Is anyone familiar with the website I Can Eat Glass? It was apparently created in the 90s by a Harvard student, who was concerned that people learning foreign languages only learn common phrases (e.g. “Where’s the loo?”) which makes them stand out as tourists when they speak. If one were to say a truly uncommon phrase, it stands to reason one would be instantly respected as a native. So he set up a website to collect as many translations of the phrase “I can eat glass, it does not hurt me” as he could.

Surely you are riveted to your screens right now, desperate to learn what this very special brain genius has been up to since then. Ethan Mollick is a professor at a Pennsylvania business school and published “Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI” in 2024. Some say he is substacking about the exponential growth of AI capabilities, but critically this book was apparently read by some german teaching influencer.

He in turn published a self-help book for parents of school kids this year, that got put on display in my local library. And of course it has a chapter on AI, so I had to lend it and hate-read a little. And of course he references Mollick and his Co-Intelligence screed, which he apparently absorbed as a base expectation what the future of AI will look like, and so I got to learn about one very special brain genius from Harvard.

My first association was Alex Jones screaming “I’M TEAM HUMAN” while ranting about environmentalists. So the brand is getting a little crowded it seems.

So I just stumbled into Team Human, because a Youtuber I kind of like (Kraut) published a video for them. They seem to run a campaign targeted at creators, pushing to get videos released on the 10th or 17th. So they must be having a bit of a high point right now. (Idk if cash changed hands.)

Their manifesto tries to amp up societal harms, but the existential risk is snuck in at the end (AI programmed pandemics, etc.) and they want to regulate AI chips like nukes. CAIS (Center for AI Safety) is listed as the sponsor. Seems a little “AI centrist” to me, as in aligned with the less insane billionaires, but still a typical AI safety astroturfing shop. Shame if any of your favorite creators fell for it.

though the lobotomized themselves weren’t among the loudest advocates of the procedure afaik

Ah well, that’s them computos for ya 🤷

Okay, what’s up with this title? Is this an 4-years-late announcement of support for Theo Seremitidis, who was unfairly dismissed by an australian company over labor safety disputes? Are there other Theos in need of support right now? Just Theo appreciation day in general?

I am utterly sniped. I have to go buy groceries now.

Also works for cocaine, I’m noticing.

Might be best as a comeback, if someone compares AI to a pharmaceutical breakthrough like antibiotics.

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.

The bubble will pop. It’s much too big to be sustainable.

But that won’t fix software industry employment because the Large Language Models don’t really need to work that well for this process. They only need to sort of work.

Get ready for the era of digitally sovereign on-premise open weight perpetual software sweatshops.

You can download an executable and surf websites with it, which will frequently break I guess.

Not sure how much help one can offer atm except donating or contributing directly.

You’re right. The grammer is right, but it still sounds off. Like, idk, someone fully capable of english leaving threats in his second language to be sneaky?

Je, wrong gramnar and the german feels totally off. Much too wooden amyway for a proper death threat.

I think he realized it too and sockpuppeted a better example. Check the comment by “Gerard”

I bumped heads here before on that take, but I can empathize deeply with these people.

I expect that interacting with most of them will be infuriating, since they probably accepted the “this is just how things are done from now on” narrative of AI and are some level of infatuated with the fancy demos.

But this acceptance is also where the inescapable soul-crushing comes from. If you can adopt an internal posture of resistance, the prevalence of AI is still grating but you can adopt a perspective that doesn’t devalue your own skill and makes personal impact conceivable. Many of these folks are pretty far gone, but a pipeline of recovery should be possible from a starting point like this.

The concept seemed interesting to me, but they did seem to enjoy making everything as complicated as possible.

I did find a CLAUDE.md when I was browsing their core repos a while back. That was only the web frontend I believe, not the core algorithm. Though it seems generous to assume they weren’t slopping up that one too.

First time I heard of this guy, but this slaps! Main post material

I just happened to watch the Heute-Show segment on the topic. (german late-night satirical news show, pretty decent takes usually but it’s no ZDF Magazin Royale)

It is nice that the doom claims by AI-CEOs are considered incredulous and their motivation is questioned (financial trouble, flagging product improvement). They certainly weren’t critical enough on some claims, e.g. the “AI hacking” incidents, let alone the inevitable dominance of AI tools. But despite that it was nice to see some sneering of the endless parroting of AI PR pieces that dominates german news.

Wernher von Braun is the way better comparison. Just maybe not one we like to make, since he basically got away with it and died an icon of U.S. space exploration.

Goering was pretty unapologetic at Nürnberg afaik, since he knew he was getting the rope.

Apparently they have the same sense of timing as the Blockchain Socialist guy, but he at least picked a brand that isn’t tied to the current hype cycle again.

This is nice! I’m curious how it’s building its index.

Probably not great fot general research, but for finding wholesome authentic stuff like cooking recipes it seems great.