There was a time when Anthropic had successfully convinced a LOT of people that they were the one and only trustworthy AI/LLM. They've pretty much blown that tentative good faith up and they should know that.

I find it odd that they're still carrying on as if they're the "good guy".

It's not as good as we want, but it's not as bad as you say.

The INTERNET has a ton of bullshit. It also is the single greatest source of fact in the history of human civilization. The challenge is separating fact from bullshit. Pre-evil Google figured out that if you rank websites' relevance according by references, the truth tends to float to the top.

Every pseudonymous/anonymous communication outlet has a ton of bullshit. What matters is the scoring structure, though, tends to float stuff to the top. That whats makes it useful. There's has been enough truth in Reddit posts and the scoring system had been sufficiently successful that after everyone learned how to game Google in search of clicks, people started adding "reddit" to their Google searches knowing that it genuinely increased their ability to solve a problem.

It just so happens that now its getting even worse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

While typically used to advise against holding a person's job hostage based on KPIs, I see it's relevance here as well:

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" or

"Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes."

ChatGPT and the Reddit management both assert that scraping Reddit for solutions and facts is good because it's full of real solutions from real humans, but once it became known that was happening, it became certain that people were going to exploit that by spamming Reddit.

AB-1856 (https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1856) is titled "Age verification signals: software applications and online services", but that's primarily for show. The key part of the proposed law says:

There is no verification of age. It's self-report of age at OS setup. There is no verification required by this code. The OS then provides age bracket range upon request.

Exhibit 1,374,882 that a large number of people are really stupid. And should be largely ignored.

Do you know the difference between correlation and causation? Are you completely ignorant of history and lack the ability to search the internet for information? Here's a shortcut to finding some of the many forms of control asserted on the use of nuclear weapons--

- the Mutually Assured Destruction Doctrine
- Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
- Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
- Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
- Outer Space Treaty
- New START Treaty
- INF Treaty
- Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement
- Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty
- the very existence of the International Atomic Energy Agency
- Nuclear Suppliers Group
- Missile Technology Control Regime
- Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones - Latin America & Caribbean, South Pacific, Southeast Asia, Africa, Central Asia,
- Unwavering levels of diplomatic conversations and economic deal making

And on and on...

Good people have put in work and continue to put in work to prevent bad people from using nuclear weapons. The lack of nuclear holocaust is a direct result of these action.

I'm wondering if we're having an exceedingly unlikely misunderstanding of the genie. I'm using "the use of nuclear weapons in war" as "the genie". No one has used nuclear weapons since 1945 because of the control efforts. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a threat of the genie being unleashed again, but control was maintained.

There will always be threats and concerns and fears. We actively fight them all so that the worst (the genie) doesn't kill millions.

Literally the same thing was said about nuclear war. You're trying to predict the future. I'm saying that we should forget about prediction and put in the work to prevent disaster. Those are two completely different ways of thinking-- Doomer vs. Worker.

Are you seriously equating the potential of nuclear attack with actual nuclear attack?

That lack of nuclear weapons in use is evidence of the control. You can call that control "tenuous" or "scary", but we don't exist in a post-apocalyptic nuclear hellscape because of the many different controls put in place over the last 80 years.

Your awfulizing is not representative of reality.

Back to the topic at hand -- the genie cannot be put back in the bottle, but it can be controlled. You have to put in the effort to control it.

But the genie can be controlled.

Nuclear weapons are a "genie out of the bottle" and they threat of nuclear war is ever-present, but we've not yet obliterated each other with nuclear weapons because we acknowledged that it's probably best that we restrict the the proliferation and possession of nuclear weapons.

We need to do the same with AI.

It's worse now. If it was a "shade of gray" before, it's very dark gray today.

1. August 2025: Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer (a Senate-confirmed, bipartisan appointee) after accusing her (without evidence) of rigging jobs data after a weaker-than-expected July report.
2. September 2025: E.J. Antoni (Heritage Foundation economist with no qualifications in this field) failed in the nomination process due to lack of credibility.
3. January 2026: Trump nominated Brett Matsumoto. He is yet to be confirmed.
4. More than a third of senior positions at the Bureau of Labor Statistics remain unfilled after massive DOGE cuts. BLS staff is currently at 1/4 of normal.

The department is under explicit political duress. It's different today.

People are the cause of doom in most sci-fi stories. They're typically political/social psychological dramas wrapped in tech, teaching that reckless advancement of technology can turn out poorly. Man's ego, lethargy, greed, fear of death, power hunger, etc. is almost always the villain. Post-apocalyptic survival dramas are almost entirely about the cruelty of man when there is a power vacuum.

Dune: Malicious greed and power hunger
Terminator: Reckless technological advancement and ego
Frankenstein: Reckless technological advancement and ego
Children of Men: Cruelty in a power vacuum
Waterworld: Cruelty in a power vacuum
Mad Max: Cruelty in a power vacuum
Book of Eli: Cruelty in a power vacuum
Wall-e: Lethargy
Alien: Ego, fear of death
Blade Runner: Ego, greed

Those are the topics that drive the plot. The tech is just window dressing.

That costs more money to implement, maintain, significantly increases in cost due to wage increases, and internalizes liability there by exposing the university to lawsuits.

The more a university transitions to a student-focused, all-compassing city from a simple "school", the more non-teaching employees you need.

Want to go have a cleaner electrical grid than your surrounding area? Well, you'll need a power plant, energy manager, many technicians, etc.
Want a ton of greenery and trees? Well, you'll need landscapers, arborists, etc.
Want on-campus healthcare limited to the students? Well, you'll need doctors, nurses, healthcare admins, etc.
Want campus housing? Well, you'll need housing administrators, housing-specific custodians, etc.
Want to park on campus, but make sure parking meets current demands? Then you'll need a permitting system, permit enforcement, etc.

And on and on and on. Wants take work. Work requires people. People require wages.

That's a big, tangential rant there.

So... where are you a grad student?

Licensure costs more money to facilitate and enforce than it is capable of generating which is why, in this deficit situation, it will not likely move forward.