This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
OpenAI are leaning hard into anthropomorphic design with their new voice features. These are unlike anything I've seen (or rather heard) on other platforms, and they're just rolling out a big update - Ethan Mollick had a good recent piece on it. While the idea of talking out loud to your AI may seem unnecessary, I've found it fits into a very useful niche in my workflow - e.g., getting an interactive lecture on long car journeys, workshopping a lecture while waiting for a train. And it's the one version of ChatGPT I've had success at pitching to older people in my life.
However, I suspect most of the revenue long-term from AI will come from B2B services. OpenAI are doing pretty well here - I don't have the exact figures, but chatting AI policy with some major (non-AI) firms, around half of them I've interacted with have service contracts with OpenAI (not Google, or even Microsoft) for an internal secure version of ChatGPT. However, these internal versions are typically worse than the off-the-shelf model, which is slowing employee adoption.
All in all I think it's way too early to write off OpenAI. OpenAI (and Anthropic) are definitely doing something a bit different by explicitly leaning into anthropomorphic design, as opposed to the Google/Microsoft/Apple model where LLMs should be utterly generic and boring and predictable.
They are still the top for now. No argument here.
But, a year ago, @sama said that AGI had been achieved internally and people thought he might be serious.
Now they are merely first among equals. As cool as the new features are, this is not AGI. I don't think they have any special sauce. There's probably nothing they can do that a startup with $100 million can't do. Hell, even China is making top-tier models now. OpenAI might end up as a successful company, they might not, but they are certainly not looking like the world beater that they did 18 months ago.
On the other side of coin, Elon is just crushing it on all levels now with Grok AI, Tesla FSD, Neuralink, and SpaceX. It's mind-boggling how he maintains all this despite apparently spending hours a day shitposting. GOAT.
Some people still think he's serious. The "strawberry"/qstar meme train has been going for the better part of a year at this point I think, with the usual twitter personalities promising that it's just around the corner the whole time.
Grok and SpaceX are the real deal. Neuralink seems promising but afaik there isn't much publicly demonstrated so far. Tesla FSD is multi year neverware best known for causing multi car pileups on US-101 thanks to oblivious drivers scrolling while driving.
You might need to update on FSD. The latest updates have been described as a phase change. It's not level 5 yet, but apparently they have a clear lead.
That sounds like the same marketing stuff that I've heard for previous versions. IMO - it is unlikely that we can get better than human driving performance (which is what will be necessary for the public to accept this) without advanced sensors (e.g. LIDAR). To my knowledge, despite the marketing name of FSD, Tesla requires that you remain attentive to the road, which is really a recipe for disaster.
But we'll see. I can believe they have a clear lead over other car manufacturers, because the rest of them are basically not touching this with a ten foot pole.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'd dispute even first among equals. Claude Sonnet 3.5 is nearly always my go-to nowadays, falling back to GPT-4o when it's overloaded. (I will sometimes try the same prompt across all of Gemini/ChatGPT/Claude just to make sure they don't catch anything Claude would miss, and DeepSeek for code, but I've yet to be surprised.)
That said, I'd be surprised if Gemini and ChatGPT haven't caught up to/surpassed where Claude is today by end of year. But it's hard to imagine any of them building an enduring lead unless one has something up their sleeve.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link