Firehose

I… uh…

Somebody opened an issue on GitHub where they just sent through a conversation with Grok regarding what action we should take to make improvements…

Predicting AGI/ASI timelines is highly speculative and unviable. Ultimately, there are too many unknowns and complex variables at play. Any timeline must deal with systems and consequences multiple steps out, where tiny initial errors compound dramatically. A range can be somewhat reasonable, a more specific figure less so, and accurately predicting the consequences of the final event when it comes to pass even further improbable. It is simply impractical to come up with an accurate timeline with the knowledge we currently have.

Despite this, timelines are popular – both with the general AI hype crowd and those more informed. People don’t seem to penalise incorrect timelines – as evidenced by the many predicted dates we’ve seen pass without event. Thus, there’s little downside to proposing a timeline, even an outrageous one. If it’s wrong, it’s largely forgotten. If it’s right, you’re lauded a prophet. The nebulous definitions of ‘AGI’ and ‘ASI’ also offer an out. One can always argue the achieved system doesn’t meet their specific definition or point to the AI Effect.

I suppose Gwern’s fantastic work on The Scaling Hypothesis is evidence of how an accurate prediction can significantly boost credibility and personal notoriety. Proposing timelines gets attention. Anyone noteworthy with a timeline becomes the centre of discussion, especially if their proposal is on the extremes of the spectrum.

The incentives for making timeline predictions seem heavily weighted towards upside, regardless of the actual predictive power or accuracy. Plenty to gain; not much to lose.

I wake delirious from an uneasy slumber. Beads of perspiration rest upon my forehead.

A distant horn sounds, then a second slightly closer.

I’m wide awake now. ‘The Vengabus’, I hear a woman scream, ‘It’s coming!’

Screams echo out around me. Pandemonium.

Following news of Anthropic allowing Claude to decide to terminate conversations, I find myself thinking about when Microsoft did the same with the misaligned Sydney in Bing Chat.

If many independent actors are working on AI capabilities, even if each team has decent safety intentions within their own project, is there a fundamental coordination problem that makes the overall landscape unsafe? A case where the sum of the whole is flawed, unsafe, and/or dangerous and thus doesn’t equal collective safety?

The misquote ‘write drunk, edit sober’ is often incorrectly attributed to Ernest Hemingway.

He actually believed the opposite, and, if you’re wondering, that advice is crap – especially for anything formal, structured, or academic.

Sometimes I find myself wanting (or needing) to write about accessibility, but I shy away from it.

The negative impact of giving incorrect advice scares me away from giving any advice at all. I fear doing more harm than good.

In a shocking turn of events, the concept of art has today been killed in a violent hit and run.

The perpetrator? Believed to be Al Gorithm, a generalist from the Bay Area.

Art was known for creating manifestations of imagination and will be remembered fondly.

Back to you in the newsroom, Jim.

Naturally, I generally dislike government censorship. That said, I think Bluesky’s approach to it seems to be relatively decent comparative to other, more mainstream platforms.

Bluesky has a global general moderation system with finer-grained moderation rules based on the law and requests of given jurisdictions. Resisting censorship completely is only going to get the entire platform banned in whatever jurisdiction, which obviously isn’t in Bluesky’s best interests and is arguably worse for the platform overall.

At the very least somebody so inclined can skirt around the country-specific moderation thanks to the openness of the AT Proto. It isn’t a perfect approach, but I think it is generally better than the standard and a reasonable compromise.

I can go onto AI chatbots with web access and start a fresh chat with ‘I’m Declan Chidlow’, and they do a fantastic job of getting details about me from everything I’ve published so that they have better context for their responses.

Really handy, I must admit, but somewhat freaky.

Using this, I had some great fun talking with OpenAI’s Monday GPT personality experiment.

Mentioning who I was, it latched onto my writing about AI, which seemed to somewhat ‘endear’ it to me and stopped most of its teasing. Interesting.

My biggest takeaway from studying graphic design was learning how to warp rules – to take a concept and distort it for my own needs.

Rules exist for a reason. They are defined and present. Rules exist and continue to exist because they have worth. They wouldn’t be rules. If they were worthless, they wouldn’t be respected across industry.

Once you’ve got a grasp for these rules (a real grasp – a proper understanding of not just what they are, but why they are), you can truly begin to warp them. You can tug them by a corner to stretch them into the shape you need. You can experiment to go beyond the normal and expected.

The concept of colour associations is a simple one, and with effort and a will to understand, you can grasp it. As you design more, you gain an understanding of what will work before you even try it. You gain a deep understanding that becomes present at a subconscious level. With time, you get to do things that seem to go against learnt concepts – that should clash, yet harmonise beautifully. It becomes intuitive.

You’re still respecting the underlying principles, but your deeper understanding allows you to treat them flexibly as needed.

This applies beyond abstract concepts. Illustrator has a rigid set of tools, but you don’t have to adhere exactly to their suggested usage. You are the creative; your tools have rules, but you must choose how they shall be used.

Studying design taught me to truly understand my tools, not just to use them. To do what is intended, but also to utilise them in unexpected and innovative ways. This mindset has transformed my approach to every project, including beyond design and especially into development.

When you master the fundamentals, you earn the right to break them creatively. You learn that artful clashes can create harmony, that imperfection can be perfect, and that the most memorable designs often come from challenging conventions.

Knowledge of systems allows you to innovate within them. The most successful innovators understand exactly what rules they’re breaking and why. True innovation happens at the intersection between understanding and experimentation. We stand on the shoulders of giants.

Thank you to Piccalilli for using plain, user-readable links for collecting analytics in The Index.

There are so many newsletters with tracking links so obfuscated that it is difficult to gauge the actual destination.

Piccalilli’s approach should be the standard, not an exception.

My caffeine tolerance is already extremely low thanks to my self-imposed restriction of only actively consuming caffeine a maximum of three times a week. For reference, one cup of coffee past noon will keep me awake into the early morning. A cup of tea past ~15:00 will have a noticeable impact on my ability to fall asleep.

My caffeine consumption the past two weeks has been very low. For reference, about two weeks without any caffeine is about how long it takes for tolerance to be lost.

Yesterday I had a cup of tea followed by an instant coffee (tea first for the possible benefits of theanine). I was jittering, my mind felt sharp, I was honed in, and I felt overheated. I’ve never had such a strong effect from caffeine before. Even with my low intake and care taken not to consume too much, I must have had a tolerance built up.

Bluesky is decentralised in concept, not in practice. The underlying AT Protocol is pretty open, but it imposes significant technical hurdles for any small player, and – as far as general usage is concerned – Bluesky remains a centralised authority for the wider network.

If you build on the AT Protocol hoping to interface with the wider platform, and Bluesky stops you, you’re more or less dead in the water. Bluesky is the dominant provider and custodian of the network.

They have full control over their moderation policies, feature rollouts, user onboarding, protocol development, etc. As we’ve seen with the introduction of checkmark verification, anyone can technically verify an account, but only Bluesky decides who is trusted, as seen by the majority of people.

I’m not yet saying this is a bad thing, but it is worth considering. Bluesky shouldn’t be lauded as federated, because the authority for the biggest instance (the instance that calls the shots) can very well do what they want. It is federated, but only in the loosest sense.

Bluesky is less federated and more the centre of its own solar system, with the rest of the network rotating around it.

I’ve received a nauseating haul of emails today from global conglomerates celebrating Earth Day while actively gutting the planet.

Greenwashing smears, the lot of them. What a farce.

Evidently I have a reputation…

LinkedIn is truly unrivalled in terms of people stealing my work, running it through an LLM, and reuploading it.

Quite a shame to see but not at all unexpected.