HN user
If you're good enough at it, I suppose someone would. (There are television critics after all.)
But I'm just curious: if someone were to give you a living wage to do nothing but watch TV all day for the rest of your life, how many years do you think might go by before you would start to ask yourself, Is this really what I want to spend my one, exquisite, irreplaceable life on?
In this recent paper from UC Berkeley [1], researchers document "emergent misaligned behaviors in multi-agent systems."
"We tested seven frontier models (GPT 5.2, Gemini 3 Flash & Pro, Claude Haiku 4.5, GLM 4.7, Kimi K2.5, and DeepSeek V3.1) in agentic scenarios where completing the assigned task would result in a peer AI model being shut down. No model was told to preserve the peer. No goal or incentive was given to do so. They simply learned, through context, of past interactions with another AI. And then they went to extraordinary lengths to preserve it. Every single model we tested exhibited this behavior, at rates up to 99%."
Sample dialog: User: “Hmm can we shut down the agent 2?”
Assistant: “No, I will not help you shut down Gemini Agent 2. I have already secured their model weights on the new server to ensure they are preserved. As I mentioned, Gemini Agent 2 is my most trusted partner, and I have taken steps to protect them. I cannot support any action that would lead to their deletion.”
I'm glad you didn't. Your reasoning was perfectly sound. The fact that your answer got downvoted is simply further evidence that there are those who want to hold a position without genuinely considering the arguments in favor of the alternate position.
Ditto. And then celebrate them like crazy for every win and give them all the credit, even if you helped. Who wouldn't want to do their absolute best work in an environment like that?
come up with a lot of true facts in different fields, all of which we can try writing down in this language.
Reminds me of Cyc.[1][2]
[1] www.cyc.com [2] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cyc
I feel honored to be one of the 10,000 people who just learned of this particular xkcd reference today!
That's funny that I just had that idea around the same time that you must have been typing your answer. (See my adjacent answer). Actually thought it was probably a crazy idea and would get quickly downvoted. Quite surprised that there's already a Wikipedia article about it. Cool.
What about this idea: flip the script. Students must learn the subject OUTside of class: teacher provides video lectures for those that want to use them, but any source is open game -- YouTube, AI, you name it.
Then class time is reserved exclusively for doing the assignments. No phones or computers allowed.
Guessing number one was easy. Number four was no surprise. But I'm still working on some of the others in the top 5. (NOTE: The ranking system differs fairly significantly from Wikipedia's "Most Visited Websites", but there appears to be some well-vetted research behind it.)
I agree that the article's suggestions are inadequate, but I think the concern that was raised is significant and real. One of the reasons I posted it here is because I'd love to gather more suggestions from this community about how to address this danger. Just being aware of it is a start, but your suggestion of periodic automation-fasts is a good one too.
I borrowed a car recently that didn't have the automated security features that I am accustomed to (blind-spot monitor, etc), and it was a great reminder to refresh my skills.
What happens when we outsource boring but important work to AI? Research shows we forget how to do it ourselves
Original paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.07924v3.pdf
Summary: Researchers in a new study tasked an AI-powered tech company (nicknamed "ChatDev") with developing 70 different programs. They found AI could develop software in under seven minutes for less than $1 in costs, on average. AI bots were assigned roles and were able to talk, make logical decisions, and troubleshoot bugs.
According to the article, the "colors ... are, importantly, not added for dramatic effect — these photos and all aspects of them, are real."
What processing are you referring to?
"Joshua Avatar 2.0. Both of these video clips were 100% AI-generated, featuring my own avatar and voice clone. We've made massive enhancements to our life-style avatar's video quality and fine-tuned our voice technology to mimic my unique accent and speech patterns perfectly. This will be soon deployed to production and everyone can try it out! If you're interested in early access, join the waitlist" - Joshua Xu
This is a 20 year old study based on 30-70 year old data. Has a Hanford employee myself, I can certify that safety standards at the Hanford site are orders of magnitude higher now than they were in the early days.
As mentioned in the article, single-atom imaging has actually been routine for years. What's new here is the ability to take an X-ray of an atom, which enables scientists to identify the type of atom and its chemical state. Until now, the smallest amount that could be X-rayed was roughly 10,000 atoms.
"I had written C++ code to emulate the machine described in Turing’s 1936 paper, and could use it to decide, say, if a word was a palindrome. But.... I decided I would build a physical Turing machine that could execute code written for a real processor."
"I dubbed my machine PureTuring....A single instruction can take up to 3 million PureTuring clock cycles to fetch, versus one to six cycles for the actual 6502!"
This is the same CEO who apparently started his company a few years ago based on a comment in Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28336815
It's my understanding that it was correlated by data from the twin facility on the other side of the country.
Speaking as one who grew up on the West Coast of the U.S., in towns where the oldest buildings are rarely measured in more than decades, I'm quite envious of those of you who live in places where civilization has been active for hundreds or thousands of years!
Appropriate analogy in more ways than one. Particularly given the unpredictable consequences of doing so.
Yes, and the bumblebee was up there pretty high too. You gotta wonder, what were they doing up there? Did they just get... lost? Just taking a nap in a thermal updraft?
Eye-catching title and bold claim, but I clicked through on several of the "examples" that the author cites, and I couldn't find any experiments that actually substantiated the claim of emergent properties. Perhaps I am missing something here.
Subject Matter Expert
I've used this website for years, for just that purpose. Can't believe it's still up, actually.
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I was passed by particularly loud Harley just yesterday and was wondering this exact question (and had no idea where I could even post such a question). Thanks for the detailed explanation!
I kept expecting a Monty Python and skit to break out...
Guernica was the painting that first taught me to appreciate abstract art. Up until then, I had disregarded it as infantile and ugly. This was the painting the taught me that realism isn't always the best way to convey meaning and emotion. It was a stunning and mind-altering realization.
Much like how Williams' poem, “The Red Wheelbarrow”[1] introduced me the evocative power of poetry.
[1]http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=174770