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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026

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In the jungle book there is a scene - Shir Han is dragging Baloo with his tail and this legendary exchange takes place:

Buzzie: "You can let go, Baloo."Baloo: "Are you kidding? There's teeth in the other end!

If we slow down now - we will certainly feel the teeth.

Qwen 3.8 flash next abliterated exists. That can be run albeit slowly on consumer hardware and my hunch is that it is enough of a both foundation and power multiplier - for the mythical beast that is ASI to eventually emerge. The cat is out of the bag and stopping now

Also one of the things the Yuddites seem incapable of doing is figuring out that superintelligence does not mean omnipotence. The laws of physics will still work and some other too. Internet is trivial to be made more secure, not every infrastructure needs to be connected to it anyway.

If the frontier labs slow down - the research will continue. My hunch tells me that we are really far away from the limits of IQ per watt, per weight, per wafer, per harness. All the world militaries and terrorist groups have great interest in making full fledged AI work in the limited hardware a drone possesses.

The datacenter big ASI have always been safe. You just put a lot of semtex in the foundations of the DC with dead man switch. The other one - the fast nimble one that could fit on consumer hardware is the dangerous one. And I don't want it to emerge in Yemen or Sudan.

The question is 2028. 2026 won't be important because the red tribe will hold the presidency and if some of the conservative judges have functioning brains will let themselves be replaced in the lame duck if they lose the senate. But who knows what the job market will be in 2028 and if the effects on AI will be suddenly felt by then.

Personally I am accelerationist. I have been since reading the Lord of Light.

His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circumstances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit. Silence, though, could.

Closeness to sam altman is pure coincidental.

From yesterday you could run the dense qwen 3.8 on 1080ti. The research will continue.

From yesterday you could run the dense qwen 3.8 on 1080ti.

How does that work? That gpu has, what, 11 gb vram?

https://prismml.com/news/bonsai-2-27b

It is with small context and 20t/s , but 24/7 are a lot of tokens.

This is a dangerous type of company. They are (presumably) thinking they are engaged in well-doing by democratizing intelligence or something like that. But soon the worst scum of the world will have very powerful and uncensored, non-refusing models running on cheap hardware and probably smartphones too, in not too distant future. This model you've linked can even be run in a browser. No know-how required at all.

I already like them. No need to sell them to me harder.

Oh. Cool. How will you and yours prevail in the Cyberpunk 2077 world of tomorrow?

By being smarter, more ruthless and more inventive. What your ilk don't understand is that Cyberpunk 2077 is the good future awaiting humanity. Leaving AI under government control means 1984 ... at best.

I don't even disagree, but you are aware of that whole the-AIs-are-about-to-break-through-the-blackwall thing happening in the background of C2077?

Yes. But I am more worried about UK government sending everyone with anti immigration sentiments using AI powered robots and surveillance tech to reeducation camps, than skynet using terminators to eradicate us all.

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