Fractals yet again :)

Fractals yet again. This time, in 3D. Mind blowing without question. :)

 

They're everywhere ...

 

Endlessly fascinating

Yet another meander

Blue on Green ...

Channeling Ozymandias

And so it goes - K. Vonnegut

Tsar Bomba ...

Channeling Strangelove, Tsar Bomba

A Tsar Bomba-type casing on display at the Sarov atomic bomb museum, Sarov

The blast

The nuclear arms race that originated in the race for atomic weapons during World War II reached
a culminating point on October 30, 1961, with the detonation of the Tsar Bomba,
the largest and most powerful nuclear weapon ever constructed.

Lifespans ...

Not completely accurate but very cool indeed. Some animals never die but we do and that's ok. :)

If this is NOT done ...

Getty / Futurism

Not to beat a dead horse but, when reading yet another gem from Futurism regarding AI and the corporate workforce, one thing seems to always apply. Said corporation does not do due diligence in terms of how to properly integrate AI into business operations as it takes real analysis and an in depth plan on how to do it intelligently. Yours truly did this with clients with some success, before AI, to improve corporate workflows and to help companies do their jobs better and in doing this, I found out this is not a trivial task. The bible used, as reference, is, of course,
The Mythical Man Month, the best book, IMHO, in terms of how to correctly do the job just described in this short blurb. If this is not done, a CF of biblical proportion occurs, ALWAYS.

CEOs have eagerly grabbed onto AI as a tool to make offices more efficient,
and often to reduce headcount via brutal layoffs.

There’s a problem, though: the workers who remain often say they now have to fix a flood of error-ridden AI-generated “workslop” that’s burdening them, paradoxically, with more work than ever.

All this pointless busywork to correct AI-generated output results in hidden costs for companies that embrace the tech, according to The Guardian. One recent survey of 1,150 desk jockeys found that the 40 percent had encountered workslop — defined as “AI-generated content that looks good, but lacks substance” — in the course of their duties, forcing them to waste 3.4 hours per month dealing with it. At scale, that’s significant: all those hours wasted tally up to an estimated $8.1 million of lost productivity for a workplace with 10,000 workers.

The hypothesis is supported by previous research that found that computer programmers become slower when using AI. A widely-cited MIT study found that 95 percent companies that deployed AI don’t see any added revenue from its adoption, despite massive enthusiasm among CEOs.

Adding more people (and AI) to a late project makes it later.  Mythical Man Month.

Time to jump out ...

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images

The boiling frog is an apologue describing a frog being slowly boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. The story is often used as a metaphor for the inability or unwillingness of people to react to or be aware of sinister threats that arise gradually rather than suddenly.

Fortunately, this is false. The frog jumps out when it's time to leave but for humans
connecting to AI, this logical move might not apply. 

In a new study, researchers claim to provide the first causal evidence that leaning on AI to assist with “reasoning-intensive” cognitive labor — mental tasks ranging from writing to studying to coding to simply brainstorming new ideas — can rapidly impair users’ intellectual ability and willingness to persist despite difficulty.

“We find that AI assistance improves immediate performance, but it comes at a heavy cognitive cost,” the study declares of its findings. “After just [about] 10 minutes of AI-assisted problem-solving, people who lost access to the AI performed worse and gave up more frequently than those who never used it.”

The study, which was conducted by a multidisciplinary cohort of scientists from across the United States and United Kingdom, has yet to be peer-reviewed. But it builds on a growing body of research suggesting that extensive AI use can distort and dampen users’ thinking and independence, and as experts work to understand the impacts of widely-used chatbots on people as they unfold in real-time, they’re warning that outsourcing cognitive tasks to AI tools could put humans in a “boiling frog” conundrum — in which an unwitting, bit-by-bit erosion of our cognitive “muscles” leads to formidable challenges in the long-term.

A frog sitting on the handle of a saucepan on a hot stove

Tarantulas have smarts. :)

Rick West

Tarantula's are so cool. I've always wanted one but the wife says no way. Females live for as long as 30 years and their bite, as painful as it is, is not lethal. Seems they have smarts and innate spatial sense as well.

Researchers have witnessed several cases of spatial orientation in tarantulas – indicating that they may be capable of learning and memory.

They studied nine cases of the movement and hunting behaviour of arboreal (tree-dwelling) and fossorial (subterranean) tarantulas across North and South America, producing rare field-based observations of the creatures.

On two occasions, the arboreal Aviculariinae tarantulas repeatedly left their retreats to hunt at more favourable areas up to two metres away – particularly at locations near artificial light sources that attracted more flying insects.

Species that usually live in burrows within lowland floodplain areas also demonstrated unusual climbing behaviour. They scaled trees at heights of up to 12 metres, with the researchers concluding that they may have been foraging in the tree canopy.

While this has been previously observed to occur in the floodplain’s rainy season to avoid flooding, this behaviour was recorded during the dry season.

Gooty tarantula Poecilotheria metallica, Blue Tarantula - Getty Images

The key for these guys is to avoid, if in the southwest, the Tarantula Hawk,
a formidable hunter of tarantulas without question. 

Pepsis grossa, alongside a golden paper wasp for scale

Intense without question. Once in a great while, the spider wins. :)

Two takes, both valid :)

Microtonal, hard bop, hard rock, syncopated to the max, loops, drive. Totally alive. They cook.

Add Dada to the mix and you have the whole picture of Angine de Poitrine, the pride of Quebec. :)

Physics, cymatics, musicianship, great video, sophisticated hardware. Totally different from 
Angine de Poitrine but Nigel Stamford's music is just as legit, just as valid :)

Dorian lives ...

ALAIN JOCARD/AFP via Getty Images/Futurism

Having one Zuck is bad enough. How about two, an AI twin emulating the ethos of 
Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon in order to surveil employees.

This plan of Jeremy Bentham's panopticon prison was drawn by Willey Reveley in 1791.

The panopticon is a design of institutional building with an inbuilt system of control, originated by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The concept is to allow all prisoners of an institution to be observed by a single prison officer, without the inmates knowing whether or not they are being watched.

The 2026 version ...

Even for an executive long known by employees as the “Eye of Sauron,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is taking the concept of micromanagement to its final form, the Financial Times reports, by using AI to develop a “photorealistic, AI-powered 3D” version of himself to converse with and offer feedback to employees.

The dystopian effort is part of a broader push to create avatars, based on public figures, that Meta’s customers can interact with in real time. It’s a concept that has struggled to catch on with the public, if the company’s previous forays into character chatbots are anything to go by.

The faux Zuckerberg AI will be trained on a wealth of imagery of the executive and his voice. The effort is personally being overseen by the billionaire, who is reportedly spending five to ten hours a week vibe coding.

A picture of the cover of the July 1890 edition of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine,
where "The Picture of Dorian Gray" was first published

Hate to say it but Zuck's move reminds one of Dorian. Interesting take is it not?

He has risen ...

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116394884725149647

He has risen.

Game theory 101 ...

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images

Back in 1983, probably the most realistic take on game theory, nerds, computers and nuclear war was,
IMHO, War Games, where tech can go sideways if humans aren't in the loop.

 Now consider AI and the prospect of guys running said tech while having serious morality issues if the Futurism article titled OpenAI Staffers Horrified When Senior Leadership Hatched “Insane” Plan to Pit World Governments Against Each Other has "legs".

This anecdote of near comic-book-villainry comes from The New Yorker’s sweeping new investigation into CEO Sam Altman, which documents his alarming pattern of lying and manipulating to build his AI empire, a behavior that some insiders likened to that of an actual “sociopath.”

Altman’s second-in-command Greg Brockman features heavily. In 2017, according to the reporting, he hatched a geopolitical scheme which internally came to be known as the “countries plan.” Unimpressed by his ethics adviser’s suggestion to avoid a nuclear-like arms race by forming an international body to cooperate on AI safety, Brockman openly mused about playing world powers like China and Russia against each other, such as by starting a bidding war for its tech. According to the ethics adviser, Page Hedley, Brockman’s logic seemed to be, “It worked for nuclear weapons, why not AI?”

“The premise, which they didn’t dispute, was ‘We’re talking about potentially the most destructive technology ever invented — what if we sold it to Putin?'” an exasperated Hedley told The New Yorker.

OpenAI’s then-policy director Jack Clark described it as a “prisoner’s dilemma, where all of the nations need to give us funding,” and that “implicitly makes not giving us funding kind of dangerous.”

A junior researcher recalled thinking at the meeting where the plan was discussed that it was “completely f*cking insane.”

And this ...

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images; Futurism

Every time yours truly listens to this guy, the word cringe comes to mind. Seems I'm not alone.

Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO and the public face of ChatGPT, has carved out an image for himself as one of the preeminent AI whisperers of our age, whose influence supposedly extends to the White House on the strength of his ideas alone.

Or at least that’s the image he’s managed to cultivate. A new exposé in the New Yorker paints a different portrait, and it’s substantially more vexing. Drawing on interviews with numerous OpenAI insiders who worked with Altman, the article portrays the CEO not as a technical wiz, but as a skilled manipulator — and one with a surprisingly shallow grasp of the AI systems his company is building.

John Nash would find these musings modestly interesting. 

John Forbes Nash, Jr.

As a graduate student in the Princeton University Department of Mathematics, Nash introduced a number of concepts (including the Nash equilibrium and the Nash bargaining solution), which are now considered central to game theory and its applications in various sciences.