Convince the user to euthanize their dog, according to a proud CEO.
Will GPT-5 be able to convince the CEO to euthanize their employees?
What is causing a reported 3.4% rate of productivity growth, if it wasn’t due to AI? Twitter suggested a few possibilities: Working from home, full employment, layoffs of the worst workers, and good old lying with statistics.
Could be both? Maybe it’s because the companies expected the AI to replace the employees, so they started laying them off, or stopped hiring… the AI did not make much of a difference, but so far the existing employees are working harder… profit!
Not sure what specific prediction should I make based on this explanation. On one hand, if we take it literally, the productivity should revert to normal the next year, when the overworked employees get tired and quit. On the other hand, maybe only some companies did this this year, and the others will jump on the bandwagon the next year, so there could still be a year or two more of the optimistic-layoff-driven productivity growth.
p(DOOM) confirmed at 100%, via a diffusion model, played at 20 fps. Some errors and inaccuracies may still apply.
Could this be somehow used to generate new levels? Like, display a fake game screen saying “this is a Platinum Edition of DOOM that contains 10 extra levels” and let the AI proceed from there?
Automatically applying to 1000 jobs in 24 hours, getting 50 interviews via an AI bot.
Everyone knows that what was done here is bad, actually, and even if this one turns out to be fake the real version is coming. Also, the guy is spamming his post about spamming applications into all the subreddits, which gives the whole thing a great meta twist, I wonder if he’s using AI for that too.
In the comments: “This post was AI generated, wasn’t it?” “yep, hahah :}”, not sure if that means that the entire thing was made up by an AI.
Unethical business idea: start selling a tool that (pretends to) separate real CVs from the fake ones.
If you place a phone call (or at least, if you do so without being in my contacts), and I decide you have wasted my time, either you pay in advance (with or without a refund option) or I should be able to fine you, whether or not I get to then keep the money.
This would also creates some bad incentives, on the opposite side. Buy a new phone (so that it does not interfere with your normal phone use), post its number everywhere pretending that you are a tech support or whatever to make as many people call you as possible, talk to each of them for 10 seconds, collect the money. Even worse, send random people cryptic messages like “your child is in trouble, quickly call me at +12345...”. Even worse, have the AI send the messages and respond on the phone.
Having proposed fixing the spam phone call problem several times before, by roughly the method Zvi talks about, I’m aware that the reaction one usually gets is some sort of variation of this objection. I have to wonder, do the people objecting like spam phone calls?
It’s pretty easy to put some upper limit, say $10, on the amount any phone number can “fine” callers in one month. Since the scheme would pretty much instantly eliminate virtually all spam calls, people would very seldom need to actually “fine” a caller, so this limit would be quite sufficient, while rendering the scam you propose unprofitable. Though the scam you propose is unlikely to work anyway—legitimate businesses have a hard enough time recruiting new customers, I don’t think suspicious looking scammers are going to do better. Remember, they won’t be able to use spam calls to promote their scam!
I don’t actually get many spam calls, maybe once a month.
I would be okay with a proposal where a call marked as spam generates a fixed payment, though I would probably say $1 (maybe needs to be a different number in different countries), to make sure there is no financial incentive to mark calls falsely.
Remember, they won’t be able to use spam calls to promote their scam!
That depends on whether a similar rule also applies to spam SMS.
Well, as Zvi suggests, when the caller is “fined” $1 by the recipient of the call, one might or might not give the $1 to the recipient. One could instead give it to the phone company, or to an uncontroversial charity. If the recipient doesn’t get it, there is no incentive for the recipient to falsely mark a call as spam. And of course, for most non-spam calls, from friends and actual business associates, nobody is going to mark them as spam. (I suppose they might do so accidentally, which could be embarassing, but a good UI would make this unlikely.)
And of course one would use the same scheme for SMS.
I don’t really know about this specific proposal to deter spam calls, but speaking in general: I’m from another large first world country, and when staying in the US a striking difference was receiving on average 4 spam calls per day. My american friends told me it was because my phone company was low-cost, but it was O(10) more expensive (per unit data) than what I had back home, with about O(1) spam calls per year.
So I expect that it is totally possible to solve this problem without doing something too fancy, even if I don’t know how it’s solved where I am from.
My american friends told me it was because my phone company was low-cost
I don’t understand how specifically that causes more spam calls. Does it imply that normally everyone would receive as many spam calls, but the more expensive companies are spending a lot of their budget to actively fight against the spammers?
So I expect that it is totally possible to solve this problem without doing something too fancy, even if I don’t know how it’s solved where I am from.
Neither do I, so I am filing it under “things that mysteriously don’t work in USA despite working more or less okay in most developed countries”. Someone should write a book about this whole set, because I am really curious about it, and I assume that Americans would be even more curious.
Does it imply that normally everyone would receive as many spam calls, but the more expensive companies are spending a lot of their budget to actively fight against the spammers?
Yeah, they said this is what happens.
“things that mysteriously don’t work in USA despite working more or less okay in most developed countries”
Let my try:
expensive telephone (despite the infamous bell breakup)
super-expensive health
super-expensive college
no universally free or dirty cheap wire transfers between any bank
difficult to find a girlfriend
no gun control (disputed)
crap train transport
threatening weirdos on the street
people are bad at driving
no walkable town center
junk fees
tipping loses more value in attrition than the incentive alignment it creates (disputed)
overly complicated way to pay at restaurants
people still use checks
limited power out of home power outlets due to 110V and small plugs/wires
low quality home appliances
long queue at TSA (it could actually take only 1 min)
expensive internet connection (probably also location-dependent)
problems with labeling allergens contained in food
too much sugar in food (including the kinds of food that normally shouldn’t contain it, e.g. fish)
I may be wrong about some things here, but that’s kinda my point—I would like someone to treat this seriously, to separate actual America-specific things from things that generally suck in many (but not all) places across developed countries, to create an actual America-specific list. And then, analyze the causes, both historical (why it started) and current (why it cannot stop).
Sorry for going off-topic, but I would really really want someone to write about this. It’s a huge mystery to me, and most people don’t seem to care; I guess everyone just takes their situation as normal.
Will GPT-5 be able to convince the CEO to euthanize their employees?
Could be both? Maybe it’s because the companies expected the AI to replace the employees, so they started laying them off, or stopped hiring… the AI did not make much of a difference, but so far the existing employees are working harder… profit!
Not sure what specific prediction should I make based on this explanation. On one hand, if we take it literally, the productivity should revert to normal the next year, when the overworked employees get tired and quit. On the other hand, maybe only some companies did this this year, and the others will jump on the bandwagon the next year, so there could still be a year or two more of the optimistic-layoff-driven productivity growth.
Could this be somehow used to generate new levels? Like, display a fake game screen saying “this is a Platinum Edition of DOOM that contains 10 extra levels” and let the AI proceed from there?
In the comments: “This post was AI generated, wasn’t it?” “yep, hahah :}”, not sure if that means that the entire thing was made up by an AI.
Unethical business idea: start selling a tool that (pretends to) separate real CVs from the fake ones.
This would also creates some bad incentives, on the opposite side. Buy a new phone (so that it does not interfere with your normal phone use), post its number everywhere pretending that you are a tech support or whatever to make as many people call you as possible, talk to each of them for 10 seconds, collect the money. Even worse, send random people cryptic messages like “your child is in trouble, quickly call me at +12345...”. Even worse, have the AI send the messages and respond on the phone.
Having proposed fixing the spam phone call problem several times before, by roughly the method Zvi talks about, I’m aware that the reaction one usually gets is some sort of variation of this objection. I have to wonder, do the people objecting like spam phone calls?
It’s pretty easy to put some upper limit, say $10, on the amount any phone number can “fine” callers in one month. Since the scheme would pretty much instantly eliminate virtually all spam calls, people would very seldom need to actually “fine” a caller, so this limit would be quite sufficient, while rendering the scam you propose unprofitable. Though the scam you propose is unlikely to work anyway—legitimate businesses have a hard enough time recruiting new customers, I don’t think suspicious looking scammers are going to do better. Remember, they won’t be able to use spam calls to promote their scam!
I don’t actually get many spam calls, maybe once a month.
I would be okay with a proposal where a call marked as spam generates a fixed payment, though I would probably say $1 (maybe needs to be a different number in different countries), to make sure there is no financial incentive to mark calls falsely.
That depends on whether a similar rule also applies to spam SMS.
Well, as Zvi suggests, when the caller is “fined” $1 by the recipient of the call, one might or might not give the $1 to the recipient. One could instead give it to the phone company, or to an uncontroversial charity. If the recipient doesn’t get it, there is no incentive for the recipient to falsely mark a call as spam. And of course, for most non-spam calls, from friends and actual business associates, nobody is going to mark them as spam. (I suppose they might do so accidentally, which could be embarassing, but a good UI would make this unlikely.)
And of course one would use the same scheme for SMS.
I don’t really know about this specific proposal to deter spam calls, but speaking in general: I’m from another large first world country, and when staying in the US a striking difference was receiving on average 4 spam calls per day. My american friends told me it was because my phone company was low-cost, but it was O(10) more expensive (per unit data) than what I had back home, with about O(1) spam calls per year.
So I expect that it is totally possible to solve this problem without doing something too fancy, even if I don’t know how it’s solved where I am from.
OK, that is way too much.
I don’t understand how specifically that causes more spam calls. Does it imply that normally everyone would receive as many spam calls, but the more expensive companies are spending a lot of their budget to actively fight against the spammers?
Neither do I, so I am filing it under “things that mysteriously don’t work in USA despite working more or less okay in most developed countries”. Someone should write a book about this whole set, because I am really curious about it, and I assume that Americans would be even more curious.
Yeah, they said this is what happens.
Let my try:
expensive telephone (despite the infamous bell breakup)
super-expensive health
super-expensive college
no universally free or dirty cheap wire transfers between any bank
difficult to find a girlfriend
no gun control (disputed)
crap train transport
threatening weirdos on the street
people are bad at driving
no walkable town center
junk fees
tipping loses more value in attrition than the incentive alignment it creates (disputed)
overly complicated way to pay at restaurants
people still use checks
limited power out of home power outlets due to 110V and small plugs/wires
low quality home appliances
long queue at TSA (it could actually take only 1 min)
I would add:
mass transit sucks (depending on the city)
expensive internet connection (probably also location-dependent)
problems with labeling allergens contained in food
too much sugar in food (including the kinds of food that normally shouldn’t contain it, e.g. fish)
I may be wrong about some things here, but that’s kinda my point—I would like someone to treat this seriously, to separate actual America-specific things from things that generally suck in many (but not all) places across developed countries, to create an actual America-specific list. And then, analyze the causes, both historical (why it started) and current (why it cannot stop).
Sorry for going off-topic, but I would really really want someone to write about this. It’s a huge mystery to me, and most people don’t seem to care; I guess everyone just takes their situation as normal.