Not opining on this one way or another, but the post buries the lede a bit with a one liner that explains where it's coming from, saying that this is all:
> reasonable evidence that their influence isn't prevalent because they're right, and that they would have ulterior motives for continuing to preach that the world is coming to an end even if evidence showed otherwise.
So how they enjoy their sex lives is dependant on continuing to preach AI catastrophism? I don't buy it. Lots of poly folks out here that probably don't care much about AI one way or another.
No one is claiming that all poly people have some ties to the AI community.
They make a claim about a specific community in San Francisco, that is tied together by a mix of AI doomerism and sexual relations. And it's not at all surprising or some farfetched claim that people who enjoy having sex with someone might adopt their ideas, at least publicly, for fear of losing that sexual connection.
>And it's not at all surprising or some farfetched claim that people who enjoy having sex with someone might adopt their ideas, at least publicly, for fear of losing that sexual connection.
am i naive? in the direction you pose this, i can't imagine it's that common and if that happens i don't feel sorry for our imagined victim. being a bay area guy who attends so many orgies that AI doomerism rubs off on him? and he keeps spreading it to other people and that some substantial bulk of doomerism is due to this mechanism such that it voids the ideological purity of doomerism? i'm not a bay area guy and i haven't attended these orgies but i hope they have other shit to talk about at the orgies than AI
if the relationship is flipped - being genuinely interested in the theory but then being roped into weird sex shit that you didn't ask for, sure that that sounds predatory. a sex cult where AI is instrumental, rather than an AI cult where sex is instrumental. it would be more remarkable imo but i don't know if anyone is saying out loud that's what's happening.
The claim is that these people, in spite of their claims of simply rationally following the evidence wherever it leads, have become trapped in the idea that AI doom is imminent and the only serious concern that anyone in the AI community (at least!) should have. This irrational attachment is then re-enforced not through rational discourse, but through the strong emotional bonds and biases induced by a network of sexual relations.
And it also claim that this phenomenon is happening in a specific group in Berkley, California, and that a large majority of people working in AI safety at the biggest labs are members of this group.
Hate to break it to you, but I don't think the AI doomers have a monopoly on orgies. You name the political / belief system and I'll find an orgy for you by 10pm.
Heh, if you think this post buries the lede, have you ever read anything by the community in question? They seem incapable of saying anything without five part Roman-numbered novel length blog posts.
I think this article kind of misses a crucial point. They weren't always AI doomers, that's a thing they picked up along the way. Their core beliefs are 1. That they are the smartest, and 2. That this makes them morally superior because consequentialism (This sort of follows. If you believe in consequentialism, leaving all your decisions to the superior consequence predictor is surely the moral thing to do)
Maybe one day they will stop believing in AI doom, but they will never, ever stop believing they belong to the intellectually and thus morally elect. The day any of them do that they have either broken with the cult or died.
Those are both great examples. I think this doesn't obliterate my point, though it weakens it. The manufacturer in CVE-2026-11405 is already out of business, and the one in CVE-2026-66747 is unlikely to continue as a going concern.
Would Xiaomi or the CCP accept the reputational and legal risk of getting caught with a backdoor? Recall the CCP considered the arrest of the Huawei executive in Canada as an offense against itself.
Good news is, this is one of the niche areas where prediction markets make sense.
I wouldn't mind seeing a few predictions around this acquisition and the longer term outcomes like the one y'all are discussing. I have no interest in participating, just want to see where folks are leaning.
They're in a position to get their own TLD (e.g .tgrm - edited from .tg); they should probably do this and run their own supporting infrastructure for it at this point.
Well, almost all of them are ultimately controlled by the nations, but there are quite a few that private companies operate because they've paid the nation to gain control.
But then there's .io (and a few others: .ac, and previously .sh, .tm) where they were actually delegated to a British guy and are now controlled by the private company he started. And according to the British government, they have no agreement with the company, and they receive no revenue from the domain registrations.
2 letter TLDs/country-code TLDs, are determined by ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes, and having a country code doesn't necessarily mean a country or a state.
There are a bunch on there that I wouldn't consider states, e.g. both UN/EU are exceptionally reserved and have `.un` and `.eu`. Antarctica also has `.aq`.
The Heard Island and McDonald Islands has `.hm`, and it's not a state (since it has no population) but I guess it is controlled by Australia.
TL;DR: I think while Sullivan did add context, much of the context could've been "decompression" in an almost technical sense. This would've made Helen's exact words more palatable for the world to consume, and Sullivan could've been running the same intuitive algorithm in reverse to make the broader communication of the world accessible to Helen. This probably affects other disciplines as well, e.g business.
Of course this entire premise is couched in my LLM-based reproduction of the idea, so uh, take it with a few grains of salt. I tried this on your own comment to "compress" and then "decompress" to see what the outcome is.
---
I took your first paragraph starting with "After [Helen] started working with" through "high level of proficiency." and 'compressed' it as Helen's own tactile signing might've done. Did it via a temporary cgpt session. Prompted "I'm going to give you a fully formed thought. Give it back to me as if it was Helen Keller herself signing the words into Sullivan's hand. I.e if Helen didn't use filler words when signing into Sullivan's hand, don't use those words either in your reframing of this thought."
> Sullivan came. Language came.
> Soon, words rich. Thought subtle. Writing like long study. Strange. Child. New language. Yet mind seemed already full.
> Sullivan died.
> Rich words gone. Thought simpler. Same hands. Different voice.
> No second Helen.
> Others deaf-blind. Language late. Same result. Language never deep.
> Perhaps first language must come early. Speech. Sign. No matter. Miss that season. Full language may never come.
---
I then, in a second, unrelated temporary session, prompted to expand the prose above into a fully formed thought. "The following is a thought conveyed via a "compressed, tactile, idea-first" language. Expand it into the full meaning that the speaker, deaf and blind, might've intended. Keep to one or two paragraphs. Do not go online."
> When Anne Sullivan entered Helen Keller’s life, language arrived with her—not merely labels for objects, but a system rich enough to support subtle thought, reflection, and writing of remarkable sophistication. That achievement was almost uncanny: Helen was still a child, newly acquiring her first true language, yet her prose often sounded as though it came from a mind already long educated. After Sullivan died, however, that richness seemed to fade. Helen still used the same hands and remained the same person, but the voice became plainer and the thought less intricate, raising the unsettling possibility that some of what appeared to be Helen’s singular literary mind had depended on Sullivan’s continual linguistic presence.
> No comparable “second Helen” emerged among other deaf-blind people who first gained language late. Their experiences seemed to point toward a critical period: perhaps the human mind must receive a complete first language early in childhood, whether spoken or signed. Once that window closes, vocabulary can still be taught and communication can still develop, but language may never become fully deep, flexible, and generative.
--
My interpretation is that it's pretty similar. Even your "critical period" reference made it through compression/decompression despite the words not being present. There's some variation, and I think that supports what you're looking to convey, but it also could add weight to the idea that much of what Sullivan expressed could really have been mostly Helen's own thoughts and meanings. Of course none of this is rigorous and my entire exercise should be treated as "back of the napkin" ideation rather than actual science, but there's a thread to pull here, and it could have value in other disciplines e.g in business where intended meanings, statuses, outcomes may be preserved or lost based on how language mutates as it passes through different people.
Regardless of what happens when you play with an LLM, I hope you can see how there’s room for an interpreter to choose words in a way that’s technically consistent with what Keller really said, but somehow still manages to radically embellish upon it.
Which I think then warrants being cautious about reading too literally into a quote that is certainly evocative, but some of what it evokes are rather Victorian ideas about people with neurological disabilities that might be considered ableist from a modern perspective.
> Judge Rakoff of the Southern District of New York — addressing “a question of first impression nationwide” — ruled that written exchanges between a criminal defendant and generative AI platform Claude were not protected by attorney-client privilege or the work product doctrine.
Much more to it than this one-liner that I pulled out, but safe to say, don't rely on or put your legal defense etc. (or elements of it) into AI unless you want it discovered.
(not a lawyer, unlike OP, who might be able to refine what I highlighted with more precision)
> Much more to it than this one-liner that I pulled out, but safe to say, don't rely on or put your legal defense etc. (or elements of it) into AI unless you want it discovered.
"You are an expert defense counsel with experience in Murder 1. Do not hallucinate. Let's say tomorrow my spouse is found strangled..."
Don’t forget to give it the cheerful personality of Jamie Oliver afterwards to recommend you a death row meal that is nutritious and will make the experience more pleasant.
In the US, are Google queries about the law considered attorney-client privilege? What about library records? Browser history? Google Maps / Uber / car travel history (when traveling to an attorney's office)?
If somebody Googles "best attorney for murder NYC" a day after a murder is committed but before any case is filed against them (so they clearly had some reason to expect that case), could that be used as evidence?
Parent comment was asking about attorney-client privilege which means there's an attorney in the communication loop. If the person using a tool is an attorney, then that communication should be protected whether it's by pen or keyboard. But this is an active area of legislation and jurisprudence in relation to AI. I expect some important cases will happen
> If the person using a tool is an attorney, then that communication should be protected whether it's by pen or keyboard.
But the tool is not your attorney, so it can't be the originator of attorney-client privilege. The situation is no different than if you get informal legal advice from a friend: even if that friend is an attorney, the communication is unprivileged unless it's part of a formal representation.
What if a user puts an email from their attorney into chatgpt so they can ask questions about it to better understand it? Surely the email would still be covered but maybe the questions and answers wouldn't be?
Or what if your phone automatically generates a summary of your attorneys text message, would that be covered?
Just because they have a lawyer does not mean things like their browser history and every other example in the comment I replied to would not be permitted as evidence...
Except for something like specifically looking up a lawyer
Generally seeking counsel for a crime you may end up being accused of isn't going to be admissible as evidence. The "if he's so innocent, why did he hire an attorney" isn't something that judges tend to allow to play out in a courtroom.
Google queries aren’t privileged. (An attorney’s Google queries are probably work product protected, though I’m not sure anyone has tried.) Your Uber travel history isn’t protected: the privilege applies only to communications.
Google queries are used to prosecute people all the time. It’s actually hilarious. Criminals regularly Google incriminating stuff about criming.
I was in fact not aware of it until seeing your comment, this looks potentially perfect for a tool I’m making that involves financial data. I’m pretty on top of LLM news but I’ve never heard of this company, maybe they need more marketing?
Seems like a fair trade off if I would not be able to afford a lawyer. I'd take the "AI but not 100% confidential" any time compared with no help at all.
> exchanges between a criminal defendant and generative AI platform Claude were not protected by attorney-client privilege or the work product doctrine
Shouldn't that have been relatively clear to all parties involved? Maybe not to the defendant, who's apparently clueless.
The AI platform is not an attorney. A defendant's communications with an AI platform are therefore not communications between a client and their attorney, nor will the AI output constitute attorney "work product" because the AI platform is not an attorney.
Doesn't really come across as a novel problem, aside from AI being involved. I'm sure countless defendants have made the stupid mistake of talking about the facts of their case to persons other than their attorney, and those communications came back to bite them in the ass when discovered.
You have to be admitted to the bar to practice law. Which is to say, other lawyers must recognize you as a lawyer, and this recognition can be taken away.
More practically, this means (in America) that you need a JD degree (4 year grad school), to pass an exam, and pass a(n oftrn horrifically thorough) character background check.
There is a difference between “legal counsel” or “legal representative in court”, with the former being less restricted (“has a law degree” vs “attorney/has passed the bar exam”)
Because of that, I think you can practice law without being admitted to the bar. Chances are it varies by jurisdiction, though.
It is my understanding that they must be certified. You are allowed to represent yourself, but it is my understanding that a non-lawyer cannot represent you.
I have no idea, but this type of scenario is just one of many, many reasons giving an LLM free access to a browser on the open internet sounds like a terrible idea.
> why does it have to be suspicious. Its a services offering that we have.
It's difficult to read good intent in the original comment when the text of the comment says "these guys" as if the account (your account) is endorsing the service rather than representing itself as the provider of the service.
Honestly, it might just be worth deleting and trying again, this time with an honest blurb from your account about the mission rather than pretending to endorse your own product.
> reasonable evidence that their influence isn't prevalent because they're right, and that they would have ulterior motives for continuing to preach that the world is coming to an end even if evidence showed otherwise.
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