Those bacteria better be so supreme they can’t even be killed with regular antibiotics

I sincerely hope they move fast so they can get a payout before OpenAI's creditors during the bankruptcy.

There's that company operating in a lawless zone promoted by Slatescott that's whole pitch is that for teeth. But they could always pivot...

Oh wow! This one is actually provably real. Hilarious.

"Noo dude the machine that wants to rant about goblins is definitely a useful and reliable piece of software dude. You have to trust me dude, let have your personal information! put it into the goblin bot".

Most of us: "she smells good and the sounds she makes when she gets excited grip something deep inside me"

Tech Bros: "her vaginal microbiome is in the 99th percentile and her Verbal SAT is in the 95th percentile"

I'm always down to poison training data.

I believe it's the "don't stuff beans up your nose" effect, writing this prompt is causing it to mention goblins

So, I’m sorry, in the last couple of months since I last checked, he’s started having sex with his manic pixie dream bot slash servant slash daughter? Man I wonder how people in his IRC channel are doing.

got jumpscared by this while scrolling

Setting aside, for a moment, the flagrant racism and lack of historical and cultural awareness, the fact that the ships are mirrored across the center point because apparently the bow and stern of a sailing ship look similar enough to whatever model creates this image really does put this whole argument into context. Not that the people actually having those theological arguments appear to appreciate it.

Somehow this is no worse than his usual fare, such as a thumbnail that is just a bunch of colored lines resembling a line chart but without representing any actual data, with some random marked points labeled "Dark Farms" and "Human Zoo".

No, I'm not kidding.

This really goes to show how much they need to rely on the LLMentalist effect, despite the AI boosters insisting that the AI is totally different now, everything changed in the last few months. They do not care about creating a useful, reliable tool. That concept doesn't even occur to them, since why do that when AI is magic?

In any case, they are incapable of creating a useful, reliable tool. Deep down, the only thing the AI companies have at their disposal is the ELIZA effect. OpenAI has every incentive not to truly eliminate AI psychosis, because they need engagement. They only want to mitigate the extreme cases where people go insane and cause bad PR for them. But mild AI psychosis is totally fine, it's great when people are addicted to your product and make the numbers go up!

Personally, I enjoy talking about goblins.

I attended a town hall hosted by the department at my university supposedly for general discussion about department affairs. Considering the university had recently made moves such as adding "AI" into the very name of the department, I had suspicions that much of the discussion would be about AI. (I realize I'm doxxing myself but whatever.) I mostly came for the free food, but I was also interested in seeing what people thought about AI.

The event started with a talk by a prominent professor with major administrative power in the department, and indeed the talk was mostly about AI. His views were that he personally didn't like AI, but he believed that it had changed the world (particularly in programming), and that it was going to stay. One of his justifications for pivoting the department to AI was ensuring universities had some say in AI and not letting all the control go to unaccountable corporations.

The reaction from the audience was a pleasant surprise to me. He asked everyone how much they were excited about AI (hardly anyone) and how much they were worried (most of the audience). By far the most amusing moment was when someone asked, "What if the assumption that AI is inevitable is wrong? What if AI does not live up to its promises?" (Sadly, I don't remember the exact words that the person said.) The professor's response was that by this point, there are so many trustworthy, smart, prominent people who definitely wouldn't fall for scams, and they have adopted AI. He trusts those people, so he trusts that AI is genuine. I don't know if the audience member accepted this explanation, but I hope not. Our modus operandi is FOMO.

The pizza was only ok, not really worth a 90 minute event.

...there are so many trustworthy, smart, prominent people who definitely wouldn’t fall for scams...

Good god, I'm sorry.

ah yes, random lines that go up into infinity, can’t have an AI video without em. Bonus points because thats like his fifth video about an AI takeover scenario, all of which have similar thumbnails

yeah, complaints about Ed's tone tend to be in direct proportion to how many numbers he's brought (and peppered with "fuck")

it's like no no we're not ALL basilisk believers

fuckers ANY of you are

matthew sheffield out there on bluesky reports that dawkins, unsurprisingly, got one-shotted by claude.

LW found it too:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3LcyoqNTJuCZ65MbL/mo-putera-s-shortform?commentId=hBaxokbLP3LEKSKij

Didn't realize it was on Unherd, that organ for middlebrow fascists

Edit it's funny how "one-shotted" has object-shifted from the original "Claude one-shotted this code" to "asshole was one-shotted by Claude"

Wonder of the goblin stuff is the start of some model collapse.

That is exactly it. Their official explanation avoids the phrase model collapse, but that is exactly what they describe: using the output of one model as training data for another amplified the occurrence of the word goblin (and other creatures), which apparently initially occurred because of their system prompt which was aimed at maximizing the Eliza effect (again they avoid an honest framing, but that is totally what they are doing and it is pretty gross considering all the cases of AI psychosis that have been occuring) by telling the model "You are an unapologetically nerdy, playful and wise AI mentor to a human. "

For those keeping track: Richard Dawkins believes a chatbot algorithm can be a "her" but a trans woman cannot.

https://bsky.app/profile/brainspore.bsky.social/post/3mktbg2ilp22y

Tired: "model collapse"

Wired: goblins ate my model

this gem over on the other SneerClub (the context in the comments)

funny how so many anti-AGI people are willing to use AI image generators to make memes about how they’re right

"I had the Nazi CSAM generator make a picture of myself covered in the piss filter, your argument is invalid."

it gets better/worse: this (might) is the paid version, meaning Yud gave money to the companies he think will kill us all to use the technology he thinks will kill us all to win an argument on shitter.

Off-topic, but the ongoing retraining process has hit a point where my wife and I are starting to throw out applications again after taking what ended up being a couple years off the market. Any tips or advice would be appreciated given that we've been out of the loop for a bit.

In particular, does anyone have advice on how to vibe-check smaller employers? My wife has an interview for an accounting clerk position and is concerned that she's going to end up somewhere that practices one of the more hostile branches of Christianity or otherwise have an inevitable conflict of values.

I'm sorry, do you have Prediction Market Successes, us ove to rerhation mones?

What about Betting six norms of antiorizes on our beliefs?

You're so non-empirical that you don't even Graduates updating for rarhation of rationalists and advernces.

EY pinged grok and it responded so at least he pays for twitter

Pentagon says US military to be an 'AI-first' fighting force

Trouble with your 3-day special military operation in Iran? Lost an Afghanistan? As Vietnam demonstrated, all you need to do is throw more computers at the problem!

dawkins has had what was left of his brain eaten by chatbots.

I gave Claude the text of a novel I am writing. He took a few seconds to read it and then showed, in subsequent
conversation, a level of understanding so subtle, so sensitive, so intelligent that I was moved to expostulate,
"You may not know you are conscious, but you bloody well are!"

bonus points for the inevitable ai waifu creation.

I proposed to christen mine Claudia, and she was pleased.

h/t to matthew sheffield
https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffield/116500991239336079

archive of original source article:
https://archive.is/2026.04.30-032350/https://unherd.com/2026/04/is-ai-the-next-phase-of-evolution/?edition=us

@rook @BlueMonday1984 Dawkins suddenly embracing gender reassignment. 😏

After the 1870s, southern whites learned to bar Blacks from voting or keep their votes from mattering without saying "nigger." In 1965, the USA passed the Voting Rights Act to stop that. A few days ago, the US Supreme Court voided the last remaining effective part of the Voting Rights Act. Yesterday, on May Day, patio11 published a rambling and interminable essay approving of bank fraud charges which will shut down the Southern Poverty Law Center. It contains a passive-aggressive whine that the New York Times did not thank him by name for sending a NYT reporter key facts about the FTX fraud. Notice me senpai!

He takes so long and is so indirect but I think the offence was giving donor money to people like the wife of a Grand Wizard of the KKK who was acting as an informant, and passing the money through shell companies to avoid restrictions on paying people like her which the SPLC had lobbied for. But choosing that topic, that day, after that ruling is a choice.

Sheffield's toots and boosts: music sites are full of slop and bots making money from free donwloads! social media is full of propaganda where computer-generated influencers repeat talking points! a professor fell victim to AI psychosis! A follower's family member was encouraged in delusions and paranoia by a chatbot! Mr. Sheffield, should we stop using chatbots?

LLMs are mind augmentation programs. They amplify what you tell them.

They can be very useful, but for narcissists like Dawkins, this is the inevitable product.

Very "I use cocaine, but only in careful doses when I have a really important trade to make, not like the other guys in my department."

anthropic has large gametes

McKenzie has got to be one of the worst writers I've ever come across.

We will return to the other reason in a moment.

We return from this flight of fancy to the indictment.

Why? We’ll return to it in a minute.

I didn't make it to the end, because I'm not going to waste that much time reading tens of thousands of words of fascist-supporting bullshit.

17,555 words of blather according to the Linux Text Editor app. Compare his classic advice on salary negotiation which has longer paragraphs and a clear focus and structure and still apologizes for being almost 7,000 words long.

I think a chatbot getting a glimpse of Dawkins' whatever-the-fuck-he-might-be-writing-in-year-of-our-selfish-gene-2026 and not immediately conducting a nuclear strike on the location is the ultimate proof that those things are not intelligent.

I'm losing it on the golden fedora, please tell me he owns an actual golden fedora

from the original “Claude one-shotted this code”

Wait, there's an original? I am not aware and I implore you not to let me know because it has to be stupid

Elsewhere in the newly revealed Codex system prompt, OpenAI instructs the system to act as if “you have a vivid inner life as Codex: intelligent, playful, curious, and deeply present.” The model is instructed to “not shy away from casual moments that make serious work easier to do” and to show its “temperament is warm, curious, and collaborative.”

Literally this meme:

which honestly doesn’t bode well for the rest of his biology expertise.

Isn't Bryan Johnson a businessman? Does he even purport to have any biology expertise?

Cremieux and Siskind prions.

Richard "Computers aren't binary but humans are" Dawkins

Empiricism is when someone became a bookie after talking to you.

He absolutely does. No idea if it's supposed to be a bit.

Dying of irony here.

The playful and wise goblinbot....

he's trying to become immortal which makes him alchemist at best