apocalypse | M Thomas Apple Author Page

Who is this “WE” and what do “WE” want AI to do?

March 5, 2026
MThomas

“WE will decide the fate of our Country – NOT some out-of-control, Radical Left AI company run by people who have no idea what the real World is all about,” Trump wrote.

Hmm. OK, what did this “Radical Left AI company” want?

US defense officials have pushed for unfettered access to Claude’s capabilities that they say can help protect the country, while Anthropic has resisted allowing its product to be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons systems that can kill people without human input.

So the WE is actually just ME, then.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/27/trump-anthropic-ai-federal-agencies?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

I’ve written repeatedly about the dangers of AI: it’s not really AI, it repeats very human bias and mistakes, and it will become potentially extremely dangerous to humanity if left unregulated.

But go on, keep using these programs. I’m sure it’ll all work out…

And the real reason Class D missions are a complete waste…

March 4, 2026
MThomas

Lunar Trailblazer blazed so hard that NASA completely lost it immediately…

Software that was supposed to point the spacecraft solar panels toward the sun instead pointed them 180 degrees away from the sun.

https://www.npr.org/2026/02/26/nx-s1-5727622/nasa-lunar-trailblazer-moon-new-report-what-went-wrong

It took a year to figure this out.

A year.

To find out that the outsourced company in charge couldn’t even be bothered to test the product. They just happily pocketed $72 million of taxpayer dollars and laughed all the way to the bank.

Another symptom of a nation in decline…

Who wants to train AI for free, hands up! 🙌

July 10, 2024
MThomas

Post a comment on Reddit, answer coding questions on Stack Overflow, edit a Wikipedia entry or share a baby photo on your public Facebook or Instagram feed and you are also helping to trainthe next generation of artificial intelligence.

https://apnews.com/article/genai-training-data-stack-overflow-reddit-9d71b75ec16c78c0d2c51cc46121c1a4

Well, if they’re scrubbing my public FB page for data,

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

I’ll take up my vorpal sword and

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

O frabjous day!

PS I hope this helps hapless mindless office workers compose emails.

Yet another Gen Z vague question?

May 8, 2024
MThomas

What was the last live performance you saw?

Last live performance of what?

I saw a baseball game last September. That was live. Does that count?

Oh. Do you mean “live” in the Japanese sense, i.e., a live performance by a musical artist?

As in a live concert?

At a club?

Or just that the musicians were alive and actually wrote their own music and played their own instruments rather than danced around and lip-synced?

Yes. I am a snarky Gen-Xer. Wave the flannel.

(FWIW I think the last live musical performance I’ve seen was in a Japanese club in Osaka around 2000 or 2001, and before that in mid-1999 in a club somewhere in Boston. It’s hard to get out when you have a family and need to actually go to work in the morning.)

What is the next “unfilmable” scifi book to hit the big screen?

April 1, 2024
MThomas

The story of the last 20 years of pop culture is, in many ways, the Victory Of The Nerd: Comic book films, gaming adaptations, the general adoption of deeply nerdy genre trappings like time loop stories, superheroes, and more, all making billions of dollars at the box office as geek obsessions infiltrate the body mainstream.
https://www.avclub.com/dune-other-great-unfilmable-sci-fi-novels-1851370740

AV Club suggests these five:

God Emperor of Dune (book 4)

The Caves of Steel (Isaac Asimov)

The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula LeGuin)

The Sirens of Titan (Kurt Vonnegut)

The Player of Games (Iain Banks)

One of the main problems that some “classic SciFi” doesn’t get made into movies is that their plots are, frankly, often ridiculous or cheesy.

What would you want to see on the big screen finally?

AGI by 2027? 2028? 2030?

March 11, 2024
MThomas

“It should be able to make a smarter AGI, then an even smarter AGI, then an intelligence explosion,” he added, presumably referring to the singularity.
https://futurism.com/artificial-superintelligence-agi-2027-goertzel?fbclid=IwAR2v9500C6hNEfhD4RehqCa04Dltys7KuVkyuepcgmiqoNhSBseMtpHojJs

Seriously. Am I the only one who thinks this is, like, a really, really, REALLY bad idea?

Eat a sun a day…

February 26, 2024
MThomas

Astronomers have discovered what may be the brightest object in the universe, a quasar with a black hole at its heart growing so fast that it swallows the equivalent of a sun a day.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/black-hole-devouring-sun-day-may-universes-brightest-object-rcna139507

Have a nice day!

Booooooring

February 22, 2024
MThomas

What bores you?

What doesn’t?

OK, I guess I’ll play along…

Boring people
People who talk a lot but say very little
Morning “news”
Talk shows
Game shows
Most TV, to be quite honest
Pop music. Of any era.
Dancing
Politicians
Business people
Pointless paperwork
Activities that require no thought or skill
Card games (seriously…sorry, I just don’t get the attraction)
Long lists about boring things (hey!)

White Dwarf the oldest star in the galaxy?

February 14, 2024
MThomas

A study published this weekend in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Societyproposes that the oldest star in the Milky Way is a faint white dwarf that is about 10.7 billion years old and shining roughly 90 light years away from Earth.
https://www.popsci.com/science/the-milky-ways-oldest-star-is-a-white-hot-pyre-of-dead-planets/?fbclid=IwAR3smMe_OryfOHbM03X9HZIz9CcFu85LCsmGiNe5vaBh-7678xtPO4VOuxY

The Milky Way is old. Like, really, really old. One of the oldest galaxies.

This is probably what will eventually happen to our solar system. That’s right, everything will turn to rubble and get sucked into the dying Sun.

So, given all that, there’s only one thing for it…

When AI becomes actual AI…

October 26, 2023
MThomas

We compared current scientific theories of what makes humans conscious to compile a list of “indicator properties” that could then be applied to AI systems.

We don’t think systems that possess the indicator properties are definitely conscious, but the more indicators, the more seriously we should take claims of AI consciousness.
https://theconversation.com/why-chatgpt-isnt-conscious-but-future-ai-systems-might-be-212860

Last year, an engineer for Google who was working on what was then called “LaMDA” (later released as “Bard”) claimed that the software had achieved consciousness. He claimed it was like a small child and he could “talk” with it.

He was fired.

Bard, ChatGPT, Baidu, and so forth are advanced chatbots built on what’s called “Large Language Models” (LLM) and can generate text in an instant.

But the programs are not AI, strictly speaking. They have no sentience.

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