Mastodawn

I just saw somebody refer to a human person, like an actual meat-and-bone possessed-of-inalienable-rights-and-inherent-dignity human person, as "agentic".

Bernard Avishai once famously said that the danger of computers is not that they will eventually get as smart as people, but that we will meanwhile agree to meet them halfway, and I think about that every day. Not just in terms of smarts, but dignity, kindness and decency.

@mhoye you never know when a new least-favorite buzzword is gonna hit

Ted Mielczarek 3d ago

@mhoye we're saving money using reserve pricing for agentic resources

@tedmielczarek You put your credit card into mechanical turk, we get it.

Ted Mielczarek 2d ago

@mhoye Now I'm wondering whether anyone has built a "Chess AI" that uses the MTurk API under the hood…

@tedmielczarek @mhoye almost
https://m.slashdot.org/story/442797

Slashdot

horrified thought — this is the run up to some people being _more agentic_ than others.

@clew not like those other non-agentic sub-people.

“The classifier says you aren’t agentic, that’s why you were never promoted”

@mhoye @clew Arguably it started that way. Turing's own paper has a dig at people who generate less than one idea per idea consumed, in analogy to inadequate nuclear piles.

Odd, that’s a weak analogy twice: ideas aren’t lost when “consumed”; and reactors can come up to operation completely subcritical.

@feonixrift @mhoye

@clew @feonixrift

I have a set of strong feelings about the imitation game.

https://exple.tive.org/blarg/2022/12/06/passing/

Passing | blarg

dragonfrog 2d ago

@clew @feonixrift @mhoye also everyone produces significantly less than one idea per idea consumed. The most productive academic reads dozens of books and papers in a field, on the way to producing one paper. We may not stand on the shoulders of giants, but the shoulders of people standing on the shoulders of people standing on the shoulders of people all the way down to the first hominids to speak an idea.

We have a name for people who produce more ideas than they consume: crackpots.

yes! Plus honors for people who seem to “overproduce” _ideas_ because they are starting with a stream of _observations_ previously neglected.

@dragonfrog @feonixrift @mhoye

Vincarsi 2d ago

@clew @mhoye we already live in that world... It's called wealth disparity under capitalism. The less money you have, the fewer options you can access. Past a certain level of poverty, the idea that you're physically capable of making rational decisions becomes a moot point. You're just flailing and grasping at whatever keeps you alive.

Stewart Russell 3d ago

@mhoye that word broke my etymology-addled brain as meaning "whatever the opposite of gentic is"

Three plus or minus five 3d ago

@mhoye
Quick internet search says the word was originally used in psychology to describe people's states, so it's maybe not that weird.

@mhoye the crazy thing is like, theyre us. theyre just extensions of our own minds and hands. this whole thing is like when a cat gnaws its own tail to the point of injury

play in progress 2d ago

@mhoye uhh, there is a whole twitter neighborhood that uses this as basically their primary value, talking a lot about how to become more so, using it as high praise/compliment etc.

@playinprogress I'm sure they're all very alpha people. I'm sure they're just maxxing stuff like crazy over there.

play in progress 2d ago

@mhoye very!

Robin Bobcat 2d ago

@mhoye Going the wrong direction with the Turing Test.

✧✦Catherine✦✧2d ago

@mhoye @yomimono wait until you find out i go solely by "it/its" (including professionally!) and don't particularly value being called "human"

@whitequark @yomimono I’m happy to address you on whatever terms you prefer, but what I’m talking about is making a practice of the opposite of that.

✧✦Catherine✦✧2d ago

@mhoye @yomimono right, i should've provided additional context

back when i was writing a document (the glasgow code of conduct) which was addressing a group some of whom would object to being called "human", i went for "agents", as in "those with agency".

to this day i don't have a better term! i realize the "AI" people seem like they have a monopoly on it nowadays, but i'm not ceding it to them

✧✦Catherine✦✧2d ago

@mhoye @yomimono (i think my core objection here is that LLMs don't have agency--they're mere tools--so calling _them_ anything remotely like "agentic" is wrong. a cat or a horsefly are more agentic than claude or whatever)

@whitequark @yomimono as an aside, I want to tell you that the only things I know that are Glasgow are a Glasgow kiss and a Glasgow Willy wonka experience, so I am ready to believe that a Glasgow code of conduct is necessary and overdue.

✧✦Catherine✦✧2d ago

@mhoye @yomimono it's this: https://glasgow-embedded.org/latest/intro.html

Glasgow Interface Explorer

A highly capable and extremely flexible open source multitool for digital electronics

@whitequark @yomimono I take back my jokes, that looks awesome. I have a bus pirate here that’s been very useful, and that looks like a whole new level up.

✧✦Catherine✦✧2d ago

@mhoye @yomimono thank you ^^

yeah, it's like bus pirate if bus pirate supported every protocol, up to and including gigabit ethernet*

* i'm still developing that. you can use 100BASE-T4 right now though

ティージェーグレェ 2d ago

I had to look up what "agentic" meant and my Operating System/browser's built-in spellchecker is still flagging it with a red underline.

Looks like SNAFU though, that is, writing as some poor plebeian from the United States of America, where corporate personhood has already been a thing longer than I have been incarnated as a human.

Which is to say, there already exists a so-called "justice" system which finds itself incapable of dismantling a convicted monopoly (e.g. AT&T, or more recently: Alphabet Inc./Google) but still has many states where the death penalty is sanctioned (and if you want to get into the can of worms of what an affront to all human decency capital punishment is, to say nothing of the egregious expenses assocaited with stateside), I am harrowingly used to those with wealth and power using any means possible to make their BS "legal" no matter whom suffers in the process. ;(

Remember, R.U.R. (the play which coined the term "robot") was always about labor rights and the laborers overthrowing the "masters" who so thoroughly dehumanized the "robots" that the robots were considered to have been grown in vats of wax; rather than via some other reproductive means.

No doubt, those with wealth and power, have and will continue to make up any excuse imaginable to continue doing their evil deeds despite those who suffer as a result.

Phrased another way, 2016's "Hidden Figures" barely skratches the surface of "computers" when it comes to smart humans, being oppressed by tyrants.

NASA, still exists after all. SpaceX gobbled up approximately 1/12th of its budget in 2024 by my estimations.

SNAFU.

Alceste ('fort bien, mais...') 🇵🇸 ☮️2d ago

Harold was a bit tricky.

bookandswordblog 1d ago

@mhoye Maciej Ceglowski already warned us that the rich Silicon Valley types he met were trying to act like they thought a superintelligent computer would act (so their fear of computers taking over is projection). So some TESCREAL types do seem to pat each other on the back for being "agentic" and "generative." https://idlewords.com/talks/superintelligence.htm

Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

bookandswordblog 1d ago

@mhoye I also see people asking themselves "if the NPC quest-giver in my CRPG is just a set of buttons to push, maybe some real people are too?" Sad and dangerous way to think about human beings.