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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1177 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 7, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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So I know a lot of posters here are doing some really advanced stuff with AI, but I have a quick little anecdote from my own luddite life that might help explain why most normies don't really see AI as something particularly useful.

I just asked Google's free AI what the current value of 0.035 ounces of gold is and it completely face-planted, ignoring the decimal and the zero and giving me the value for 35 ounces. This isn't a case of overactive guardrails or confusing syntax or hallucinating plausible details into a news story; it's the most basic of transcription errors, the kind that dumb, pre-LLM systems have solved for decades. Old google never would have made such an error.

This is the technology that's going to completely upend the world order? It makes sense for normies to be skeptical. Regardless of what the frontier labs have cooking, the AI most people actually interact with is worse than useless half the time.

Anybody else have one of these "the fuck are we even doing here?" moments with AI recently?

I get them every single time I use one for anything subjective or creative. I suspect LLMs are a dead end. The comprehension of prose is terrible, their ideas are terrible and wishy-washy, and the naked glazing disgusts me.

I suppose that biological neural networks were ultimately evolved in the same way; throwing them at a task (survival) over and over and over until they accomplished it, then iterating. It's why our brains arent truth-seeking machines, but survival machines, and even our sensory perceptions are a cobbled together mess of imaginary qualia and we see Shadow-Men and optical illusions.

Instead, these things are trained on convincing a human that the output pleases them; any accuracy or usefulness is ultimately incidental.

I'm amazed at how many people don't cough up even the $20 required for the full-fat experience. At least OpenAI has recently announced that they're making unlimited usage of a newer model, 5.6 Luna, available to the masses for free. It is still several steps down from Sol, which continues to genuinely impress me.

Google's "free AI" is an incredibly imprecise term. It can mean Gemini 3.5 (Flash? Lite?) when used through the Gemini app. It can be the search-specific Gemini 1.5, IIRC, used if you just "Google" something. As you can imagine, not even Google can afford to use the best of the best when serving so many people at such scale, with the majority being trivial queries.

I would pay a great deal more than $20 for an AI plan, but luckily, I don't have to. I've got tons of Claude Max, because I decided to accept payment in that form instead of figuring out intercontinental financial transfers after my participation in Unslop.

I remember when a Dutch junior of mine was consulting another senior for advice when working on a meta-analysis meant for a big name journal. I could have clapped like a seal when the latter mentioned Claude, in addition to ChatGPT, for help with the stats scutwork. Then I asked, and confirmed, that she only had a free plan. I was so dismayed that I immediately offered to share my Max, and walk her through things. It didn't hurt that she's a pretty girl, and it would have provided an opportunity to go out with her (that ended up happening anyway), but I am beyond annoyed when other doctors use free-tier LLMs for clinical work. They still function adequately, but anyone who can afford better should use better. $20 is really not an onerous ask for a significant amount of intelligence on tap.

they're making unlimited usage of a newer model, 5.6 Luna, available to the masses for free.

In my ime, all cost optimized models are absolute worthless dogshit. A current gen cost optimized model is not as useful as early gen normal models (llama3 70b, gpt-4o).

My understanding is that current chatgpt free is 5.5 real with thinking=0 which is still a decent model. Luna (equivalent to nano, much worse than even mini), is a maaaasive step down. I think it's criminal to even let the masses have access to this piece of hot garbage, as it will provide negative information to a 100iq midwit.

Yeah, very recently decided to try the Claude Pro-tier AI for a month, and I'm very impressed. I did have access to Gemini 3.1 Pro through work, but it feels like a night-and-day difference.

We'll see if I still feel this way in a couple weeks, but for now I'm firmly in the "very, very useful" camp.

I'm actually a huge fan or 3.1 pro (high) personally. Opus and 5.x xhigh are definitely better at difficult problem solving but 3.1 pro can handle most things and is much more chill and less anal about many things.

Would be interesting to hear what specific tasks 3.1 pro underperforms on that opus can take care of

Not quite that extreme, but https://www.themotte.org/post/3791/smallscale-question-sunday-for-june-7/450717?context=8#context

Google's AI is embarrassingly bad.

This is the technology that's going to completely upend the world order?

I think LLM-tech is over-hyped, and I think this site's rationalist/EA DNA makes its commentariat hype it even above that over-credulous baseline.

Even still, it's probably unfair to judge the current state of the LLM frontier by whatever Google is doing. Their latest Gemini models are dogshit, and anecdotally represent a regression over previous releases. The fact that they can't even get a new pro model out the door reinforces my opinion.

My work is using it along with GPT for various tasks. Management loves Gemini for some reason. It can't even consistently summarize emails. It will hallucinate basic things like who said what, or even completely invert the plain statements of speakers. This doesn't do too much damage, because management tended to hallucinate a lot in the first place, so all we've really done is streamline their rejection of reality.

When I have tried to use it for coding tasks, it frequently shits the bed because it invents APIs that don't exist, refuses to use tool calls, and goes into schizophrenic reasoning loops. I use it because politics demand that I be a team player, but at this point I'm pretty sure I've already lost more time to it than I will ever save.

In contrast, the latest GPT models are... OK I guess. They still hallucinate once you go a few steps off the beaten path, but it's not omnipresent and endemic like it is with the Gemini lineage. I think it's insane that we've spent nearly a decade and approximately 50 Manhattan projects worth of money to accomplish that level of utility, but it's... OK.

all we've really done is streamline their rejection of reality.

Poor old Scott Adams. This would make a great Dilbert punchline.

If Scott Adams weren't dead, the current business zeitgeist around LLMs would kill him.

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