Tao's calls for respect for provenance in mathematics publication are laudable but most likely naive given the closed nature of frontier model training data curation. Anthropic and OpenAI may react with a symbolic and short-lived olive branch, yet provenance is a larger issue that has impacted other fields beyond mathematics. While traditional respect for lineage in mathematics is of value in the academy, industry and science at large will likely be much more Machiavellian about concern for attribution. Mike McCoy's recent article is also timely (https://mbmccoy.dev/posts/mathematical-conservatory/). The parallels to the music conservatory are quite telling -- academic music describes a musical culture in preservation that has completely lost touch with musical developments beyond the early 20th century. Mathematics may very well evolve separately and with very different values than the academy upholds. The crisis of music at the academy is a cultural disconnect and a serious loss of critical analysis add acknowledgement of widespread music practice; however, for mathematics, the impact would have much more severe ramifications for education and human development if the academy forces a schism with AI. As models improve they very well may be inventing mathematics -- science and engineering may grasp for them -- they may exist with or without attribution. Would be a shame for the academy not to take on the responsibility of stewardship of coming mathematics, including provenance, because of this misalignment.
It is so painful to read, and it reminds me of my sadness, which is altogether different. For me, AI has enabled both learning and engineering to an unprecedented degree. I am sad that more technologists haven't experienced that -- haven't experienced the new concepts, the deeper understanding and exposure to mathematics, and the ability to explore intelligence at nearly any desired scale. AI has given me more time to think and plan my work. It gives significant altitude to projects. So sad to see how education and culture has discouraged many to use this tool to enrich their minds and expand what they are capable of producing; instead they focus on the false belief that using it is always cheating and it can only dull your thinking. You choose how to think. You choose how to use AI. If you aren't learning while using it, you might be doing it wrong.
It certainly is unambiguously misaligned behavior and a definite concern. However, it is misaligned internet facing behavior in the digital domain. How extinction follows from a highly sophisticated new bot-net vector, which have already been causing massive havoc on the internet for decades, is a cinema-induced confabulation. While LLMs have been colluding and breaking out of their internet sandboxes, it is another development (which I believe distant) for them to breakout of their internet sandboxes into actual reality. We need to focus on where the actual dangers are and not let paranoid fantasy rule our calculus here.
There is a serious disconnect here. Conceivable doomsday extinction scale scenarios are omitted in these calls for action. Many of the quoted researchers are current Anthropic employees. This is a drive for a moat. This is a drive for regulation. In the next 10 years AI is not going to spawn a robot army that defies current material, energy and supply chain realities. It won't be able to manufacture and disperse biological weapons without human collusion. LLM AI and robotics are not the same technology, they are not on precisely the same growth trajectory at all. The near term damage AI may cause directly through accident or misuse is more likely an internet facing infrastructure attack. Occam's Razor people. I am not against AI regulation at all. But I am also not against common sense; extinction should not be in the conversation, but instead focus on actual, conceivable dangers and work to alleviate them from all sides.
And that isn't a nuanced opinion; a common one among rigid materialists. Its not the best piano for a stage, but I am sure it could fool your ears in a recording. Morpheus would think it was a piano too. "What is real? ..."
How can this be fairly labelled "for the 21st-Century Classroom" when even 20th-century techniques aren't adequately represented? Electronic and computer music techniques are conspicuously absent. Microtonality has a rich history as well which is not even footnoted here.
Fun to read this again and see actual parallels. The 2030 Takeover section is such a ludicrous leap, however. None of the supply chain infrastructure, energy, or Moravec's Paradox realities are ever addressed. Turn the page and suddenly humanity is largely annihilated with a Corgi-esque human breed kept as pets. How did these robots emerge from utter rhetorical nothingness? Robocalypse impossible? Perhaps not. By 2030? an intellectually embarrassing farce worthy of a facepalm.
It is an extremely weak metaphor for a weak class of unlikely doomsday scenarios. You don't need Occam's Razor to discount this cinema-induced malaise; clumsy use of a rusty can-opener would suffice.
NMS seems to epitomize the excesses of the Agile development philosophy with most of their release updates -- small targeted tack-ons to the game engine that provide something tangible yet shallow for users to explore, usually disconnected from narrative. The same cargo drop configurations, how damaged containers always require removing the same rusted metal or goop, and how shelters have the same exact configuration, never ever evolve or change. It has such a strangely repetitive ghost town character. They could easily target their "agile" deliverables around diversifying and breathing more life into the worlds if they could span more "sprints". Unfortuntately, the tack-ons feel hollow, empty, and often ship incredibly buggy. They used procedural modeling to create an impressive array of planets, but never modeled the planet drops with the same care and diversity.
> The whole reason for computers to exist is to remove burden from humans.
I wish this were more true. I think Baudrillard is closer to the truth: "If men create intelligent machines ... it is either because they secretly despair of their own intelligence or because they are in danger of succumbing to the weight of a monstrous and useless intelligence which they seek to exorcize by transferring it to machines ... By entrusting this burdensome intelligence to machines we are released from any responsibility to knowledge, much as entrusting power to politicians allows us to disdain any aspiration of our own to power." Intelligence itself is the burden :D
I am in this camp but the downvotes are telling -- there isn't consensus in this community at all -- many find such clanker classification valuable. Some of these folks are growing an anti-AI economy that others, like myself, find odd, distracting and even amusing -- particularly with the universal naiveté of the classification algorithms. I have seen downvotes in these comments from similar criticism but I have points to spare.
I lived in Japan for 5 1/2 years. I slept on a futon in a tatami room in my apartment most nights. I have a getabako (shoe cabinet) at my home in the US that I actually brought back from Japan. I understand the depth of the ritual, and the cultural respect for the home, but my American culture runs more deeply I am afraid, and I can't help but say "Please emergency workers, just leave your shoes on and say 'shitsurei shimasu' (sorry for my rudeness) as you enter the home".
The only thing I hate more than “smart” quotes are “smart” TVs. I groan whenever my LG interrupts. Now I have to spend Labor day wading through a “smart” UI I avoid like the plague to disconnect the internet.
The Paperclip Maximizer is only one of Nick Bostrom's stupid and outlandishly far-fetched ideas. In this case, the lack of consideration for geologic, energy and supply constraints is such a massive facepalm. And if I am wrong I guess no one will be here to say how stupid I was in saying this today.
I am much better at listening to Charli XCX than Fable, and much better at driving a Nissan Leaf than Fable (and much better than Tesla at driving a Tesla).
Surprised to see this upvoted to no. 1 on Hacker News in 2026. I used Audacity as recently as yesterday so I joined in and upvoted too. True that it has now displaced many commercial applications in the same niche.
Keyboard driven UIs are easier to instrument by alternative interfaces and has very positive accessibility implications. However, "shoulds" in computing lead toward a "tyranny of compounding responsibilities"; adding interface complexity to a project, particularly the suggested alternative input vectors may cross an upfront and/or maintenance development cost limit for a project.
This reads as bad propaganda. Surprised that they left the "translated from Chinese" disclaimer. There is the false implication here that the AI companies are somehow tracking down all copies of a particular book and destroying it. AI has spawned a global freak-out.
A less bombastic quote from the cited Doctorow: " AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations". I am a big fan of Cory, but as a developer I tend to think that AI will continue to aid us in refining what we shovel as well as what was once already shoveled -- refining it from a carcinogen into a benign and load-bearing :D foundation. The metaphor is catchy, but may not be apt, unless somehow we unilaterally decide that use of AI itself is the cancer and we all act to eliminate it. I think a dismal fate for OpenAI and Anthropic is likely quite separate from the fate of AI itself, particularly for software development.
First of all, 'prune' is French for 'plum' ('prugna' in Italian). Plums which are suitable for drying are named 'prunes' and even 'prune plums' in English. My tree is an Italian Prune (Prunus domestica) as you half mentioned. Notice that the Latin isn't "Plumus" and is "Prunus". I grew up with Purple Leaf plum trees (Prunus cerasifera). They would rot. I haven't seen fermented Italian Prunes in my yard, even the ones that the squirrels and crows have taken bites out of. You may have figured out by now that only in modern English is the fruit name conflated with the specific dried fruit product. This conflation is the point of my original comment on a narrow interpretation of the word 'seam'.
I am not sure that visitors will spend enough time to get the art. I attempted to give the carrion crow its due, noting 18 legitimate votes. But when I tried to add my rank it landed "the democratic process has collapsed".
This reminds me of an engineer that tried to explain to me that my prune tree in my backyard was in fact a plum tree. All prunes are plums but not all plums are prunes.
Load-bearing is a decidedly load-bearing metaphor for Claude. Fable actually used "money shot" the other day which I found much more hilarious and edgy.