WSJ:
AI is trained in part on what people like, and people prefer the brown-nosing, says Myra Cheng, a computer-science Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University and lead author of a March study on agreeable AI. Participants rated sycophantic AI responses significantly higher in quality and, after interacting with a more obsequious model, said they were more likely to return to the AI.
This bodes ill.
The home of The Victorian Society was well chosen.Β
In 1968, [KoΕakowski] was fired from Warsaw University for βforming the views of the youth in a manner contrary to the official tendency of the country,β banned from teaching and publishing entirely, and placed under constant police surveillance.Β
As I come to the end of my teaching career, I am bitterly disappointed in myself: I have never been formally charged with βforming the views of the youth in a manner contrary to the official tendency of the country.βΒ
Angus taking a break from playing in the garden hose, which is his favorite thing to do that does not involve eating.
For my Buy Me a Coffee supporters I wrote a report from Mission Control.Β
How much would you pay for a smarter baby? β I can imagine the lawsuits later: βWe paid for a smarter baby but instead we got a child whoβs compassionate and generous! Weβve been screwed!βΒ
Via Ian Leslie, a beautifully designed page on ordinary abundance.
Book/magazine cover art by Kenneth Romney Towndrow
A remarkable intaglio from the Getty Museum: Aeneas and his family escaping Troy. The museum dates this around 20 B.C., which was around the time of Virgilβs death, with his poem unfinished β and surely this is a depiction of the scene specifically as described by Virgil, with Aeneas carrying Anchises on his back and leading Ascanius by the hand. Does this mean that the artist had read the in-progress Aeneid? Or that Virgil was borrowing the details from some earlier history?Β