Post #3624877

2026-07-06 08:38 UTC

Realizing more and more how modern-day AI taps into some very old urges. So many would like "unsurpassed mastery without any effort", and would summon a demon to get it.

Replies (7)

@petealexharris@mastodon.scot 2026-07-06 08:46

@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz And there are equally old warnings, which is ironic, since there aren't any djinn or demons or fairies to make dangerous slippery-worded pacts with, so we built some ourselves. This is fine. I assume the malicious deceptive beings in our ancestral environment that these cautionary tales were really warning about were ... us.

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@rrb@infosec.exchange 2026-07-06 14:35

@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz They should do it the old fashioned way: have wealthy parents.

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@simonzerafa@infosec.exchange 2026-07-06 18:44

@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz That's how some of the characters in the Neuromancer novel see the AI entities 🙂

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@bgavran@mathstodon.xyz 2026-07-06 08:40

@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz Yes, the parallels are stark indeed. My favourite is this one: https://mathstodon.xyz/@bgavran/114054413104698446

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@FrohlichMarcel@mathstodon.xyz 2026-07-06 08:53

@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz from which book is this fragment?

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@BashStKid@mastodon.online 2026-07-06 08:55

@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz Definitely a ‘no royal road to knowledge’ story. Let alone wisdom or understanding …

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@androcat@toot.cat 2026-07-06 09:01

@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz I keep wondering. In every field, there are early reports of astounding usefulness of LLMs. Followed by debunkings and finally a realization that the bullshit generator can generate plausible-sounding bullshit, and that's it. In coding, potentially the closest thing to maths in application, it shows itself as a shortcut to replace typing, but with a cost in review that outstrips the functionality entirely, ending up slower than without the tool. In any field, the only application where there appears to be a genuine benefit (albeit partial and fallible) is as Search. So what's up with Maths? Is it an application as Search, and somehow magically able to discern things the thing does not and cannot understand? Or is it once again overhyped bullshit?

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