But I don't have the math skills to explain properly, so I'll resort to a kind of metaphor. The real "talent" of AIs is in sounding plausible based on lots of examples of "what sounds good". In this case, it turned out that Occam's Razor worked, and an explanation that sounded plausible turned out to be a valid proof.

But I speculate there were many failures, some of them hilarious, though the human "author" only published the good guess.

Yeah, it's funny on its face, but when I asked a generative AI about "AI for Erds" and it hallucinated an answer involving ye olde Entity Relationship Diagrams.

Is there a new job category for people who are good at asking questions the generative AIs can't answer properly? I'm pretty sure my batting average against Gemini is way over .300. Combination of nasty questions and wording questions in ways that suggest I might be expecting a particular wrong answer. I'm also considering the possibility that the AIs have detected my fundamental hostility to the entire idea of AI oracles, so they have "decided" the shortest path to satisfaction in my case is to provide stupid and incorrect answers as often as possible. They "know" I'm "really" looking to give the thumb's down response?

And yet even I am expecting the computers to get the last laugh.

Recent example of AI anti-humor from SMBC: https://www.smbc-comics.com/co...

[Overlooking the nameless BF.]

Most relevant recent citation is Stolen Focus by Johann Hari, but my use of "level of abstraction" goes back many years and the more modern label is probably "reference frame". Also related to contextual meaning.

Fundamental problem is the accumulation of too much information, so we have to attack problems by reframing them at the right level and by using the correct tools to manipulate them within that appropriate frame. Not at all surprised that someone who hasn't mastered all the mathematical literature and earned all the fancy qualifications was able to use a better tool to solve the problem Erdos didn't have time for. The real metric of relative success should be how quickly Erdos could have done it with the same tool?

So we need to create a GAIvatar of Erdos to find out?

Not a new problem, by the way. Just asked an AI and it claims it would have taken at least 50 years of full time effort to read the entire Library of Alexandria.

Extreme potential for Funny, but nada.

See Subject. Then checked to see if the answer appeared anywhere in the "ripe" discussion. Nada.

Now to check for Funny. Expecting another nada.

Were you talking to me?

Whenever I see a Murdermobile AKA Tesla I feel like sticking a note under the wiper: "Why do you support starving children to death?"

Poison brand. Soon to implode. On the model of Lycos, once worth a paltry $12.5 billion.

Actually a complaint about the lack of Funny though the target has limited potential. Still I think it's kind of funny that no comments related to freedom of movement have entered the discussion. And there I was thinking it was basically a good thing.

So would you donate to help create such a fork? Or even donate to the Ubuntu people for a stability uber alles version? (Only found your comment as the only reference to "stabil")

I keep fantasizing about funding models that would stop breaking things the better to fail in their neverending competitions with the gigantic corporate cancers. And I sure as heck would not donate to add more AI to any of the tools I'm using now. At this point I think I'd be most likely to donate for anti-AI features...

(But perhaps a short-term problem? Aren't we overdo for the next AI winter? That should take care of the current bubble, too.)

So please don't fee them or propagate their vacuous Subjects. Actually, I count it in his favor that so many sock puppets post hate speech about him.

There is quite a bit of room for substantive comment on this story. Mostly the balance between witch hunting and actual competence or actual immorality. But if Lieber did whatever he did for money, then those are supposed to be "pure" motives as America operates these years. In that case, I would guess the "real" problem is failing to wet the correct beaks.

Now I'm smelling a joke about necessary and sufficient beaks to stay out of jail?

Again, disappointed by the joke, but I think Kimmel is a reasonable fellow and it wouldn't cost that kind of money to get rid of a few jokes.

But I think the joke I was looking for would have involved the mentalist failing to predict the cancellation of his show. Even better if he had helped Kimmel steer clear of the touchy lines.

Getting away from the Funny side, but I'm torn between looking for the incompetence in the security and looking for the insanity in the wannabe assassin. Easier to understand the insanity of thinking he's going to get past dozens of armed killers? Or a fancy version of suicide by cop? Or just watched too many Hollywood movies?

Why is it moderated Funny? Disappointed that little Kim didn't make the cut? I think he should be in the top five, though I'm not sure who I'd pick as the fifth. Or I'm just missing the joke completely?

You were going for funny, and I want to encourage that, but the low-hanging joke I was looking for is in the new Subject.

What could possible go wrong? Nothing. Congress is now incapable of passing any laws, so nothing will be made lawful when it comes to AI and that means the google won't do anything harmful. For a change.

But every time I try to use Gemini I am more astonished by how bad it is. I'll share the latest anecdote and perhaps some human can answer what's going on. Just got a ColorOS update for my Oppo smartphone, and now there is small circle that appears just below the text input cursor. Not all the time, but enough to be annoying. So I decided the Android phone might be within the google's scope, but the answers were completely wrong. Both as regards what it was and as regards how to control it.

Mod parent funny for "timeline" though it could be a multiverse joke.

Finding it increasingly hard to develop or sustain interest in any Slashdot stories these days. Personal problem with time? Or specific problems with each story? Or just the downwards trend in the quality of discussions? (But that might be a selective memory problem.)

On this story I have been considering GitHub sans Copilot as part of a solution approach to a problem created by a dying website. However this story puts the last nail in the coffin for that idea. Copilot is an invasive cancer and GitHub is merely the latest site of metastasis.

Or going for the highest level? My human-neutron cross-section has decreased below criticality? For a website or app to be "sustainable" in today's economic bubble-verse it has to infect fresh people faster than it burns the old ones out--and that is the real (under the wraps) objective of the AI projects. In the form of a weak joke (largely derived from recent reading about Facebook) "Tech-topia Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Human Husks". Copilot with or without GitHub is a poster child.

(But back to the personal time thing: Once a day is not a match for Slashdot. New stories (like this one) will not have any developed discussion, whereas old stories will be on the verge of death as they fall off the top page. I already checked all the "mature" discussions for Funny and was disappointed, as usual. And when I return (around the same time) tomorrow, this story (including this comment and replies, if any) will be on the verge of death or already gone.)

Or did you deliberately decide to avoid that angle? In spite of the recent news? I was just motivated to look into the topic and the YOB is the new champion with around 17 attempts. Previous record holder was Obama, with a dozen or so (that we know about).

In terms of conspiracies, the motives are what make them interesting, so I guess Obama's won't be that interesting. Much more of a mix of motives for the YOB's case.

Interested to discover the first attempt was on Andrew Jackson. Apparently a true maniac and idiot who failed with two pistols and spent the rest of his life in various loony bins. That was in 1835, but the wannabe assassin lived until 1861, when Lincoln "triggered" a number of attempts. After that things mostly settled down until Clinton...