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I read that essay on Twitter the other day and thought that it was a mildly interesting expression of one end of the "AI is coming for our jobs" thing but a lit

by simonw 9mo ago

I read that essay on Twitter the other day and thought that it was a mildly interesting expression of one end of the "AI is coming for our jobs" thing but a little slop-adjacent and not worth sharing further. And it's now at 80 million views! https://x.com/mattshumer_/status/2021256989876109403 https://x.com/mattshumer_/status/2021256989876109403 It appears to have really caught the zeitgeist.

camillomiller 9mo ago
Well the zeitgeist is that our brains are so fried that such piece of mediocre writing penned by a GPT-container startupper can surge to the top
kerblang 9mo ago
Let me get something straight: That essay was completely fake, right? He/It was lying about everything, and it was some sort of... what? Did the 80 million people believe what they were reading? Have we now transitioned to a point where we gaslight everyone for the hell of it just because we can, and call it, what, thought-provoking?
- coffeefirst 9mo ago
  Yes. It’s an ad for his product, which nobody had heard of before. I’m not on twitter but I’m seeing it pretty much everywhere now.
- hypfer 9mo ago
  > Did the 80 million people believe what they were reading? Those numbers are likely greatly exaggerated. Twitter is nowhere near where it was at its peak. You could almost call it a ghost town. Linkedin but for unhinged crypto- and AI bros. I'm sure the metrics report 80 million views, but that's not 80 million actual individuals that cared about it. The narrative just needs these numbers to get people to buy into the hype.
- Kiro 9mo ago
  What was fake? I don't see anything controversial or factually wrong. I question the prediction but that's his opinion.
  - zahlman 9mo ago
    I think the claim is that it doesn't represent an authentic personal experience, despite pretending to.
- scottmf 9mo ago
  The guy is a fraud https://venturebeat.com/ai/new-open-source-ai-leader-reflection-70bs-performance-questioned-accused-of-fraud https://venturebeat.com/ai/new-open-source-ai-leader-reflect...
ianbutler 9mo ago
I just skimmed this and the so called zeitgeist here is fear. People are scared, it's material concern and he effectively stoked it. I work on this technology for my job and while I'm very bullish pieces like that are as you said slopish and as I'll say breathless because there are so many practical challenges here to deal with standing between what is being said there and where we are now. Capability is not evenly distributed and it's getting people into loopy ideas of just how close we are to certain milestones, not that it's wrong to think about those potential milestones but I'm wary of timelines.
- pfisch 9mo ago
  Are you ever concerned about the consequences of what you are making? No one really knows how this will play out and the odds of this leading to disaster are significant. I just don't understand people working on improving ai. It just isn't worth the risk.
  - ianbutler 9mo ago
    Of course, I think about this at least once a week maybe more often. I think that the technology overall will be a great net benefit to humanity or I wouldn't touch it.
    - justonepost1 9mo ago
      Genuine question: how? I’m younger than most on this site. I see the next decades of my life being defined by a multi-generational dark age via a collapse in literacy (“you use a calculator right?”), median prosperity (the only truly functional distribution system we have figured out is labor), and loss of agency (kinda obvious). This outcome is now, as of 2026, essentially priced into the public markets and accepted as fact by most media outlets. “It’s inevitable” is at least a hard point to argue with. “Well I’M so productive, I’m having the time of my life”, the dominant position in many online tech spaces, seems short-sighted at best. I miss being a techno optimist, it’s much more fun. But it’s increasingly hard.
Der_Einzige 9mo ago
This is what they get for not reading our antislop paper (ICLR 2026) and using our anti-slopped sampler/models, or Kimi (which is remarkable relatively non sloppy) https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.15061 https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.15061 I thought normies would have caught onto the EM dash, overuse of semicolons, overuse of fancy quotes, lack of exclamation marks, "It's not X, it's Y", etc. Clearly I was wrong.
- gwern 9mo ago
  Is Kimi still non-sloppy? When I switched to 2.5, it suddenly felt noticeably less creative and base-model-like, more sycophantic, and it hasn't gone aggro at all. Feels like a lot of the magic is gone.
coffeebeqn 9mo ago
It’s possible that all this will come to pass but honestly AI being able to do most of white collar work means we have reached AGI or baby AGI. The changes that will bring are for me totally unprojectable

by simonw 9mo ago

camillomiller 9mo ago

Well the zeitgeist is that our brains are so fried that such piece of mediocre writing penned by a GPT-container startupper can surge to the top

kerblang 9mo ago

Let me get something straight: That essay was completely fake, right? He/It was lying about everything, and it was some sort of... what? Did the 80 million people believe what they were reading? Have we now transitioned to a point where we gaslight everyone for the hell of it just because we can, and call it, what, thought-provoking?

coffeefirst 9mo ago
Yes. It’s an ad for his product, which nobody had heard of before. I’m not on twitter but I’m seeing it pretty much everywhere now.
hypfer 9mo ago
> Did the 80 million people believe what they were reading? Those numbers are likely greatly exaggerated. Twitter is nowhere near where it was at its peak. You could almost call it a ghost town. Linkedin but for unhinged crypto- and AI bros. I'm sure the metrics report 80 million views, but that's not 80 million actual individuals that cared about it. The narrative just needs these numbers to get people to buy into the hype.
Kiro 9mo ago
What was fake? I don't see anything controversial or factually wrong. I question the prediction but that's his opinion.
- zahlman 9mo ago
  I think the claim is that it doesn't represent an authentic personal experience, despite pretending to.
scottmf 9mo ago
The guy is a fraud https://venturebeat.com/ai/new-open-source-ai-leader-reflection-70bs-performance-questioned-accused-of-fraud https://venturebeat.com/ai/new-open-source-ai-leader-reflect...

ianbutler 9mo ago

I just skimmed this and the so called zeitgeist here is fear. People are scared, it's material concern and he effectively stoked it. I work on this technology for my job and while I'm very bullish pieces like that are as you said slopish and as I'll say breathless because there are so many practical challenges here to deal with standing between what is being said there and where we are now. Capability is not evenly distributed and it's getting people into loopy ideas of just how close we are to certain milestones, not that it's wrong to think about those potential milestones but I'm wary of timelines.

pfisch 9mo ago
Are you ever concerned about the consequences of what you are making? No one really knows how this will play out and the odds of this leading to disaster are significant. I just don't understand people working on improving ai. It just isn't worth the risk.
- ianbutler 9mo ago
  Of course, I think about this at least once a week maybe more often. I think that the technology overall will be a great net benefit to humanity or I wouldn't touch it.
  - justonepost1 9mo ago
    Genuine question: how? I’m younger than most on this site. I see the next decades of my life being defined by a multi-generational dark age via a collapse in literacy (“you use a calculator right?”), median prosperity (the only truly functional distribution system we have figured out is labor), and loss of agency (kinda obvious). This outcome is now, as of 2026, essentially priced into the public markets and accepted as fact by most media outlets. “It’s inevitable” is at least a hard point to argue with. “Well I’M so productive, I’m having the time of my life”, the dominant position in many online tech spaces, seems short-sighted at best. I miss being a techno optimist, it’s much more fun. But it’s increasingly hard.

Der_Einzige 9mo ago

This is what they get for not reading our antislop paper (ICLR 2026) and using our anti-slopped sampler/models, or Kimi (which is remarkable relatively non sloppy) https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.15061 https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.15061 I thought normies would have caught onto the EM dash, overuse of semicolons, overuse of fancy quotes, lack of exclamation marks, "It's not X, it's Y", etc. Clearly I was wrong.

gwern 9mo ago
Is Kimi still non-sloppy? When I switched to 2.5, it suddenly felt noticeably less creative and base-model-like, more sycophantic, and it hasn't gone aggro at all. Feels like a lot of the magic is gone.

coffeebeqn 9mo ago

It’s possible that all this will come to pass but honestly AI being able to do most of white collar work means we have reached AGI or baby AGI. The changes that will bring are for me totally unprojectable