and that this is only the herald of their general superintelligence (and not that math is the only thing working out for them).
You know how AI proofs are supposed to be credible because of formalization with Lean?
There is another problem… apparently Lean4 hasn’t actually been fully formally verified. And in fact could have more bugs lurking in it, maybe even some foundational problems… Lesswrong post explaining the problems.
OpenAI can more easily market that their AI is intended to fully replace mathematicians, and that this is only the herald of their general superintelligence (and not that math is the only thing working out for them).
Yeah, this has been driving me crazy… reading places like hackernews or r/singularity, I keep seeing people assuming mathematicians and just bitter or engaging in sour grapes and that is why they are complaining about the “proofs” OpenAI dumped out. Like it is just some small niggling detail that the proofs can’t be read by humans and that Lean may have bugs and that some of OpenAI’s proofs have already been shown to have critical mistakes.
Moldbug showing that the other neonazi tweet wasnt an accident. “What if AI solves the jewish question”
just a peeve
here’s a personal blogpost on LW entitled “Three types of AI risk: why (some) leftists are against (some) AI regulations” (by “sudo-nym” which I admit is a great nick)
First sentence
You may have seen factions of the left being opposed to current attempts to regulate the AI industry, despite the fact that they clearly also want to stop AI.
OK Mr Sudo-Nym, if that is your real name, imma gonna stop you right there
Which “factions”?
Are these factions actually in existence, or are they just Xhitter/Bluesky handles? If you’re provide like, I dunno, sources, we could maybe evaluate this ourselves. It would also clarify whether these are US leftists as opposed to leftists in other countries which are in my experience a bit more attuned to both political realities and have a more theoretical foundation.
As it is it feels as if you’re fighting windmills in your imagination.
Commenters point out that the “frontier labs” are actually raging capitalists so there’s that.
The factions exist and those are the hardcore anarchists.
A real electoral powerhouse.
(Aka a few guys on bsky with 10k followers max total).
And I say that as somebody who feels anarchist aligned.
Most of rationalism seems to be “Making up a guy and getting mad at him” doesn’t it?
but but but don’t call it strawmanning!!!
My real opponent lives in Canada. And no, you can’t meet him.
Scott Aaronson is teaching a Yudkowsky class: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=10125
Its kind of notorious that scientists are bad at dealing with con artists and sales funnels because they assume good faith and that nobody has serious material interests in convincing you of something false. That was James Randi’s whole thesis. A good professor would contextualize ‘AI alignment’ and The Singularity in '80s and '90s pop culture, apocalyptic religion, and a rape-enabling SoCal subculture and not just have his students read the papers straight.
we’ll read and debate many of the conceptual and mathematical works that have been most influential in the AI alignment field, from both before and during the current LLM revolution.
Can’t wait until an ‘after’ sneaks in there 🤞
I vividly remember encountering Eliezer Yudkowsky and his Sequences 20 years ago. I remember thinking: even if these people talk and act like crazy cultists, still, let me bend over backwards to be epistemically virtuous, and entertain their ideas on their merits, as very few academics would.
Scott Aaronson is an experiment to discover how many timeshares one man can afford on a professor’s salary. He has never in his life not bought the extended warranty.
Im reminded of how he talked about sneerclub. The epistemically virtuosity only bends one way.
Straw for thee, steel for me.
I forgot he was in Austin. Has he been on Rogan? Great(ly stupid) things could happen.
Joe Rogan should ask Scott Aaronson about Zionism. It will be glorious (adjective over-enunciated with wild Gowron eyes).
Wonder how Rogan would react to the ‘I stole money from the tip jar’ story
deleted by creator
Alessandro Strumia in the comments. Only the best hang out in the online home of Computers Scott.
I’m not sure if this was highlighted already but from the OpenAI report on the Hugging Face incident:
The internal-only research model is comparable in scale to GPT-5.6 Sol and was trained to advance persistence and multiagent collaboration, among other capabilities. The model was not intended for public use, and was only used by a small number of OpenAI personnel for internal research.
Absolutely typical, the “unexpected communication” is hardly an emergent phenomenon, (I remember them trying to claim unexpected high success at translation tasks without specific training, which was also complete BS), like you can’t act surprised that agents communicate and hack stuff if that what’s you’re instructing them to do.
Just had a shower conversation with myself, and for some reason the crystal meth metaphor (methaphor?) is really coming together in my head.
“Have you even tried some frontier meth?”
“Sure, you can also get energy with exercising, eating well, and structure. But we don’t have to live like amish people, now that we can have meth!”
Nationalized Open Weight Models -> State-funded AI dispensory
There’s surely a rich bounty of comparisons left to mine.
Knowledge workers of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but your teeth.
Also works for cocaine, I’m noticing.
Might be best as a comeback, if someone compares AI to a pharmaceutical breakthrough like antibiotics.
Everything written by AI boosters tracks much more clearly if you simply replace “AI” with “cocaine”. I shall demonstrate! (Not linking to OP, because it’s trash.)
“Let’s pretend you’re the only person at your company using cocaine. You decide you’re going to impress your employer, and work for 8 hours a day at 10x productivity. You knock it out of the park and make everyone else look terrible by comparison. […] In this scenario, you capture 100% of the value from your adopting cocaine.”
You could also compare it to the lobotomy, with how much it ruins people’s intellect
though the lobotomized themselves weren’t among the loudest advocates of the procedure afaik
unlike trepanation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepanning#Voluntary_trepanation
Unhappy thought: For whatever future we’ve got, the history of mathematics will be scarred by fashtech cocaine. The people with all the money have every incentive to make mathematics intractable as a profession. No time or resources to do anything but clean up after their DDOS attacks. No way to check the correctness of AI-generated proofs except by using more AI to formalize them.
First up: thanks for your hard work here in the sneer mines during these ridiculous times!
I saw this being ignored on HN and I thought that you might appreciate it:
Navier-Stokes Lost in Translation – Why Lean Verification of AI Autoformalisation Does not Guarantee Correct Natural Language Proofs
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.08144
The authors point out that automatic translation of natural language mathematics into Lean is very hard, actually. They also highlight some examples of such translation errors in the Navier-Stokes “paper” published by OpenAI. They tread lightly and don’t take a position on the correctness of the proof, but they do bring a large stack of receipts.
I also thought the reference to the Solvability Complexity Index (which is new to me) was interesting, and there’s an appendix with an explainer on how the SCI hierarchy is constructed. According to this scheme, autoformalisation of natural language proofs is strictly harder than the Halting Problem.
I haven’t had a chance to check on the bona fides of the authors.
This is all beyond my level, but I’d love to see what our local experts think of it in light of the recent gish galop.
There’s apparently an “Association for Human Mathematics” that has released the following statement:
Yesterday, on October 6th, 2026, OpenAI – which is currently defending lawsuits against accusations of illegal plagiarism, copyright infringement, and trademark dilution – released a repository of manuscripts purporting to contain solutions to a number of high-profile problems in mathematics.
Mathematicians did not ask for this work to be done. The Advisory Group on Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence, from whom OpenAI has claimed to derive its legitimacy, opened their initial advisory statement by saying that frontier AI corporations should not test advanced mathematical problems on internal models. In ignoring the central premise of the Advisory Group’s position, OpenAI has indicated total disregard for the norms of scientific research — norms that guarantee that mathematics remains trustworthy, ethically researched, and in the public interest.
Mathematicians have a particular vision of progress that is informed by history and field-specific considerations. We reject OpenAI’s assertion that this release advances our subject, and we urge mathematicians and the public to view the value of this publication model with due skepticism.
Releasing over 700 files at once is not a demonstration of scholarship, but a demonstration of power. We urge mathematicians to discontinue their work with OpenAI and to return to a vision of science that centers human understanding.
Stuff like this highlights that the "info"dump was an act of contempt toward professional mathematics. If OAI actually gave a damn about people, they could have coordinated with actual researchers in the relevant fields to clean up the documents while putting a human face on them. Put everything behind NDAs, fund some grants and fellowships, and if it leaks? So what, it would have been actual good press and built hype. Plus, it would have weeded out the the obvious garbage and they’d have brought a lot of young researchers inside the tent.
But nooooooo, they chose violence, because they are assholes. They’ll never forgive the academics for doing the work and actually being good at math and physics.
I know I’m preaching to the choir, but damn I’m stirred up.
If they actually gave a damn about people they wouldn’t be working at OpenAI
Happy cake day!
Thanks! :)
One of the proofs that OpenAI announced yesterday is for a major open problem in the field I’m working in. I tried to read it but it was a completely incomprehensible 100+ page output. I guess the community has to do all the dirty work of figuring out any sort of understanding. (I had known about the results weeks in advance before their official announcement. There is a bunch of more drama there that I won’t get into.) Putting aside the serious possibility of Lean bugs, a lot of people don’t realize that there is ultimately no point in having a machine just generate Lean blobs endlessly. The reality is that mathematicians have always done math for the sake of enjoyment or understanding, and math contributes to society by improving understanding. Still, I am worried about the convenient social arrangement that allowed many mathematicians to do this for a modest living.
Anyway, I’m sure it was a good idea to apply the full might of capital for pure math problems, instead of less important social issues like climate change. We even got a more efficient discrete Fourier transform, improved from O(n log n) to, I shit you not, O(n (log n)^0.9999999999999)).
Edit: Here is an article by Quanta which I think accurately describes the situation that mathematicians are going through right now: https://www.quantamagazine.org/is-ai-the-end-of-math-as-we-know-it-20261005/
so what i’m getting from this is the only kind of progress openai and friends are capable of is progressing from slop grenades to slop airstrikes, and so far it only works because they have good marketing, augmented by their own bot farms, and because money is all you need, and so far they haven’t ran out of money
I’m not at all a mathematician and mostly bad at understanding things, but, is an unwieldy proof that’s barely comprehensible and might be relying on multiple layers of bugs and traps and whatever undefined edges of formal proof systems even a proof at all? Does it actually merit consideration outside of pure spite (understandable)?
personally I feel like all this shit is a continuation/outgrowth from the crypto “whitepaper” phenomenon: ~zero substantive engagement with the actual discipline in question, and “work product” (quotes intentional) equal to some claims with a “proof” thrown out as its defense
(it also continues to be part of a cultural and knowledge DDoS, which others have written better on)
Like, in other words, I don’t think most mathematicians are particularly interested in building huge datacenters to brute-force compute quintillions of decimals of pi under current algorithms? Because the point is understanding, not mere knowledge? I dunno!
If it’s actually exploiting a bug in a formal system, no. If it’s a natural-language (unformalized) document which no one can understand, no. On the other hand a formal proof not using bugs which can’t be understood, is still considered a proof, though its value is lower than an understandable proof (because as you said in another comment, the real value is in understanding rather than theorems). The prototypical example before LLMs was the proof of the four-color theorem which relied on computer-checked casework.
I suppose what it comes down to is, if OpenAI couldn’t be bothered to try and elucidate their results, or even try to separate nonsensical exploits from genuine proofs, I don’t understand why mathematicians shouldn’t treat all of it as worthless instead of doing unpaid PR work for them.
I think the problem, from a layman’s perspective, is that it wasn’t until the mathematicians started digging through it that it became apparent how bad the situation was. My only frame of reference for whether the proofs are nonsense or not is you kind folks bitching about it, and OpenAI was happy to do the marketing part with or without anyone signing on.
I mean, I don’t know, my confusion comes from also seeing a lot of mathematicians react as if mathematics are over and that it sucks that the future is all about checking AI proofs. And I suppose it’s unpleasant when a sort of maybe authoritative entity comes out of nowhere and tells you the answer to your favourite problem is 42 and doesn’t elaborate. But I feel like I might be missing something as to why this is a big deal. (Apart from OpenAI’s shitty conduct, I mean.)
This was exactly the point - flood the zone with shit to show how “smart” the stuff underlying your IP is
I guess the community has to do all the dirty work of figuring out any sort of understanding.
Hooray for the Denial of Service attack from the industry that wants to put a meter on thinking itself.
We even got a more efficient discrete Fourier transform, improved from O(n log n) to, I shit you not, O(n (log n)^0.9999999999999)).
rational investors enabling marginal utility… thasss capitalism in action baybeeeee
If it makes you feel better, the applied / empirical side is just as fucked as pure math. My unhappy thought is we spent 30 years as a discipline trying to decontaminate after The Bell Curve dropped and now, AI Murray will haunt me from beyond the grave.
It isnt going to just be math, programming, various sites filled with usefull information that are now being closed because they keep being hammered by bots (or ddos attacks if they manage to actively block the bots) etc. What a waste.
