Hi Rhiannon12866



Ha I remembered it all. The other day I was trying to type out your handle and couldn’t remember it all.

She studied anthropology, but ended up working for the Financial Times. In 2006 and 2007, she realised that the world of finance was fooling itself that collateralized debt and similar things were something they understood well, and everything in finance was going great, although they didn't really know what they were doing (it's not that she did, but she could recognise people who were overconfident in their knowledge). After she wrote about it, the bankers lined up at Davos to say she had no idea, she was just an anthropologist etc. And within the year, the markets crashed.

I do not understand how they are getting away with this level of hype or sleight of hand in directing attention away from the real dangers of ai. Ed Zitron aside, the one critic I have seen address it less as an injustice issue and more as a bloviation issue is this scientist Adam Becker:

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-mad-religion-of-technological-salvation/

https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/04/youre-not-going-to-mars-and-you-wont-live-forever-exploding-silicon-valleys-ideology/

I am myself struggling with science in a niche area beyond which I have no ambitions. I aim to be averagely competent in that area and above all to never break things.

The two most important things I learnt as a scientist are:
1) everything is really, really difficult.
2) don’t ever break things for real.

And these guys won’t accept simple constraints like those.

I saw an interview with an economist whose name I forget whom Yan Lecun recommended. And he disagreed with Amodei’s bullishness.

(Amodei is the CEO of Anthropic and Yan Lecun used to work at Meta. Prof Lecun is the rare ai scientist I trust to be honest with the public).

People seem a little more restrained just lately with language after all the earlier hyperbole by the tech press worked to get us here. That is not a bad thing. But Amodei’s hype should be checked more forcefully.

What is more worrying than LLMs are agents. I think they may either be a disaster or merely reduce the already poor quality of life further. I am hoping it is the latter, but in certain areas like medicine, policing and the military they will be a disaster. I think that has already started. It makes me think of Dr. Who’s “Smile”.

Until technology company ceos recognize that escaping accountability is not viable in the long run, they will keep treating collateral damage to customers, citizens as irrelevant.

So much of it struck me as cornucopianism in action. I have been wondering when the many world theory will take over as the next excuse used to shill limitless expansion. Quantum computing, unlike this mediocre stuff, is cool. It is still not magic.

I am on the pessimistic side and these guys have made it worse. It is not superficially visible depression so much as deep hopelessness that anything but Harry Harrison’s “Make Room! Make Room!” is even feasible. Unless they nuke the place.

My money is still on drastically reduced quality of life and an average of all the more realistic dystopian scifi our there. We are almost there.

He's a dirtbag! I never watch him.
Who cares what he has to say?

I'm going to switch it up this week: FUCK BRET STEPHENS!

BTW, everyone: Gillian is pronounced exactly like Jillian. Like Gene being pronounced like Jean.

Newsom will be interesting, and Stevens (who voted for Harris) and Tett should be good as well.

And of course, his opening and New Rules are always fun.

Thanks for posting!

Maher's opening with Gavin Newsom was so informing!

And the back and forth between Bret Stephens, Gillian Tett, and Maher was 'off the charts' informing and fun as well!

SO glad I took the time to watch... one hour not wasted!

And sad as well. Hard to imagine that being a member of the 'FBM' crowd would deny one the pleasure of watching this episode Oh well.

I remember Bill saying ages ago that he'd tried for years to get the Governor on the show - so this was his second appearance and definitely worth it. And I don't remember if Bret Stephens and Gillian Tett have been on before, but they were both worth it, especially on the Overtime segment.

Haven’t watched this episode yet, but I know that Bret Stephens has been on before.