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 -
Is anyone excited about OpenAI at this point? They've spent what feels like forever selling hype for things that you can't use, and once (if ever) you finally get access to them, they end up feeling underwhelming. Sora got surpassed before it ever released. I expect people will prefer R1 to O3 in actual use even after the latter releases.
Right now OAI seems fixated on maxing out benchmarks and using that to build hype about "incoming AGI" and talk up how risky and awesome and dangerous their tech is. They can hype up the mystery "super agents" all they want and talk about how they'll "change everything", but for practical applications, Anthropic seems to be doing better, and now Deepseek is pushing boundaries with open models. Meanwhile, OAI seems to be trying to specialize into investment money extraction, focusing purely on hype building and trying to worm their way into a Boeing-type position with the US gov.
I don't expect anything to come of this "investment", but I'll be waiting eagerly for deepseek's next announcement. China seems to be the place to look for AI advancement.
As much as I'm convinced Altman is a scammer, this may very well be the best interest of the shareholders.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link