Zach Weinersmith@ZachWeiner

Soonish, Open Borders, Bea Wolf, and new book: A City on Mars Married to @fuschmu. @ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social (Support at patreon.com/zachweinersmith)

 Virginia
smbc-comics.com
Joined February 2009
5,316 Photos and videos
Available now! kickstarter.com/projects/wei… Thanks for your support, everyone!
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Zach Weinersmith retweeted
Zach Weinersmith@ZachWeiner
Oct 15
New AI chat, focusing on the mathocalypse, implications for security, and AI economics. Also weirder stuff: piped.video/s3CCYVrFAnM

Is AI a Bubble? Two Ex-Reddit CTOs and a Cartoonist Weigh In

What could AI break next? OpenAI released 722 AI-generated math res...

youtube.com
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Zach Weinersmith retweeted
SMBC Comics@SMBCComics
20h
Really should've gone for even more closeup on panel 2. COMIC ◆ smbc-comics.com/comic/cells PATREON ◆ patreon.com/ZachWeinersmith STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com/ #comics #humor
4-panel SMBC comic update. A little girl asks her mother why people get old. The mother replies "actually we don't!" She explains "Most of my cells are just about the same age as yours!I look like this because my body is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy made by a blind tailor! You're lucky my face is on forwards!" As she speaks, the panels show all the blemishes and signs of aging on her face in a close up. The little girl concludes that "life is like a horror movie," prompting the mom to reply "honey, no, Things matter in horror movies."

ALT 4-panel SMBC comic update. A little girl asks her mother why people get old. The mother replies "actually we don't!" She explains "Most of my cells are just about the same age as yours!I look like this because my body is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy made by a blind tailor! You're lucky my face is on forwards!" As she speaks, the panels show all the blemishes and signs of aging on her face in a close up. The little girl concludes that "life is like a horror movie," prompting the mom to reply "honey, no, Things matter in horror movies."

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I think a lot of the psychological differences in reaction to AI automation have to do with to what extent a category of people do their work for a goal vs. for a lifestyle. A lot of us artists got into this "business" because we wanted to spend our time creating things.
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It's also, I suspect, a major part of why there's poor understanding between groups. To an engineer, the idea that a mathematician doesn't WANT a result dump is baffling. You got the result! In fact, you got it with less work! Win win, right?!
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The irony being that if the ultimate goal of all this is replacing human labor, at the end we'll need to care quite a lot more about lifestyle than goal, if we want to stay sane!
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Zach Weinersmith retweeted
SMBC Comics@SMBCComics
Oct 18
Meanwhile the Engineers are just lighting themselves on fire to see what happens. COMIC ◆ smbc-comics.com/comic/reacti… PATREON ◆ patreon.com/ZachWeinersmith STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com/ #comics #humor
4-panel SMBC comic update. A header above the panels reads "reactions to AI automation." The first two panels show an artist and a mathematician working, and reacting to AI by saying "but I don't want to lose my job. I love it." The third panel shows an economist shouting "LONG HAVE I AWAITED THIS HOUR! DESTROY ME, EFFICIENCY AND LET UTILIZATION-ADJUSTED TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY RISE ON THE WIND OF MY ASHES!" The final panel shows the economist getting his face blasted off as the artist and the mathematician stare perplexed.

ALT 4-panel SMBC comic update. A header above the panels reads "reactions to AI automation." The first two panels show an artist and a mathematician working, and reacting to AI by saying "but I don't want to lose my job. I love it." The third panel shows an economist shouting "LONG HAVE I AWAITED THIS HOUR! DESTROY ME, EFFICIENCY AND LET UTILIZATION-ADJUSTED TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY RISE ON THE WIND OF MY ASHES!" The final panel shows the economist getting his face blasted off as the artist and the mathematician stare perplexed.

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I don't think this was very hard to do, but it's the most beautiful ai-generated music I've heard yet. I keep listening to it. bsky.app/profile/antiali.as/…
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But in the middle, it's going to be messy. A lot of work is going to go away, often among the people who worked the hardest and cared the most.
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People will perhaps say that the point of life is struggling through adversity. I don't believe that. I think struggle is often necessary, either because the task is hard or because doing it demonstrates character to others. But it's not the point.
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Anyone wanna chip in to get Anthropic a winrar license?
ClaudeDevs
@ClaudeDevs
Oct 16
We keep improving performance across Claude, and you may have noticed it starts responding sooner! Claude Code now gzips the conversation it sends on every turn, so it reaches the model faster. Cloud sessions also start up as soon as you start typing.
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Zach Weinersmith retweeted
SMBC Comics@SMBCComics
Oct 17
Actually maybe this is the solution to the Fermi Paradox. COMIC ◆ smbc-comics.com/comic/chip PATREON ◆ patreon.com/ZachWeinersmith STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com/ #comics #humor
4-panel SMBC comic update. A bald man in a teal suit with a giant cable sticking out of his head declares "Hahaha! At last a brain chip that makes me infinitely intelligent and immortal. Activate!" The activation zaps the man, and then he says "My desire for knowledge was in fact a desire for social status among apes who I've now transcended, and my fear of death was founded on a trivially flawed notion of persistent identity." The man then says "aw nuts!" in folksy disappointment.

ALT 4-panel SMBC comic update. A bald man in a teal suit with a giant cable sticking out of his head declares "Hahaha! At last a brain chip that makes me infinitely intelligent and immortal. Activate!" The activation zaps the man, and then he says "My desire for knowledge was in fact a desire for social status among apes who I've now transcended, and my fear of death was founded on a trivially flawed notion of persistent identity." The man then says "aw nuts!" in folksy disappointment.

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Once again, this needs to be eleveated to a law of nature that predicts fast acceleration: All AI advances are stupid.
ClaudeDevs
@ClaudeDevs
Oct 16
We keep improving performance across Claude, and you may have noticed it starts responding sooner! Claude Code now gzips the conversation it sends on every turn, so it reaches the model faster. Cloud sessions also start up as soon as you start typing.
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Zach Weinersmith retweeted
SMBC Comics@SMBCComics
Oct 16
I believe this comic is making fun of naive objections to consequentialism, but I am not 100% certain. COMIC ◆ smbc-comics.com/comic/hun PATREON ◆ patreon.com/ZachWeinersmith STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com/ #comics #humor
Part 1/2 of a 6-panel SMBC comic update. A waitress approaches a man in a booth to take his order, asking "What'll it be, baby?" The man then explains over 3 panels "FOOL! You think it's possible to 'order lunch?' You think I can just assign some nonsensical "goodness" score to every item and combination, and calculate maximum felicity as if I am GOD and the world is MATH?! Ha! This is mere scientism!"

ALT Part 1/2 of a 6-panel SMBC comic update. A waitress approaches a man in a booth to take his order, asking "What'll it be, baby?" The man then explains over 3 panels "FOOL! You think it's possible to 'order lunch?' You think I can just assign some nonsensical "goodness" score to every item and combination, and calculate maximum felicity as if I am GOD and the world is MATH?! Ha! This is mere scientism!"

Part 2/2 of a 6-panel SMBC comic update. The waitress replies "Hun, you don't need a commensurable scalar score for each item. Just ordinally rank yer preferences." The man is stunned. The waitress adds "Sorry, I mean try the chicken strips, hun." The man says "Chicken strips please, ma'am."

ALT Part 2/2 of a 6-panel SMBC comic update. The waitress replies "Hun, you don't need a commensurable scalar score for each item. Just ordinally rank yer preferences." The man is stunned. The waitress adds "Sorry, I mean try the chicken strips, hun." The man says "Chicken strips please, ma'am."

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Still working out kinks but I thought I'd share for people in a similar situation. We have a mostly nonverbal autistic kid who can do sight-words OK. I realized I could make music videos with exactly his sight-word set and favorite topics using Claude (the model was sonnet 5.5)
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This sort of thing was not possible to do well... a month ago. I'm now having visions of helping him with all sorts of phrases, e.g. a video on saying what hurts, where you want to go, etc. One gets emotional...
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Still footling with it but for anyone else who wants to try, I gave Claude the relevant words, so it generated the lyrics. Then I used Suno to make the song. Then I handed the song back to Claude with light notes on what I wanted to see.
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