This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Dead forum?
Today in AI news, OpenAI has reportedly released GPT-6 Astra. Rumors on X suggests that it scores 99% on Arc-AGI-3, meaning that the benchmark is essentially dead now. For comparison, Fable only scored 30%. Does this mean AGI is here? Many are saying that it is. Color me skeptical, but its getting harder and harder to find concrete tests that AI cannot pass. The god of the gaps gets smaller.
Many intelligenct people have important things to say about this. But what do the 84 year old communists think? Bernie Sanders today has introduced legislation calling for a ban on superintelligence with a 20 year prison term for attempted superintelligence. He also wants (shocked Pikachu) a government regulatory agency. Although he mumbles something about international cooperation, its clear that China will not be subject to these rules so it solves nothing.
I will give him credit for at least recognizing the importance of the issue.
We could be entering a world of unimaginable change. And, given the political systems in place in the US and China, the midwives of that changes will be those on the cusp of senility.
I don't know what any of these eval scores mean. I no longer have the ability to intuitively "feel" how much more intelligent each iterative model release is. I don't know how to code. I don't know how to do graduate-level math. These models have been smarter than me for quite some time.
The point of ARC-AGI was to find tests that were easy for normal humans but difficult or impossible for AI.
So unlike more inscrutable tests like FrontierMath, this one is a little easier to understand. You would easily beat Opus 4.6 on ARC-AGI-3 even though the model is smarter than you in other ways. But you wouldn't beat Astra (at least not in its harness and with a large enough token budget).
This doesn't mean that Astra can do everything on a computer that a human can do, only that it's making real progress.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link