From coff at tuhs.org Wed Aug 12 01:59:24 2026 From: coff at tuhs.org (Bakul Shah via COFF) Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:59:24 -0700 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] A thing I did (AI Slop Alert) In-Reply-To: References: <3eda05a715be91db5a9dfd0ad0450e2e@alanlee.org> <60dcc3207f2d574efcad2aa350b3a49e@herricane.ca> Message-ID: <18A277C2-06BE-4601-AD19-6EE417DFE3D2@iitbombay.org> May be best to move this AI slop^Wspecific discussion to COFF? From coff at tuhs.org Wed Aug 12 10:25:36 2026 From: coff at tuhs.org (Cameron Tyre via COFF) Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:25:36 +0000 Subject: [COFF] A thing I did (AI Slop Alert) In-Reply-To: <3fbfcec5-4f70-09cc-beaf-54466fe665aa@makerlisp.com> References: <3eda05a715be91db5a9dfd0ad0450e2e@alanlee.org> <60dcc3207f2d574efcad2aa350b3a49e@herricane.ca> <3fbfcec5-4f70-09cc-beaf-54466fe665aa@makerlisp.com> Message-ID: <27Y-FqKHoiMOph7a0pvgoEZfitsObgaWqWrCJMNvy-y3ohZNMGaVfBZMKPGUtb6VkUt2rx7RZI9MHg6NcAvYy2H1kmMZjMd4xAreJDCG6lA=@protonmail.ch> Purely from personal observation, I think there is a degree of peer influence as to whether one accepts or rejects "AI", assuming you have a choice, i.e. dependant on whether your boss tells you to use it or not. I know, in some jobs now, there is no choice, unless you count qutting. I was helping a family member set up a website for her business. Aside from the obvious necessities like name of the business and service offered, I asked, "Do you have a spiel you want to put, on an 'About me' or 'About us' page on your website?". I pictured perhaps a couple of modest paragraphs revealing relevant experience. I was handed a pile of printed sheets of paper containing many, many paragraphs of what soon revealed itself to be repetitive and mostly generic phrases that could have applied to many businesses. I pointed out that there seemed to be repetition and asked if that was a mistake, i.e. had a paragraph or four been copied and pasted by accident. I was told, "Ooh no, I just told ChatGPT all my hopes and dreams and it wrote it all for me!". That was my first indirect experience of "AI" and it made me see that many people use "AI" because they are short on time, don't know how to do the thing themselves, can't be bothered doing it themselves or similar reasons. When I remonstrated with my family member and said, "A shorter piece, actually written by you, would be more powerful.", I was told, "But ChatGPT has done it for me!". My wife and many of her colleagues use "AI" at work because they are given far too much to do by the KPI obsessed management team and it probably saves one or two of them from having nervous breakdowns before school is out for summer. My wife, in particular, uses it to create visual aids such as pie charts and graphs which, by her own admission, might take her a whole day to create on her own. I think "AI" can be useful in certain specific circumstances but I have seen some awful "AI slop" videos on YouTube which get many things wrong and the "creator" of the video either doesn't know any better or doesn't care or both. My main concern is that people might, over a generation or two, get so lazy and uneducated that they will believe anything "AI" tells or shows them, meanwhile "AI" will start scraping the output of other "AI" and the output will get less accurate and less realistic through each iteration until we end up getting videos on YouTube about "Easter Island was the last holdout of the Nazis", or, "NICAP had proof that the Moon landings were faked - 'lost' footage revealed after 60 years!". I bought a "Python for Dummies" book a couple weeks ago, mostly because I have fond memories of earlier books in the Dummies series. I was astounded that a large chunk of the first chapter was about how to set up the VS Code IDE and tie it in with a subscription to an "AI" account so that you can get the "AI" to write code for you. I felt that kind of negated the point of the book. I aim on reading the whole book to the end but how many people will try and find the shortest route to making "AI" write code for them? I was recently reading about the decommissioned Bradwell nuclear power station in England, UK. The article I read stated, "In 1969, a new Honeywell 316 was installed as the primary reactor temperature-monitoring computer; this was in continuous use until summer 2000, when the internal 160 kB disk failed. Two PDP-11/70s, which had previously been secondary monitors, were moved to primary."** My word of caution, related to that story, a question of caution really, is, "Would mankind let 'AI' write the software for a nuclear reactor temperature-monitoring computer?" Best regards, Cameron ** A super-interesting rabbit hole, in case anyone wants to take a trip down it, specifically the Honeywell 316. Sent from Proton Mail for Android. From coff at tuhs.org Wed Aug 12 11:15:46 2026 From: coff at tuhs.org (Adam Thornton via COFF) Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2026 18:15:46 -0700 Subject: [COFF] A thing I did (AI Slop Alert) In-Reply-To: <27Y-FqKHoiMOph7a0pvgoEZfitsObgaWqWrCJMNvy-y3ohZNMGaVfBZMKPGUtb6VkUt2rx7RZI9MHg6NcAvYy2H1kmMZjMd4xAreJDCG6lA=@protonmail.ch> References: <3eda05a715be91db5a9dfd0ad0450e2e@alanlee.org> <60dcc3207f2d574efcad2aa350b3a49e@herricane.ca> <3fbfcec5-4f70-09cc-beaf-54466fe665aa@makerlisp.com> <27Y-FqKHoiMOph7a0pvgoEZfitsObgaWqWrCJMNvy-y3ohZNMGaVfBZMKPGUtb6VkUt2rx7RZI9MHg6NcAvYy2H1kmMZjMd4xAreJDCG6lA=@protonmail.ch> Message-ID: I'm pretty sure my boss gave me the task of putting AI features into our custom JupyterLab container precisely because I was the most AI-skeptical of anyone on our team. Along the way, I did learn that Claude does pretty decent code reviews and it's a good idea to let Claude do that before I inflict my code on actual co-workers for review. And of course I'm pretty pleased with the outcome of the Forth interpreter. (I did follow the earlier links to find FIG-Forth as a standalone bootable environment for the PDP-11.) If I have a bunch of credits left over at the end of the month I'm probably going to see how far I get with a tn3270e client, because x3270 is pretty long in the tooth and XQuartz is getting more and more of a PITA, and while zti/tnz are great, I'd really like something that runs as a nice MacOS graphical app (I don't care if it's actually Electron or whatever under the hood), because Carbon support didn't make it to 64 bits so Peter De Camillo decided not to try to update tn3270. I know there's Perry Werneck's pw3270 but I have never actually gotten it to build. The nice thing about that is that there are a series of incremental steps I can take, each of which has a nice clear deliverable (like, step 1 is a basic 3270-not-e 80x24 monochrome terminal), and I can do the same thing I did with v7 and just set up Hercules running TK5 under VM/CE and give Claude instructions for what tasks to perform in the environment to do some end-to-end testing. Only this time we don't have to invent the file transfer because IND$FILE is already a thing. Adam On Tue, Aug 11, 2026 at 5:25 PM Cameron Tyre via COFF wrote: > Purely from personal observation, I think there is a degree of peer > influence as to whether one accepts or rejects "AI", assuming you have a > choice, i.e. dependant on whether your boss tells you to use it or not. I > know, in some jobs now, there is no choice, unless you count qutting. > > I was helping a family member set up a website for her business. Aside > from the obvious necessities like name of the business and service offered, > I asked, "Do you have a spiel you want to put, on an 'About me' or 'About > us' page on your website?". I pictured perhaps a couple of modest > paragraphs revealing relevant experience. > > I was handed a pile of printed sheets of paper containing many, many > paragraphs of what soon revealed itself to be repetitive and mostly generic > phrases that could have applied to many businesses. I pointed out that > there seemed to be repetition and asked if that was a mistake, i.e. had a > paragraph or four been copied and pasted by accident. > > I was told, "Ooh no, I just told ChatGPT all my hopes and dreams and it > wrote it all for me!". That was my first indirect experience of "AI" and it > made me see that many people use "AI" because they are short on time, don't > know how to do the thing themselves, can't be bothered doing it themselves > or similar reasons. When I remonstrated with my family member and said, "A > shorter piece, actually written by you, would be more powerful.", I was > told, "But ChatGPT has done it for me!". > > My wife and many of her colleagues use "AI" at work because they are given > far too much to do by the KPI obsessed management team and it probably > saves one or two of them from having nervous breakdowns before school is > out for summer. My wife, in particular, uses it to create visual aids such > as pie charts and graphs which, by her own admission, might take her a > whole day to create on her own. > > I think "AI" can be useful in certain specific circumstances but I have > seen some awful "AI slop" videos on YouTube which get many things wrong and > the "creator" of the video either doesn't know any better or doesn't care > or both. My main concern is that people might, over a generation or two, > get so lazy and uneducated that they will believe anything "AI" tells or > shows them, meanwhile "AI" will start scraping the output of other "AI" and > the output will get less accurate and less realistic through each iteration > until we end up getting videos on YouTube about "Easter Island was the last > holdout of the Nazis", or, "NICAP had proof that the Moon landings were > faked - 'lost' footage revealed after 60 years!". > > I bought a "Python for Dummies" book a couple weeks ago, mostly because I > have fond memories of earlier books in the Dummies series. I was astounded > that a large chunk of the first chapter was about how to set up the VS Code > IDE and tie it in with a subscription to an "AI" account so that you can > get the "AI" to write code for you. I felt that kind of negated the point > of the book. I aim on reading the whole book to the end but how many people > will try and find the shortest route to making "AI" write code for them? > > I was recently reading about the decommissioned Bradwell nuclear power > station in England, UK. The article I read stated, "In 1969, a new > Honeywell 316 was installed as the primary reactor temperature-monitoring > computer; this was in continuous use until summer 2000, when the internal > 160 kB disk failed. Two PDP-11/70s, which had previously been secondary > monitors, were moved to primary."** My word of caution, related to that > story, a question of caution really, is, "Would mankind let 'AI' write the > software for a nuclear reactor temperature-monitoring computer?" > > Best regards, > > Cameron > > ** A super-interesting rabbit hole, in case anyone wants to take a trip > down it, specifically the Honeywell 316. > > > > > Sent from Proton Mail for Android. > > > From coff at tuhs.org Thu Aug 13 03:39:43 2026 From: coff at tuhs.org (Seth Morabito via COFF) Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2026 10:39:43 -0700 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Re: A thing I did (AI Slop Alert) In-Reply-To: <202608120620.67C6Ka8d073243@freefriends.org> References: <3eda05a715be91db5a9dfd0ad0450e2e@alanlee.org> <1df36454-3733-40f0-82f3-4f0fed26b8c6@mhorton.net> <202608120620.67C6Ka8d073243@freefriends.org> Message-ID: <52e0abdf-ead9-43f7-ada5-7a69b02dba7f@app.fastmail.com> On Tue, Aug 11, 2026, at 11:20 PM, Arnold Robbins via TUHS wrote: > Mary Ann Horton via TUHS wrote: > >> Many in this group are retired, so we may not be aware of what the >> business world is doing. >> >> Many large corporation executives have told their workers "Embrace AI. >> Use it or get left behind." The reason is that their competitors are >> embracing AI, and their company will be at a competitive disadvantage if >> they don't do the same. Software developers, in particular, are being >> pushed to partner with AI, as a productivity aid. > > This is quite true. I hear this from friends and former colleagues. > I also have heard from one person that productivity results that are > reported up the management chain are, inflated, shall we say? > (At a VERY large software company that shall remain nameless.) > > Fortunately, I retired just before being forced to use AI at work > became a thing, so I'm happy. [Reply re-directed to COFF] The divide between "Embracing AI" and "Rejecting AI" doesn't appear to correlate very strongly with age so far in my experience, and I'm still trying to puzzle out what it DOES correlate strongly with, if anything. I'm just not sure. I've discussed it at length with friends and acquaintances and colleagues across the tech industry, and people who are very much against LLM use and people who are very much in favor of LLM use seem to span the age range from their 20s to their 60s and beyond. I have many objections to the current generative AI landscape, but I'm lucky enough that at my current employer we're not being pushed to use it very strongly. Some engineers, do, some don't, there's not much pressure either way and I like that. My objections are twofold: Ethical (I hate the companies that are driving this adoption and find them to be morally bankrupt in a way we haven't seen since the Robber Baron era), and practical. The practical one is where I find a big divide. For me, the LLMs remove the fun part of the job, and leave the tedious part of the job. I suspect that's exactly the opposite for people who are embracing LLMs, they probably find what I find fun to be tedious, and the other way around. Anyway, I'm not quite able to retire yet, I'm only 53, but I'm trying to find my way out of the tech industry, because it certainly is not fun any more! -Seth -- Seth Morabito * Poulsbo, WA * https://loomcom.com/ From coff at tuhs.org Thu Aug 13 04:04:15 2026 From: coff at tuhs.org (Steffen Nurpmeso via COFF) Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2026 20:04:15 +0200 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Re: A thing I did (AI Slop Alert) In-Reply-To: <52e0abdf-ead9-43f7-ada5-7a69b02dba7f@app.fastmail.com> References: <3eda05a715be91db5a9dfd0ad0450e2e@alanlee.org> <1df36454-3733-40f0-82f3-4f0fed26b8c6@mhorton.net> <202608120620.67C6Ka8d073243@freefriends.org> <52e0abdf-ead9-43f7-ada5-7a69b02dba7f@app.fastmail.com> Message-ID: <20260812180415.1qmOkd6d@steffen%sdaoden.eu> Seth Morabito via COFF wrote in <52e0abdf-ead9-43f7-ada5-7a69b02dba7f at app.fastmail.com>: |On Tue, Aug 11, 2026, at 11:20 PM, Arnold Robbins via TUHS wrote: |> Mary Ann Horton via TUHS wrote: |>> Many in this group are retired, so we may not be aware of what the |>> business world is doing. |>> |>> Many large corporation executives have told their workers "Embrace AI. |>> Use it or get left behind." The reason is that their competitors are |>> embracing AI, and their company will be at a competitive disadvantage \ |>> if |>> they don't do the same. Software developers, in particular, are being |>> pushed to partner with AI, as a productivity aid. |> |> This is quite true. I hear this from friends and former colleagues. |> I also have heard from one person that productivity results that are |> reported up the management chain are, inflated, shall we say? |> (At a VERY large software company that shall remain nameless.) |> |> Fortunately, I retired just before being forced to use AI at work |> became a thing, so I'm happy. | |[Reply re-directed to COFF] | |The divide between "Embracing AI" and "Rejecting AI" doesn't appear \ |to correlate very strongly with age so far in my experience, and I'm \ |still trying to puzzle out what it DOES correlate strongly with, if \ |anything. I'm just not sure. I've discussed it at length with friends \ |and acquaintances and colleagues across the tech industry, and people \ |who are very much against LLM use and people who are very much in favor \ |of LLM use seem to span the age range from their 20s to their 60s and \ |beyond. | |I have many objections to the current generative AI landscape, but \ |I'm lucky enough that at my current employer we're not being pushed \ |to use it very strongly. Some engineers, do, some don't, there's not \ |much pressure either way and I like that. My objections are twofold: \ |Ethical (I hate the companies that are driving this adoption and find \ |them to be morally bankrupt in a way we haven't seen since the Robber \ |Baron era), and practical. The practical one is where I find a big \ |divide. For me, the LLMs remove the fun part of the job, and leave \ |the tedious part of the job. I suspect that's exactly the opposite \ |for people who are embracing LLMs, they probably find what I find fun \ |to be tedious, and the other way around. | |Anyway, I'm not quite able to retire yet, I'm only 53, but I'm trying \ |to find my way out of the tech industry, because it certainly is not \ |fun any more! It is just another race, and that alone, and necessarily, i would say, results in wrong direct(ion|ive)s. If it would be sensitive, it would possibly have been done like the Iter project. And windmill farms, with hydrogen electrolysis, and solar panels, ditto (maybe), would have been created where it makes sense, to generate the necessary electricity, and dedicated computing grids would have been spread around the globe where nature offers a splendid environment for that. (Arctic circle.) Then scientists etc would use these facilities for things that make sense, riding in their <=200 horsepower fuel cell car that they drive for a decade or longer. Here we now approach almost maximum coverage of our fusion thing. (That i personally approach more from the spiritual side, actually, and love the summer light and warmth, in a totally unscientific and untopheavy way.) --steffen | |Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear, |der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one |einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off |(By Robert Gernhardt)