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#CryptoVC #Web3 #AI #DeFi #VentureCapital #Startups #Blockchain #VCICI
ai
Re-introducing myself because it’s been a while!
Hello, I’m Adam. I support a team that designs and builds supercomputers for #HPC, #MachineLearning, and #AI applications. We span the full stack from datacenter design to middleware and app optimization.
Outside of work? My personal means of expression is mostly in #TTRPG campaigns, as well as baking cakes, playing #jazz music, and random tech fun.
I also spend a lot of time entertaining our three cats and a dog. What can I say, the beasties are pretty cute.
Hello, I’m Adam. I support a team that designs and builds supercomputers for #HPC, #MachineLearning, and #AI applications. We span the full stack from datacenter design to middleware and app optimization.
Outside of work? My personal means of expression is mostly in #TTRPG campaigns, as well as baking cakes, playing #jazz music, and random tech fun.
I also spend a lot of time entertaining our three cats and a dog. What can I say, the beasties are pretty cute.
A few inchoate thoughts on Gas Town, since I think this example has more to it than “it’s just a meth binge/crypto scam/one-shot AI poisoning”. Part of the reason I think this is that some of the rhetoric it deploys dovetails perfectly with broader trends and phenomena, and I think it's worth pulling those out.
1. Economists from the physiocrats (18th century) onward promised society freedom from material deprivation and hard physical labor in exchange for submitting to an economic arrangement of society
2. In a country like the US, material deprivation and hard physical labor have been significantly reduced since then:
1. Economists from the physiocrats (18th century) onward promised society freedom from material deprivation and hard physical labor in exchange for submitting to an economic arrangement of society
2. In a country like the US, material deprivation and hard physical labor have been significantly reduced since then:
Though too many clearly still suffer too much, a large proportion of people live free from fear of starvation or lack of shelter
The US has deindustralized, meaning hard physical labor is not the reality for a lot of people. For a lot of people labor is emotional or symbolic (“knowledge work”)
In other words, for lots of people the economic promise has been fulfilled
It is not coincidental that “Gas Town”’s announcement post mentioned Towers of Hanoi, an undergraduate CS student homework problem that for most students requires thinking hard. It’s designed to encourage a kind of “eureka” moment where recursion as a computer programming technique becomes more clear. GT claims to fulfill the promise of not having to think hard like this anymore: the LLMs will do that thinking for you
It is not coincidental that Gas Town is described as being very expensive. Economic power in the form of asset accumulation is what earns you freedom in this way of conceiving things. If you want the freedom from having to think hard, you’d better accumulate assets
Since the promise is greater collective freedom, endeavoring to accumulate assets is, in this view, a collective good
This differs from effective altruism and other “do good by doing well” conceptions. Rather, the very mechanism of economics produces collective wealth, so the story goes, which means the more active one is as an economic agent, the more collective good one produces (“wealth” and “good” being conflated)
Accumulation of assets is the scorecard, so to speak, of such enhanced economic activity, and the individual reward can then be freedom from having to think hard
Lotka’s maximum power principle (supposedly) dictates that those entities that transform the most power into useful organization are most fit from an evolutionary standpoint
Ernst Juenger’s notion of “total mobilization” brings this principle to politics/political economy/geopolitics: those nations that “totally” mobilize their national resources are the ones that will dominate geopolitically
See, for instance, the RAND Corporation’s Commission on the National Defense Strategy: “The Commission finds that the U.S. military lacks both the capabilities and the capacity required to be confident it can deter and prevail in combat. It needs to do a better job of incorporating new technology at scale; field more and higher-capability platforms, software, and munitions; and deploy innovative operational concepts to employ them together better.” (emphasis mine). In summary: the US is about to be outcompeted (lacks fitness); in response, it should go big (“at scale”, “more”) in an organized way (“deploy innovative operational concepts”, “employ them together better”)
The rhetoric around LLM-based AI includes similar language, exemplified in the GT post: burn through as much infrastructural resources as possible to produce organized outputs “at scale”, while avoiding having human beings think too hard to produce those outputs, an indication that the power was burned to produce useful organization
LLM-based AI plays a prominent role in US federal government strategy, particularly military strategy, with language about dominance serving to justify its use
It is not coincidental that Gas Town uses many orders of magnitude more resources to solve the Towers of Hanoi problem (“Burn All The Gas” Town). This rhetoric dovetails perfectly with the “total mobilization” concept
Edited 24d ago
The US Democratic party has been abjectly failing in so many ways. This is such a sad and frustrating read on the failures with respect to cryptocurrency regulation: https://lpeproject.org/blog/inside-the-failure-to-regulate-stablecoins/
What was and still is at stake is the balance between technology and humanity struck by the US federal government. The same incoherence that led us to where we are with crypto is almost surely also at play with the apparent lack of movement around generative AI.
#USPol #democrats #DemocraticParty #crypto #cryptocurrency #StableCoins #ShadowBanking #regulation #AI #GenAI
What was and still is at stake is the balance between technology and humanity struck by the US federal government. The same incoherence that led us to where we are with crypto is almost surely also at play with the apparent lack of movement around generative AI.
#USPol #democrats #DemocraticParty #crypto #cryptocurrency #StableCoins #ShadowBanking #regulation #AI #GenAI
Edited 60d ago
Perhaps the most (in)famous and illustrious American computer scientist and acknowledged principal pioneer of the discipline now known as artificial intelligence (AI), Professor Marvin Minsky of MIT, once pronounced—a belief he still holds—that ‘‘the brain is merely a meat machine.’’ It is significant that the English language distinguishes between ‘‘flesh’’ on the one hand, and ‘‘meat’’ on the other. The latter is dead and may be eaten, thrown in the garbage, fed to pigs, and so on. Flesh, on the other hand, is living matter and, as such, deserves the respect and dignity for life of which, among others, Albert Schweitzer spoke eloquently. The word ‘‘merely’’ in Minsky’s sentence means essentially ‘‘nothing but,’’ that is, also not deserving unusual respect. His statement is a clear reflection of a profound contempt for life that, as I see it, is shared explicitly by important sectors of the AI community, the artificial intelligentsia, as well as many scientists, engineers, and ordinary people. Daniel C. Dennett, an important American philosopher, once said that we must give up our awe of life if we are to make further progress in AI.
#AI #ComputerScience #life #brain #mind
"Only ten percent [of over 5,000 US adults] said they were "more excited than concerned," indicating that most Americans simply do not share the extremely optimistic views of tech leaders selling AI products."
Edited 155d ago
#French #Doors to #Paradise by Kaye Menner Wide variety #Prints & lovely #Products at:
https://kaye-menner.pixels.com/featured/french-doors-to-paradise-by-kaye-menner-kaye-menner.html
#beach #beachview #seashore #sunrise #horizon #sand #walkway #ocean #flowers #nature #summer #serene #tranquility #warmtones #yellowaqua #digitalart #ai #homedecor #mastoart #fediverse #fediart #fedigiftshop #giftideas #wallartforsale #Art #artforsale #BuyIntoArt #AYearForArt #Artist #FineArtAmerica #PhotographyFeed #VisualArts #CreativeArts
#lispyGopherClimate #LIVE #technology #podcast
https://communitymedia.video/w/vY4A9hxkZEQCe47UBASXFa
@kentpitman #climate #haiku and note on https://climate.us
@jns #gopher #phlog about #vcfmw
Mastodon #lisp happenings recently @mdhughes etc
#emacsconf proposal deadline is Friday!
Otherwise, I did lots of #commonLisp #programming this week and will talk about the #gof_ai & #DeepLearning #AI one, and maybe my spacetime-box #NicCLIM #gamedev.
https://screwlisp.small-web.org/fundamental/classical-ai-and-deep-learning-ai-difference-in-two-examples/
https://screwlisp.small-web.org/lispgames/spacetime-boxes-nicclim/
Edited 156d ago
#classicalAI ( #gof_ai ) and #deeplearning #AI . A minimal #programming #example in #commonLisp for identifying the artist of famous pictures with either approach.
The code fits on the back of a cereal box. (Barely. Argh, numerically encoding data for DL..).
I think this is as clear an example as can be. Though I look forward to your feedback and criticisms.
"𝐇𝐨𝐰 #𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐑𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐫 𝐃𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐎𝐮𝐫 #𝐏𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 𝐈𝐧 𝟐 𝐆𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭 #𝐌𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐞 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞𝐬"
𝑬𝒗𝒆𝒏 𝒊𝒏 𝒅𝒆𝒂𝒕𝒉, 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑮𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒕 𝑹𝒐𝒃 𝑹𝒆𝒊𝒏𝒆𝒓'𝒔 𝒉𝒆𝒍𝒑𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒖𝒔 𝒔𝒕𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒈𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 #𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒆 & 𝒇𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 #𝒇𝒂𝒔𝒄𝒊𝒔m / #𝑴𝑨𝑮𝑨, 𝒊𝒇 𝒘𝒆'𝒍𝒍 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒏:
https://www.blueamp.co/p/how-rob-reiner-decoded-our-politics-fa0 #politics #news #culture #military #BAM #film #ai #venezuela #usa #america #unitedstates #russia #tv #economy #tariffs #nato #us #writing #pr #narrative #ukraine #europe
I just had to convince my husband that his 60 slide, three hour talk on AI ethics would not be a suitable Christmas present for our friends.
If you write about the messy reality behind "free" internet services: we're seeing #OpenStreetMap hammered by scrapers hiding behind residential proxy/embedded-SDK networks. We're a volunteer-run service and the costs are real. We'd love to talk to a journalist about what we're seeing + how we're responding. #AI #Bots #Abuse
#翻译 之所以成为被 #AI 侵入最快的行业，是因为缺少“ #私有上下文 ”，几乎所有的技能和信息都是公开的（一名翻译很容易取代另一名翻译的工作），而且是相对容易数字化的（海量的现成文本和音频）。完全满足这些条件的职业其实并不多。
本来，高质量的文章就是适合机器翻译的。不适合机器翻译的文字常常是因为本身就写得比较混乱，这种文字大概率不值得花高成本去翻译。而且，一个可以感受到的趋势是，因为机器翻译的出现，很多文章为了能扩大受众，自觉不自觉地写成机器容易翻译的样子。
没人认为现在所有的人工翻译都不存在了，但是这个市场在显著地萎缩，因为机器翻译有几个数量级的成本和速度优势（几分钟几毛钱翻译一本书，更不要说优势还每秒钟都在扩大！）。少数不差钱的客户没法撑起一整个行业。
🇪🇺"One notable MIT study found that 95 percent of companies that integrated AI saw zero meaningful growth in revenue. For coding tasks, one of AI’s most widely hyped applications, another study showed that programmers who used AI coding tools actually became slower at their jobs.”
A lot of generative AI stuff isn’t really working,” Gownder told The Register. “And I’m not just talking about your consumer experience, which has its own gaps, but the MIT study that suggested that 95 percent of all generative AI projects are not yielding a tangible [profit and loss] benefit. So no actual [return on investment.]”
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-failing-boost-productivity
Learning a new AI-related term: workslop.
"The insidious effect of workslop is that it shifts the burden of the work downstream, requiring the receiver to interpret, correct, or redo the work. In other words, it transfers the effort from creator to receiver."
https://hbr.org/2025/09/ai-generated-workslop-is-destroying-productivity
#workslop #AI #slop #GenAI #technology #news #TechNews #study
🤖 WNB.rb Meetup Alert!
Join us Tuesday, September 30th at Noon Eastern for "Thoughtful AI for the Rubyist" with @christine!
Ever wondered how to make AI work for you without losing that Ruby magic? Christine will show us how to integrate AI tools into our Ruby workflow while keeping our code elegant and intentional.
Ruby enthusiast + lifetime learner - Christine brings practical wisdom with a bit of humor or at least she thinks so 😉
🔗 Join us: https://discord.gg/bd9ZHBB8?event=1414956005699096686
Edited 155d ago
CNN: Tired of AI, people are committing to the analog lifestyle in 2026
"...It’s hard to quantify just how widespread the phenomenon is, but certain notably offline hobbies are exploding in popularity. Arts and crafts company Michael’s has seen the effects: Searches for “analog hobbies” on its site increased by 136% in the past six months, according to the company, which operates over 1,300 stores in North America. Sales for guided craft kits increased 86% in 2025, and it expects that number to go up another 30% to 40% this year.
Searches for yarn kits, one of the most popular “grandma hobbies,” increased 1,200 % in 2025. ..."
(Paywall maybe)
https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/18/business/crafting-soars-ai-analog-wellness
Finally, after an epic battle against Gitea CI:
The definitive answer to the question, "Is AI intelligent yet?"
If current-generation LLM-based chatbots can drive people to commit crimes or even take their own lives, what do you suppose Neuralink would do to people?
The first thing I said to the person who suggested to me that human brains might be directly hooked to a computer, whenever that was, was "everyone will go insane immediately". I still believe that, but now we're beginning to see evidence.
#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLM #Neuralink #tech #dev #HCI #BrainImplants
The first thing I said to the person who suggested to me that human brains might be directly hooked to a computer, whenever that was, was "everyone will go insane immediately". I still believe that, but now we're beginning to see evidence.
#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLM #Neuralink #tech #dev #HCI #BrainImplants
So…MIT has an AI incident tracker. It tracks and classifies the damage AI has done and harm it has caused. The classification is defined by seven key categories:
Discrimination/toxicity
Privacy/security
Misinformation
Malicious actors
HCI
Socioeconomic/environmental
System safety/failures/limitations
Tracked by AI. 😂
Edited 148d ago
“AI is a surveillance empire wrapped in a trenchcoat with some fairy dust on it” Meredith Witthaker, CEO of @signalapp, in her @publix talk in Berlin. #AI
The upcoming edition of Art Meets Radical Openness is titled “Becoming Unreadable.” It explore ways of #resisting the toxic dimensions of contemporary hypervisibility. By this, we refer to the current logic of platform-mediated social and political discourse, to the global-scale #extraction and appropriation #infrastructures feeding the #AI and strengthening new and old colonial threads.
The call for participation is open
https://radical-openness.org/en/amro26-call-participation
deadline 16th January 16:26 CET
My honest take on AI: I am not entirely against it, I’ve seen AIs that can do good things that are powered by renewable resources, but we need strong regulation and we need to ban anyone that profits off of AI “art”. AI art can be cool for personal use such as wallpapers or avis if you don’t profit off of it or excessively promote it on your social media. I believe AI can be useful, but that is only if it is in the hands of co-ops and the general population, not corporations. #AI #aiart
Edited 146d ago